Abstract: Drawing on Alexis Wright’s novel The Swan Book and Irene Watson’s expansive critique of Australian law, this article locates within the settler–Australian imaginary the figure of the ‘wounded Aboriginal child’ as a site of contest between two rival sovereign logics: First Nations sovereignty (grounded in a spiritual connection to the land over tens of […]

With a section on ‘Celebrity masculinities and settler colonialism‘.

Scholars committed to decolonial activism should discuss ways in which settlers can support Indigenous struggles and consider whether Indigenous examples could inspire and guide a commitment to decolonisation. Instead, I here feel compelled to write a post about being politically confronted by scholars committed to decolonial activism like me. Perhaps this is what blogs are […]

Description: The Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies is the first comprehensive overview of the rapidly expanding field of Indigenous scholarship. The book is ambitious in scope, ranging across disciplines and national boundaries, with particular reference to the lived conditions of Indigenous peoples in the first world. The contributors are all themselves Indigenous scholars who provide critical […]

Abstract: This article examines how the person-centered approach (PCA) became established in Aotearoa New Zealand, and draws parallels between how a Western psychology lands and settles and the process of colonization. Utilizing a critical methodology of both written records and oral history, the article documents the process of ‘first contact’ of Rogers’ ideas, followed by […]

Abstract: In this paper I reconsider debates in the Australian colonies in the 1830s and 1840s about Aboriginal people and rights in land. I contend that Aboriginal rights of property in land were seldom the matter at stake in these debates. Further, I argue that a notion of duties rather than rights was invoked by […]

Abstract: This paper examines the repurposing of Palestinian rural lands for real estate investment. Focusing on Rawabi, the celebrated first Palestinian planned city, this study unsettles the city’s narrative of triumphant urban development within an empty rural landscape by centering the experiences of the three villages on whose land this real estate scheme was built. […]

Abstract: In 1899 the American journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd was one of many social reformers who travelled to New Zealand to witness the social programmes instituted by the Liberal government. For Lloyd and other Progressives, New Zealand represented a model industrial democracy. His book Newest England (1900) describes Public Works Department projects built under the direction of […]

Excerpt: The romance of a white woman’s settler childhood seems innocuous enough when sung in a Taylor Swift lyric. After all, who could fault her for a memory of swinging in the trees over a creek at age seven, “too scared to jump in”? “Please picture me in the trees // with Pennsylvania under me,” […]

Abstract: This article traces debates and policies of the Russian imperial administrators toward the Korean population in the Far Eastern provinces of the Russian Empire. Koreans were initially treated as de facto members of the peasant estate, and in the 1890s many were granted the status of Russian subjects. Yet the rise of settler colonialism […]