Cloning acceptable indigeneities: Debbie Bargallie, ‘Producing the “good Indigenous employee”: cultural cloning and the reproduction of sameness in the Australian workplace, Ethnic and Racial studies, 2026

13Apr26

Abstract: Australian workplaces, particularly the Australian Public Service (APS), reproduce institutional whiteness through the cultural cloning of Indigenous employees. While Indigenous underrepresentation is widely acknowledged, less attention is paid to the regulatory terms under which inclusion operates. Drawing on Philomena Essed’s concept of cultural cloning and Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s theorisation of the “good Indigenous citizen”, this paper theorises the figure of the “good Indigenous employee” as produced through institutional practices that reward compliance and proximity to whiteness while suppressing critique. Based on qualitative interviews with Indigenous APS employees, a four-part conceptual framework is developed – cloning at the gate, cloning within, cloning upward, and de-cloning as refusal – to map how Indigenous employees are recruited, contained, promoted, or excluded according to their alignment with dominant institutional expectations. Refusal is foregrounded as sovereign resistance that disrupts what Charles W. Mills terms the racial contract structuring recognition, legitimacy, and conditional inclusion within Australian workplaces.


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Picture this (i.e., a settler colonial citizenship): Fay Anderson, Jane Lydon, Melissa Miles, Amanda Nettelbeck (eds), Picturing Citizenship: Images, Belonging and Colonial Legacies in the Settler Nation, Bloomsbury, 2025

13Apr26

Description: For many, the conditions and privileges of citizenship, and the access it provides to equal civil, political and social rights, are taken for granted. Yet citizenship always implies histories of inclusion and exclusion and in settler nations with colonial roots, the history of citizenship is entangled with the legacies of colonisation. Looking beyond its legal definition to the wider historical processes through which citizenship and its associated ideas of rights and belonging have been imagined, debated and found lasting form, this collection considers the unique role of visual culture in defining, contesting and advancing ideas of citizenship in settler national contexts from the 19th century to the present day. Addressing citizenship’s particular entanglements with colonial histories in contemporary settler nations, the collection considers how images have shaped the meanings and experiences of citizenship from the colonial era, through periods of mass global migration to contemporary geopolitical change and debates on Indigenous rights and recognition. Contributors explore the role visual culture has played in imagining or interrogating ideas about belonging, rights, civic identity, and the ideal citizen in societies that continue to grapple with their settler colonial origins. They ask how image-making may be used to negotiate or contest the limits of citizenship, whether as a legal or as an imagined cultural category, and the role of visual culture in building relationships between citizens, non-citizens and the state. This collection will provide a new and compelling history of citizenship and the ways it has been defined, not only by historicising citizenship’s visual imagery but by exploring its present effects and legacies.


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Soviet-settler Territorialism: Gamze İme, ‘The Crimean Jewish Autonomy Project of the 1920s–30s’, Journal of Jewish Studies, 77, 1, 2026

12Apr26

Abstract: In the 1920s the Soviet Union launched the Crimean Jewish Autonomy Project as part of its korenizatsiya (indigenization) policy to integrate minorities into socialism. By promoting Jewish agricultural settlement and granting limited cultural autonomy, the state sought to weaken Zionism and foster a unified Soviet identity. Crimea thus became a testing ground for Soviet social engineering in managing ethnic diversity. Yet the initiative imposed ideological constraints, reshaping Jewish identity within socialist boundaries. The project ultimately revealed both the ambitions of Soviet nationality policy and its inherent contradictions.


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Decolonial ruralisation in the settler colony: Ettore Santi, Ethan Matthews, ‘Ruralization as decolonization: Land, property, and possibilities in North America’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 2026

12Apr26

Abstract: Recent scholarship in human geography has proposed the framework of geographies of ruralization to describe rural elements that are persistent, resonant, and pervasive amidst urbanization. This concept has primarily emerged through empirical studies in the Global South, where village-based societies have been rapidly transformed by megaregional urbanization. This commentary brings ruralization into the context of the Global North, specifically rural New England, where modern property regimes have profoundly shaped the rural landscape. Drawing on examples from Massachusetts – where colonial property regimes were first tested and codified – we argue that ruralization in the North today might be understood as an ongoing, processual challenge to the settler-colonial structures of land tenure that have historically defined rural space. We highlight three pathways toward this decolonizing ruralization in the region: autonomy, reparation, and rematriation. These efforts constitute an ‘ecosystem of possibilities’ in which rural actors reclaim embodied relations with the land against colonial enclosure and the ongoing financialization of rural land.


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Militant ignorance to settler colonialism: Lara Fricke, German Militant Ignorance towards Palestinian Experiences of Israeli Settler Colonialism, PhD dissertation, University of Exeter, 2026

12Apr26

Abstract: This thesis investigates the German discourse surrounding Palestine. Using a conceptual framework combining ignorance, Orientalism and coloniality of power, it complicates previous research into the topic by unpacking the intricate connections between German Holocaust memory and Germany’s position of power within colonial power dynamics. To capture the ways in which both act together to create Germany’s discourse on Palestine, it develops the concept of militant ignorance which it defined as an active production of ignorance which militantly prevents an acknowledgement of ‘threatening’ knowledge and the reality it depicts. This research locates and identifies this German militant ignorance, its mechanisms and roots. In order to do so, it conducts a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of news articles, broadcast contributions, social media posts, open letters and official statements relating to three case studies. These case studies are three discursive events surrounding Nemi El-Hassan in 2021, School for Unlearning Zionism in 2021 and Achille Mbembe in 2020. Each case study presents an incident of a cancellation, defunding or disinvitation campaign against individuals and groups voicing Palestinian experiences of Israeli settler colonialism and therefore (re)produces the epistemic and discursive erasure of Palestinians. The thesis finds that German militant ignorance is produced and maintained through ostracisation and persecution of those presenting Palestinian experiences of Israeli settler colonialism, and through epistemicide against the very body of knowledge of colonial realities in Palestine. It finds that this militant ignorance is rooted in both, German memory culture and its affects, and colonial power.


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The settler triangle: Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh, ‘Dromore and Trillick: revolution and reaction on a colonial frontier, 1906–22’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026

12Apr26

Abstract: This article analyses the experience of partition in the borderlands of Dromore and Trillick, County Tyrone (1906–1922), through the lens of Veracini’s settler-colonial triangle. Using census data, Irish-language sources, IRA and Cumann na mBan records, and government archives, it shows how republican mobilisation drew on cultural revival to articulate a decolonial, anti-sectarian project, while loyalism functioned as the local expression of settler-colonial dominance. The study demonstrates that the Ulster Special Constabulary – armed, funded, and politically protected by the British state – used systematic coercion to secure Unionist rule and enforce the new border. The resulting asymmetry reveals partition not as a democratic compromise but as an imperial settlement sustained by state-backed settler-colonial violence.


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It’s an improvement! (no it isn’t): Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Book Review: Settler Colonial Sovereignty: Visions of Improvement and Indigenous Erasure by Liam Midzain-Gobin’, International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis, 2026

10Apr26

Excerpt: Settlers routinely imagine empty spaces when they think about what they are doing in the countries they seek to possess. They can only do so by foreclosing Indigenous lifeworlds, and they are typically enthusiastic foreclosers. Liam Midzain-Gobin’s Settler Colonial Sovereignty opens with a reference to Canadian politician Alexander Morris’s 1858–1859 call for a Nova Britannia to be established in British North America (3–5). Morris was an inveterate denier of Indigenous sovereign organisation, and he was certainly not alone.1 While this vision of emptiness has been noted in much of the literature appraising settler aesthetics and perception, until now, it had not yet been analysed for what it says about settler cosmologies. Cosmologies are usually appraised in relation to Indigenous collectives, but Settler Colonial Sovereignty reverses this normalising assumption and queries the stories about the fundamental order of the world the settlers tell themselves and everyone else who will listen. Cosmology now operates in the semantic area ideology once operated in—it is about how we make sense of the world—but these are not times for terminological quarrels, and what matters is that Midzain-Gobin is able to develop a crucial insight: if we take settler cosmologies into consideration, and if we understand the effects of the initial emptiness the settlers uncomprehendingly perceive in the land, then we can perceive a constant discursive refrain, a logic that still informs settler utterances, despite genuine and less genuine contemporary attempts to achieve Indigenous “inclusion.” It is the logic of improvement. The logic of improvement, we learn, is fundamentally based on settler cosmologies and ways of knowing (as explained in chapter 1). Importantly, the knowledge production that emanates from the logic of improvement is seen as “apolitical,” and a form of “common sense” (49). After all, who does not like improvement? As the book progresses, we realise that the logic is relentless: whether the state demands that Indigenous people conform to settler expectations, whether it sets out to delimit First Nations reserves and is unprepared to receive Indigenous sovereign inputs (as explored in chapter 2), whether it develops and reforms land and resource monitoring schemes (as detailed in chapter 3), or whether it collects data regarding Indigenous individuals and groups so that it can craft better and more targeted policy interventions (as charted in chapter 4). The logic of improvement underpins settler knowledge production and settler power, and is therefore the foundation of settler sovereignty: a specific sovereign formation that characterises the settler colonial polity. Midzain-Gobin observes that the logic of improvement “structures the very ways” settlers conceive of “what is possible” (9). It structures their knowledge and the governance systems they are determined to impose. Lands and territories can be the subject of improvement (usually by settlers), and Indigenous individuals and their collective institutions also become the target of improvement policies. This is the stuff of coercive assimilation, and it is deadly. But the settlers’ policies and governance mechanisms are also the subject of constant improvement: the settler state, we realise, is not averse in principle to improving its operations because improvement is still, even in an age of Indigenous inclusion, the very language of its cosmological foundation. The settlers are still heading towards their country: once, they literally moved towards it; now, they move metaphorically. One day, they believe, the settler state will finally be capable of containing and representing the Indigenous collectives it is now containing and repressing. This is the cunning of the logic of improvement: it flexibly applies to the contemporary integrative or reconciliationary settler dispensation and to past coercive attempts at improvement. Improvement is the “ideational core of settler colonial worldmaking,” Midzain-Gobin argues (22). A consideration of the logic of improvement makes the relentless constancy of the settler polity manifest. Midzain-Gobin’s sources and archives deal with Canadian settings, but his method and findings are relevant for the study of all the settler colonial polities. The settlers, after all, share a cosmological orientation—one result of being collectives that are heading towards their countries, unlike all other collectives, which are constituted by peoples who come from their countries. The logic of improvement may therefore accompany Patrick Wolfe’s logic of elimination, a formulation that kickstarted Settler Colonial Studies as an autonomous field of research about two decades ago. Attending to both logics enables an examination of the continuities in settler colonial policies and governance, but the two logics may also be considered in their interaction. Settler Colonial Sovereignty‘s most valuable analytical offering may indeed lie in an appraisal of the two logics’ sequential and concomitant operation: improvement by elimination in a primary or originary “frontier” moment, and elimination by improvement in successive, more settled, and much “improved” eras.


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The settlers’ ‘dream’: Neerej Dev, ‘From Rivermind to Care Homes: Settler Dreams and Britain’s Care Crisis; the cannibalistic business model depicted in Common People holds up a mirror to Britain’s predatory social-care infrastructure’, Economic & Political Weekly, lXI, 11, 2026, pp. 71-72

10Apr26

Excerpt: The so-called “settler dream” referenced here differs from the broader migrant aspiration. It signals a particular fantasy of arrival, rooted in Britain’s colonial hangover. One that has made you believe in the transition from periphery to metropole, not only to work but to belong. Academics like Nandita Sharma and Aihwa Ong have shown how this fantasy is shaped by postcolonial hierarchies and stratifi ed citizenships, in which legal belonging is contingent, conditional, and constantly repriced. Unlike traditional settler colonialism, where land and status are extracted from others, here it is the migrant’s own future— labour, savings, even love that is steadily devoured.


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Auctioning settler colonialism (mobilising preaccumulation): Reinoud Vermoesen, ‘A world without stuff? Public auctions in a colonial setting: Kingston (New York) in the seventeenth century’, in Bruno Blondé, Anne Sophie Overkamp, Jon Stobart (eds), Auctions and Households in the Eighteenth-Century World: Comparative Perspectives from Across the Globe, 1700-1850, Routledge, 2026

10Apr26

Abstract: This chapter explores what the second-hand market looked like in a setting characterised by a constant scarcity of consumer goods. It focuses on an early modern colonial context: the Hudson Valley in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. This was a period when small settlements fought against the elements, against hostile natives, against other settlers, and sometimes even against each other. It examines how auctions were organised, who participated in them, and what was ultimately sold. The analysis centres on 21 auctions which took place in Esopus–Wiltwijck–Kingston between 1664 and 1667. The auctions comprised 330 different lots―including real estate, agricultural output and implements, farm animals, transport items, textiles, furniture, kitchen utensils, luxury items and arms―and involved all strata of colonial society. In a society where goods were scarce and where life was characterised by high mobility, auctions were the perfect medium for colonists who wanted to settle down, but also for those who only briefly lived in a colonial settlement. It was the circuit par excellence for a commodity market that lacked a developed retail sector. Backed by well-developed institutions, such as the local aldermen’s courts, it allowed settlers to easily sell and purchase goods. This contribution shows how auctions contributed to the construction of a colonial society.


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It wasn’t me! (the stories the settlers tell): Sami Lakomäki, ‘Imagining a Birkarl conquest: mediated violence and the cultural construction of colonialism in Sápmi’, Acta Borealia, 2026

07Apr26

Abstract: At the turn of the seventeenth century Swedish Crown officials popularized a violent story describing how men called Birkarlar had long ago conquered the Sámi people and their homeland, Sápmi. Since then, the story has enjoyed widespread popularity in both Sweden and Finland, and it has been retold for a variety of political, academic, and artistic purposes by diverse Swedish, Finnish, and Sámi narrators. While the Birkarl conquest is today considered a fictional invention, the stories depicting it open an important window into a very real historical process: the construction – and deconstruction – of colonial power and ideologies in Sápmi. Drawing from the growing scholarship on the role of mediated violence in colonialism, this article scrutinizes how stories about a violent Birkarl conquest have participated in Swedish and Finnish colonialism in Sápmi from 1600 to the present. It argues that the stories have engaged with three important processes in Sápmi’s colonial history: colonial state-building, efforts to define the place of the Sámi within the colonial state, and debates over the morality and persistence of colonial rule in Sápmi. Moreover, the stories reveal important connections between Swedish and Finnish colonial imagination and broader currents in European colonial ideologies.


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