The Fiscal Politics of Settler Colonialism

This review concentrates on the fiscal practices of settler colonial states and societies such as Canada and the United States. Synthesizing critical interdisciplinary literature, I characterize how the fiscal forwards settler political goals of civilization, dispossession, and possession of Indigenous people, nations, and territory. Emphasizing the sociality and material power effects of fiscal colonialism demonstrates how practices like taxation have been administered historically and contemporarily around imperatives of settler authorities and against Indigenous nationhood. Organized around the knowledge politics of fiscal colonialism, the review foregrounds how fiscal discourses, techniques, and knowledge forms are integral to understanding settler colonial legal and political framing of Indigenous peoples. In doing so, this literature analyzes how public finance is structured and constituted by racist economic hierarchies, political ideologies, and property regimes that inscribe anti-Indigenous imperatives into law, state repertoires, and social practices.