Abstract: In the eleventh century CE, the Shona people of Central Africa built the city of Great Zimbabwe, an administrative center and royal home. Connected to the Indian Ocean gold trade, it would become the largest pre-colonial city in sub-Saharan Africa. However, it entered into decline and was ultimately abandoned by the sixteenth century – […]

Abstract: This essay examines particular episodes of violence between Native peoples and white settlers in the American West and the competing narratives created by the two groups. The contested memory of the US-Dakota War, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Modoc War, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the legacy at Fort Smith, […]

Abstract: There are at least four ways in which Antarctic colonialism was white: it was paradigmatically performed by white men; it consisted in the taking of vast, white expanses of land; it was carried out with a carte blanche (literally, “blank card”) attitude; and it was presented to the world as a white, innocent adventure. While the […]

Description: Since time before memory, large numbers of salmon have made their way up and down the Klamath River. Indigenous management enabled the ecological abundance that formed the basis of capitalist wealth across North America. These activities on the landscape continue today, although they are often the site of intense political struggle. Not only has […]

Abstract: On August 25, 2003, the Tłįchǫ Peoples of the Northwest Territories signed a combined comprehensive land claim and self-government agreement with the Government of Canada. In addition to transferring ancestral lands back to the Tłįchǫ Peoples, the Agreement provides the Tłįchǫ Peoples with the right and freedom to define how their lands and its […]

Abstract: In Settler Colonial Theory, there is a growing body of work that looks at the ways settler colonization is being challenged. The understanding of how settlers are engaging with these potential transformations remains unclear. I build on Davis et. al’s (2017) idea of “transforming settler consciousness” to consider what conditions, spaces, and practices are […]

Excerpt: “I digress constantly,” declares the narrator of Roughing It (1872), Mark Twain’s semi-autobiographical account of “variegated vagabondizing” in the North American West (331, xxxi).1 With this aside, Twain calls attention to the way he depicts spaces where US settlement was far from an accomplished fact. Most of Roughing It is set in early-1860s Nevada—which had been a part of […]

Abstract: Using the papers of the Gibb Committee on the future of Aboriginal communities on pastoral properties in the Northern Territory (1970–72), this article contributes both theoretically and empirically to the history of self-determination policy. It reveals non-Aboriginal authorities’ thinking at a crucial moment in the history of the governing of remote Aboriginal Australians: the […]

Abstract: Implanted in 1846 as a pilgrimage site on Algerian soil after France’s 1830 conquest, the majestic Virgin Mary of Santa Cruz statue overlooks Oran, Algeria’s second city. This essay traces transMediterranean journeys by Virgin Mary statues between France and Algeria that call for reflexive, mirrored readings. A key concept is the ‘repatriated,’ a French […]

Excerpt: Originally published in Weird Tales in 1932, Robert E. Howard’s short story “The Horror from the Mound” blends conventions of Western and horror fictions, particularly in the characterization of the cowboy protagonist and the vampire antagonist. The story is set in the border region of west Texas around (if not exactly) 1845 and details the heroic […]