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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Slavery in the settler colony: Zoë Laidlaw, Jane Lydon (eds), Legacies of British slavery in Australia and New Zealand, Manchester University Press, 2026

07Apr26

Description: This book investigates the legacies of British slavery beyond Britain, focusing on the colonisation of Australia and New Zealand, and explores why this history has been overlooked. After August 1833, when the British Parliament abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape, former slave owners were paid compensation for the loss of their ‘property’. New research shows that many beneficiaries had ties to other parts of the British Empire, including the settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. Through a range of case studies, contributors to this collection trace the movement of people, goods, capital and practices from the Caribbean to the new Australasian settler colonies. Chapters consider a range of places, people and themes to reveal the varied ways that slavery continued to shape imperial relationships, economic networks and racial labour regimes after 1833: from the life stories of those travelling from the Caribbean to the new settler colonies, to the extensive links between Caribbean slavery and the mid-nineteenth-century development of colonial industries such as pastoralism, and Queensland’s sugar industry. For the first time, this collection tracks reinvestment in the new colonies and experiments with ‘free’ labour championed by colonisers with strong financial or personal links to Caribbean slavery. It shows that colonisers’ connections to Caribbean slavery shaped their approach to First Nations peoples in seeking to exploit their land, control their labour and meet anti-colonial resistance with lethal violence.


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Peace catechism and settler colonialism: Ilan Pappe, ‘The Failure of the “Peace Orthodoxy”: A Critical Review of the Israel–Palestine Peace Process’, The Maghreb Review, 51, 2, 2026 pp. 156-163

06Apr26

Abstract: The attempts to solve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict had already begun during British rule over Palestine (1918–1948) and were reignited after 1967, under the guidance of the USA, with rare occasions, such as during the Oslo Accord, when European countries or the UN took the lead. Whoever was in the driving seat adhered to a catechism, defined here as the Peace Orthodoxy. This was a set of presumptions, detached from the history and the reality on the ground, that not only failed to bring peace, but also created more despair and consequently violence. This paper will examine the basic assumption of the Peace Orthodoxy and will also offer a counter approach and language to the failed project of the Peace Orthodoxy.


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Securitisation and settler colonialism: James M. Hundley, ‘Border Securitization as Settler Colonialism’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal , 49, 1, 2026, pp. 81-102

06Apr26

Excerpt: In a well-known short story by American-born Canadian author Thomas King, the narrator’s mother drives up to the border with her daughter in the car, attempting to cross into Montana. The Canada Border Services Agency officer asks, “Wow, you both Canadians?” “Blackfoot” is her reply. After a discussion about the agent knowing a Blackfoot person, she asks again. “Citizenship?” “Blackfoot” again is the reply. “‘I know,’ said the woman, ‘and I’d be proud of being Blackfoot if I were Blackfoot. But you have to be American or Canadian.” While this is a fictional short story, there are plenty of instances of this situation occurring not just for the Blackfoot/Blackfeet (the designation depending on whether one is referring to the nation in what is now Montana—Blackfeet—or Alberta—Blackfoot), but also the Haudenosaunee in the New York, Ontario, or Quebec region, the Coast Salish of the Pacific Northwest, and others across the continent. What these instances of division, citizenship, and frustration have in common is the international border. From a state-centric position, international borders mark the power of the state to control movement, bestow citizenship, and define those who reside within its territory. In North America, particularly the Canada–United States border, there is little concern about a military threat. However, “risky others” remain a concern for both countries due to the real or perceived threat from potential terrorists, migrants, smugglers, and, because of settler colonialism, Indigenous peoples. These fears have only grown in the past two decades as the state continues to present Indigenous peoples, and others, as a threat to justify and extend its imperialist agenda. Though regularly ignored by settler politicians, Indigenous perspectives continue to challenge this statecentric position.


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Zoometric and settler colonialism: Irus Braverman, ‘Zoometrics and the Dogs of Gaza: Species, Race, and Settler-Colonial Violence’, Theory & Event, 29, 2, pp. 347-375

06Apr26

Abstract: Zoometrics—the shifting hierarchies that calibrate value between the more-or-less human and the more-or-less animal—is a core technology of settler colonialism. Such hierarchies govern life and death, authorizing both violence and care. Drawing on the literature on posthumanism, more-than-human geographies, political ecology, Black and decolonial studies, and critical animal studies, this project identifies strategies of humanization, dehumanization, and feralization performed in Gaza through companion, free-roaming, and military dogs, especially since October 2023. Most acutely, I trace how conceptual violence through zoometrics precedes, and often precisely predicts, physical violence. I write about dogs not to center their suffering over that of Palestinians, but to reveal how species difference intersects with race to rationalize and justify extreme atrocities. At the same time, the dogs in Gaza are not mere metaphors; they are living beings with relations and capacities that matter and resist.


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Carceral and settler colonialism: Michelle Brown, ‘Abolition is ceremony: Christianity, carcerality, and the Cherokee Mission School’, Incarceration: An international journal of imprisonment, detention and coercive confinement, 2026

06Apr26

Abstract: The Indian mission school, with its haunting institutional merge of Christianity and education, marks how carcerality and its categories structure not only the Native boarding school, educational, and child welfare systems that follow in what is now the United States, but the carceral state itself. Indeed, this material and ideological punishment infrastructure is a prerequisite for the politics of genocide, fascism and authoritarianism. These ongoing colonial projects that we live with today make historic sites of settler care, learning, and religious fervor, penal harbingers for the carceral moment we live in. This article examines this settler project through the evangelizing “mission” of Valley Towns Baptist Mission school, the largest and most popular settler mission among the ᏣᎳᎩ/AniKituwah/Cherokee people. As a key point of first contact with forms of settler colonialism and Christian supremacy, the school emerges as a contested site where evangelical practices, logics, and ideologies systematically sought to eradicate Cherokee knowledge, life ways, and spiritual cosmologies. Amid ongoing counter-archival efforts to unravel the fate of family ancestors who attended this school, I draw from official and legal documents, Native elder stories, land walks, and Indigenous scholarship that unveil a field of carceral christianizing cruelty and enduring strands of life flourishing cosmologies. These tensions continue to shape how Cherokee and Indigenous peoples address harm and harm-doing without prisons and jails, laying out some of the world’s most abiding and foundational ways into struggles for communal healing, safety, accountability, and abolitionist plotting for power.


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Acoustic and settler colonialism: Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante, Acoustic ColonialismL Acts of Mapuche Interference, Duke University Press, 2025

06Apr26

Description: In Acoustic Colonialism, Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante examines the role of sound in Chilean and Mapuche cultural production over the last two centuries. Cárcamo-Huechante theorizes sound as a territory of racial, patriarchal, and colonial hegemony as well as of Mapuche struggle, agency, and response to what he calls “acoustic colonialism.” From the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Chilean literature, radio, and other media have exerted a historic role in disseminating distorted visual and sonic representations of the Mapuche. The enduring effects of what Cárcamo-Huechante defines as the colonial ear—the entry point for these misrepresentations—reflect the logic of the Chilean settler nation-state. In response to these aural and sonorous figurations, contemporary Mapuche writers, artists, and activists have produced their own literary, radiophonic, vocal, and musical expressions. The voices, sounds, and discourses of these Mapuche productions contest and disrupt the acoustic colonialism that has dominated the soundscape of the territory designated in present-day cartography as central and southern Chile. 


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