The Settler Sea is a deeply researched and inspired contribution to the expanding field of settler colonial studies. Centering her study around the Salton Sea in the Colorado Desert of far southeastern California, Traci Brynne Voyles examines the myriad ways that the culture of local Indigenous people, especially the Desert Cahuilla, and other racialized inhabitants have been dramatically altered by the creation and management of the Salton Sea and the massive irrigation projects that have both surrounded and maintained it since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Voyles defines settler colonialism as “a set of power relations that seeks to colonize Indigenous peoples and claim their homelands as settlers’ own” via “a web of relationships that reinforces white supremacy, control over land, exploitation of racialized workers, and unsustainable resource use for capitalist accumulation” (6). The book explores the manifestations of this concept in eight thematic chapters with the denotative titles...
University of California Press