Tuck and Yang’s “Decolonization is not a metaphor” argues that decolonisation must not be reduced to a fashionable synonym for social justice, critical pedagogy or institutional reform. Its central proposition is uncompromising: decolonisation requires the repatriation of Indigenous land and life, not merely changes in language, consciousness, curricula or representation . The authors criticise the casual use of phrases such as “decolonise schools” or “decolonise thinking” when these projects do not address settler colonialism, Indigenous sovereignty or material land return. Their key concept, settler moves to innocence, describes strategies through which settlers relieve guilt while keeping land, privilege and futurity intact. Examples include claiming distant Indigenous ancestry, romanticising adoption into Native identity, equating all oppression with colonisation, or treating critical consciousness as sufficient political action. A decisive case study is education: while anti-racist or critical pedagogies may challenge inequality, they can still domesticate decolonisation if they leave settler occupation untouched. Tuck and Yang therefore insist on an ethic of incommensurability, recognising that decolonisation may overlap with social justice struggles but cannot be absorbed into them. Ultimately, the article demands intellectual and political honesty: decolonisation is unsettling because it asks not for symbolic inclusion, but for the undoing of settler colonial relations.
URBANISM MEETS ART