Abstract: This paper addresses the role of music and music education in the perpetuation of settler colonialism (a particular colonial configuration predicated on the expulsion of indigenous people and occupation of indigenous land) within the United States. Using Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra, or “false truths,” to look at racialized depictions in John Philip Sousa’s 1910 […]

Abstract: In early 2015, the prime minister of Australia delivered the seventh annual Closing the Gap Prime Minister’s report (Australian Government, 2015). In it he reported that the government’s goal to halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and other Australians by 2018 was not on track, a euphemism for failing, and that there […]

Description: In contemporary settler societies, reconciliation has emerged as a potent and alluring form of utopian politics. This book examines the performative life of reconciliation and its discontents in settler societies. It explores the affective refoundings of the settler state and reimaginings of its alternatives and, in particular, the way the past is mobilized in […]

Abstract: Here is an object of research, found in the archives: a piece of ‘data’, an ink-on-paper mark. It exists on the bottom right-hand side of a sturdy square of parchment. The intriguing drawing (Figure 5.1) represents the unique tā moko or facial tattoo of a Maori leader, Hongi Hika. The central whorls are the lines […]

Abstract: In South Park’s “Going Native,” the white character Butters becomes inexplicably angry only to uncover that his family contends the anger is “biologically” caused by their “ancestral” belonging to Hawai‘i. He then travels to Kaua‘i to resolve this anger by connecting with his “native” home. To parody the materiality of white settlers playing and […]

Abstract: Assimilation is a process by which a person or group belonging to one culture adopts the practices of another, thereby becoming a member of that culture.

Abstract: Hoover Dam is a settler-colonial project, requiring Indigenous land and waterways while producing energy that enables further non-Indigenous settlement. In addition to the Dam’s engineering feats, its cultural production—art, pageantry, commemoration, and media—helped to buttress these claims to land. In this article, I offer the concept of dam/ning: how tactics used to preserve White settler […]

Abstract: This paper examines some of the non-Native narratives of disruption that were constructed in opposition to a 2006 Haudenosaunee land reclamation in order to discern what these narratives can tell us about the future obstacles Canadians and their government will need to overcome if true reconciliation with First Nations is to be achieved. Some […]

Abstract: The labelling and categorization of archaeological sites have consequences for the interpretation and subsequent research completed. As such, we as archaeologists must always be vigilant regarding the unintended consequences of labels we attach, or choose to omit, from official site information. These problems become compounded when governmental control codifies existing archaeological conventions and renders […]

Excerpt: In Waleed Aly’s Fairfax column last week he explained the “anatomy” of our national neurosis, the one that periodically erupts whenever white men are challenged about their natural order.