Native American voices are excluded through ecological domination.

This University
was built on Dakota land. When people walk on this land, they forget the indigenous
people who walked on it before. ecological domination also tends to feed colonial
logic, as sites for Native Americans disappear. 

Whyte 18, K. (2018). Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice, Environment and Society, 9(1),
125-144. Retrieved Jul 1, 2019, from https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/environment-and-
society/9/1/ares090109.xml

file:///Users/david/Downloads/Settler_Colonialism_Ecology_and_Environm.pdf DCB // SHS JL // EHS AI

Settler colonialism, as an ecological form of domination, is environmental violence . In the first paragraph of
this article, I feature the voices of people who understand the disruption of relationships between humans and the environment as violent.
Interpreting the disruptions ecologically, it
is possible to identify some violent patterns of environmental injustice
that arise from settler colonialism. While I do not think there is some exhaustive list of patterns of injustice, I do want to discuss
at least two and give them labels for the sake of this essay. Th e fi rst is “vicious sedimentation,” which is the pattern of how environmental
changes compound over time to 138 Kyle Whyte reinforce and strengthen settler ignorance against Indigenous peoples. The second is
“insidious loops,” which is the pattern of how historic settler industries that violated Indigenous
peoples when they began are also implicated many years later in further environmental violence, such
as climate injustice. Vicious sedimentation refers to how constant ascriptions of settler ecologies onto Indigenous ecologies fortify
settler ignorance against Indigenous peoples over time. In historic accounts of fur traders, clergy, and settlers, they certainly attempted to
enclose regions such as Anishinaabewaki into settler concepts of nationhood, savage places, and so on. But in reading those accounts, the
colonists nonetheless traveled through these regions and recognized the diff erent Indigenous ecologies operative within those places. Witgen
(2011), Sleeper-Smith (2001), Michael McDonnell (2015), and White (1991) provide accounts of European and US attempts to abide by
Anishinaabe kinship-based forms of diplomacy. Yet, fast-forward more than two centuries later. People
who participate in settler
colonial domination are perhaps more likely to have their discriminatory beliefs about Indigenous
peoples confirmed by the prevalence of settler ecologies that have forcibly overlaid Indigenous
ecologies substantially and dramatically. Th e Midwestern US, for example, appears to settlers, depending on where, as endless
farming and commercial agriculture, recreational lakeshore, unoccupied parks, vast urban centers, wilderness space, golf courses, quaint towns,
military installations, and so on. When
settlers even walk onto an Indigenous jurisdiction or nearby a sacred
site, there is a good chance that they experience no awareness of any difference from their own lives .
From the soils and hydrology to the fl ora and fauna, all they can see are settler ways of life. Even references to “Native American inhabitation”
in parks and tourist sites are often written by non-Indigenous persons and do not reflect the lives of the descendants of those “inhabitants”
today. The
lack of visibility of wild rice beds and the Indigenous communities who monitor and protect
them, when settlers drive along highways, go on hikes, mine, or grow foods, among other activities,
further solidifies the presumption that Indigenous peoples are absent. Urban gentrifi cation in Midwestern cities
erases any traces of Indigenous origins of the area. Gentrifi cation processes often commodify highly selective memories and legacies of other
groups, oft en people of color, who lived there before the most recent gentrifi cation process

Settlement is not a one time event but rather an ontologically functions as an ongoing
structure built to delegitimize and oppress the indigenous body. 
Rifkin 14 – Associate Professor of English & WGS @ UNC-Greensboro (Mark, ‘Settler Common Sense:
Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance,’ pp. 7-10) (Eagan AI)
If nineteenth-century American literary studies tends to focus on the ways Indians enter the narrative frame and the kinds of meanings and
associa- tions they bear, recentattempts to theorize settler colonialism have sought to shift attention from its
effects on Indigenous subjects to its implications for nonnative political attachments, forms of inhabitance,
and modes of being, illuminating and tracking the pervasive operation of settlement as a system. In Settler
Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology, Patrick Wolfe argues, “Settler colonies were (are) premised on the elimination of native
societies. The split tensing reflects a determinate feature of settler colonization. The colonizers come to stay— invasion is a structure
not an event” (2).6 He suggests that a “logic of elimination” drives settler governance and sociality, describing
“the settler-colonial will ” as “a historical force that ultimately derives from the primal drive to expansion that is
generally glossed as capitalism” (167), and in “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” he observes that “ elimination is an
organizing principle of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off(and superceded) occurrence” (388).
Rather than being superseded after an initial moment/ period of conquest, colonization persists since “ the logic of elimination marks
a return whereby the native repressed continues to structure settler- colonial society ” (390). In Aileen
Moreton-Robinson’s work, whiteness func- tions as the central way of understanding the domination and displacement of Indigenous peoples
by nonnatives.7 In “Writing Off Indigenous Sover- eignty,” she argues, “As a regime of power, patriarchal white sovereignty operates
ideologically, materially and discursively to reproduce and main- tain its investment in the nation as a white possession” (88), and in “Writ- ing
Off Treaties,” she suggests, “At an
ontological level the structure of subjective possession occurs through the
imposition of one’s will-to-be on the thing which is perceived to lack will, thus it is open to being
possessed,” such that “possession . . . formspart ofthe ontological structure of white subjectivity” (83–84). For
Jodi Byrd, the deployment of Indianness as a mobile figure works as the principal mode of U.S. settler colonialism. She observes that
“colonization and racialization . . . have often been conflated,” in ways that“tend to be sited along the axis of
inclusion/exclusion” and that “misdirect and cloud attention from the underlying structures of settler
colonialism” (xxiii, xvii). She argues that settlement works through the translation of indigeneity as Indianness ,
casting place-based political collec- tivities as (racialized) populations subject to U.S. jurisdiction and manage- ment: “ the Indian is left
nowhere and everywhere within the ontological premises through which U.S. empire orients , imagines, and
critiques itself”; “ideas ofIndians and Indianness have served as the ontological ground through which U.S.
settler colonialism enacts itself” (xix).

Academia is founded on the violent exclusion of Indigenous epistemologies, making

neg framing epistemically suspect. The affirmative is uniquely key to introduce native
perspectives. 
Burns 16,Jim Burns is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Florida International University. His research centers on
institutional violence and education, Foucauldian analysis of governmentality, biopower, and genealogical inquiry. ["Indigenous Education,
Colonization, Neoliberal Schools, and Narratives of Survivance," Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 8-1-2016, Vol.14(2), p.100-
129]//ARK1 (Eagan AI)
Considering Delpit’s(2012) concept of culture, neoliberal schooling contextualized in the history of heteropatriarchal
settler colonialism illustrates an anti-culture and anti-politics imbued with anesthetic curricula, pedagogies, and
institutional practices predicated on commodification, disposability, and violence. Ernest’s and Amanda’s counter-
narratives of survivance  demonstrate their commitment to cultural sustainability and revitalization and
capture their commitment to actively resist heteropatriarchal settler colonialism and neoliberalism through, as Amanda put it,
“Indigenizing the academy.”Amanda’s reference to “Indigenizing the academy” resonates withPete’s (2015) call for educators to “Indiginize and
through “resisting and confronting the epistemic ignorance of our
decolonizetheir teaching, serviceand research”
profession” in an academy in which Indigenous“ways of knowinghave been marginalized,
dismissedand made invisible”(p. 65). More broadly, Battiste (2013) conceptualizes Indigenizing the academy as a move toward “a
global reclamation for education” (p. 14). Ernest and Amanda articulate an understanding of education as a political and personal journey of
cultural revitalization and the reclamation of sovereignty, which bring to presence connections between generations, senses of place, and
histories that havebeen “disappeared” (Arvin, et al., 2013) by the heteropatriarchal settler colonial academyand neoliberal schooling. As
Indigenist scholars (Battiste, 2013; Smith, 2012) we have learned that we consistently confront our own limitations, which as Delpit (1988)
writes is not easy. This work has reminded us that the institutions in which we work have been built on partial
knowledge, which is often mis-knowledge(Kumashiro, 2001) imbued with the hubris inherent in heteropatriarchal institutions predicated
on hyper-masculinized claims to objective certitude and rationality—men of reason(Connell, 1995)—rather than a sense of critical humility or
critical consciousness. Neoliberal schooling with its roots in heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism,suffersa “narration sickness” that presents
“reality as if it were motionless, static,compartmentalized, and predictable” and expounds on topics “completely alien to the existential
experience of the students”(Freire, 2009, p. 71). Palmer (2011) similarly critiques the academy’s “cult of expertise”in which “there are no
ambiguities, only claims of certainty,” which silence voices with deep experiential knowledge, but who lack “expert credentials”(p. 133).
Neoliberal schooling likewise jettisons wisdom, knowledge, and ways of knowing that lack a “market value” in favor of, as Ernest wrote, “data.”

Setcol is at the center of the ecosystem debate. The environment is essential to the
identity of indigenous culture. Thus the role of the ballot is to recognize and
deconstruct Western notions of ecology and indigenous culture.
Sepie 17 Amba J., researcher at University of Canterbury, “More than Stories, More than Myths:
Animal/Human/Nature(s) in Traditional Ecological Worldviews”, Humanities, 2017,
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/6/4/78/htm DCB // SHS JL
At the centre of this project is the necessity of querying the scholarly norms, simplistic divides and cosmological assumptions that have
The purpose of this
provided impetus for the establishment, and continuance, of westernization over several thousand years. 2
inquiry is to contribute constructively to the re-ignition, or recovery, of our awareness of the
fundamental human relationships that we have with the broader ecologies within which we
are embedded.3 I argue that indigenous and traditional life-ways around the world present
numerous valuable understandings regarding the nature of the human being, other species,
the planet we share, and how to live together; all of which appear vastly superior to
westernized interpretations of responsibility for socio-ecological wellbeing across species,
most especially in a time of planetary-level, cascading socio-ecological crises. This is not suggested as
some romantic or utopian ideal, but as a direct response to the indigenous and ecological thinkers (and their allies) who have called for the
decolonization of all people as a response to earth crises. Their call is based on the wholesale rejection of ways of thinking and being that lead
to destruction and domination, and the socialization practices which continue to perpetuate these elements within westernized societies.
The templates for how to live well together on the planet, based on reverence, responsibility, reciprocity, respect, and relationship, are
very evident in traditional and indigenous life ways, and deference to these values and practices has been sought by indigenous elders, across
the globe, for over forty years.4 Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen scholar Julian Brave NoiseCat (2017) asks that we “heed
the
diverse indigenous voices displaced and drowned out by imperialism […] indigenous people
today stand on the frontlines of global movements fighting for a more just relationship
between humanity and the land”.

Local spaces, such as debate, are uniquely key to deconstruct settler colonialism
Alfred and Corntassel,
For Manuel and Posluns, the Fourth World is founded on active relationships with the spiritual and cultural heritage embedded in the words and patterns of thought and behaviour left to us by our ancestors.

The legacies of their struggles to be Indigenous form the imperatives of our

contemporary struggles to regenerate authentic Indigenous existences. A Fourth World theory asserting Indigenous
laws on Indigenous lands highlights the sites of ongoing state–nation conflicts while reaffirming the spiritual and cultural nature of the struggle . This is not simply another taxonomy relating
Indigenous realities in a theoretical way to the so-called First, Second and Third Worlds, but a recognition of a spiritual ‘struggle to enter the Fourth World’ and to decode state motivations as they invade under

a battle against the ‘empire of possessive

the ‘mantle of liberation and development’.37 The Canadian historian Anthony Hall describes this as

individualism’ and the ‘militarization of space’: ‘the idea of the Fourth World provides a kind of broad ideological umbrella to cover the
changing coalitions of pluralistic resistance aimed at preventing the monocultural transformation of the entire planet . . .’38 While the concepts of peoplehood and the Fourth World undoubtedly provide solid

Cherokee
bases for thinking about strategies of resurgence, the question remains: how can these be put into practice? In Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America, the

sociologist Eva Marie Garroutte discusses the concept of ‘Radical Indigenism’ [is] as a
process of pursuing scholarship that is grounded in Indigenous community goals and which ‘follows the path laid down in the models of inquiry
traditional to their tribal community’.39 This intellectual strategy entails utilizing all of the talents of the

people inside and within a community to begin a process of regeneration. The larger process
of regeneration, as with the outwardly focused process of decolonization, also begins with the self. It is a self- conscious kind of

traditionalism that is the central process in the ‘reconstruction of traditional communities’ based on the original teachings and orienting values of Indigenous peoples.40
Colonialism corrupted the relationship between original peoples and the Settlers, and
it eventually led to the corruption of Indigenous cultures and communities too. But our discussion thus far has, we hope, illustrated the fact that
 decolonization and regeneration are not at root collective and institutional processes. They are shifts in thinking and
action that emanate from recommitments and reorientations at the level of the self that, over time and through proper organization, manifest as broad social and
political movements to challenge state agendas and authorities. To a large extent, institutional approaches to making meaningful change in the lives of Indigenous people have not led to what we understand as
decolonization and regeneration; rather they have further embedded Indigenous people in the colonial institutions they set out to challenge. This paradoxical outcome of struggle is because of the logical
inconsistencies at the core of the institutional approaches. Current approaches to confronting the problem of contemporary colonialism ignore the wisdom of the teachings of our ancestors reflected in such
concepts as Peoplehood and the Fourth World. They are, in a basic way, building not on a spiritual and cultural foundation provided to us as the heritage of our nations, but on the weakened and severely

Purported decolonization and watered-down cultural

damaged cultural and spiritual and social results of colonialism.

restoration processes that accept the premises and realities of our colonized existences as
their starting point are inherently flawed and doomed to fail. They attempt to reconstitute
strong nations on the foundations of enervated, dispirited and decultured people. That is the honest and brutal reality; and
that is the fundamental illogic of our contemporary struggle.

Traditional set col is fruitless. We need to study SetCol in specific instances. In certain cases,
like the aff’s plan, Political action is uniquely key to rectify the injustices of indigenous people

Greenstein 16 [Ran, associate professor of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand,

“Settler Colonialism: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?”, Jadaliyya, June 6, 2016,
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/24603/settler-colonialism_a-useful-category-of-
historica, July 10, 2017] (Eagan AI) 

And, of course, where they became numerically dominant, settlers used their political independence to consolidate their rule, marginalizing
“natives” further. But they also incorporated them into the new polity when the demographic ratio was sufficiently favorable so as not to pose
a threat to settler domination. This contrasts with the maintenance of legal-racial divisions in places where indigenous people remained a
majority of the population. Indigenous strategies have differed as well. They have consisted of attempts to integrate as individuals on an equal
basis in some countries. In others, indigenous people sought to maintain pre-colonial identities and modes of organization. Still others have
formed nationalist movements on the new ground created by colonial settlement, or focused on race as a basis for resistance. Most of these
strategies acknowledge, to varying degrees, settlers as legitimate members of the envisaged future liberated society. It is not only the broad
contours of history that vary greatly in settler colonial societies but also patterns of social change over time. Constant geographical expansion
while driving out indigenous people has occurred in the USA and Australia. Elsewhere there has been constant expansion while incorporating
indigenous people as labor power, in South Africa most notably. In other cases there has been an initial takeover of the entire territory with
more-or-less fixed relations of subordination throughout the period – for example in Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, and Namibia. There have been
different degrees of incorporation of “urban natives” in a relatively privileged position compared to rural populations, and different
combinations of direct and indirect despotism, to use Mahmood Mamdani’s notions of colonial rule in late colonial Africa. In other words, the
category of settler colonialism is compatible with different demographic ratios and different trajectories of indigenous-settler relations. It can
go along with different relations between settlers and metropolitan centers and different destinies of settlers in the post-colonial period. It is
compatible with different social structures, relying variously on free white labor, and indentured immigrant labor, from Europe, India or other
places. Or it can rely on African slavery, indigenous labor subordination, and combinations of the above. In all these respects, settler colonial
societies do not share a single historical dynamic nor do they exhibit a tendency to move in similar directions. They may end up with the
consolidation of settler rule or its demise through indigenous resistance and victory. None of the possible outcomes serves to mark the
historical trajectory of settler colonialism apart from other types of colonial societies. In the absence of a unique trajectory, does settler
colonialism display perhaps specific conceptual features? That is to say, does it work as a theoretical model? A model offers a relationship
between a limited number of concepts or variables. It aims to make sense of large number of observations. It reduces the infinite variety of
empirical reality into discrete units with distinct dynamics or laws of motion. Do models of colonial societies (settler, exploitation, plantation,
and so on), show us how some cases differ from others in theoretical terms? Do they outline distinct ways in which concepts such as class, race,
ethnicity, identity, state, gender, power, sexuality, ideology, space, time, and discourse, manifest themselves concretely or intersect with one
another? If we pose the question in this way, the conclusion seems unavoidable . Settler colonialism as a category of
historical analysis does not establish any specific social-theoretical dynamics unique to it. We
cannot use its historical features to distinguish it analytically – not just descriptively – from
other types of societies, be they colonial or not. If settler colonialism has no specific historical or theoretical dynamics
then, how do we deal analytically with societies that fall within its definition? As an alternative method of investigation, I suggest a
strategy of addressing the multiplicity of colonial and post-colonial societies with a three-track
approach: · Studying them in their full historical specificity without imposing artificial boundaries
between classes of cases; · Deploying general analytical concepts instead of developing idiosyncratic models. Such models
abound: “colonialism of a special type,” “ethnic democracy combined with protracted military occupation,” “exclusionary colonialism,” or
 Engaging in
“regimes of separation.” They may serve as useful political labels but are theoretically without predictive value. ·
selected comparisons in order to highlight general and unique features by examining them
against each other. This should allow us to enhance the complexity of good empirical description as well as the generality of social
theory. But it would not compromise either one of these imperatives. To illustrate this approach, I apply it to two settler-colonial societies,
Israel/Palestine and South Africa. In what ways does such a study offer a better prospect for historical analysis? Is the concept of apartheid,
originating in one of them and increasingly applied to the other, a useful analytical substitute? In brief, these two have in common an ongoing
conflict between indigenous people and settlers. It has stretched over centuries and involved conquest of territory, massive land dispossession,
and a constant quest for innovative modes of political domination well beyond the period of global colonial expansion and subsequent
decolonization. This continued all the way to the last decade of the twentieth century, in South Africa, and into the twenty-first in
Israel/Palestine. At the same time, there are important differences between them. They include the centrality of indigenous labor in enhancing
settler prosperity, the religious symbolism of the land, the prevailing mode of collective organization (nationalism as opposed to race), and the
degree of international legitimacy. These differences shape both power and resistance, the nature of the
state and society, as well as the possibilities of indigenous social and political mobilization. Neither settler colonialism nor apartheid as
analytical concepts can help us predict the trajectories of these societies. For that, we have to study them in concrete
historical detail and outline the precise configurations of forces at work in each case. The
approach proposed here though, directs our attention to key historical processes seen from a comparative angle. For example, it can
point out the impact of indigenous modes of political organization on conquest and
resistance. It can also highlight the greater capacity of pre-1948 Palestinians to shape the terms of the evolving conflict. And, it can point
out the more fragile modes of social organization of indigenous people in South Africa. These, in turn, facilitated their conquest and
incorporation into settler-dominated economic structures. It raises questions about the ways in which parties to the conflict in Israel/Palestine
made use of their links to global Arab, Islamic and Jewish identities and resources. In contrast, actors in South Africa were reliant for long
periods – before the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century – on local affiliations and resources. In a contemporary vein, this approach leads
us to examine strategies of resistance by focusing on the centrality of the labor movement in South African struggles as compared to its marginal role in Israel/Palestine. This can be linked to patterns of settlement and conquest  

Offense

Natives have 0 power over their land rn

Hannah 18 Hannah White, Indigenous Peoples, the International Trend Toward Legal Personhood for Nature, and the
United States, 43 Am. Indian L. Rev. 129 (2018),
h ps://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/ailr/vol43/iss1/4

United States continues to be inhabited by native peoples with spiritual and cultural
connections to the land—land that colonists methodically acquired and used to build their empire. Before colonization, an
estimated several million Native Americans lived in the territory now defined as the United States, but the native population
decreased significantly due to “disease, war, enslavement and forced relocation.”6
7
Now, about 1.7% of the population of the United States, or 5.2 million people, identify as Native American or Alaska Native. Recognized
Native American tribes in the United States are treated as sovereign and self- governing nations with rights to their ancestral lands, but they
remain under the power of the United States government as “domestic dependent nations.”8 This diminishes
whatever rights they may have to original lands and territories and subordinates them to the interest of the federal
9
government. Today, many Native Americans live on reservations or exclusively native-controlled lands set aside by the federal government, but
10
these lands are likely not those they historically occupied, nor do they compare in size, resources, or spiritual value to those they once held .

Plan Text: The United State Federal Government ought to grant legal
personhood to Natural Ecosystems on Native American Land
Hannah 18 Hannah White, Indigenous Peoples, the International Trend Toward Legal Personhood for Nature, and the
United States, 43 Am. Indian L. Rev. 129 (2018),
h ps://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/ailr/vol43/iss1/4
The struggle between different people groups over valuable lands is one that pervades all times, places,
and cultures. Many indigenous groups have deep cultural and spiritual connections to
their traditionally inhabited lands, as well as the associated natural
resources that have sustained their lives and those of their ancestors. For this reason, indigenous peoples
often have a great interest in the preservation and conservation of
land and natural resources. The systematic stripping of these sacred aspects of indigenous
culture due to rampant conquest is deeply embedded in the histories of many increased and a human
rights framework emerged following World War II, the international community built a stage on which
advocates and abused alike can challenge the “taker” mentality of the past three centuries. This stage also
the
raises awareness of indigenous peoples’ concrete rights that have traditionally been denied. Now,
inherent right of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands and
natural resources is recognized internationally by the International Labour Organization
Convention No. 169, as well as through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Despite the growing recognition of such rights, international human rights

mechanisms do not provide a binding solution that addresses the struggle between native and
non-native inhabitants over the land and resources that interest both groups. Countries seeking to rectify past wrongs

must come up with their own solutions to allocate the land and
resources in a way that balances the rights of indigenous peoples,
which include their cultural, historical, and spiritual interest in the land and resources, as well as the
societies that have developed in the region. Many
countries have done just that by
joining traditional indigenous ideologies that view land as a “being”
needing protection and preservation in order to prevent resource
depletion.
They continue
Although seemingly radical at first, this Comment will show how granting rights to nature has been successful in New Zealand, Ecuador, Bolivia,
and some United States municipalities. Generally, as discussed throughout this Comment, these rights are successfully
recognized when they relate to indigenous peoples, the environment, or a combination of the two.
Allowing a natural body to be a “person” under the law eliminates the need for one group or another to have full and
complete control or ownership over it. Instead, this allows all parties to bring claims for protection and preservation of lands
and natural resources—whether for environmental or spiritual reasons, or for no reason at all. Unsurprisingly, the United States seemed to scoff
when a similar solution to the depletion of a major natural resource was proposed through the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of the Colorado
16
River. This Comment will explore granting personhood rights to nature—the unique, yet growing, solution nations are implementing to solve
environmental issues and long-existing tensions between native and non-native groups. This Comment will discuss whether the United
States could consider this a valid way to mend ties with Native Americans and preserve our increasingly scarce
resources.

New Zealand proves. The granting of legal personhood through politics is uniquely key to mend
ties with indigenous populations
Athens’18
Allison K. Athens, An Indivisible and Living Whole: Do We Value Nature Enough to Grant It Personhood?, 45 Ecology L. Q. 187 (2018). J.D.
Candidate 2019, University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Ph.D. 2013, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Like the Whanganui River, Te Urewera is located in the North Island. Before gaining personhood, Te Urewera was the largest national park on
the Island.157 It contains virgin forest, or original bushland from before British colonization, and was created in 1954 on the traditional lands of
the Tūhoe without their consultation.158 The Tūhoe had refused to sign the Treaty of Waitangi in order to retain control of their sovereign
lands.159 The New Zealand government confiscated their land anyway and removed Tūhoe authority to control
and manage the land and their own affairs.160 During the settlement process, the Tūhoe refused any settlement offer that did not include Te
Urewera, the place where they could “exercise their spiritual authority through guardianship” of the natural environment.161 Initially, the New
Zealand Crown refused to give the Tūhoe control of the national park, but
through the legal personhood model that
gives no one ownership of the land (except itself) and a co-management strategy, the land remains
protected with public use remaining an important feature.162 Te Urewera will maintain a separate identity
with a different management strategy, but will have significant Tūhoe input about how the management strategy can better respect Tūhoe
cosmology and cultural relationship with the land.163 This view radically changes the legal system from respecting property rights of a single
person to respecting property rights of nature in itself.
This settlement agreement codifies Te Urewera as a
living entity with value in itself and the Tūhoe’s relationship with the natural feature without turning the
natural feature into Tūhoe property or making it a “wilderness,” empty of people and history. The Tūhoe and the New Zealand Crown reached
this conclusion through negotiation as part of the settlement process: “Tūhoe and the Crown share the view that Te Urewera should have legal
recognition in its own right.”164 Scholars have noted that the settlement is not a completed step towards recognition of Māori law and full
reconciliation between Māori and the New Zealand Crown, although they “make significant advances in terms of establishing a framework that
reflects a Māori perspective on human relationships with the natural environment and specific landscape features.”165 While the national park
plan for the landscape is still in effect, modifications have already been introduced, such as limited hunting and cultural resource gathering within
park boundaries, activities that had been expressly forbidden under Crown government management in order to protect it as a “wilderness,” with
no mark of man upon it.166 Legal scholar Catherine Iorns Magallanes explains that both New Zealand and Māori settlement agreements that give
rights to nature “were not designed in order to give more rights to nature or in order to uphold the environmentalists’ claims of according legal
personality to nature. Instead, they
were devised as a way to better uphold the human rights of the
indigenous Māori of New Zealand.”167

The continuance of Settler colonialism results in the erasure of Indigenous culture,

ecological destruction, and ultimately total physical genocide 
Bacon 18 (May 28 2018, J.M. Bacon is a Ph.D candidate in the Environmental Studies, Science, and
Policy program at the University of Oregon, “Settler colonialist as eco-social structure and the
production of colonial ecological violence”, file:///C:/Users/Michele
%20Tang/Downloads/bacon2018.pdf) DCB // SHS JL (this is mine now I have colonized it)
In the United States, settler colonialism structures political and social life through the ongoing appropriation and occupation of
Native land, and is culturally enforced through practices that actively obscure or erase Indigenous peoples
– an effort to complete via ideological and cultural means the work of earlier failed attempts at total
physical genocide (Wolfe 1999; Coulthard 2014; Fenelon and Trafzer 2014; Tuck and Wayne Yang 2013).1 Simultaneously subject to
erasure are the processes of settler colonialism itself (Wolfe 2006; Veracini 2011). Yet, settler colonialism pervades
contemporary US society, functioning in politics, law, education, and culture. Indeed, its traces can be found
across all levels of analysis from the international to the interpersonal, thus there is ample reason to consider settler
colonialism’s influence over a host of social and political institutions . However, because settler
colonialism’s fundamental goal is the ongoing appropriation of Indigenous land and resources by and
for the benefit of settlers it is an especially important lens for thinking about eco-social relations
(Coulthard 2014; Norgaard, Reed, and Bacon 2018). Looking at a few highly illustrative examples of state power and the development of settler-
colonial resource management policy as well as at the settlercolonial culture which pervades US environmentalism, I will demonstrate that
settler colonialism is an ecosocial structure, which produces/maintains drastic and enduring inequalities between settlers and Native peoples.
This structure disrupts Indigenous eco-social relations,2 and in so doing produces what I call colonial
ecological violence,3 which results in particular risks and harms experienced by Native peoples and
communities.4 Settler colonialism in US environmental sociology While the concept of settler colonialism occupies a relatively robust
position in anthropology, geography, and history as well as in Canadian and Australian sociology, US sociology has only begun to grapple with
the concept relatively recently (e.g. Steinman 2012; Steinmetz 2014; Glenn 2015; Fenlon 2015; Bonilla-Silva 2016; Cantzler and Huyhn 2016;
Norgaard, Reed and Bacon 2018). Throughout US sociology, deep and sustained sociological engagement with contemporary US Indigenous life
has been uncommon.5 This is apparent in both the published sociology literature and the status of contemporary US Indigenous research and
researchers within the American Sociological Association. One of the most visible and sustained engagements with settler colonialism in US
sociology was the intellectual exchange between Glenn (2015), Fenelon (2015), Steinman (2016) and Bonilla-Silva (2016), which moved the
conversation about settler colonialism forward in the area of race and ethnicity. Though not working in the area of environment, the exchange
between these scholars necessarily addressed issues of eco-social relations demonstrating the centrality of this issue in settler colonialism and
scholarship aimed at explaining this structure. For example, Glenn’s (2015) attention to the imposition of cultural values that transform land
into property, and Fenelon’s (2015) important interventions regarding issues of homeland defence, territoriality, and the colonial-capitalist
exploitation of land and labor. The centrality of land and territory in settler colonialism quite simply cannot be ignored. \Scholars like Julia
Cantzler and Kari Norgaard have demonstrated a lasting commitment to making inroads in this area, and their work comprises a significant
portion of environmental sociology focused on Indigenous peoples within the United States. Cantzler’s (2007) analysis of the Makah whaling
conflict raised important concerns about the ideological and “moral” conflicts between protreaty and mainstream environmental groups. She
has also contributed to comparative analyses of environmentally centered conflicts between indigenous peoples in the United States, Australia,
and New Zealand (Cantzler 2011). Norgaard’s work – along with her various colleagues – has expanded the research on food sovereignty (Alkon
and Norgaard 2009; Hormel and Norgaard 2009) and drawn important connections to the sociology of the family (Willette, Norgaard, and Reed
2016), emotions (Norgaard and Reed 2017) and race and gender (Norgaard, Reed, and Bacon 2018). Within the environmental subfield, studies
of particular tribal conditions and conflicts have laid essential groundwork for drawing connections between the practices of settler-colonial
states and institutions and the structuring of eco-social relations (e.g. Norgaard, Reed, Van Horn 2011; Cantzler 2007; Deutsch 2017). More
the US conservation movement has provided important
broadly, Dorceta Taylor’s (2016) analysis of the rise of
insights into how race, class, and gender inform the development of US environmentalism, while also considering settler
colonialism as part of conservation’s ecosocial project. Other recent publications have aimed to tease out the relationship
between settler colonialism, decolonization, and environmental justice (e.g. Clark 2002; Cantzler and Huynh 2016; Pellow 2016). Settler
colonialism and eco-social structure While it has been clearly demonstrated how racism, sexism, capitalism, and a host of other forces structure
eco-social relations, especially the generation and maintenance of inequalities through the disproportionate distribution of environmental
benefits and burdens (e.g. Taylor 2000; Taylor 2016; Brulle and Pellow 2006), I contend that these structures are themselves – in the US context
– tied to settler colonialism. Since the wealth and power of the United State as a state is grounded in the ongoing occupation of Indigenous
lands, I consider settler colonialism – though always in connection with other forms of domination – the primary force shaping eco-social
relations in this country.6 Settler colonialism and elimination Scholars in both Native Studies and Settler Colonial Studies have given special
attention to settler colonialism’s aspirations of self-supersession by which the division between colonizer and colonized is effectively erased
from public consciousness, conferring “native status” upon the settler population and state (Veracini 2011). This is a process Wolfe (2006)
describes as “elimination of the native” a primary drive through which settler colonialism asserts itself destroying to replace. In accordance with
these aspirations, Native Americans in the United States have been subjected to numerous attempts at elimination.7 The first and most obvious
of these are the attempts at physical elimination through genocide. This includes massacres (e.g. Wounded Knee, Sand Creek), and the less
well-known practices of sterilization (Lawrence 2000; Torpy 2000). Through programs of assimilation, the US government attempted to
culturally eliminate Native Americans. A clear example of this is the boarding school system which explicitly sought to, in the words of Richard
Henry Pratt, “kill the Indian to save the man” (Jacobs 2006). Politically, policies of termination sought to eliminate Native peoples as unique
political groups (Fixico 1986). At the same time, sociocultural norms tend toward the discursive elimination of Native people and the erasure of
settler colonial processes Table 1. Generally, US culture and education, through dual processes of underrepresentation and misrepresentation,
generate and reproduce a public lack of understanding about both Native peoples and the processes of settler colonialism (Shear et al. 2015;
Johnston-Goodstar and Roholt 2017). The bulk of the dominant culture’s knowledge about Native peoples comes from sources that are not
Native-made, and reflect neither Indigenous epistemologies nor realities (Leavitt et al. 2015; Fryberg 2008). These forms of elimination inscribe
themselves on the land and fundamentally inform perceptions of place. Ways
of relating to place and environment
contribute to social identities and cultures; simultaneously they are informed and constrained by
sociological processes (Coté 2010; Smith 2012; Berkes 2012; Norgaard and Reed 2017). If you live in the United States ask yourself
these questions: Whose traditional territory am I living on? How many federally recognized tribes are in my state? What are their names? If you
are like the majority of people I’ve asked over the years, you struggled to answer. Indeed, I have met very few people who can easily name the
traditional peoples of the land they live on. Fewer still know the treaty, treaties, or acts of Congress, which enabled their town or city to be
developed. This substantial knowledge gap, even among highly educated people, is consistent with settler-colonial goals of erasure.

Underview
1. ROB over theory.
A)ROB contextualizes what the judge can even vote on. We don’t know if the judge’s job
is to be a fair and impartial adjudicator without knowing what the ballot does.
 B) We need to criticall interrogate education and fairness with the ROB.If theory was
bad we would only know that using the ROB
2. Debate is a space for real world change. Prefer political solution that address material
consequences
CURRY ’14: [Dr. Tommy J. Curry 14, “The Cost of a Thing: A Kingian Reformulation of a Living Wage Argument in the 21st Century”,
Victory Briefs, 2014]
Despite the pronouncement of debate as an activity and intellectual exercise pointing to the real world consequences of
dialogue, thinking, and (personal) politics when addressing issues of racism, sexism,
economic disparity, global conflicts, and death, many of the discussions concerning these ongoing
challenges to humanity are fixed to a paradigm which sees the adjudication of material disparities and sociological realities as the
conquest of one ideal theory over the other. In “Ideal Theory as Ideology,” Charles Mills outlines the problem contemporary

theoretical-performance styles in policy debate and value-weighing in Lincoln-Douglass are confronted with in their attempts to get at the concrete problems in our
societies. At the outset, Mills concedes that “ideal theory applies to moral theory as a whole (at least to normative ethics as against metaethics); [s]ince ethics deals by definition with
normative/prescriptive/evaluative issues, [it is set] against factual/descriptive issues.” At the most general level, the conceptual chasm between what emerges as actual problems in the
world (e.g.: racism, sexism, poverty, disease, etc.) and how we frame such problems theoretically—the assumptions and shared ideologies we depend upon for our problems to be heard

and accepted as a worthy “problem” by an audience— is the most obvious call for an anti-ethical paradigm, since such a paradigm insists on the actual as the basis of what can be
considered normatively. Mills, however, describes this chasm as a problem of an ideal-as-descriptive model which argues that for any
actual-empirical-observable social phenomenon (P), an ideal of (P) is necessarily a representation of that phenomenon. In the idealization of a social phenomenon (P), one

“necessarily has to abstract away from certain features” of (P) that is observed before abstraction occurs. This gap between
what is actual (in the world), and what is represented by theories and politics of debaters proposed in
rounds threatens any real discussions about the concrete nature of oppression and the racist
economic structures which necessitate tangible policies and reorienting changes in our value orientations. As Mills states:

“What distinguishes ideal theory is the reliance on idealization to the exclusion, or at least marginalization, of the actual,” so what we are

seeking to resolve on the basis of “thought” is in fact incomplete, incorrect, or ultimately irrelevant to the actual problems which our “theories” seek to address. Our

attempts to situate social disparity cannot simply appeal to the ontologization of social
phenomenon—meaning we cannot suggest that the various complexities of social
problems (which are constantly emerging and undisclosed beyond the effects we observe) are totalizable by any one set of theories within an
ideological frame be it our most cherished notions of Afro-pessimism, feminism, Marxism, or the like. At best, theoretical
endorsements make us aware of sets of actions to address ever developing problems in our empirical world,
but even this awareness does not command us to only do X, but rather do X and the other ideas which compliment the material conditions addressed by the
action X. As a whole, debate (policy and LD) neglects the need to do X in order to remedy our cast-away-ness among our

ideological tendencies and politics.

3. Debating political solutions is an iterative process that uses the academy as a site of
movement building that creates a bulwark against fascism.
Keeanga-Yamahtta TAYLOR 17 , assistant professor of African American studies at Princeton University [“Home Is the
Crucible of Struggle,” American Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 2, June 2017, p. 229-233, Accessed Online through Emory Libraries]
Creating home, or what may also be described as a struggle to belong, has always been political in the United States. In a country
founded on the extermination of its indigenous population, whose wealth was derived from the forced labor of the enslaved, and for
whom that wealth was multiplied a trillion times over through the violent expropriation of waves upon waves of immigrant labor—to
stay or belong has been brutally contested and valiantly fought to achieve. In other words, we share a history of repression and
resistance in the elemental, human struggle to belong, to be home. Those various battles over land rights and citizenship; the right to
work and housing; the right to vote, speak, and organize have all been in an effort to reshape or reform the injustice and oppression
that shapes the daily lives of most people in this country. In this persistent quest, we now enter into a period of both certainty
and uncertainty. We can be certain that the administration of Donald Trump will pursue policies that will make the lives

of ordinary people substantially harder. We can be certain that his administration will attack immigrants.
He has promised to restore law and order, which appears to be an invitation for the police to continue their assaults
on Black and Brown communities. Trump has bragged about sexually assaulting women while decrying their rights
to reproductive freedom. Trump and his cohort have all but declared war on Muslims in the United States and beyond.
We have seen a revival of the white supremacist Right and an unleashing of open racial animus. In the month after the
election of Trump, over one thousand hate crimes across the country were reported. Since he has taken office, Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated; mosques have been burned;

What is uncertain is the extent to which Trump

and swastikas have been brandished in acts of vandalism and intimidation.

will be able to follow through on his threats against a variety of communities. This uncertainty is not with Trump's
intention to inflict as much pain and harm on the most vulnerable people in the United States; rather, it is based on a calculation that our
ability to organize and build movements will complicate, blunt, and, in some cases, thwart the Trump
agenda. [End Page 229] The challenge is in using the spaces we occupy in the academy to approach this task. There will be many
different kinds of organizing spaces developed in the coming years, but there is a particular role we can play in this moment. This
organizing possibility exists only when we recognize the academy, itself, as a site of politics and
struggle. Those who ignore that reality do so because they have the luxury to or because they are so constrained by
compartmentalization that they ignore the very world they are living in. In the last two years we have seen the flowering of campus
struggles against racism, rape, and sexual violence, amid campaigns for union recognition and the right of faculty to control the
Whether or not we on campus see them as political spaces, the right
atmosphere of their classrooms.
wing certainly does. They have raged against "safe spaces" and what they refer to as "political correctness." While reasonable
people may debate the merits and meaning of concepts like safe spaces, we should not confuse those discussions with an attack from
the right that is intended to create "unsafe spaces" where racial antagonism, sexual predation, and homophobia are considered rites
of passage or, as the new president describes as it, "locker room" behavior. These, unfortunately, are only smaller battles happening
within the larger transformation of colleges and universities into the leading edge of various neoliberal practices, from the growing
use of "contingent labor" to the proliferation of online education, to certificate and master's programs that are only intended to increase
the coffers while adding little to nothing to the intellect or critical thinking capacities of its participants. Robin Kelley reminds us that
universities will "never be engines for social transformation," but they are places that often reflect, and in some situations magnify,
the tensions that exist in society more generally. There is a relationship between the two. The struggles for academic units in Black
and Chicano studies in the 1960s were born of the political insurgencies that captivated those communities while shaking the entire
country to its core. Robert Warrior reminds us that in Native studies there is a commitment to crash through the firewall that is often intended to silo scholarship from the
communities it is often derived from. He writes that a "clear predominance exists in Native studies of scholarship that obligates itself in clear ways to being connected to the real
lives of real peoples living in real time. More than just connected, a hallmark of Native studies scholarship is a preoccupation with how the work of scholars and scholarship
translates itself into the process of making the Indigenous world a better, more just, and more equitable place to live, thrive, and provide for future generations."

Scholarship alone is not politics, but the study of history, theory, and politics can imbue our political practice with
depth and confidence. Today there is a [End Page 230] need to connect the legacy of resistance, struggle,
and transformation with a new generation of students and activists who are
desperately looking for hope that their world is not coming to an end. To be sure, there is deep malaise and
fear about the meaning of a Trump presidency. It is not to be underestimated. Anyone who is so open about his antipathy and disgust with entire populations of people should be
believed when he promises to amplify the suffering in this society. And we should not underestimate the obstacles that confront a political Left that is

deeply fractured and politically divided. But we should also remember that the future is not already written. It has
yet to be cast in stone. The stories of our demise have been predicted over and over again. The marches that erupted in the immediate aftermath of
the Trump victory give a sense of the resistance to come. Who could have predicted that the day after Trump's inauguration between three and four million people in the United

we have already seen in the last decade the

States would take to the streets to defiantly resist and oppose the new president? In fact,

eruption of mass struggle embodied in the Occupy movement and most recently the rise of Black Lives
Matter. The challenge to Trump, however, will demand more than moral outrage. It requires
a strategy, and strategy can be developed only when we have political clarity on the nature
of Trumpism. The queer theorist Lisa Duggan made an important observation at the association's annual meeting last November in
Denver. In an emergency session assessing the US presidential election, there was a sense of urgency that we have talked enough and now is the time to act. But Duggan
while action is always necessary, we must also create the political
made the important observation that

and intellectual spaces necessary for debate, argument, and discussion. We cannot act in intelligent ways
without understanding why we are acting and what we are acting against. In other words, politics and ideas matter as
much as the action necessary to transform conditions we abhor. This may seem like a minor or even self-evident point, but there is
a constant critique that we are often "preaching to the choir" or a question about the usefulness of sitting in yet "another" meeting.
But this most recent electoral season has also shown that the choir has different pitches and cadences. The choir can be off-key.
This is not to suggest that we should all agree or mute the areas of disagreement and
tension, but we should be clear about those differences. Just as we should be clear on what is agreed on
and what are the bases on which we can overcome differences and unite. These various position s cannot be intuited; they are
discovered through patient debate. Beyond the culture of respectful internal debate and discussion, academics also
have something to contribute. The confidence necessary to effectively [End Page 231] engage in struggle is not easily
 attained in an atmosphere of defeat and defensiveness. Those are the moments to draw on the history of resistance in the
movements of the oppressed. Often the political establishment better understands the power of this history than those who are its rightful inheritors. There is a reason that the
federal government invested so heavily in the repression of the Black liberation movement of the 1960s. The point was not only to defeat the struggle; it was intended to snuff out
its legacy. In significant ways the repression has carried on until this very day. There is a reason sixty-nine-year-old Assata Shakur remains a political exile in Cuba and our
government continues to keep a $2 million bounty on her head while shamefully including her on the misnamed terrorist watch list. It is the same reason that the Angola Three—
Robert King, Albert Woodfox, and Herman Wallace, Black Panther members held in the infamous prison in Louisiana—collectively spent 113 years in solitary confinement as
political punishment for their ideas. It is the same reason 45 years after the Attica Prison Rebellion in 1971, federal and state officials continue to hide the truth of its brutal
repression. The most important, and thus damning, archives that the historian Heather Ann Thompson used to write her book on Attica have, once again, disappeared from public
scrutiny. Not only does the political establishment want to punish and demonize the voices for Black liberation, but more important,
they want to bury the legacy, the history, and politics of the movement itself. It is clear to understand why. It is not irrational hatred
of African Americans; it is quite simply because when Black people go into struggle, it unravels the dominant narrative, or the
fabrications at the heart of American mythology—that we are a democratic and just society. Only a cursory knowledge of Black
history—and the history of indigenous people in this land—shatters the United States' obsession with its own self-idealization as an
"exceptional" society. In doing so, Black
struggles are examples of how the "margins" can upend and
destabilize the supposed center. And perhaps even more important is how those struggles within the various
iterations of the Black Freedom movement become a platform for other liberation
struggles to emerge. This was the legacy of the Black insurgency of the 1960s. As a result, the political establishment distorts
this history and distorts its radical content, its radical leaders, and their voices. This is not just a lesson of who gets to tell history; this
legacy of repression affects the movements of today. The attempt to distort and bury the struggles from a previous period of Black
rebellion deprives the current generation of the politics, strategy, and tactics of our movement historically. It diminishes the analyses
and the political tools necessary to help forge a way forward in [End Page 232] this political moment. But perhaps, most perniciously,
the efforts to disconnect people, especially young people, moving into struggle from their radical roots and history, are to dramatically
limit our political imaginations so that we believe that the best we can hope for in this life is a Black president or a more responsive
and less inept Democratic Party: the establishment wants us to believe that life as it currently is, is the best we can hope for. This is
why, for example, the scholar and activist Angela Davis is so important because she is a connection to our radical history. She is the
living legacy of a political movement that put liberation at its center. And you can see her political and intellectual fingerprints all over
our movement today—from the politics of Black feminism and the concept of intersectionality to the demand of abolition and the
rejection of the very normative idea that humans should be surveilled, caged, or killed by the state. It is no wonder that her politics and
activism have deeply influenced many of the Black queer women at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. She compels us to
think more deeply, to get to the root of the matter, to be radical in our analysis, and to struggle harder—not just in the world as it is but
for the world as we want it to be. Davis is but a single example. There are many other examples where those from a previous era of
struggle whom we respect and honor connect our searching present with a previous moment of insurgency and struggle. In our
lifetimes, we have never been more in need of the inspiration, the lessons, and the strength of those who have bequeathed to us the
The challenge continues to lie in our abilities to
certainties and uncertainties of home today.
transcend, through argument, debate, and struggle, the many paths that crisscross and
potentially divide our resistance to hatred, bigotry, and oppression. This is a call for
solidarity, but not on the basis of papering over the different experiences that create
different levels of consciousness within our society. Solidarity is most palpable when
there is recognition that our fates are connected and that an injury to one is an injury
to all. Another world is truly possible, but only if we are willing to struggle for it.
\

4. Topical plans are examples of the resolution—specification is inevitable and key to

stable, educational debates
Overing, TOC Finalist 2012, ‘14
(Bob, Topicality and Plans in LD: A Reply to Nebel by Bob Overing, December 11, 2014,
http://premierdebatetoday.com/2014/12/11/topicality-and-plans-in-ld-a-reply-to-nebel-by-
bob-overing/)
And if the aff case is the focus but the case is not topical, the judge should vote neg per Nebel’s argument (“T in Policy,” para. 8). Now all
we need to do is motivate the notion that the neg must disprove the specific aff case, even without a plan.
A) To encourage clarity and clash.
If the aff is tied to a specific interpretation of the resolution, there is a clear understanding among the
debaters and judge(s) about the subject of debate. On Nebel’s view, definitions may change frequently within a
debate, which decreases consistency and depth along single lines of attack,
B) To prevent “squirreliness.”
 If the aff can jettison its interpretations at any time, there is an incentive to use many and even conflicting definitions
to alter the neg’s strategic decisions and then construct a coherent story for an aff ballot in the 2AR. Also, topicality’s
significance is decreased because it simply modifies how resolutional debate proceeds; that may cause buried or hidden topicality
arguments in the line-by-line if the perceived investment needed to win T is lessened.
C) To prevent counterwarrants.
While Nebel maintains other paradigmatic tenets that might avoid this objection, focus on the resolution (rather than aff case) as point of
stasis more readily lends itself to counterwarrant strategies where the negative forwards examples to negate the resolution, not the specific
affirmative case. Counterwarrants avoid clash on the aff case and may give the neg a significant advantage (Simon, 1984, p. 50-52).
D) The plan/non-plan distinction is fuzzy.
At what point is the aff so specific that it’s a plan? It seems arbitrary to draw a line at a certain level of specificity, and
that determination is so far from clear that we shouldn’t stake entire debates on it.
E) LD topics are generally quasi-policy propositions, not propositions of value.
According to argumentation theorists Freeley and Steinberg (2009), a proposition of value is “a type of value claim” such as “Resolved:
That abortion is immoral” or “Resolved: That Washington was a greater president than Lincoln.” (p. 56-57). A proposition of policy is “a type of advocate claim” such as “Resolved: That the proposed tax bill should be
enacted” (p. 57). Finally, quasi-policy propositions “express a value judgment about a policy” such as “Resolved: That a unilateral freeze by the United States on the production and development of nuclear weapons would be desirable.” (p. 56). “Quasi-policy” best describes LD
topics such as “Resolved: The United States ought to prioritize the pursuit of national security objectives above the digital privacy of its citizens” or “Resolved: A just society ought to presume consent for organ procurement from the deceased.” I believe that at least the past eight
LD topics describe or imply policy action and call for evaluation with terms like “ought,” “should,” and “just.” At the very least, we have good reason to follow Matlon (1988) in complicating a strict value/policy dichotomy (p. 5). Nebel ports Ulrich (1984) to LD in a move that
seems inappropriate if LD is not quite value debate.
So why does it matter for topicality? A strong interpretation is that LD resolutions allow for plans as in policy and simply change the nature of evaluation. If plans are best for policy debate, and LD resolutions are quasi-policy, then plans combined with some aspects of value
debate may be best for LD debate. Sherwood (1994) elaborates, “If an affirmative can reasonably prove that the resolution being discussed is a policy resolution, a quasi-policy resolution, or a value resolution with obviously policy implications, they should be allowed the choice
of presenting a plan” (p. 16). To a lesser degree, Freeley and Steinberg (2009) state that plans are implicit in quasi-policy propositions (p. 56). As such, the aff may not need to defend a specific policy, but the debate should be focused on the defined or assumed focus of the aff
case, not the resolution.
A weaker interpretation is to allow for non-plan affs but still port stock issue requirements from policy debate. Matlon (1988) cites six different debate coaches and theorists who argue that debaters should debate quasi-policy resolutions through stock issues or comparative benefits
analysis (p. 5). The latter would be undesirable in LD, but stock issues seems workable and useful for policy-evaluation. And with stock issues, we get a clear topicality burden for the aff case.
Plans on Quasi-Policy Topics
As Nebel has pointed out, it’s hard to come up with many plans that affirm LD topics on his view of topicality that “whether a plan is topical is whether its being a good idea entails the resolution” (“T in Policy,” para. 10). However, we have good reasons to reject that view of
topicality as too stringent. Nebel finds this definition from Lichtman, Rohrer, and Corsi (1979) and leans on it heavily:
[T1] affirmative teams are required to formulate proposals whose affirmation logically entails affirmation of the resolution (p. 375)
The fact that Nebel bolds this definition does not grant it authority. It is not, in fact, the “only uniform test” (“T in Policy,” para. 10). It’s also unclear that Lichtman et al. have a strong intent to define, given that their article is not about topicality whatsoever. They do not discuss
various alternative definitions. Why should we hold their idea of T above any of the following definitions?
[T2] The plan and case ought to justify the conclusion the resolution asks to be drawn (Allen & Burrell, 1985, p. 857)
[T3] The plan and case must provide evidence in favor of the resolution
[T4] The plan and case must be an example or instance of the resolution
[T5] The plan and case must fall within the bounds of the resolution
[T6] All plan provisions must bear a rational relationship to a topical scheme of action

(Unger, 1979 cited in Hingstman, 1985, p. 850)

Nebel omits the plethora of alternative views on topicality he is no doubt aware of. In particular, definitions like T4 and T5 that stress the
“bounds” of the topic are common in debate theory (Dolley, 1984; Hingstman, 1985; Parson, 1987; Bauschard, 2009). On these views, the
plan must only be an example or a subset of the topic, a smaller burden than defending the resolution as a whole.
Without defending any particular definition of topicality, we can say that Nebel’s T1 is
mistaken. It seems to be extremely difficult to meet with any plan, even on policy topics. For instance, consider
the 1993-94 NDT topic, “Resolved: That the Commander-in-Chief power of the President of the United States should be substantially
curtailed.” A specific plan to substantially curtail the Commander-in-Chief power in a very specific way may not entail the truth of this
proposition generally. For instance, it may be that the power to deploy armed forces should be curtailed, but every other Commander-in-
Chief should be augmented! One might bite the bullet on examples such as these, but that would render many plans
consistently deemed topical in NDT and NDT-CEDA debate non-topical, narrowing the
potential breadth of these topics and stifling creativity. Many such plans, especially on
resolutions that are not disjunctions, are and should be allowed. Reasons A) through E) above are
additional justifications for this loosening of topicality from T1 to T2-T6 to allow more policy debate on quasi-policy topics.
Additionally, on my view, the aff could use specific examples while avoiding the induction/generalizability problem. As Allen and Burrell
(1985) explain, on definitions like T1 and T2, the aff can only win on a plan if its proposal generalizes to the resolution as a whole (p. 857-
59). Importantly, this means that even on Nebel’s view, the aff gets to read a plan. However, this produces bad debates
by requiring
a generalizability contention in the aff case. Debaters either a) race to find the most representative example for their
side of the topic and debate out the comparative “generalizability” of these examples, or b) eschew
example-finding altogether in favor of a whose-large-metastudy-is-better debate, neither of which seem particularly productive.
debates may be difficult to judge due to a lack of standard for clear example
Simon (1984) also points out that these
comparison (p. 50-51). In-depth plan debates seem less repetitive, more informative, and more
lenient on the aff. Modifiers in the topic such as a plural actor or words like “substantial” or “prioritize” as well as stock issues
constrain potential plans avoid minute, unpredictable plans. Goodnight, Balthrop and Parson (1974) defend something similar, recognizing
that many plans may not “ontologically encompass the resolution for all times” but may be overwhelmingly valuable for competitive debate
(cited in Dolley, 1984).

No TVA and takes out Nebel T. If this card is conceded, drop nebel T from the flow