Healing on-Country: Jacob Prehn, Douglas Ezzy, ‘Our Way on Country: Cultural Determinants of Health, Settler Colonialism, and Indigenous Men’s Wellbeing’, AlterNative, 2026

10Aug26

Abstract: This article examines how on-Country healing practices operate as cultural determinants of health for Indigenous men in Australia. Country, understood as ancestral lands that embody lore, kinship, spirituality, and identity, remains central to wellbeing, yet few self-determined studies have explored the therapeutic benefits of such programmes. Health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are stark, with Aboriginal men experiencing some of the most adverse outcomes at the intersection of ethnicity and gender. Drawing on 11 semi-structured interviews, this study identifies four key benefits of on-Country participation: safe expression of Indigenous masculinity, strengthening of cultural identity, holistic improvements to health and wellbeing, and the development of social connections. Framed by settler colonialism and cultural determinants of health, findings suggest how land-based programmes challenge colonial disruptions to culture and identity while fostering holistic wellbeing. The study highlights the importance of incorporating cultural determinants and promoting Indigenous self-determination within health policy and practice.


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Settlers against dinosaurs (of course): Scott Magelssen, ‘Dinosaur Encounters: Settler Colonialism and Planetary Time in South Dakota’s Black Hills’, in Bryan W. Schmidt, Weston Twardowski (eds), Staging Visitation Book Subtitle: Tourist Performances and Theatricalized Places, University of Michigan Press, 2026, pp. 216-234

10Aug26

Excerpt: Time is out of joint in the opening moments of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film Jurassic Park, his blockbuster adaptation of Michael Crichton’s bestselling novel. After the movie’s title appears in its now iconic primitivist, African- safari- inspired lettering, the audience is immersed into an exotic and threatening locale in which state- of- the- art technology is pitted against the violent forces of nature. As the scene unfolds, tropical foliage rustles and electric cattle prods flash like lightning in the thickening mist as a crew of local workers attempts to transfer a dangerous dinosaur from its holding pen into its paddock. Primal growls share the soundscape with the ominous minor key notes of John Williams’s score as the workers display fear and apprehension in the face of their unnatural task. A white game warden oversees the operation, looking like a colonial expedition leader in his khaki hunting vest and Australian bush hat. The animal transfer, of course, goes awry. The technology fails to keep the untamed dinosaur in check. The beast (mostly unseen except for a shot of a menacing reptilian eye through an aperture in the holding pen) violently kills a nameless Black worker before the crew can regain control, despite the game warden’s noble attempts to save him.


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Settler genocide is contagious! Ge Tang, ‘Contagious Racial Antipathy: Negotiating Indigenous Genocide Anthony Trollope’s Australia and New Zealand (1873)’, in Nina Engelhardt, Anja Hartl (eds), Victorian Antipathies: Negative Feelings in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture Book, Palgrave, 2026, pp. 201-219

10Aug26

Abstract: I mobilise an analysis of the violent antipathy that Anthony Trollope’s travel writing mediates towards Indigenous Australians to illuminate the under-acknowledged history of genocide in Queensland, a history which, I argue, the author seeks to downplay. Trollope’s expression of profound antipathy towards the racial other stemmed from a collective antipathy pervasive within Queensland’s settler community, but it was also connected to his own corporeal experience of the Australian bush. Trollope’s antipathetic feeling towards the land’s custodians governed his engagement with earlier travel accounts about Australia by his predecessors; his writing, in turn, amplifies and disseminates this emotion, shaping how readers perceived Indigenous Australians and their suffering under British colonisation.


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Settler experimentation, in isolation: Erik Olssen, The Origins of an Experimental Society: New Zealand, 1769–1860, Auckland University Press, 2025

10Aug26

Description: The history of New Zealand explained through powerful beliefs and the people who held them. In this major work, one of our leading historians offers a new account of the origins of New Zealand: how Pākehā settlers – nurtured on Enlightenment thought and evangelical humanitarianism – encountered Māori, and how the two peoples together developed a distinctively experimental society. With James Cook’s arrival in 1769 and the subsequent colonisation, New Zealand became one of the few post-Enlightenment experiments in creating a new nation anywhere in the world. The Europeans who settled these islands brought with them a belief in the power of reason and experience to improve peoples and societies. Encounters between Māori and these new arrivals profoundly shaped the thoughts and behaviours of both peoples. Olssen argues that the people who settled New Zealand planned two experiments in making a better society. They hoped that, in contrast to earlier colonial projects, the indigenous New Zealanders would not be driven to extinction but eventually take their place as equals in a modern commercial society. And they aimed to create a society that was fairer and more just than the one they had left behind; a ‘Better Britain’. While both experiments were first conceived by savants and philosophers, they gained ongoing support, by lodging in the hearts and minds of the settlers: whalers and missionaries, mothers and farmers. In turn, Māori adapted these new ideas to their own ends, giving up slavery and inter-tribal warfare, and adapting the institutions of the colonisers in ways that would re-define the experiments. This then is an ethnography of ‘tangata Pākehā’, a people of European descent changed by their encounters with ‘tangata Māori’ and their land – just as Māori were themselves changed – and the story of the society they built together. Ranging across intellectual and cultural history, from the beach at Paihia to the coffee houses of Paris, Olssen enables us to understand the origins of New Zealand anew.


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Settlers heading out: Richard Redgrave, ‘The Emigrant’s Last Sight of Home’, 1858 (Tate Britain)

10Aug26

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Settler colonialism impacts planetary health: Kathryn Stone, Jeremy Perkins, Sarah Plank, Nicole Bates-Eamer, Julia Albert, Heather Castleden, ‘Radical, transformative, or decolonial? A systematic review of The Lancet Planetary Health’s progress on embracing Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems’, The Lancet: Planetary Health, 2026, #101476

09Aug26

Summary: All life on earth is affected by the intensifying impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Planetary health science is emerging as a crucial framework to address the health of the planet and its inhabitants. Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems have evolved over millennia and are grounded in principles such as interconnectedness of all living things. As a discipline, the tenets of planetary health draw upon Indigenous science and approaches; however, the extent of ethical engagement has not been examined. We conducted a systematic review of all articles published in The Lancet Planetary Health up to October 2025, to assess the recognition and integration of Indigenous knowledge systems. 1137 of 1172 articles reviewed contained no Indigenous research features or perspectives. Although the number of articles engaging with Indigenous knowledge systems has increased over time, these publications are predominantly commentaries, with relatively few original research articles. The Lancet Planetary Health was launched with the aim of informing a “radical civilisational transformation”. Based on the findings of this systematic review, we suggest that decolonising planetary health science should be integrated into this civilisational transformation.


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Settlers do not make the land wealthy: Rui Wang, Yang Zhou, ‘Japanese colonial settlement and long-run rural income in Northeast China: evidence from the “Kaitakudan”’, Applied Economic Letters, 2026

09Aug26

Abstract: This study examines whether Japanese colonial settlement in Manchuria has affected contemporary rural income. We construct a novel dataset covering 290 districts across Northeast China, and employ an instrumental variable strategy, based on the 1934 Japanese population share, to identify the effect as cleanly as the historical setting allows. Our district-level analysis reveals a robust negative association between colonial settlement and present-day rural income, which is consistent with the long-run persistence of colonial institutions on rural development beyond the European colonial context.


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Assimilation is confronting: Katherine Solomonson, ‘Confronting Assimilation: The Interplay Between Očéti Ŝakówiŋ and Settler Spatialities in Dakota Territory, 1883–1888’, in Charles L. Davis, Kathryn E. Holliday, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury (eds),Rewriting American Architecture: Contesting the Myths of National Culture, University of Texas Press, 2026, pp. 255-272

09Aug26

Excerpt: On September 4, 1883, three hundred Lakhˇóta and Dakhˇóta people from the Standing Rock Agency of the Great Sioux Reservation rode into Mandan, Dakota Territory, a boomtown adjacent to the Northern Pacific Railroad just west of the Missouri River (fig. 14.1). With them were the US Indian agent James McLaughlin, who left an account of this event; and the Huŋkpaphˇa Lakhˇóta Chief Sitting Bull (Thˇath ˇáŋka Íyotake), who seven years earlier had been one of the prime movers behind the battle that defeated the US Seventh Cavalry at Pezi Sla (Greasy Grass, a.k.a. Little Bighorn). Leaving their horses behind, the travelers commenced the long wait for their train.1 As they waited, Pullman cars filled with European and American “ladies and gentlemen” …


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Carceral settlerscapes: Antonina Griecci Woodsum, ‘Settler carcerality in Southern California’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026

09Aug26

Abstract: ‘Settler carcerality in Southern California’ examines how, during the first half of the twentieth century, US federal officers, local police, and county sheriffs patrolled the territory of what is now known as Southern California – the traditional homelands of the Cahuilla, Kumeyaay, Luiseño, Serrano, and Cupeño peoples – surveilling and arresting California Native people and white and Mexican residents who interacted with them, often under the pretense of regulating the liquor trade. The intensifying imposition of US laws on Indigenous sovereign nations introduced new power relations between Indian subjects, state officials, and non-Indians who engaged with these communities. This article explores how these policed relations interfered in tribal governance, supplemented surveillance during the national Prohibition era, and disciplined Native participation in New Deal work programs. Theorizing ‘settler carcerality’ reveals that US-state targeting of a seemingly small minority population carried resonant effects beyond the reservation territories of Southern California Native communities. Indexing the assaults of settler carcerality also exposes its failures and the endurance of social relations and political practices that exceeded its punishing rule.


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Discontinued in 1976! Harrison W. Mark, ‘Homestead Act: Settling the American West’, World History Encyclopedia, 24/07/26

06Aug26

Excerpt: The Homestead Act was a policy enacted by the United States government on 20 May 1862 to encourage westward expansion. Passed during the American Civil War (1861-1865), the act offered 160 acres (65 ha) of public domain land to any citizen who had never taken up arms against the federal government. Though the land did not cost any money, it was not completely free. Prospective farmers were required to live on and ‘improve’ the land for five years before the property would legally become theirs. Though a large percentage of farms would fail, the Homestead Act encouraged hundreds of thousands of American families to move out West. Before it was discontinued in 1976, the act led 270 million acres of land to be claimed and settled by US citizens.

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