The settler fantasy is weird: Travis Franks, ‘Make Settler Fantasy Strange Again: Unsettling Normative White Masculinity in Robert E. Howard’s Weird West’, Western American Literature, 54, 3, 2019, pp. 295-322

13Nov19

Excerpt: Originally published in Weird Tales in 1932, Robert E. Howard’s short story “The Horror from the Mound” blends conventions of Western and horror fictions, particularly in the characterization of the cowboy protagonist and the vampire antagonist. The story is set in the border region of west Texas around (if not exactly) 1845 and details the heroic but harrowing account of former cowboy Steve Brill, who unleashes and eventually destroys a centuries-old vampiric Spaniard, Don Santiago de Valdez. Brill unknowingly unearths Valdez while plundering what appears to be an Indian burial mound, in the process discovering, too, that his neighbor Juan Lopez, the embodiment of several anti-Mexican stereotypes, belongs to a secret order meant to safeguard against the vampire’s return. Owing largely to Brill’s greed, Lopez fails in his sworn duty and, having hurriedly penned a short history in which he reveals to Brill the truth of the mound, dies in an anticlimactic confrontation with Valdez. A much more dramatic final showdown between cowboy and vampire takes place in Brill’s home, which has accidentally been set afire in the course of their fighting. Nevertheless, the cowboy is able to break the vampire’s back and escape, leaving Valdez to burn with the house. As the story closes, Brill gives thanks to God that no one else will ever know of the evil Spaniard’s existence.

Despite not being well-known today, Howard is credited with having created the Conan the Cimmerian series and the “sword and sorcery” genre of fantasy to which it belongs. “The Horror from the Mound” is also largely overlooked, although some critics suggest that not only might it be the first “undead Western” story ever published, but that, with a handful of similar stories, Howard likely pioneered the entire genre of the weird Western. Not surprisingly, the scant scholarship that exists concerning this formative short story focuses almost exclusively on its “weird” elements. As such, critical discussion about the story has not done justice to the complex construction of Anglo frontier masculinity that Howard undertakes in “Horror.” This essay aims to do just that and, in the course of analysis, to unsettle the text, not by demonstrating the ways it establishes weird genre norms but rather by revealing several normative impulses of settler identity within the story that must be made strange.


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Settler territorialisations: Travis Hay, The Meaning of Mount McKay: Anemki-waucheau and Settler Colonial Reterritorialization in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Social History, 2019

13Nov19

Abstract: This article interrogates the settler colonial history of Thunder Bay through place names and argues that gendered forms of anti-Indigenous violence are part of the city’s social architecture. Between 1860 and 1910, settlers produced vast amounts of wealth and built a local industrial economy founded upon land-based resources such as silver, timber, and shale; at the same time, settlers forcefully relocated Anishnaabe peoples to multiple reserve sites, prevented them from participating in the emergent industrial economy, and used their sacred mountain as a quarry for brick-making and as a stop-butt for a settler rifle range. The article deploys the concept of settler colonial reterritorialization to critique the ways in which this history has been sanctioned and celebrated through local place names such as Mount McKay, Fort William, Port Arthur, and Simpson Street. Ultimately, I show that the material violence of enfolding the land and its resources into an exploitative and exclusive settler colonial economy emerged in tandem with the power to name the land in honour of white men who played primary roles in that very violent historical process.


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Undecolonised social justice isn’t: Sheelagh Daniels-Mayes, Valerie Harwood, Nyssa Murray, ‘On Settler Notions of Social Justice: The Importance of Disrupting and Displacing Colonising Narratives’, in K. Freebody, S. Goodwin, H. Proctor (eds), Higher Education, Pedagogy and Social Justice, Palgrave, 2019, pp. 37-54

13Nov19

Abstract: Universities have a unique responsibility to social justice with Aboriginal peoples. Yet settler privilege is evident in how teaching standards and research funding are determined predominantly by government, delivered and driven by universities born out of dispossessing colonisation. Consequently, research projects intended to disrupt/displace settler narratives of social justice run the risk of being sucked back into the mainstreamed system, perpetuating university privilege rather than fulfilling the university’s social justice responsibilities. This chapter explores ways universities can work alongside Aboriginal peoples and communities. Drawing on the Arendtian idea of responsibility, the authors ask: could universities better engage in social justice with Aboriginal people if responsibility meant the welcoming of initiatives that might challenge the university and its traditions?


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Settler weaponised genealogies: Ian McKay, ‘The “Morals of Genealogy”: Liberal Settler Colonialism, the Nova Scotia Archives, and the North American Ancestor-Hunters, 1890-1980’, Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region, 48, 2, 2019, pp. 43-89

13Nov19

Abstract: Genealogy loomed large in the culture of Nova Scotia from the 1890s to the 1970s, yet when D.C. Harvey, the provincial archivist after 1931, defined the key purposes of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, he excluded genealogical research from the core objectives of this “historical laboratory.” He was fighting a losing battle. Like it or not, the institution he headed operated as part of a transnational mnemonic network within which genealogical approaches were becoming more influential and within a province whose White colonial elite had deep connections with New England – the epicentre of popular genealogy in the United States.


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Migrants or settlers? Helen Proctor, ‘The hidden historiography of migration and Australian schooling’, History of Education Review, 2019

13Nov19

Abstract: Purpose: Despite Australia’s history as an exemplary migrant nation, there are gaps in the literature and a lack of explicit conceptualisation of either “migrants” or “migration” in the Australian historiography of schooling. The purpose of this paper is to seek out traces of migration history that nevertheless exist in the historiography, despite the apparent silences. Design/methodology/approach: Two foundational yet semi-forgotten twentieth-century historical monographs are re-interpreted to support a rethinking of the relationship between migration and settler colonialism in the history and historiography of Australian schooling. Findings: These texts, from their different school system (state/Catholic) orientations, are, it is argued, replete with accounts of migration despite their apparent gaps, if read closely. Within them, nineteenth-century British migrants are represented as essentially entitled constituents of the protonation. This is a very different framing from twentieth century histories of migrants as minority or “other”. Originality/value: Instead of an academic reading practice that dismisses and simply supersedes old work, this paper proposes that fresh engagements with texts from the past can yield new insights into the connections between migration, schooling and colonialism. It argues that the historiography of Australian schooling should not simply be expanded to include or encompass the stories of “migrants” within a “minority studies” framework, although there is plenty of useful work yet to be accomplished in that area, but should be re-examined as having been about migration all along.


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Resurgence for all: ‘Supporting resurgent Indigenous-led governance: A nascent mechanism for just and effective conservation’, Kyle A. Artelle, Melanie Zurba, Jonaki Bhattacharrya, Diana E. Chan, Kelly Brown, Jess Housty, Faisal Moola, Biological Conservation, 240, 2019

08Nov19

Abstract: Substantial increases in the pace, scale, and effectiveness of conservation will be required to abate the ongoing loss of global biodiversity and simultaneous ecological degradation. Concurrently, the need for conservation to respect inherent human rights, including the rights and title of Indigenous Peoples, is increasingly recognized. Here, we describe the often overlooked role that resurgent Indigenous-led governance could have in driving rapid, socially just increases in conservation. Whereas Indigenous resurgence spans all aspects of governance, we focus on three aspects that highlight both the necessity and nascent potential of supporting resurgent Indigenous-led governance systems as they relate to conservation of lands and seas. Firstly, much of the landscapes and seascapes of conservation interest are within Indigenous territories, so augmenting conservation within them will increasingly not be possible, justified, nor legal without Indigenous consent and partnership. Secondly, resurgent Indigenous governance provides potential for rapidly increasing the spatial coverage of conserved areas. Thirdly, resurgent Indigenous governance provides potential for increased conservation effectiveness. We focus on Canada, a country disproportionately composed of globally significant intact ecosystems and other ecosystems with considerable ecological value, comprised of Indigenous territories, and where Indigenous governments are well-positioned to advance meaningful conservation at a large scale. We discuss broader implications, with Indigenous territories covering large swaths of the globe, including in all five countries (Canada, USA, Australia, Brazil, Russia) whose borders contain the majority of the world’s remaining intact landscapes. We offer suggestions for supporting resurgent Indigenous governance to achieve biodiversity conservation that is effective and socially just.


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Settlers out of time: David Kenrick, Decolonisation, Identity and Nation in Rhodesia, 1964-1979 A Race Against Time, Palgrave, 2019

08Nov19

Description: This book explores concepts of decolonisation, identity, and nation in the white settler society of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) between 1964 and 1979. It considers how white settlers used the past to make claims of authority in the present. It investigates the white Rhodesian state’s attempts to assert its independence from Britain and develop a Rhodesian national identity by changing Rhodesia’s old colonial symbols, and examines how the meaning of these national symbols changed over time. Finally, the book offers insights into the role of race in Rhodesian national identity, showing how portrayals of a ‘timeless’ black population were highly dependent upon circumstance and reflective of white settler anxieties. Using a comparative approach, the book shows parallels between Rhodesia and other settler societies, as well as other post-colonial nation-states and even metropoles, as themes and narratives of decolonisation travelled around the world.


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Settlers incarcerate indigenous girls: Sandrina de Finney, Patricia Krueger-Henney, Lena Palacios, ‘Reimagining Girlhood in White Settler-Carceral States’, Girlhood Studies, 12, 3, 2019, pp. vii-xv

08Nov19

Excerpt: We are deeply honored to have been given the opportunity to edit this special issue of Girlhood Studies, given that it is dedicated to rethinking girlhood in the context of the adaptive, always-evolving conditions of white settler regimes. The contributions to this issue address the need to theorize girlhood—and critiques of girlhood—across the shifting forces of subjecthood, community, land, nation, and borders in the Western settler states of North America. As white settler states, Canada and the United States are predicated on the ongoing spatial colonial occupation of Indigenous homelands. In settler states, as Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang remind us, “the settler never left” (2012: 20) and colonial domination is reasserted every day of active occupation. White settler colonialism functions through the continued control of land, resources, and racialized bodies, and is amalgamated through a historical commitment to slavery, genocide, and the extermination of Indigenous nationhood and worldviews. Under settler colonial regimes, criminal justice, education, immigration, and child welfare systems represent overlapping sites of transcarceral power that amplify intersecting racialized, gendered, sexualized, and what Tanja Aho and colleagues call “carceral ableist” violence.


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Settlers don’t return land: Matthew Wynyard, ‘”Not One More Bloody Acre”: Land Restitution and the Treaty of Waitangi Settlement Process in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Land, 8, 162, 2019

08Nov19

Abstract: Te Tiriti o Waitangi, signed between Maori rangatira (chiefs) and the British Crown in 1840 ¯ guaranteed to Maori the ‘full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands’. In the decades ¯ that followed, Maori were systematically dispossessed of all but a fraction of their land through ¯ a variety of mechanisms, including raupatu (confiscation), the individualisation of title, excessive Crown purchasing and the compulsory acquisition of land for public works. Maori, who have deep ¯ cultural and whakapapa (genealogical) connections to the land, were left culturally, materially and spiritually impoverished. Land loss has long been a central grievance for many Maori and the return ¯ of land has been a guiding motivation for whanau (extended family), hap ¯ u (sub-tribe) and iwi (tribe) ¯ seeking redress from the Crown. Since the 1990s, many groups have entered into negotiations to settle their historical grievances with the Crown and while land loss and the deep yearning for its return are central to many Maori claims, precious little land is typically returned to M ¯ aori through ¯ the settlement process. This paper seeks to critically examine the Treaty settlement process in light of land restitution policies enacted elsewhere and argues that one of the many flaws in the process is the paucity of land returned to Maori. 


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Settler colonialism’s (commemorative) structures: Susan Slyomovics ‘Dismantling a world: France’s monumental military heritage in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, Algeria’, The Journal of North African Studies, 2019

05Nov19

Abstract: The history of France’s war memorials is a much-studied domain of scholarly inquiry. According to historian Antoine Prost, constructing monuments on a grand scale to commemorate wars was a response to the staggering number of 1,300,000 French dead in World War I. Among those who fought for France in 1914–18 were 343,000 conscripted and mobilised Algerians divided according to colonial categories between French citizens and indigènes, the latter drafted as French subjects. So widespread was the ‘cult of the monument’ that the term ‘statuomania’ was coined by historian Maurice Agulhon to account for 36,000 war memorials erected in the interwar period throughout France and its overseas territories, especially in Algeria, which was integrated as France’s southernmost province. The significance of French colonists implanting statues was well understood by the native Algerian population who linked a colonial Algeria known for a plethora of monuments to the visible and materialised expressions of colonial power and occupation. Analysing how the formerly colonised of Algeria address the enduring material presence of statues, steles, monuments, and other effigies of the colonial past, this essay draws on concepts such as ‘dark heritage’ and ‘difficult heritage’. My case study is the town of Sidi-Bel-Abbès, headquarters and cradle of the French Foreign Legion until 1962 and the different fates of its two war memorials after Algeria’s 1962 independence from France.


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