Excerpt: ‘Crucially, these more relational theories of commoning as a practice have leveraged the concept as a critique of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, which both have their bases in private property, enclosure, and extraction‘.

Abstract: Part of an ongoing series of writings began in 2012, this chapter proposes Decolonial Questioning as a methodology that aims to mobilize intergenerational white settler responsibility in the cultural sector. Committed to furthering decolonizing methodologies that contribute to unsettling contemporary settler colonial systems, structures and attitudes, Carla Taunton and Leah Decter specifically expand on […]

Abstract: Renewed calls for Indigenous sovereignty in North America have led some scholars to search Western philosophy for thinking that affirms these claims. Many suggest that the common law tradition offers resources to do so. In this article, I argue that common law is limited in its capacity to endorse Indigenous political legitimacy. Instead, I […]

Abstract: In recent years settler governments have begun to seriously engage with Indigenous peoples’ fire and other ecological knowledges in the context of managing natural hazards and resources. In Australia, Aoteroa New Zealand, Canada and the United States, Indigenous peoples and their ecological knowledge have become increasingly involved in combating such naturally—and socially constructed—threats as […]

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Abstract: French colonialism in North America has often been typified by the histories of New France and the Great Lakes region, characterized as a middle ground that, while violent, still provided opportunity for alliance and left Indigenous cultural practices largely intact. Yet, in contrast, the founding of Lower Louisiana was explicitly settler colonial, and the […]

Abstract: “Occom’s Arrow” explores the nature of Indigenous personhood in eighteenth century America. Focusing on Jonathan Spilsbury’s 1768 mezzotint portrait of Mohegan minister Samson Occom, the essay examines how cultural intermediaries such as Occom challenged widespread assumptions concerning the opposition of “Christian” and “Indian.” In Occom’s portrait, as well as in his life, we witness […]

Abstract: Indigenous people in northern Australia are among the most incarcerated on the planet. I examine the impacts of this regime on the everyday lives of Aboriginal people in the Northern territory Victoria River’s region. Based on a Long-term participant observation informed by the question, ‘what happens in families and communities when people are locked […]

Abstract: The dynamics of settler colonialism, of which capitalism is a dominant feature, continue to constrain the ability of Māori to assert tino rangatiratanga. Before the arrival of Europeans, rangatiratanga over every aspect of life, including the economy, lay with the rangatira of hapū and iwi. Now there are other sites of power to contend […]

Abstract: Constructing a coherent sense of communal identity was far from easy for early Americo-Liberian settlers. They felt the need (a) to distinguish themselves from a racist ‘white civilisation’ while nevertheless claiming to be among the ‘civilised’; (b) to set themselves apart from black Americans in the U.S. while remaining equally committed to anti-slavery and […]