Abstract: This chapter argues that Utopia is groundbreaking because it established the notion of ‘imperial settler utopias’ that influence attempted and fantasized manifestations of utopianism. Unlike settler utopias that are isolated and focused on inward development, imperial settler utopias—whether real or fictional—are settler colonies so entranced by their own ideals that they envision themselves as predestined to […]

Abstract: In the current rush to Space ‘colonization,’ a term which moved from Science Fiction to reality in just a few decades, it becomes necessary to (re)define not only the borders of the known ‘world’—which projects itself far beyond the galaxy where we live—but also the lexicon of exploration, invasion, and belonging. The analogies with […]

Abstract: This article examines how the network of settler colonial systems in Canada worked to ensure the widespread and intentional cover-up that allowed one man to remain in the Indian Residential School (IRS) system for over two decades (from 1910 to 1932) despite overwhelming evidence of his abuse. Using genocide scholar Andrew Woolford’s metaphor of […]

Abstract: Nineteenth-century US print media is rife with interactions between white settlers and the wolves (and other wild canids) they slaughtered. Print played host to the evolutions of folkloric villains, heroes, and gender norms in ways that directly impacted national identity and settler conceptions of the so-called American frontier. North American frontiers provided an opportunity […]

Reviewing Julianne Schultz, The Idea of Australia: A Search for the Soul of the Nation, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2022, 472 pp., $34.99 (paperback), ISBN: 1760879304

Abstract: The omission of Native Peoples’ existence, experiences, and perspectives is systematic and widespread across numerous societal domains, referred to as Native omission. In mainstream media, for example, less than 0.5% of representations are of contemporary Native Peoples. We theorize that Native omission is a tool furthering settler colonial goals to oppress and eventually erase […]

Abstract: This essay focuses on the subject position of settler colonizers to interpret the developing global politics of Indigenous recognition in the settler societies and in Australia in particular. It focuses on the dynamics of recognition in the specific context of Indigenous–settler relations, on the contribution settlers may make to decolonial passages, on the ways […]

Abstract: Settler colonialism tries to master the land, use it, and derive bounty from it, putting tremendous strain on and wrecking environments. This chapter examines settler colonial crises and failures by discussing how the recent blockbuster films Ad Astra and Interstellar tackle imaginary settler projects in outer space in the context of environmental problems and the precariousness of habitability. […]

Excerpt: This is a story of hubris, settler colonialism, and waterWalking onto the University of Arizona campus the dissonance of the lawns is instantly and oppressively apparent. In Tucson there are not a lot of lawns; they still appear in some parks, but it is certainly not a prevalent landscaping decision. Grass, however, is perhaps […]

Excerpt: In what is now called northern British Columbia, Canada, events that will shape the contours of its energetic and infrastructural futures for better or worse are currently unfolding. Since 2009, members and hereditary chiefs of the Unist’ot’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en peoples reoccupied their unceded territory, building a healing center and other infrastructures of […]