The affirmative’s epistemological failures engages in the erasure of Indigenous presence

By failing to recognize and engage settler-colonial frameworks, race scholars risk misunderstanding, mis-representing, or—worse yet—erasing key structures and events that contextualize race in the U.S. Academic enter-prises and sociology in particular have long exhibited dual tendencies toward social justice on the one hand, and legitimation of established social order on the other (e.g., Morris, 2017). Attending to settler-colonial structures is not only crucial for developing an understanding of the experiences of Indigenous peoples today; it fundamentally informs and enriches sociological approaches to race. Whereas the existing sociological work on race has engaged themes of colorblind racism, white supremacy, and labor, the integration of settler-colonial theory underscores how Indigenous dispossession and erasure have fundamentally structured the racialization processes of all peoples in the U.S. The central focus on land makes visible a complex set of racializing forces that have so far been largely ignored by the field, and thereby exposes the extent to which the attainment of “racial equality” integrates non-Indigenous people targeted by racism into settler systems and whereby they simultaneously participate in Indigenous disposses-sion and erasure. We have emphasized here how the theoretical framework of settler-colonialism challenges and enriches socio-logical theories of race. But we note that the absence of this theory to date is part of a larger problem - the general absence of Indigenous scholars and perspectives within sociology as a whole. To make way for an Indigenous Sociol-ogy (for lack of a better term), we must attend to the removal of existing barriers to Indigenous participation within our discipline. In addition to improving literacy on settler colonialism and Indigenous experiences and perspectives among sociologists, it is crucial to make sure the institutions and practices we partake in recognize and account for the value of Indigenous scholars and epistemologies. Just as empires and settlers presumed the North American con-tinent as terra nullis, so too have sociologists largely failed to account for the presence of Indigenous peoples in North America, inevitably leading to the erasure of Indigenous scholars, frameworks, and epistemologies within the discipline. Fortunately, the tension between settler colonialism and enduring Indigeneity, and the roles played by the natu-ral world within this dialectic, can be employed to address long overdue questions at the intersection of race, political and environmental sociology, and gender and sexuality. By understanding how the structure of settler colonialism shapes race and racism, particularly around Indigenous experiences and resistance, and by examining how this struc-ture fundamentally shapes the categorization and exploitation of all peoples and landscapes, sociologists can begin reversing Indigenous erasure within the subdiscipline and develop more accurate and nuanced analyzes.