Providential settler colonialism: Laura Rademaker, ‘Providence and the Destiny of the “Heathen” in Australia’s Settler Colonies, 1788-1860s’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2026, #lfag011

20Mar26

Abstract: This article seeks to unpick and expose the internal logics of the biblical arguments that were deployed to explain and justify settler colonization in Australia. Pushing beyond “subduing the earth” as the extent of the religious rationale for colonization to an understanding that incorporates the broader biblical narratives drawn on by settler colonists, it argues that colonists’ constructions of Aboriginal people’s spirituality as “heathenism” was vital for settlers’ project to decipher the workings of “Providence.” It argues that Aboriginal people’s supposed “forgetting” of religion was used to explain to their rapid population decline and the possession of their land by colonists. Evangelicals were aware of and concerned for the moral contradictions of the settler-colonial project. Ultimately, however, their allegations that the British Empire itself had behaved in a “heathenish” manner served to urge settler colonists to justify and secure their presence on Aboriginal land through the favor of “Providence”.


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Settlers come to stay: Tin Pham Nguyen, ‘Rooted in the ‘lucky country’: settler permanence, emigration ambivalence, and national identity in Australia, National Identities, 2026

20Mar26

Abstract: This paper offers a conceptual analysis of Australia’s comparatively low diaspora ratio, theorising emigration ambivalence as a product of national identity, settler colonial permanence, economic affluence, and mobility regimes. Rather than attributing immobility to geography or prosperity alone, it reframes staying as a culturally and politically constructed ideal. Drawing on nationalism studies, migration theory, and Indigenous critique, the paper argues that settler imaginaries of territorial belonging produce a structural preference for domestic permanence and weak institutionalisation of outward mobility. While grounded in Australia, the analysis contributes broader insights into immobility, diaspora absence, and identity formation in affluent and settler colonial contexts.


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Really JICH? Amir Goldstein, Elad Nahshon, ‘From Partnership to Revolt: The Dialectics of SettlerColonial Consciousness in the Zionist Right’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2026

20Mar26

Abstract: This article offers a historically grounded contribution to the debate on the relationship between Zionism and settler colonialism. Rather than determining whether Zionism should be defined as a settler-colonial project, the study employs settler colonialism as an analytical lens to examine how Zionist actors – specifically the Irgun (Hebrew: Etzel, National Military Organisation) – experienced and conceptualised their position within the colonial environment of Mandatory Palestine. Focusing on a key transitional moment in the 1930s – 1940s, this article trace the shifting consciousness of the Zionist Right as it moved from reliance on the British Empire to an increasingly confrontational stance, culminating in the Irgun’s anti-British revolt under Menachem Begin. This study utilises Irgun and Revisionist leaflets, circulars, pamphlets, and internal directives to reconstruct the organisation’s evolving self perception. The findings challenge narratives that portray Zionist actors as denying the settler-colonial dimension of their enterprise. Instead, an explicit adoption of colonial discourse, including comparisons with British settler societies and the positioning of Jews as ‘European settlers’, is revealed in the Revisionist and early Irgun phases. At the same time, these sources expose a fluid identity spectrum between ‘settler’ and ‘native’, shaped by contemporary colonial classifications and claims of historical rootedness. The article’s central contribution lies in demonstrating that the Irgun’s shift from cooperation with Britain to anti-imperial struggle was not a rupture but a gradual, dialectical transformation in settler colonial consciousness. Beyond the Zionist case, the study proposes a refined model for understanding how settler societies negotiate tensions between dependence on the metropole and the development of independent identity, highlighting how highly different modes of self-understanding can coexist within the same political movement, it thus invites reconsideration of the temporal and ideological dynamics that shape settler-colonial identity formation.


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The critical psyche against settler colonialism: Lee-Anne Broadhead, Christine Gwynn, Sean Howard, ‘he Critical Psyche: Jung, Marcuse and the Aesthetics of Social Change in an Era of Indigenous Resurgence’, International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2026

20Mar26

Abstract: In 1978 Gertrude Steuernagel argued for the necessity of deepening the culturally ‘therapeutic’ function of political philosophy by means of a ‘synthesis’ of works by C.G. Jung and Herbert Marcuse. We believe her proposal continues to offer—with one important qualification—a valid path towards a politically ‘therapeutic intervention’ in dysfunctional power relationships. Such an intervention is required in settler colonial states and should involve something unaddressed and unimagined by Steuernagel: an intervention by Indigenous political theorists into mainstream, Eurocentric political theory itself, as well as the friendlier (but still culturally biased) territory of Jungian/post-Jungian psychology. Given the centrality of the aesthetic dimension to both Jung and Marcuse, the paper considers the role of Indigenous artworks, in challenging the settler-colonial persona. The paper answers Steuernagel’s call for “creative conclusions or implications” stemming from her appeal by identifying Indigenous critique as key to the practice of therapeutic political philosophy.


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It’s time: Genevieve Renard Painter, ‘As If a Foreign Country: Evidence Law and Settler Colonial Sovereignty’, in Paolo Amorosa, Ville Erkkilä, Karolina Stenlund (eds), Times of Global Injustice, Routledge, 2026

20Mar26

Abstract: The hallmark of sovereignty is not only effective control over space, but effective control over time. In settler colonial states, time is the vector through which the state defends its perpetual existence against the inconvenient fact of pre-colonial and continuing Indigenous presence. Adjudication in common law systems is a powerful mechanism for defending settler sovereignty because of the rules that bind facts to law. Evidence rules determine how adjudicators come to know the past and stipulate some of the past as knowable. Whether through eyewitness, documentary, or expert evidence, evidence rules make the past “present” in the present, without interpretation or mediation. Through legal technique, the legal process produces temporal sovereignty. First, the action of writing history in judgment presumes and reifies the state’s continuity through time. This reaffirms the settler state’s perpetually contested sovereignty. Second, history written into judgments creates pasts from which the state’s jurisdiction is imagined to flow. Thus are codified foundational myths about state domination over Indigenous life. Third, the mechanics of citation and precedent cause a judicially-legitimated past to repeat as fact. Writing in a present challenged by rival Indigenous legalities, the judge is bonded by legal techniques into writing histories that are declared to correspond to the past and that iterate into the future. Telling stories through law is how the state occupies time.


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Settlers vs. Indigenes in Nigeria: Anthony Imeh Umoh, Victoria Edet Okon, ‘Dynamics of Indigene/ Settler Conflicts in the Northern Senatorial Zone of Plateau State, Nigeria (1994-2012)’, International Journal of Finance Management and Governance, 2, 1, 2026

20Mar26

Abstract: The Northern Senatorial Zone of Plateau State is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and highly complex society. With groups both indigenous and settlers, the zone from 1994 to 2010 struggled to grapple with the intricacies of the indigenous/settler and ethno-religious dichotomy. The perennial violent conflict in the zone was always between the Hausa/Fulani settlers and indigenous ethnic groups. The Hausa/Fulani claim they deserve the indigeneship of the zone, having been active participants in the political, economic, and resource development of the area, thereby contributing immensely to the development of Jos as a modern city. The indigenous groups, on the other hand, regarded the Hausa/Fulani as settlers who migrated to the place for greener pastures when tin ore was a foreign exchange earner for Nigeria. This paper examines the dynamics of indigene/settler conflicts in Plateau North, its dimension, and the zero-sum nature in which one group wanted to gain and the other lose. The paper argues that what made the conflicts in the zone more complex was the multiplicity of factors such as ethnicity, religion, competition for scarce resources, and an attempt to gain and control political and economic space. It concludes that these negative dynamics hindered and frustrated the dividend of democracy in the zone, as lives and property were lost and scores rendered homeless in the conflicts.


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Settler colonial ambivalences (but it is actually simpler: neither imperial, nor decolonial – settler colonial): Elizabeth E. Imber, Uncertain Empire: Jews, Nationalism, and the Fate of British Imperialism, Stanford University Press, 2025

20Mar26

Description: Following the British conquest of Ottoman Palestine, Jews across the British Empire—from Jerusalem to Johannesburg, London to Calcutta—found themselves at the heart of global Jewish political discourse. As these intellectuals, politicians, activists, and communal elites navigated shifting political landscapes, some envisioned Palestine as a British dominion, leveraging imperial power for Jewish state-building, while others fostered ties with anticolonial movements, contemplating independent national aspirations. Uncertain Empire considers this intricate interplay between British imperialism, Zionism, and anticolonial movements from the 1917 British conquest of Palestine to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Elizabeth Imber highlights diverse and sometimes conflicting visions of Jewish political futures, offering detailed case studies of key figures including Chaim Arlosoroff, Moshe Shertok, Helen Bentwich, Rachel Ezra, and Hermann Kallenbach. She explores a “politics of uncertainty” in which Jews engaged with both imperial stability and the rise of anticolonial mobilization, when many were likewise forced to reconsider Palestine as a viable refuge and political solution. Ultimately, this book provides a nuanced understanding of how the British Empire’s fate became central to Zionist and broader Jewish political thought, revealing the complex intersections of empire, state power, and Jewish politics during a time marked by profound urgency and exigency.


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The settler’s arrested development: Shuya Su, ‘Indigenous Girlhood, Radical Resurgence, and the Question of Settler Growth in Jen Ferguson’s The Summer of Bitter and Sweet’, Children’s Literature in Education, 2026

17Mar26

Excerpt: This paper examines Jen Ferguson’s YA novel The Summer of Bitter and Sweet (2022), arguing that it exposes the ongoing colonial violence against Indigenous women and girls in Canada while articulating a framework of Indigenous-led radical resurgence that critically engages with the settler society. Narrated by Lou, a Métis adolescent in contemporary Alberta, the novel foregrounds the inherited colonial trauma shaping Indigenous girlhood. This includes her biological father’s history of sexual assault and the boundary-crossing behavior of her white ex-boyfriend, Wyatt. Lou’s skepticism about Wyatt’s potential for growth encapsulates a central tension in the text: whether settlers can experience moral development, and on what terms.


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Digital dispossession: Tyler McCreary, David Hugill, ‘Digital Colonialism, Fossil Capitalism, and Indigenous Dispossession’, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2026

17Mar26

Abstract: This paper argues that North America’s emerging digital economies are materially and politically grounded in ongoing regimes of settler-colonial extraction. While scholarship on “digital colonialism” has illuminated new forms of data appropriation, corporate concentration, epistemic domination, and frontier discourse, it has often underemphasized the extent to which digital infrastructures remain tethered to fossil capitalism and Indigenous dispossession. We contend that digitization is not post-extractive. Rather, it amplifies extractive relations, relying on energy-intensive infrastructures powered by fossil fuels from Indigenous lands. Focusing on Calgary, a Prairie petropolis that has rebranded itself as a “smart city,” we examine how urban digital transformation is embedded in, and extends, settler-colonial fossil regimes. We develop four interrelated claims: (1) the appropriation of resources from Indigenous lands remains foundational to digital economies; (2) corporate power in both fossil and tech sectors is mutually reinforcing within the political order of the petro-state; (3) the digitization and automation of extraction reconfigure labor geographies, undermining Indigenous employment while distancing work from land-based lifeways; and (4) these dynamics intensify colonial violence, with profound consequences. By situating digital capitalism within the historical and ongoing logics of settler colonialism, the paper reframes debates on digital colonialism in grounded, place-based terms.


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The colony as a prison: L. N. Billington, ‘L.N. (2026). ‘Incarceration as Colonisation: Indigenous Imprisonment and Self-Determination in Australia and Kanaky’, in T. Anthony, M. Bhatia, K. Pillay, J. M. Williams (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Racial Injustice and Resistance, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026, pp. 245-270

17Mar26

Abstract: For generations, prison population rates in colonial carceral systems have reported breathtakingly high levels of Indigenous incarceration. While Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States of America (CANZUS) are most often cited in this regard, Indigenous hyperincarceration manifests in colonial carceral jurisdictions across the globe. Positioning Indigenous incarceration as an integral part of a colonial project which is both lived and ongoing, this chapter scrutinises the imperialist logics driving historical and contemporary exercises of colonial carceral control over Indigenous nations. This chapter draws on two colonial carceral case studies: Kanaky (New Caledonia) and Australia. Building on the observations and reflections of those with lived experience of prisons in these jurisdictions, as well as on both critical scholarship and Indigenous advocacy work in Australia and Kanaky, this chapter examines the structural relations between colonisation and incarceration, and between decolonisation and decarceration. Analysing the ways colonialism and Indigenous incarceration are fundamentally entwined in these jurisdictions, this chapter demonstrates the purposeful and continued deployment of carceral control over Indigenous nations as a tool of the modern-day colonial project to subdue, subjugate, dispossess and eliminate Indigenous peoples. Drawing on illustrations from Kanaky and Australia, this chapter concludes that the inherently colonial nature of Indigenous incarceration necessitates the fundamental fracture of the contemporary structures of colonial invasion—including the prison. Only then can Indigenous decarceration become a reality.


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