Settlers out there: Scott Solomon, ‘Will Settling Space Lead to the Evolution of a New Human Species?’ in Chris Carberry, Rick Zucker (eds), A Future Spacefaring Society: Establishing Human Life Beyond Earth, Springer, 2026, pp. 321–331

14May26

Abstract: Creating a self-sustaining human civilization beyond Earth rests on the ability to engage in one very basic, yet essential endeavor: reproduce. The first baby born on the moon or Mars will, in many ways, be an even greater milestone than the first human footstep on its surface. Without the ability to reproduce in-situ, our status on other planets will remain as visitors, not residents. If we can successfully reproduce beyond Earth, we have the potential to become a true spacefaring society—one that does not need to be tethered to the home planet to perpetuate itself.


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Indigenous peoples here: Sangaralingam Ramesh, The Political Economy of the Indigenous Peoples of the World: Land, Sovereignty, and the Foundations of Indigenous Economies, Palgrave, 2026

14May26

Description: This book, the first of two volumes, presents a global perspective, with case studies from each continent, on the political economy of indigenous populations. It presents the diverse socio-economic systems that have shaped indigenous communities and examines how colonisation, land dispossession, cultural suppression, and economic marginalisation have threatened them. By highlighting the issues related to European innovation and growth, such as environmental degradation, traditional narratives of Western superiority are challenged. The value of indigenous knowledge, governance, and environmental protection is, in contrast, examined to highlight the traditions that are lost through colonisation and economic exclusion. This book sets out a path of justice and equity for indigenous communities that overcomes the historical injustices and structural inequalities that they have faced. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in the political economy and the protection of indigenous peoples.


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Settler killing more Country: Jacob Tropp, ‘Globalizing Diné (Navajo) Stories of Radioactive Injustice: Transnational and Settler Colonial Politics of Uranium Mining in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s’, Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, 2, 3, 2026

13May26

Abstract: The traumatic impacts of uranium mining on Diné (Navajo) communities in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah in the late 20th century have become well-known cases of radioactive injustice. Much less recognized is how these experiences were significant on a global stage. This paper explores how Diné uranium experiences and activism became entangled in two other particularly fraught global arenas of nuclear and settler colonial politics in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In particular, Diné experiences reverberated in two other settler colonial contexts: Northern Territory, Australia, where Aboriginal activists resisted uranium mining’s expansion on their communities’ lands; and Namibia, where opposition to uranium mining was tied to the fight for independence from apartheid South Africa. Diné and other Native American activists, along with non-Native allies, utilized a variety of transnational platforms – in Australia, the U.S., and western Europe – to share the cautionary lessons of Diné communities’ ongoing suffering from radioactive injustice, forging solidarities with Aboriginal and Namibian actors as well as activists representing other Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups facing similar uranium mining threats. This circulation of Diné uranium stories not only heightened transnational awareness of the shared nuclear vulnerabilities of Indigenous people in settler colonial contexts but also brought into sharp focus the tremendous personal suffering at stake in uranium development around the world.


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Settler killing Country: Juan De Lara, ‘Who killed the Salton Sea? Settler infrastructures and ecological violence in the Southern Californian Desert’, EPD: Society and Space, 2026

13May26

Abstract: The Salton Sea, Southern California’s largest inland lake, is dying. This article moves environmental justice analysis beyond siting and distribution models to show how racialized capitalism is materially inscribed in landscapes over time. I argue that the Sea’s ecological crisis was produced by water infrastructures that encoded white supremacy and racialized capitalism into the landscape, concentrating harm in the Cahuilla, Kumeyaay, and Cocopah nations whose territories preceded the modern Sea and the Mexican American communities whose labor made the region’s agriculture profitable. Two analytical concepts trace this history. Embeddedness reveals how seemingly technical decisions about water allocation and land use were structured by racial and class hierarchies that determined who bore the costs of development. Sedimented violence traces how those costs accumulated across generations, depositing a stratigraphic record of regulatory choices and industrial activities in the Sea’s sediments, local ecologies, and human bodies. Following these processes from the construction of irrigation infrastructures in the early 1900s to contemporary efforts to extract lithium, I demonstrate that each layer of development reproduced the same racial and class logics: invoking a greater public good to justify poisoning the Sea and the communities that surround it.


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Analogous history and settler identifications (it’s not just the lobby): Samir Abed-Rabbo, ‘The Colonial Foundations Linking the US and Israel: Settler Colonial Projects from 1492 to Gaza’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 2026

13May26

Abstract: The settler-colonial foundations of the United States and Israel reveal deep structural affinities in their histories of land expropriation, ethnic cleansing, and the systematic dispossession of Indigenous populations. This article critically examines these parallels, emphasizing the expansionist policies, legal frameworks, and ideological narratives that have shaped both countries. Although the United States has partially reformed aspects of its settler-colonial past, Israel has moved in the opposite direction, deepening its apartheid system. The notion of shared democratic values between the US and Israel is a manufactured political construct designed to justify American support for Israel rather than an objective reality. Through an analysis of US colonial experience and territorial expansion alongside Israel’s military occupation and annexation policies, this study argues that American support for Israel is structurally rooted in their shared settler-colonial origins. This continuity explains the contradictions of US policy better than rhetorical claims of “shared democratic values.” Furthermore, the US–Israel alliance exacerbates regional instability, fuels conflict and undermines genuine efforts for justice and peace. A fundamental reassessment of this relationship would require the United States to confront its own imperial and settler-colonial legacy – raising the critical question of whether a settler empire, still reckoning with its own injustices, can serve as an honest broker for justice abroad.


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Settler moves to worthiness: Yukiko Tanaka, ‘Racialized settler moves to worthiness’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2026

13May26

Abstract: In this paper, I engage with Tuck and Yang’s (2012) work on settler moves to innocence in the case of racialized immigrants in settler colonial societies. Drawing on interviews and sharing circles with immigrants to a mid-sized Canadian city, I develop the concept racialized settler moves to worthiness, wherein immigrants and refugees attempt to position themselves not as innocent, but as worthy and deserving citizens. First, I argue that immigrants make investments into whiteness by drawing boundaries between themselves and Indigenous peoples. Second, I contend that these moves to worthiness must be understood in the context of postcolonial struggles for autonomy and recognition. Third, I assert that these moves are produced through Canadian immigration policy, which demands self-reliance. By showing how contemporary “settlement” happens vis-á-vis Indigenous people, this paper advances our understanding of immigrant agency in the face of structural constraints of settler colonialism, postcolonialism and Canadian immigration policy.


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Still settler colonial Hollywood: Yining Zhou, ‘The American Western and Native Americans: Revisiting Hollywood’s Representation of the “Indian Wars” in Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 2026

13May26

Abstract: This article examines Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) as an understudied 1990s revisionist Western. It argues that the film marks a critical moment in Hollywood’s evolving portrayal of the “Indian Wars.” It demonstrates how the film reveals the structural violence of U.S. expansion through a historically grounded depiction of Apache resistance and how the film foregrounds the racialized logic of the settler-colonial system through its depiction of Apache scouts’ liminal political position. However, it also contends that the film’s reliance on a predominantly white perspective ultimately exposes the structural limits of Hollywood revisionism in representing Native agency and historical experience.


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Dynamite settlers! Takahiro Yamamoto, ‘Japanese Settlers’ Introduction of Dynamite to Truk in the 1890s’, Itinerario, 2026

13May26

Abstract: In the 1890s a small group of Japanese men settled in a Pacific Island group of Truk (today called Chuuk, located within the federated states of Micronesia). The settlers, who found home in several of the islets surrounded by one of the world’s largest coral reef lagoons, arrived a few decades before the islands became occupied by the Japanese navy and eventually went under Japanese colonial rule with the mandate from the League of Nations in 1920. These earliest migrants had lost their privilege and financial base in the recent regime change in Japan. They are often seen as a pioneer of Japan’s southward imperial expansion, but a closer look reveals that the core of their activity was the export of copra in exchange for contraband firearms. They managed to carry out this trade due to the access to firearms in Japan as well as the kinship network that they forged with Trukese Islanders and other settlers from Europe. By examining the economic and sociocultural background of this copra-dynamite trade in Truk, this paper tries to show how entrepreneurship by migrants could be conditioned by global flows of technological innovation and the conditions of the migrants’ home country.


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A history of Indigenous lawfare in Brazil: Alexandre Pelegrino, ‘Fighting Against Land Dispossession: Indigenous Power, Legal Activism, and Race in Brazil (Maranhão, c. 1750–1830)’, The Journal of the Civil War Era, 16, 2, 2026, pp. 267-293

13May26

Abstract: This article traces Indigenous land disputes in nineteenth-century Brazil, centering on a claim from a small village in northern Brazil in the 1820s and the 1830s. It analyzes how a local Indigenous community fought in court to annul an aforamento, a practice similar to land leasing, conceded to the settler Mateus Severino de Avelar. The proceedings reveal how Indigenous groups successfully drew on colonial practices and forged alliances with other Luso-Brazilian settlers to defend against the encroachment of their lands. Broadly, the article demonstrates that Indigenous land dispossession was neither a linear nor an inevitable process and that its study sheds insights onto local legal cultures and institutions.


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The good press of settlers: Shelisa Klassen, Imprinting Empire: Land and Settler Colonialism in Manitoba Newspapers, University of Manitoba Press, 2026

11May26

Description: The 1870s was a time of rapid transformation for the province of Manitoba. Though reeling from the aftermath of the Red River Resistance and ongoing oppression of the Métis community, at the onset of the decade the province was still an Indigenous space. However, by the decade’s close, settler hands firmly grasped power structures and territory following waves of immigration encouraged by newspapers that repeated colonial narratives about land and belonging until they seemed inevitable and true. Through a careful examination of nine Manitoba newspapers—including French-language Le Métis—and relevant local, national, and international immigration materials, Shelisa Klassen captures the tensions, political debates, and outright propaganda that helped the Canadian nation dispossess Indigenous peoples of their land and claim the prairies as its own. Imprinting Empire demonstrates the intentionality, violence, and integrality of immigration to the settler colonial process while clearly pointing to the printing press as a weapon of empire.


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