David W Hugill

This article considers how racial capitalism can be productively mobilized to extend contemporary work on settler colonial urbanism. It argues that scholars interested in the latter have much to gain from the recent flourishing of geographical work on the former. Our contribution begins by surveying some of the core tensions and affinities between the theoretical commitments that animate the settler colonial and racial capitalism frameworks. It then examines the historical development of Winnipeg, Manitoba in an effort to ground our thinking in an empirical context. In doing so, it surveys the key dimensions of that city's settler colonial urban history, focusing on the ways that property relations have functioned as a technique of racial domination. It concludes with a consideration of how an engagement with racial capitalism offers important opportunities to develop a more expansive understanding of racialized oppression in this and other contexts.

Safer injection facilities provide critical resources for people who have been systematically marginalized. In Canada, organizing efforts in
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside have been at the forefront of drug user advocacy. David Hugill and Michael C.K. Ma interviewed Ann Livingston in the summer of 2017 and discussed her organizing career and the contemporary overdose crisis.

What is a " settler‐colonial city " and how does it differ from other forms of imperial urban spatial organization? This article seeks to answer these questions by attempting to urbanize recent insights in settler‐colonial theory. It begins by considering well‐established theorizations of the "colonial city " —particularly those developed by geographers and urbanists in the 1970s and 1980s—in order to assess their suitability for analyses of contemporary settler‐colonial milieu. Building on this discussion, the paper asks if and how the insights of settler‐colonial theory offer new opportunities to renovate earlier theorizations in ways that are more explicitly relevant to making sense of the urban process in North America and other societies where colonists have " come to stay " and no formal process of decolonization has unfolded.

This paper offers a comprehensive interpretation of how an “Indian neighborhood” emerged in the Phillips district of South Minneapolis in the decades that followed the Second World War. It examines some of the ways that postwar urban strategies and political developments (suburbanization, the expansion of the middle class, interstate construction, and inner-city devalorization, for example) operated to divide the city by producing and sustaining discrete zones of privilege and deprivation, cementing the “structured advantage” of some and the exclusion of others. Building on this analysis, it concludes with a consideration of how the distribution of these advantages is illustrative of the enduring potency of the “colonial relation.”

This article considers the explicit link between the historical production of the Twin Cities metropolitan area (Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN) and the violence of settler colonization by examining the life and contributions of one of the urban region’s most celebrated ‘city builders’, Thomas Barlow Walker. Drawing on recent scholarship in the emergent subfield of settler-colonial studies, it demonstrates that Walker’s rise to local fame and fortune is inseparable from strategies of dispossessive accumulation that operated to valorize and legitimate the territorial and social claims of settler colonists, over and above those of Indigenous peoples. In doing so, this article aims to challenge revisionist presentations that interpret the urban region as a strictly settler creation and demonstrates that settler colonial dispossession retains an explicit material trace in the urban present.

David Hugill and Owen Toews

Abstract

This paper examines the controversy that emerged as the City of Winnipeg debated committing public funds to an evangelical Christian group seeking to build a youth centre in an urban neighborhood with a large Aboriginal population. It traces the emergence of a coordinated opposition to the project and demonstrates why many felt that municipal and federal support was not only inappropriate but also worked to recapitulate longstanding patterns of disregard for the needs and aspirations of Aboriginal peoples. In an era where it has become common for Canadian governments to speak of “reconciliation” we demonstrate how such ambitions continue to be impeded by pervasive logics of governance that work against genuine processes of decolonization. We argue that events in Winnipeg reveal the persistence of longstanding colonial dynamics and demonstrate how such dynamics are exacerbated by the regressive tendencies of the city’s neoliberal orientation. We insist that colonial practices and mentalities not only permeate the present but also that they interact with, and are shaped by, the exigencies of actually existing political economies. Ours is an attempt to show how insights about the form and content of urban neoliberalism can be productively engaged with insights about how colonial relations have been reproduced and transformed in the contemporary moment. It is also an effort to demonstrate how such mentalities and practices are being resisted and challenged in important ways in contemporary Canada. Our observations are based on a range of interviews with local activists,  politicians and service providers as well as a close reading of a range of political documents available on the public record.
Key Words: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Aboriginal Peoples of Canada, Urban Neoliberalism, Settler Colonialism, Evangelical Christianity, Aboriginal Non-Aboriginal Relationships, Postcolonialism.

Urbanismo renaciente: Nuevas Incursiones Misioneras, Resistencia de los Pueblos Originarios y Barreras a la Reconstitución de Relaciones en el Noreste de Winnipeg

Este artículo analiza la controversia surgida del debate acerca del financiamiento con fondos del Municipio de Winnipeg de un grupo evangélico cristiano que planeaba construir un Centro para Jóvenes en un barrio con una numerosa población aborigen. Acá se rastrea el surgimiento de una oposición coordinada al proyecto, y se demuestra por qué muchxs argumentaron que el apoyo municipal y federal no solo era inapropiado sino que además reinstituía viejos patrones de indiferencia hacia las aspiraciones y necesidades de los pueblos originarios. En una era en la que es común que los gobiernos canadienses hablen de ‘reconciliación’, acá demostramos cómo estas ambiciones continúan siendo incitadas por lógicas de gobernanza que en realidad funcionan en contra de los procesos genuinos de decolonización. En nuestra visión, los hechos en Winnipeg revelan la persistencia de viejas dinámicas coloniales y demuestran cómo esas dinámicas son exacerbadas por las tendencias regresivas de la orientación neoliberal de la ciudad. Insistimos en que existen prácticas y mentalidades coloniales que permean el presente pero también interactúan con (y son moldeadas por) las exigencias de las economías políticas realmente existentes. El nuestro es un intento de mostrar cómo los aportes acerca de la forma y el contenido del urbanismo neoliberal pueden ser relacionados con los aportes acerca de cómo las relaciones coloniales han sido reproducidas y transformadas en la actualidad. Se trata también de un esfuerzo por demostrar cómo esas mentalidades y prácticas son fuertemente resistidas y desafiadas en Canadá. Nuestras observaciones se basan en una serie de entrevistas con militantes locales y con políticos, así como también en la lectura detallada de numerosos documentos políticos de acceso público.
Palabras clave: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Pueblos Originarios de Canadá, Neoliberalismo Urbano, Colonialismo, Cristianismo Evangélico, Postcolonialismo."

Canadian political economists Leo Panitch and
Sam Gindin have long held that states are not the
unwitting stewards of capitalism but key actors in its
maintenance and reproduction. With The Making
of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of
American Empire (Verso 2012) they make this case
more explicitly than ever by forensically tracing the
decisive role that the American state has played in establishing
the foundations of the contemporary global
capitalist space economy. Their weighty tome – which
was more than a decade in the making – is a comprehensive
account of the rise of American empire. It
details the proximity between prescriptions devised
and favored in Washington and the shape of contemporary
capitalism. Panitch and Gindin’s crucial
contribution, however, is not simply that they record
the emergence of a Pax Americana but rather their
revelation of the historical uniqueness of this new
form of imperial rule. The authors demonstrate that
the post-war American state was uniquely placed to
“relaunch” global capitalism after the mid-century
bloodletting, but through strategies that were far more
“informal” than those of its predecessors. They show
that in promoting the interests of American capital
and attempting to maintain an accumulation-friendly generalized rule of law the American state took the
lead in “creating the political and juridical conditions
for the general extension and reproduction of capitalism
internationally” (Panitch and Gindin 2012: 6).
Much of the book’s twelve chapters are committed to
telling this story, chronicling the convoluted process
by which the American state became the central force
in the emergence of a truly global post-war capitalism.

Students and education workers have been at the forefront of the mass mobilizations that have swept across Europe over the past 18 months. As these movements have developed, their transnational character has become increasingly evident. Student movements have begun to draw connections between their own national contexts and the broader struggles against austerity that have emerged in a wide range of locales, including North America. There are numerous lessons that North American students and workers can draw from the practices, projects, and critiques advanced by European education activists, particularly around issues of organizing and what it means to draw on legacies of struggle. As European universities become subject to increasing homogenization through the adoption of “North American” systems of organization, and as the neoliberal process of university transformation becomes increasingly international, the overt links between our struggles become stronger. At a recent meeting in Paris called to build bridges between student movements from around the world, élise Thorburn and David Hugill spoke with activists from the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands in order to uncover what North Americans can learn from the battles currently underway in Europe.