Abstract: This paper reinterprets the Dust Bowl on the US Southern Plains as one dramatic regional manifestation of a global socio-ecological crisis generated by the realities of settler colonialism and imperialism. In so doing, it seeks to deepen historical-theoretical understandings of the racialized division of nature and humanity making possible the global problem of soil […]

Excerpt: Dakota Elizabeth Cook-Lynn’s scholarship has been influential in shaping Indigenous studies for at least four decades. She has steadfastly criticized how scholarship in Native studies has been hijacked by American exceptionalism so that the historical treatment of Indigenous peoples and our present dilemmas continue to be erased, sanitized, and denied as the United States […]

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Abstract: In his 1966 essay ‘A Report from Occupied Territory’, James Baldwin wrote that ‘occupied territory is occupied territory, even though it be found in that New World which the Europeans conquered’. Though written 50 years ago, Baldwin’s observations continue to resonate, indicating historical trends across geographical experiences affected by the legacy of colonialism. A […]

Abstract: This article discusses the colonial encounter of the Welsh and Tehuelche/Mapuche in the Welsh colony (Y Wladfa Gymreig), founded 1865. The Welsh sought to create a Welsh-speaking utopia in the ‘empty’ lands of Patagonia, paradoxically using this colonisation as a way to resist disparagement of the Welsh language and culture by an English-dominated state. […]

Excerpt: Taiwan’s president on Monday apologized on behalf of the government to the island’s aboriginal peoples for 400 years of conquest and colonization, saying the facing of difficult historical facts was necessary for society to move forward. Tsai Ing-wen said her government wished to “take a further step” and offer its “fullest apology.” “If we […]

Abstract: This essay interrogates aspects of the recent reconfiguration of Canadian environmental resource governance in relation to Indigenous sovereignty, rights, and struggles for self-determination in the context of mining and mineral exploration. I am especially interested in the targeting of expressions of Indigenous sovereignty as threats to the “resilience” of the national economy and attempts […]

Excerpt: It is only relatively recently that “genocide” has been used to describe what happened to Native Americans, and determined efforts to end the term’s usage in this regard are a testament to the power of the term. The three volumes considered here address whether the history of American Indians north of Mexico may be […]

Abstract: In this paper we take up Tania Li’s question ‘what is land’. While her interest is in how land becomes inscribed so as to make it investable, ours is in reversing the sequence so as to make long-inscribed land de-investable. We focus on a family farm in Eastern South Dakota which was bequeathed to […]

Abstract: Focusing on radical labour historian Ian Turner’s The Australian Dream (1968), this article reflects on the evolution of Australia’s settler colonial imagination. During a few crucial decades in the nineteenth century, colonial traditions were overcome by settler colonial ones. The former espoused a system where British rulers would paternally manage a colonial environment and […]