Doukhobors (Spirit Wrestlers) and Colonialism in Canada.

Colonialism can be seen as a historical process, or an ideology. As this article demonstrates, for Canadian Doukhobors, it is also a lived experience. Canadian Doukhobors, or Spirit Wrestlers, are a group of pacifist religious dissenters of mixed ethnic origins who immigrated to Canada from the Russian Empire in 1899. The worldview of the Doukhobors was radically different from the principles on which the colonial government was founded. The goal of this article is to describe the colonial policies directed towards the Doukhobors, their anticolonial struggles, and to consider the implications of the Doukhobor history for contemporary anti-colonial thought in Canada and worldwide. The government subjected Doukhobors to a range of discriminatory actions including cancellation of earlier granted land registries in Saskatchewan, incarcerations for refusal of military service (despite an existing legal exemption), taking away children of some Doukhobors and placing them in a juvenile detention center to force the assimilation. While considering the significance of the Doukhobor struggles against colonialism, the article proposes a new term, 'colonial privilege.' This article is reflexive and sheds a new light on the earlier recorded facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]