settler colonial studies blog
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Integration requires disintegration: Paloma E. Villegas, Breanna Barrie, Serriz Peña, Jilanch Alphonso, Alveera Mamoon, ‘Integration, Settler Colonialism, and Precarious Legal Status Migrants in Canada’, Journal of International Migration and Integration, 2019, pp. 1–17
Erasing present indigenous people by focusing on long gone ones: Lee M. Panich, Tsim D. Schneider, ‘Categorical Denial: Evaluating Post-1492 Indigenous Erasure in the Paper Trail of American Archaeology’, American Antiquity, 2019
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Foreclosing indigenous people, literally: K-Sue Park, ‘Money, Mortgages, and the Conquest of America’, Law & Social Enquiry, 41, 4, 2016, pp. 10006-1035
01Sep19
Abstract:
In colonial America, land acquired new liquidity when it became liable for debts. Though English property law maintained a firm distinction between land and chattel for centuries, in the American colonies, the boundary between the categories of real and personal property began to disintegrate. There, the novelty of easy foreclosure and consequent easy alienation of land made it possible for colonists to obtain credit, using land as a security. However, scholars have neglected the first instances in which a newly unconstrained practice of mortgage foreclosure appeared—the transactions through which colonists acquired land from indigenous people in the first place. In this article, I explore these early transactions for land, which took place across fundamental differences between colonists’ and native communities’ conceptions of money, land, and exchange itself. I describe how difference and dependence propelled the growth of the early American contact economy to make land into real estate, or the fungible commodity on the speculative market that it remains today.
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Settler colonialism is a global and transnational phenomenon, and as much a thing of the past as a thing of the present. Settlers 'come to stay': they are founders of political orders who carry with them a distinct sovereign capacity.
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Parking settler colonialism: Sarah Montoya, ‘Moving Toward Accountability: Challenging Settler Narratives through Interpretive Shifts and Tribal Engagement at Anza National Historic Trail’, Parks Stewardship Forum, 42, 1, 2026, pp. 101-110
The land eaters: Mansel G. Blackford, Land Hunger: Ohio and the Western Frontiers, Ohio University Press, 2025
The wreck of settler colonialism: Coll Thrush, Wrecked: Unsettling Histories from the Graveyard of the Pacific, University of Washington Press, 2025
Emasculating settler colonialism: Sam McKegney, Carrying the Burden of Peace: Reimagining Indigenous Masculinities Through Story, University of Regina Press, 2021
Indigenous sovereignty just down the road: Kiara Vellios, Andréanne Doyon, ‘Examining Indigenous resurgence in urban parks through Vancouver’s Stanley Park’, Journal of Urban Affairs, 2026
Occupied labour between the rvier and the sea: Ihab Maharme, ‘The Politics of labour: everyday practices of Palestinian workers in the settler economy’, Journal of Political Power, 2026
The occupied water between the river and the sea: Elisa Adami, ‘Thinking with Water in Palestine’, UAL Research Online, 01/11/25
Come and see settler colonialism: Jennifer Lynn Kelly, Invited to Witness: Solidarity Tourism across Occupied Palestine, Duke University Press, 2023
Occupying time AND space: Natalia Gutkowski, Struggling for Time: Environmental Governance and Agrarian Resistance in Israel/Palestine, Stanford University Press, 2024
Settler malaria: Amanda Cooke, Megan B. Brickley, ‘Ecologies of Risk: Malaria and Settler Landscape Transformation in 19th-Century Ontario’, American Journal of Human Biology, 38, 1, 2026, #e70181
Settler colonialism is a current affair: Zachary Levenson, ‘Review Essay: On Settler Colonialism, Its Critics, and Its Critics’ Critics’, American Journal of Sociology, 2026
The race of Indigenous peoples: Sofia Locklear, ‘”People love playing the ‘what are you?’ game with me”: Street Racialization of American Indian and Alaska Native individuals’, Social Problems, 2026
On settler colonial Kashmir: Tasleem Malik, Maira Safdar, Fiazullah Jan, ‘Beyond occupation: memory, displacement, and the logic of settler control in Kashmir’, GeoJournal, 91, 2026, #9
Reliable allies? Sarah Nelson, ‘The missing map: a meditation on allyship’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026
Poetic refusal (of settler colonialism): Jeffrey Sacks, Poeticality: In Refusal of Settler Life, Fordham University Press, 2026
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