The settler family: Avril Bell, ‘Introduction: Studies of Critical Settler Family History’, Genealogy, 6, 2, 2022 | settler colonial studies blog

The settler family: Avril Bell, ‘Introduction: Studies of Critical Settler Family History’, Genealogy, 6, 2, 2022

07Jun22

Excerpt: As a subset of this field, critical settler family history (CSFH) explores the roles of settler families in (and against) the work of colonialism. Given the centrality of families and home-making to the settler colonial project of taking over the homelands of Indigenous people and creating a ‘new’ society, CSFH is a highly appropriate method for exposing and undercutting the logics and dynamics of colonial violence wrapped in the seemingly benign practice of settlement. CSFH work focuses on the home-making of individual families, exposing the violence at its heart. While settler family historians—and popular history-makers in settler societies—often celebrate the pioneering exploits and spirit of early settlers, CSFH interrogates families’ relationships with Indigenous communities and centres the ways in which the settler family’s home-making is entwined with histories of Indigenous dispossession, and the various forms of violence against Indigenous communities involved in that process. Settler home-making is thus exposed as anything but benign.

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