The spectacle of settler colonial urbanism, racialized policing, and Indigenous refusal of white possessive logics

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore how the underlying logics of white possession continue to fuel a cycle of state-supported territorial acquisition, enclosure, and expulsion in Edmonton, Alberta’s city center through the recent opening of Rogers Place, a publicly financed $613.7-million arena and home of the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Edmonton Oilers. Drawing from a two-year ethnography, we examine how men’s professional hockey and its related land development projects are powerful mechanisms for bringing a new iteration of settler colonialism to the city, including as hockey fans re-enact a historical racial hierarchy that privileges certain lives over others, and as police enforce this racial project of accumulation and its colonial lines of force with impunity. Our research, moreover, challenges common-sense ideas about the benefits of sports-driven downtown redevelopment, as well as the widespread belief that settler colonialism is an event of the past that occurred outside of cities. Finally, as settlers renew and reproduce lines of power through these processes, we also explore the various ways in which city-center residents refuse white possessive logics in their attempts to transcend the limits of ‘settler-colonial city-making’ and policing, ‘producing urban space in their own right.’ 1