A settler colony nearby: Rachel O’Sullivan, Nazi Germany, Annexed Poland and Colonial Rule: Resettlement, Germanization and Population Policies in Comparative Perspective, Bloomsbury, 2023

05Apr26

Description: This book examines Nazi Germany’s expansion, population management and establishment of a racially stratified society within the Reichsgaue (Reich Districts) of Wartheland and Danzig-West Prussia in annexed Poland (1939-1945) through a colonial lens. The topic of the Holocaust has thus far dominated the scholarly debate on the relevance of colonialism for our understanding of the Nazi regime. However, as opposed to solely concentrating on violence to investigate whether the Holocaust can be located within wider colonial frameworks, Rachel O’Sullivan utilizes a broader approach by investigating other aspects, such as discourses and fantasies related to expansion, settlement, ‘civilising missions’ and Germanisation, which were also intrinsic to Nazi Germany’s rule in Poland. The resettlement of the ethnic Germans-individuals of German descent who lived in Eastern Europe until the outbreak of the Second World War-forms a main focal point for this study’s analysis and investigation of colonial comparisons. The ethnic German resettlement in the Reichsgaue laid the foundations for the establishment and enforcement of German society and culture, while simultaneously intensifying the efforts to control Poles and remove Jews. Through this case study, O’Sullivan explores Nazi Germany’s dual usage of inclusionary policies, which attempted to culturally and linguistically integrate ethnic Germans and certain Poles into German society, and the contrasting exclusionary policies, which sought to rid annexed Poland of ‘undesirable’ population groups through segregation, deportation and murder. The book compares these policies – and the tactics used to implement them – to colonial and settler colonial methods of assimilation, subjugation and violence.


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Settler colonialism is an ecology: Charis Enns, Brock Bersaglio, Settler Ecologies: The Enduring Nature of Settler Colonialism in Kenya, University of Toronto Press, 2024

05Apr26

Description: Settler Ecologies tells the story of how settler colonialism becomes memorialized and lives on through ecological relations. Drawing on eight years of research in Laikipia, Kenya, Charis Enns and Brock Bersaglio use immersive methods to reveal how animals and plants can be enrolled in the reproduction of settler colonialism. The book details how ecological relations have been unmade and remade to enable settler colonialism to endure as a structure in this part of Kenya. It describes five modes of violent ecological transformation used to prolong structures of settler colonialism: eliminating undesired species; rewilding landscapes with species desirable to settler ecologists; repeopling nature to create seemingly more inclusive ecologies and capitalize on biocultural diversity; rescuing injured animals and endangered species to shore up support for settler ecologies; and extending settler ecologies through landscape approaches to conservation that scale wild spaces. Settler Ecologies serves as a cautionary tale for future conservation agendas in all settler colonies. While urgent action is needed to halt global biodiversity loss, this book underscores the need to continually question whether the types of nature being preserved advance settler colonial structures or create conditions in which ecologies can otherwise be (re)made and flourish.


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Settler colonialism in Kashmir: Goldie Osuri, Settler/colonialism in Kashmir: Sovereignty, Catastrophe, Indigeneity, Manchester University Press, 2026

03Apr26

Description: Sovereignty, Catastrophe, Indigeneity examines Indian rule in occupied Jammu and Kashmir through the lens of settler-colonial geopolitics. Engaging with settler-colonial, decolonial and Indigenous studies, the book traces how European sovereignty was shaped through settler-colonial practices that proved catastrophic for Indigenous worlds and helped generate today’s climate crisis. It argues that India draws on these same mechanisms in governing Kashmir, thereby fuelling ecological harm and reinforcing a global settler-colonial order. Analysing the India–China rivalry, Kashmir’s political economy and India’s indigenisation of Hindu sacred geography in the region, the book reframes Kashmiri resistance as an Indigenous anti-colonial struggle. By exploring the intersections of sovereignty, catastrophe, Indigeneity and ecology, it positions Kashmir within broader debates on settler-colonialism and planetary crises.


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Criminal nonplaces: Šárka Bubíková, ‘Nonplaces and Crime in David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts’, in Petr Chalupský, Tereza Topolovská (eds), Spatiality in Contemporary Anglophone Literatures, Routledge, 2026

03Apr26

Abstract: This chapter examines David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s crime novel Winter Counts (2020) through the lens of spatial theory and postcolonial critique, continuing the exploration of the relationship between place, belonging, and identity in the postcolonial context. The analysis explores how spatial dynamics shape both the novel’s crime narrative and its commentary on settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance. Drawing on the concepts of nonplace and placelessness, the chapter argues that these spatial categories reflect the socio-economic and legal conditions that foster crime and marginalisation in Native communities. The novel juxtaposes meaningful places of belonging with nonplaces that serve as sites of violence and disconnection. While the utilisation of nonplaces follows crime fiction conventions, in Winter Counts, the nonplaces uniquely and simultaneously expose the structural and systemic crimes of settler colonialism and effectively link current violence and crime with their historical counterparts. In contrast to clearly identifiable places and nonplaces, the Rosebud Reservation itself emerges as a hybrid space, functioning both as a place of cultural rootedness and as a nonplace marked by state neglect and legal ambiguity. This spatial hybridity mirrors the complexity of contemporary Native American identity and survivance.


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Settlers and their good press: Helena Goodwyn, Reviewing The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire, 1870–1900 by Andrew Griffiths, Settlers, War, and Empire in the Press: Unsettling News in Australia and Britain, 1863–1902 by Sam Hutchinson, and Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America by Duncan Bell, Modern Language Review, 121, 2026, pp. 260-267

03Apr26

Excerpt: Read together or alone, these three valuable contributions to nineteenth-century studies provide us with insights into how Victorian journalism in particular influenced imperial narratives and shaped public opinion on war, race, and empire. Settlers, War, and Empire in the Press: Unsettling News in Australia and Britain, 1863–1901 examines Australian colonist conflicts in New Zealand (1863–64), the Sudan (1885), and South Africa (1899–1902) via their representation in newspapers. In his opening remarks Sam Hutchinson makes the claim that the ‘Anzac legend’, or ‘Anzac spirit’ (the set of courageous characteristics said to be demonstrated by Australian and New Zealanders during the First World War), as articulated by the newspaper press, can be pieced together from different elements in the reporting of each of the aforementioned conflicts. The Anzac spirit is, as such, one example of the main preoccupation of Hutchinson’s thesis: the formation of a settler character, forged out of the negotiation between representations of Australia as colony and an increasingly independent set of states, moving towards federation and commonwealth. This negotiation, as indicated by the title of Hutchinson’s book, emerges via close readings of the periodical press in Britain and Australia. Indeed, one of the key revelations of Settlers is the interpretative interplay — the dynamic, reciprocal relationship — between newspapers in Australia and Britain revealed by Hutchinson’s analysis. This analysis uncovers how the news reported in one location shaped the perspective and content of the news in the other.


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Reconciliations with barriers: Kaylee Grace Brink, State-Driven Indigenous-Settler Reconciliation in Australia and Canada: The Identification of Societal and Individual-Level Barriers, PhD dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 2026

03Apr26

Abstract: Indigenous-settler reconciliation in Australia and Canada seeks to reset relationships deeply harmed by generations of legal discrimination and cultural genocide. Prime ministerial apologies in both countries in 2008, alongside sustained Indigenous, civil society, and legal advocacy, appeared to reinvigorate reconciliation efforts. However, progress has since stalled. While existing research has examined various social and political factors shaping reconciliation, few studies have simultaneously examined the roles of societal narratives and individual attitudes. This thesis therefore asks: what are the societal-level and individuallevel barriers to Indigenous-settler reconciliation in Australia and Canada? To answer this question, the thesis presents five empirical studies using qualitative and quantitative methods within a comparative framework informed by settler colonial theory. The studies analyse the influence of history education, collective memory, media discourse, and public opinion on support for reconciliation. Across these domains, the findings demonstrate the recursive nature of societal narratives and individual attitudes toward reconciliation. The analysis identifies three societal-level barriers operating across contexts: the continued use of, or belief in, collective memories challenged by the 2008 apologies, settler paternalism, and deficit framing of Indigenous Peoples. These narratives are reproduced through formal education and media discourse, shaping public understandings of reconciliation and influencing individual-level support for reconciliation initiatives. Taken together, the findings provide a comparative, multi-level explanation of how societal narratives and individual attitudes interact recursively to sustain barriers to reconciliation in settler colonial societies. The thesis concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for advancing reconciliation and identifying avenues for future research.


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Settler what-aboutism: Jayde Fuller, ‘”What-aboutism” as colonial technology: a practical guide for First Nations People – how deflection operates as an automated defence system and how to respond from sovereignty’, Indigenous Regulatory Practice, 11/03/26

02Apr26

Abstract: What-aboutism deflection is not a communication failure. It is colonial technology – an automated institutional defence that activates when First Nations Peoples name specific harm and demand specific accountability. This piece argues that what-aboutism functions as a discursive mechanism with identifiable patterns, a documented history, and measurable consequences: in the 18 months following the Voice to Parliament referendum, over half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults experienced discrimination when seeking healthcare. Discrimination is escalating – not improving – precisely as the frameworks designed to address it are being diluted. Drawing on Daniels’ structural harm frameworks, the documented co-optation of Dr Irihapeti Ramsden’s cultural safety into a universal one, and current Mayi Kuwayu data, this piece maps five patterns of what-aboutism, traces their institutional logic, and provides eight sovereignty-based responses for First Nations Peoples who choose to engage them. It closes with a direct address to the institutions and individuals producing the deflections it names.


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Trafficking settlers: Hannah Greenwald, ‘Trafficked into Oblivion: Indigenous Women and the Politics of Maternalism in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires, Argentina’, The American Historical Review, 131, 1, 2026, pp. 26-60

01Apr26

Abstract: This article recovers the lived experiences of trafficked Indigenous women in nineteenth-century Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 1878 through 1885, the Argentine Army carried out a series of campaigns in the Pampas and Patagonia, imprisoning and displacing thousands of formerly autonomous Indigenous people. Hundreds of prisoners, mostly women and children, were sent to Buenos Aires and placed under the jurisdiction of a women’s charity organization called the Sociedad de Beneficencia (SdB). In conjunction with Argentina’s Ministry of War, the SdB sent Indigenous women to live in the homes of wealthy Buenos Aires families as unfree domestic laborers. The SdB employed a racialized and gendered discourse of moral uplift to justify coercive treatment and sanitize ongoing frontier violence. This article reveals that some Indigenous women, unable to access protection under the law, attempted to shape their circumstances by publicly calling attention to mistreatment and neglect. These resistant actions forced Argentina’s political elites to question the meaning of Argentine citizenship and national belonging. Ultimately, this article provides insights into the complex relationship among gender, race, and social class in the construction of settler colonial nation-states, highlighting the possibilities for Indigenous resistance under settler colonialism.


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Settler nuclear: Jessica Urwin, Contaminated Country: Nuclear Colonialism and Aboriginal Resistance in Australia, University of Washington Press, 2025

01Apr26

Description: The destruction and defiance that swirled around Australia’s embrace of the world’s nuclear order. Though a nonnuclear state, Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear energy programs of numerous global powers across the twentieth century. From uranium extraction to nuclear testing, Australia’s lands became sites of imperial exploitation under the guise of national development. The continent was subject to rampant nuclear colonialism. However, this history is not just one of imposition. Aboriginal communities, bearing the brunt of these processes, have persistently resisted, reclaiming their rights to Country and demanding reparations. As Jessica Urwin shows, extraction, weapons testing, and nuclear waste disposal have caused incalculable physical, spiritual, and cultural harm to Aboriginal communities and lands. Yet Indigenous peoples all over the world have not only survived nuclear colonialism but challenged it time and time again. Tracking the colonial mechanisms Australia used to pursue a nuclear industry, Urwin simultaneously highlights how Aboriginal peoples refused and reshaped those same mechanisms over time. A groundbreaking book, Contaminated Country reveals how Australia’s deep nuclear past has been entangled with colonialism locally, nationally, and internationally.


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Contesting settler control over Indigenous bodies (introducing a special issue): Ashlea Gillon, Bronwyn Carlson, ‘Indigenous(ly) fat, fat(ly) Indigenous’, Fat Studies, 2026

01Apr26

Excerpt: This special issue asks the question: What does Indigenous fat studies look like, particularly when we refuse coloniality? It questions what happens when fat Indigenous bodies are not positioned as problems to be solved, but as sovereign sites of knowledge, memory, resistance, and futurity. Across (un)settler colonial contexts, Indigenous Peoples have been rendered (hyper)(in)visible through surveillance and medicalization, while simultaneously oppressed as sovereign thinkers and embodied knowledge holders. Anti-fatness, in particular, has been mobilized as a colonial technology, intertwined with racialization, missionary morality, public health moral panic, neoliberalism, and more. For Indigenous Peoples, fat bias and fat hatred are not simply matters of dislike, they are intersecting systems of oppression that entangle with the theft of land, food system and relationship disruption, sexualized violence, and the ongoing (mis)governance of Indigenous lives. The articles in this special issue do not merely critique these regimes; they refuse them.


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