Settler what-aboutism: Jayde Fuller, ‘”What-aboutism” as colonial technology: a practical guide for First Nations People – how deflection operates as an automated defence system and how to respond from sovereignty’, Indigenous Regulatory Practice, 11/03/26

02Apr26

Abstract: What-aboutism deflection is not a communication failure. It is colonial technology – an automated institutional defence that activates when First Nations Peoples name specific harm and demand specific accountability. This piece argues that what-aboutism functions as a discursive mechanism with identifiable patterns, a documented history, and measurable consequences: in the 18 months following the Voice to Parliament referendum, over half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults experienced discrimination when seeking healthcare. Discrimination is escalating – not improving – precisely as the frameworks designed to address it are being diluted. Drawing on Daniels’ structural harm frameworks, the documented co-optation of Dr Irihapeti Ramsden’s cultural safety into a universal one, and current Mayi Kuwayu data, this piece maps five patterns of what-aboutism, traces their institutional logic, and provides eight sovereignty-based responses for First Nations Peoples who choose to engage them. It closes with a direct address to the institutions and individuals producing the deflections it names.


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Trafficking settlers: Hannah Greenwald, ‘Trafficked into Oblivion: Indigenous Women and the Politics of Maternalism in Nineteenth-Century Buenos Aires, Argentina’, The American Historical Review, 131, 1, 2026, pp. 26-60

01Apr26

Abstract: This article recovers the lived experiences of trafficked Indigenous women in nineteenth-century Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 1878 through 1885, the Argentine Army carried out a series of campaigns in the Pampas and Patagonia, imprisoning and displacing thousands of formerly autonomous Indigenous people. Hundreds of prisoners, mostly women and children, were sent to Buenos Aires and placed under the jurisdiction of a women’s charity organization called the Sociedad de Beneficencia (SdB). In conjunction with Argentina’s Ministry of War, the SdB sent Indigenous women to live in the homes of wealthy Buenos Aires families as unfree domestic laborers. The SdB employed a racialized and gendered discourse of moral uplift to justify coercive treatment and sanitize ongoing frontier violence. This article reveals that some Indigenous women, unable to access protection under the law, attempted to shape their circumstances by publicly calling attention to mistreatment and neglect. These resistant actions forced Argentina’s political elites to question the meaning of Argentine citizenship and national belonging. Ultimately, this article provides insights into the complex relationship among gender, race, and social class in the construction of settler colonial nation-states, highlighting the possibilities for Indigenous resistance under settler colonialism.


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Settler nuclear: Jessica Urwin, Contaminated Country: Nuclear Colonialism and Aboriginal Resistance in Australia, University of Washington Press, 2025

01Apr26

Description: The destruction and defiance that swirled around Australia’s embrace of the world’s nuclear order. Though a nonnuclear state, Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear energy programs of numerous global powers across the twentieth century. From uranium extraction to nuclear testing, Australia’s lands became sites of imperial exploitation under the guise of national development. The continent was subject to rampant nuclear colonialism. However, this history is not just one of imposition. Aboriginal communities, bearing the brunt of these processes, have persistently resisted, reclaiming their rights to Country and demanding reparations. As Jessica Urwin shows, extraction, weapons testing, and nuclear waste disposal have caused incalculable physical, spiritual, and cultural harm to Aboriginal communities and lands. Yet Indigenous peoples all over the world have not only survived nuclear colonialism but challenged it time and time again. Tracking the colonial mechanisms Australia used to pursue a nuclear industry, Urwin simultaneously highlights how Aboriginal peoples refused and reshaped those same mechanisms over time. A groundbreaking book, Contaminated Country reveals how Australia’s deep nuclear past has been entangled with colonialism locally, nationally, and internationally.


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Contesting settler control over Indigenous bodies (introducing a special issue): Ashlea Gillon, Bronwyn Carlson, ‘Indigenous(ly) fat, fat(ly) Indigenous’, Fat Studies, 2026

01Apr26

Excerpt: This special issue asks the question: What does Indigenous fat studies look like, particularly when we refuse coloniality? It questions what happens when fat Indigenous bodies are not positioned as problems to be solved, but as sovereign sites of knowledge, memory, resistance, and futurity. Across (un)settler colonial contexts, Indigenous Peoples have been rendered (hyper)(in)visible through surveillance and medicalization, while simultaneously oppressed as sovereign thinkers and embodied knowledge holders. Anti-fatness, in particular, has been mobilized as a colonial technology, intertwined with racialization, missionary morality, public health moral panic, neoliberalism, and more. For Indigenous Peoples, fat bias and fat hatred are not simply matters of dislike, they are intersecting systems of oppression that entangle with the theft of land, food system and relationship disruption, sexualized violence, and the ongoing (mis)governance of Indigenous lives. The articles in this special issue do not merely critique these regimes; they refuse them.


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Selective humanitarianism: Pietro Stefanini, Settler Colonial Humanitarianism: A Genealogy of the Settler Subject in Palestine/Israel, PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2024

30Mar26

Abstract: This thesis reorients settler colonial studies towards an understanding of humanitarianism’s role in the constitution of the settler subject. Grounded in the case of Palestine/Israel, the settler colonial modality of humanitarianism that I illustrate is two-fold: enabling the continuous establishment of the settler society; and providing a tool for the dispossession of Palestinians. To substantiate these central claims, I draw from a genealogical methodology that reconstructs the changing patterns and spaces in which humanitarianism came to shape the settler subject, tracing its appearance and evolution to present day. To trace this genealogy linking different historical moments to the present, I relied on research in multiple archives and over 60 interviews conducted primarily during fieldwork in Palestine/Israel. The global history of humanitarianism in colonial and settler colonial contexts tells us a story in which it is usually the native subject the recipient of humanitarian aid and sentiment. But archival research on the relief work of the Zionist Commission (1918-1921), which targeted settlers in need of aid to rebuild damaged colonies, reveals a distinct form of settler colonial humanitarianism which breaks from that historical pattern. After the First World War, humanitarian relief transformed into an instrument of settler sovereignty formation within the bounds of British imperial rule. Meanwhile, in revisiting the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe), I argue that the 1923 precedent on Greek-Turkish ‘population exchanges’ influenced how the expulsion of Palestinians was framed as a ‘humanitarian’ population transfer. This moment opens an avenue for understanding humanitarianism’s function in the dispossession of Palestinians. Yet, at this historical conjuncture, for the Israeli statehood project to succeed the mass depopulation of Palestinians that took place in 1948 had to be coupled with populating the conquered land with settlers. Here I argue that the ‘humanitarianisation’ of the Jewish immigration process facilitated the creation of the Israeli settler state. Drawing from an ethnographic approach and interviews with Israeli settlers, Israeli military officials, and staff of international humanitarian organisations, I explore the contemporary manifestations of the settler subject through two different processes. First, I examine a recent form of humanitarian governance adopted by the Israeli military which serves to buttress the control, counterinsurgency strategies, and ultimately dispossession of Palestinians. Second, a close appraisal of Israeli settlers evacuated from Gaza in 2005 reveals the multiple ways in which a settler colonial form of humanitarianism emerged. Israeli settlers began mobilising the figure of the refugee and the mental health discourse of trauma to disavow the process of de settlement from Palestinian land. Through a reconstruction of the historical and contemporary contours of Israeli settler colonialism, this genealogical investigation thus shows how humanitarianism generates an eliminationist settler subjectivity that heralds the removal and replacement of Palestinians.


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Shocking settlers (in Kenya): Colin Leys, Norman Leys and Settler Colonialism in Kenya, Merlin Press, 2025

30Mar26

Description: In 1924 Norman Leys shocked liberals by revealing the truth about settler colonialism in a best-selling book called, simply, Kenya. He showed that settler colonialism had nothing to do with a ‘civilising mission’ but meant the ruthless exploitation of African forced labour. In 1910 he had exposed the duplicity of the Governor of Kenya in moving the Maasai out of their traditional land to make way for settlers. The Governor was forced to resign. Leys was demoted and exiled. Leys campaigned tirelessly to try to change public opinion in Britain. He exposed the racism behind popular support for the settlers and was prepared to accept the unpopularity this caused. The book tells the story of what made a medical doctor a champion of African liberation decades before it was fashionable, and why he had the impact he had. With a Foreword by Paul Gilroy, two maps and one photos. Annexes present selected original texts. With three maps and three photos.


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Resettlers are settlers: Cristian Cercel, ‘The emigration solution and the coloniality of migration: postwar plans of resettling German expellees’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026

27Mar26

Abstract: This article examines the so-called ‘emigration solution’ to the ‘refugee question’ in postwar Europe and the plans to resettle Germans expelled from the East of Europe in Latin America. After laying down the theoretical framework, articulated around the concept of ‘coloniality of migration’, the article contextualizes the German presence in the East of Europe and the flight and expulsion of Germans at the end of the Second World War, emphasizing the parallels and links with settler colonialism and settler migration to Latin America. It then discusses the emigration solution as a response to the European displacement crisis, showing that it drew on a repertoire of ideas with affinities to settler colonialism. Subsequently, it engages with three postwar projects of resettling German expellees to Brazil, Chile and Venezuela, discussing how they are related to settler colonialism and how the coloniality of migration informed them. The article concludes with a discussion on how the coloniality of migration provides a framework enabling an understanding of the links between settler colonialism and settler migration and with a consideration of the interconnections between the East of Europe and Latin America in the global history of settler colonialism and settler migration.


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The problem of the settler library out there: Dattatraya Kalbande, ‘Toward extraterrestrial librarianship: Designing knowledge systems for human settlements in space’, Journal of Space Safety Engineering, 2026

27Mar26

Abstract: As humanity moves closer to establishing settlements beyond Earth, libraries must be reconceptualized as autonomous, adaptive, and ethically grounded systems that support human survival, learning, and cultural continuity in extraterrestrial environments. This paper presents a conceptual framework for “extraterrestrial librarianship,” integrating insights from space science, digital preservation, human-computer interaction, and Library and Information Science (LIS). The proposed three-layered model—Sensing, Processing, and Interaction—guides the design of space libraries capable of functioning under extreme conditions such as microgravity, radiation, communication latency, and social isolation. Comparative and functional analysis tables distinguish traditional Earth-based libraries from their space counterparts and map practical use-cases ranging from mental health support to conflict mediation. The paper expands the librarian’s role into that of a knowledge architect, ethical curator, cultural diplomat, and emotional support agent. Through speculative yet grounded scenarios—including Martian knowledge pods, bio-encoded interstellar archives, and zero-gravity VR story lounges—the study demonstrates the transformative potential of libraries in future space civilizations. It affirms that wherever humans venture, libraries will remain critical infrastructure for preserving memory, fostering identity, and sustaining civilization beyond planetary boundaries.


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Indigenous-settler relations in urban Nigeria: Olutoyin Samuel Senbor, ‘Ethics, Culture, and Peaceful Co-Existence among Indigenous and Settler Communities in Ketu, Lagos State’, Interculturality, 1, 2, 2026

27Mar26

Abstract: In urban Nigeria, the indigenous and the settler groups meet on a daily, long-lasting basis, challenging the questions of belongingness, recognition, and power. The research explored how ethics and culture influenced peaceful coexistence between indigenous and settler people in Ketu, a multi ethnic neighbourhood in Kosofe Local Government Area in Lagos State. An exploratory qualitative design was employed; the interviews applied were semi-structured (n=8), paired (n=4), and nonparticipant observation in markets and communal settings. A total of twelve participants were chosen purposively to include indigenous residents, settler residents, and community gatekeepers. Thematic analysis showed that in Ketu, coexistence was considerably governed by ethical commonalities like respect, tolerance, hospitality, and common responsibility, which defined the day-to-day interaction and cooperation in economic and religious settings. Nevertheless, coexistence was not equal and unconditional. Authority systems based on indigeneity meant that settlers were limited in their participation in the leadership and decision-making processes, which strengthened the symbolic and practical limits of belonging. The effect of these dynamics was that they created a negotiated form of coexistence that was characterized by moral restraint in place of institutional inclusion as a means of containing peace. The research found that, although in Ketu, civic ethics prevailed in everyday life with peaceful relations, subtle forms of exclusion, which are based on indigeneity, nonetheless dictated the local way of governance and the social hierarchy.


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Assimilate or die! Gracelen Hawkins, ‘Comparing Assimilationist and Non-Assimilationist Approaches in Settler Colonialism: From Ancient Times to the Present’, Honors dissertation, Wright State University, 2025

27Mar26

Excerpt: Settler colonialism is multi-faceted and widely debated. Emerging in the 1990s through foundational scholars like Patrick Wolfe and Jürgen Osterhammel, the field of settler colonial studies is relatively young. Even amongst scholars, finding a definition for the term is a difficult task. Osterhammel expresses this difficulty, calling colonialism a “phenomenon of colossal vagueness.” Scholars differ in their priorities for what constitutes settler colonialism; thus, the term varies in interpretation and often conflicts between authors. Beginning by defining settler colonialism from the perspectives of Osterhammel and Veracini, I stress the universal question of settler polities: What should be done with the native population? I explore the ways in which settlers decide to deal with indigenous populations, either through assimilation of natives into the settler colonial society or via non-assimilationist, exclusionary tactics. In examining historical examples of settler colonialism, I argue that assimilation, as an expression of settler colonial removal and replacement of indigenous people, is one of the defining characteristics of settler colonialism. To further develop a framework of assimilation in settler colonialism, one must also understand exceptions to this element. Nonassimilationist practices occurred to claim lands, prevent indigenous uprisings, and promote exclusion through racial hierarchy. Conversely, assimilation occurred in settler societies as part of a demand for labor, reproduction, and land acquisition. While not present in all examples, such as the ancient Greeks, early United States, and present-day Israel, assimilation is a core strategy in suppressing indigenous peoples as seen in Rome, New Spain, and New Zealand.



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