Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

In 1978, scholarly articles were published in the book Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, which remains a fundamental text in Appalachian studies.47 Pearson writes that in the flagship essay of the collection, written by Helen Lewis and Edward Knipe, the authors refer to the white residents as “the indigenous population,” while those of the residents who align themselves with the coal companies are designated as “natives who become colonizers of their own people.” They write of the “colonizers” manifesting racism against an Indigenous population, referring to the white settler population, which the authors refer to as “the colonized.” The authors analogize regional development organizations to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, claiming that the white population lives “on the Appalachian Reservation.” Pearson notes that this is a comparison also made by other white Appalachian scholars. Most disturbing is that Lewis and Knipe treat the original invasion of the Scots Irish squatters as peaceful settlement rather than genocidal violence. They portray an empty landscape that the settlers occupied, the Indigenous peoples somehow having disappeared with white settlers inheriting indigeneity and the land.48 In another anthology, Edward Guinan writes of the Appalachian region, “whose indigenous Cherokee integrated, educated, and nursed the exiled Celtic arrivals into maturity, wisdom, and community.”49 Julie “Judy” Bonds, a well-known activist opposing mountaintop re...