Settler colonialism is a structure of domination organized around the replacement of Indigenous peoples with a settler society on Indigenous land. Unlike exploitation colonialism (which extracts labor and resources while maintaining the colonized population as a workforce), settler colonialism seeks to eliminate the Indigenous population — through genocide, removal, assimilation, or legal erasure — and replace it with a new, permanent settler society that claims the land as its own.
The critical insight is that settler colonialism is a structure, not an event. It is not something that happened in the past and produced present-day consequences; it is something that is happening now, sustained by ongoing practices: the legal apparatus of property and sovereignty, the policing of Indigenous land and bodies, the educational systems that naturalize settler presence, and the economic arrangements that treat Indigenous land as a resource base. Patrick Wolfe’s formulation — “invasion is a structure, not an event” — captures this: the invasion did not end when the fighting stopped.
This structural analysis has consequences for what decolonization requires. If settler colonialism were merely a historical injustice, it could in principle be addressed through acknowledgment, apology, and reform within existing institutions. If it is an ongoing structure, it requires the dismantling of that structure — which means the return of land, not merely the recognition of historical wrongs. This is why Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang argue that “decolonization is not a metaphor” — it cannot be reduced to curriculum reform, diversity programming, or settler moves to innocence.