Unfitting and therefore settlers: Susan Kollin, ‘Settler Ecologies and Western Adaptation: Unfitting Characters in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’, in Pamela Demory (ed.), Ecoadaptation: Mediating Nature and the Environment, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026, pp. 203-218

24Apr26

Abstract: This chapter explores how the Coen brothers reconfigure the Western in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, laying bare its white settler fantasies to reveal how toxic beliefs often shape foundational myths of regional and national identity. Many of the sequences refuse to deliver action in ways we expect in the genre. Plots, for instance, often appear unreal and cartoonish, highlighting a refusal on the part of the filmmakers to conform and adapt themselves to expectations of the Western. Satire and humor likewise redirect the narratives to reveal the underside of generic myths. Foregrounding various “unfitting” and “maladaptive” western characters whose misguided relationships with the more-than-human world and each other often end in tragedy and death, the Coens’ film illustrates how stories persist or perish, leading to the conclusion—from the point of view of ecoadaptation—that perhaps some stories need to go extinct.


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Adapting, but still settlers: Katie Kane, ‘”A Huge Mass in a Single Hand”: Yellowstone and the Selling of Montana’, in Pamela Demory (ed.), Ecoadaptation: Mediating Nature and the Environment, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026, pp. 153-170

24Apr26

Abstract: This chapter argues that the television series Yellowstone rewrites the history of white settlement and white relations with Native nations in Montana, revising a cultural idea of the “Frontier” that promotes a notion of “rugged individualism,” a ranching-style monopoly capitalism, and an ethically empty “environmental” ethos. It is a narrative adaptation of a story of the American West that positions the land as “beautiful” without considering its extreme environmental precarity and its long entanglement with extractive economies, including mining, logging, agriculture, and, most significantly, ranching. The series has had real-world impacts, affecting the state’s demography, housing market, and tourism. Even though the axiom of the series is “protect the land,” the proposed method of doing so reinforces white settler principles of class, status, and race.


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Indigenous diasporas are implicated: Hemopereki Simon, ‘”Cut your Hōhā nonsense out!” the “lady crown debacle(s)” as settler/invaderism from Māori in “so-called” Australia’, Journal for Cultural Research, 2026

24Apr26

Abstract: This article examines how Māori indigeneity is ethically reconfigured in diaspora when Māori live on Aboriginal land in so-called Australia. Drawing on tikanga-based obligations of manuhiritanga, it argues that Māori are tangata whenua in Aotearoa New Zealand but become implicated in settler/invader relations in Australia unless they practice humility, restraint, and accountability to local Aboriginal authority. The central questions are: under what conditions do Indigenous migrants become entangled in settler/invader power on other Indigenous lands, and how are claims to indigeneity, mana whenua, or customary authority articulated and contested outside their originating jurisdictions? The analysis is grounded in the sovereign jurisdiction of Dharug Ngurra, treating Dharug Law/Lore as the enduring legal and ethical framework for Parramatta and the Dyarubbin. Using the 2019 Lady Crown/Ngāti Rangihou Corrangie case as a diagnostic ‘limit case,’ the article traces how whakapapa, missionary history, pseudo-law, and media amplification can be mobilised to manufacture trans-Indigenous sovereignty claims that bypass Aboriginal consent and governance. It concludes that such diasporic overreach risks reproducing settler/invader logics in Indigenous dress, and that Māori integrity in Australia requires acting as manuhiri under Aboriginal leadership.


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The handmaiden of settler history: Shawn Van Ausdal, ‘Cattle ranching: Handmaiden of settler colonialism’, in Mark Moritz, Igshaan Samuels, Nikolaus Schareika, Eva Schlecht (eds), Routledge Handbook of Pastoralism, Routledge, 2026

24Apr26

Abstract: This chapter briefly compares the nature of ranching and pastoralism. It then follows the diffusion of cattle ranching to the Americas, Oceania, and southern Africa. And it explores how ranching helped propel settler colonialism. However, rather than viewing cattle as the “shock troops” of European settlement, it describes ranching as the handmaiden of state-led pacification. By altering land uses and landscapes, by promoting new sets of property rights and social relationships, by shifting diets and identities, and by occupying vast spaces, cattle ranching helped to produce new cartographies of colonial power.


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Indigenous title as a trap: Maritza Paredes, Danitza Gil, Anke Kaulard, ‘The Indigenous land titling trap: adaptive practices and the limits of climate governance’, World Development, 204, 2026, #107429

23Apr26

Abstract: This article examines why Indigenous land titling, widely promoted as an enabling condition for climate action, advances without closing persistent gaps in territorial recognition. It conceptualizes this paradox as a climate titling institutional trap, in which reforms progress through adaptive practices yet remain embedded in territorial governance configurations that constrain their transformative potential. Drawing on an extended case study of Kichwa communities in San Martín, Peru, based on multi-scalar ethnographic research, the paper shows how Indigenous leaders and bureaucrats deploy pragmatic strategies to navigate administrative bottlenecks and secure partial advances in titling. However, these gains unfold within historically layered regimes of agrarian, extractive, and conservation governance that overlap and converge in limiting Indigenous territorial rights. The interaction between adaptive practices and these layered institutional orders produces incremental change without altering underlying power relations. The article contributes to development debates by reframing institutional traps as dynamic outcomes of reform processes, highlighting the political-economic conditions shaping the limits of Indigenous inclusion in climate governance.


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Clearly, on Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu: Kim Alley, Dan Tout, ‘Backlash: Dark Emu, Settler Nationalism, and Indigenous Sovereignty’, in Dan Tout, Emma-Jaye Gavin, Julia Hurst (eds), Barriers to Truth and Justice in Settler-Colonial Australia: Why Won’t Settlers Listen? Springer, 2026, pp 129-153

21Apr26

Abstract: Over the past decade, Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu has become a flashpoint in Australia’s ongoing History Wars. By challenging colonial myths that depicted Aboriginal peoples as ‘mere hunter-gatherers’ and demonstrating the complexity of pre-colonial practices of cultivation and land management, Pascoe directly unsettled the legal fiction of terra nullius and, with it, the legitimacy of the settler-colonial nation-state. This chapter situates the backlash against Dark Emu—and against Pascoe himself—within the politics of Australian settler nationalism. It argues that what is at stake in this controversy is less the technical question of whether Aboriginal peoples were ‘farmers’ or ‘hunter-gatherers’ (whether ‘mere’ or ‘complex’) than the threat posed to foundational settler narratives and their enduring ideological, cultural, and legal force. The often vitriolic responses to Pascoe, including attempts to delegitimise his identity and work, exemplify a reactionary effort to extinguish the basis for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. In tracing these dynamics, we show how the Dark Emu debate represents a twenty-first-century iteration of the History Wars, illuminating both the persistent anxieties of dispossession structuring settler nationalism and the possibilities opened up by truth-telling for unsettling its shaky foundations.


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Paralysed settler colonialism: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Fear and Loathing in Settler Australia’, in Dan Tout, Emma-Jaye Gavin, Julia Hurst (eds), Barriers to Truth and Justice in Settler-Colonial Australia: Why Won’t Settlers Listen? Springer, 2026, pp. 155-167

21Apr26

Abstract: A widely shared assumption is that truth-telling about colonial violence can facilitate reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous peoples. This paper addresses the psychological disposition of the settlers of Australia as it was manifested in recent public contestations, including in the lead-up to the Voice referendum of October 2023, when the proposal of amending the Australian Constitution and establishing an Indigenous body capable of making representations to parliament was rejected. The paper focuses on foreclosure and disavowal as specific defensive mechanisms displayed by Australian settler publics, the former prompted by fear, the latter leading to paralysing loathing.


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Tone deaf settler colonialism: Dan Tout, Emma-Jaye Gavin, Julia Hurst (eds), Barriers to Truth and Justice in Settler-Colonial Australia: Why Won’t Settlers Listen? Springer, 2026

21Apr26

Description: This collection brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and experts from Australia and beyond to examine the persistent settler-colonial patterns of denial, ignorance and antipathy that continue to constrain the possibilities of truth and justice in settler-colonial societies. Written from diverse cultural and disciplinary perspectives, the chapters identify and analyse the social, cultural and political barriers to listening, hearing, and responding on the part of settlers, and the settler state/s. Prompted by the unsuccessful 2023 referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and the constitutional recognition of the First Peoples of Australia as the First Peoples of Australia, the volume reorients the discussion. Rather than returning to questions of how truth-telling might be improved or made more persuasive, it shifts the focus towards the continuing refusal of settlers (and the settler state/s) to adequately and ethically engage with the truths that have already been told. The chapters investigate patterns of denial, deflection, and structural resistance, exposing their contradictions and points of vulnerability with the express aim of contributing to their undoing. While a number of contributions paint a sobering picture of the enduring impediments to meaningful change, others—particularly those from First Nations authors—highlight the continuing, generative, healing work of truth-telling and/as activism already underway. These contributions foreground the transformative potential of Indigenous-led truth-telling practices, not only as responses to settler inaction, but as active forces for reimagining and reshaping settler–Indigenous relations.


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The settlers’ frozen prairies: Nicole Aminian, Grace O’Hanlon, ‘The History of the Living Prairie Museum: Conservation, Preservation, and Tall Grass Prairie’, Prairie History, 19, 2026, pp. 15-28

21Apr26

Abstract: The Living Prairie Museum (LPM) initially called the St. James Prairie Park, or the St. James-Assiniboia Living Prairie Museum is a tall grass prairie conservation area and park in Winnipeg established in 1976. It was set aside by municipal leaders to preserve an area that is home to a diverse range of prairie grasses and flowers which had been largely unaffected by agriculture or urban development. Its purpose is to promote conservation and preservation of tall grass prairie, increase ecological awareness and provide educational opportunities for teaching about the prairie ecosystem. For the past several decades, the LPM has hosted school field trips, community workshops, and educational programming designed to explain past prairie ecologies that endured for thousands of years before European colonization, industrialization, and urbanization. The 13-hectare preserve traces its roots back to the time of the Red River Settlement. A firm vision began to emerge during the interwar period, the more so in the post-Second World War era of urban expansion. It came to full fruition in 1976, four years after a number of small municipalities surrounding Winnipeg were incorporated into the City of Winnipeg. This article tells the stories of the key scientists, community members, and city councillors who were instrumental in identifying and preserving the LPM. Ultimately, it was the foresight of these key figures that safeguarded a beautifully preserved, albeit small, representation of what so much of Winnipeg and its surrounding area once was.


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Ultimately, decolonial theory does not consider settler colonialism: Sindre Bangstad, ‘The Aporias of Decolonial Anti-imperialism’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2026

21Apr26

Abstract: Following the 2015 #RhodesMustFall movement in South Africa and amidst calls to «decolonize academia», decolonial theory has become increasingly read and cited in many academic disciplines. But as I seek to demonstrate in this essay, decolonial theory as elaborated by the leading exponent of it, Walter D. Mignolo, is beset with internal contradictions and inconsistencies relating to its view of non-Western imperialism and settler colonialism, which has led it to not only being appropriated by a transnational far-right, but also to increasingly work in tandem with it. These, then, are the aporias of decolonial anti-imperialism.


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