Settler colonialism is an ongoing pursuit within Canadian state-building practices and refers to the unfolding process of settling Canada through structured dispossession. As Kahnawá:ke Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson notes: “This settling is not, of course, innocent either. It is dispossession: the taking of our land from us. And it is ongoing. It is killing our women in order to do so; and has historically done this to do so.” Ongoing dispossession relies on racialized, gendered, economic, and political domination that seeks to eliminate Indigenous peoples from the land and enacts targeted violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQ+: “in order for settlers to usurp the land and extract its value, Indigenous peoples must be destroyed, removed, and made into ghosts” (Arvin, Tuck, and Morrill).

In the context of settler colonialism, MMIWGT2S+ relations experience the multigenerational effects and complex trauma of living, working, and resisting ongoing colonial gendered violence. Pima’tisowin e’ mimtotaman is centered in decolonial relations, networks of healing, and transformative justice by and for MMIWGT2S+ relations.