Title: Settler Colonial Present in Northern Europe
Abstract: My talk examines settler colonialism in Northern Europe not as a closed historical episode, but as an ongoing structure that continues to organize political authority, territorial governance, and social reproduction. While Nordic colonialism is often framed in terms of a legacy, I argue that the Nordic region offers a salient case of how settler colonial relations persist within liberal democratic states that otherwise present themselves as egalitarian and progressive. Focusing on the governance of land, resources, welfare, and knowledge in Sámi territories, the talk traces how contemporary legal, administrative, and welfare-state arrangements reproduce colonial relations through practices of jurisdictional containment, extraction, and recognition without restitution. My analysis foregrounds the present tense of settler colonialism: how colonial power is enacted through infrastructure, policy, and everyday state practices rather than solely through overt coercion. It also highlights Indigenous responses that contest these arrangements, particularly claims to jurisdiction that exceed frameworks of minority rights or cultural accommodation. By situating Northern Europe within broader comparative debates on settler colonialism, the talk challenges exceptionalist narratives of Nordic innocence and contributes to a more analytically precise and politically accountable understanding of coloniality in Europe today.
Bio: Rauna Kuokkanen is Research Professor of Arctic Indigenous Politics at the University of Lapland (Finland) and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on comparative Indigenous politics and law, Indigenous feminism and gender, Arctic governance, and settler colonialism in the Nordic countries. Her Sámi name is Jovnna Jon Anne Kirstte Rávdná or Fierranjot Kirstte Rávdná. She’s from the Deatnu River, Ohcejohka/Utsjoki.
