Excerpt: Any consideration of what sovereignty has come to mean in Native North America, as a conceptual framework that names a particular kind of lived indigenous experience, has to be understood within the context of settler colonialism. Yet anthropology has been slow to take up settler colonialism as a key analytic, even though the discipline has […]

Abstract: Familiar to most anyone with knowledge of U.S. history, antebellum Indian removal likely evokes a drama comprised of two roles: on one hand, Indian peoples as represented by elite Cherokee activists, and, on the other, their political antagonists in the nascent states’ rights movement, among whom the infamous Andrew Jackson stands both as agent and […]

Abstract: This dissertation is an ethnography of the body as medium in the North American Spiritualist tradition. With its origins in the “burned-over district” of upstate New York, Spiritualism is a homegrown religious movement rooted in the radical Protestant milieu of “Great Awakenings,” which evolved into an international religious movement with a distinctly secular bent. Spiritualists, […]

Abstract: Escalating environmental controversies are placing Indigenous peoples and First Nation communities at the front lines of protests, opposing unjust government policies and corporate actions. Yet, many environmental educators are not actively engaged or affectively learning about Indigenous Land struggles against Canada’s colonial oppressions. Environmental education has a strong record of research to promote ecological, place-conscious […]

Abstract: My dissertation, “Empire’s Imagination: Race, Settler Colonialism, and Indigeneity in ʻLocal’ Hawaiʻi Narratives,” addresses the history of U.S. empire in Hawaiʻi, arguing that empire persists into the present through the structuring of contemporary literary representations of Asian migrants and Kanaka Maoli, the Indigenous population. This project intervenes into postcolonial studies, American studies, and ethnic studies […]

Abstract: During the first half-century of Britain’s presence in Canada, the Aboriginal policy was largely shaped by strategic and military matters. This policy, however, changed rapidly and radically in the early nineteenth century. The new official objective of Britain’s policy quickly became civilizing the Aboriginal peoples. Focusing particularly on the period during which the Aboriginal civilization […]

Abstract: By the end of the eighteenth century, intense transformations had taken place in the Americas in relation to both local processes and to more general circumstances that affected the population, economy, and politics. Accordingly, the Spanish Crown expressed a vigorous interest in its American colonies through economic goals formulated in the framework of a general […]

Abstract: The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination for social and cultural development. This fundamental right has been impeded worldwide through colonisation where many Indigenous peoples have had to adapt to ensure continuation of cultural knowledge and practice. In South East Australia colonisation […]

Abstract: As movements for social justice within settler colonial states like Canada and the United States begin to centralize Indigenous struggles for sovereignty as foundational to liberation, non-Indigenous movement participants are challenged to contend with what it means to decolonize within their respective movements. This article explores the potential to engage in decolonizing research methodologies among non-Indigenous anti-authoritarian […]

Abstract: Few people are aware that dairy cows form part of Antarctic exploration history. Richard Byrd’s second expedition of 1933–35 took with it three Guernseys, ostensibly to provide milk for the men. We outline the cows’ Antarctica experience, discussing the way in which their celebrity benefited the expedition and its sponsors. Contextualizing the episode within the […]