settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial epistempophilia: Alexis Shotwell, ‘Learning How To Not Steal: Settler Practices for Being in Relation to Indigenous Sovereignties in Entangled Worlds’, Theory & Event, 29, 1, 2026, pp. 140-157

09Feb26

Abstract: “Epistemophilia”—a love of knowledge—is key feature of colonialism. It includes the belief that knowing more is better, that knowledge should be shared, and that knowledge is separable from context. Settler-colonial education systems are in part systems of epistemic extraction and theft that buttress material and relational extractivism, attempting to steal land, relations, and practices. In this paper I explore how white settlers doing research, learning, and teaching can resist extractivism in our work, including creating space to not know, to recognize situated and embodied forms of knowledge that are not transferable across context, and to respect boundaries.

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Off white? Fully settler: Uzma Jamil, ‘Off-White: The tensions of Whiteness in Quebec’, Identities, 2025

09Feb26

Abstract: This paper focuses on the internal tensions of Whiteness in the dual settler colonial contexts of Quebec and Canada through the relationship between the province as a White, francophone minority/majority and White anglophone Canada. Whiteness in Quebec is mediated through its settler colonial history, language and complexity of its minority/majority position to create an off-white Quebec national identity. It operates through the racialization of French as a language, from its White settler colonial roots to the present-day context of a post-Quiet Revolution society. Despite its specificities, Quebec echoes themes in global configurations of Whiteness and coloniality.

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Municipal settler colonialism: Margaret Ellis-Young, Municipal Interpretations of Indigenous-Settler Reconciliation in Planning for Urban Redevelopment and Regeneration, PhD dissertation, University of Waterloo, 2025

09Feb26

Abstract: Municipalities in settler-colonial countries such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are placing new emphasis on improving Indigenous-settler relations and addressing colonial injustices in the city, in discourse if not in practice. In Canada, municipalities increasingly identify comprehensive planning projects that define future change and (re)development in the city as a space through which to advance these ‘reconciliation’ objectives. However, such projects are also intertwined with gentrification outcomes, outcomes that include Indigenous displacement, dispossession, and erasure. While a growing body of scholarship underlines these settler-colonial dimensions, it is unclear if such connections are made in practice as municipal planners turn their attention to both advancing Indigenous-settler reconciliation and mitigating gentrification-induced displacement. This dissertation deepens emerging dialogue between gentrification scholarship and literature on settler-colonial urbanism and Indigenous recognition as it examines tensions between gentrification, reconciliation, and displacement mitigation within municipal comprehensive planning. To identify the continuity and/or disruption of colonial-capitalist relations therein, I interrogate 1) how reconciliation discourses are translated into area redevelopment plans, 2) how municipal planners represent reconciliatory planning practice, and 3) how planning responses to gentrification concerns address the colonial dimensions of displacement. The research looks at comprehensive planning projects in cities across Canada, with a particular focus on Vancouver and Montréal. I draw on critical discourse analyses of both project documents and interviews with municipal planning staff and other relevant actors. The findings reveal that municipal planners negotiate multiple colonial-capitalist ‘boundaries’ at the nexus of redevelopment and reconciliation: those of Indigenous recognition, existing planning structures, and status quo regeneration objectives. While these boundaries are often reproduced as planners look to advance reconciliation and mitigate displacement within their constraints, more transformative policies, approaches, and mentalities are also beginning to emerge. The research expands on the (im)possibilities of state-led reconciliation through a planning lens, nuances the dynamics of Indigenous recognition in planning within a new context, and provides insight into discursive and policy shifts regarding gentrification and displacement, including limitations therein. It also underlines the importance of building planners’ motivations and capacities to disrupt colonial-capitalist planning relations.

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Thrivance as the end of settler colonialism: Ashik Istiak, Fairooz Saiyara, ‘From survivance to thrivance: the becoming of a defiant Indian self in Zitkála-Šá’s American Indian Stories’, Cogent Arts & Humanities, 13, 1, 2026, #2623567

09Feb26

Abstract: Zitkala-Ša’s autobiographical short story collection American Indian Stories presents the coming of age of an Indian girl. The protagonist finds herself in a cruel Indian-hating boarding school system that continuously ‘disciplines’ her Indian self. However, going back to her mother in the reservation land, she regains a sense of belonging leading her to be a defiant Indian woman. This paper identifies the first phase of the protagonist’s life at boarding school as a form of survivance as described by Gerald Vizenor since at that time it was necessary for her to survive though she made occasional resistance. Then, the phase of her soul-regaining and finally, resigning the job from a settler colonial institution may be seen as a form of thrivance as described by Taté Walker. This way, the paper maps a journey from survivance to thrivance observing the life of the protagonist in select stories that appeared in American Indian Stories.

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The settler colonial sovereignty of policing: Brieanna Watters, Policing Sovereignty: Tribal-State Policing Agreements and Settler Colonial Governance, PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2025

09Feb26

Abstract: This dissertation examines how tribal–state policing agreements operate as technologies of settler-colonial governance on the Green Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. Although these agreements are publicly framed as pragmatic solutions to jurisdictional complexity and as exercises of tribal sovereignty, I argue that they simultaneously extend state authority, constrain Indigenous autonomy, and reproduce racialized spatial inequalities. Using a multi-method qualitative design—archival research, interviews, and ethnographic police ride-alongs—I trace the historical rise of tribal policing from mid-century termination and relocation policies, through the Red Power era, to the expansion of federal policing grants in the 1990s. Across this trajectory, two mechanisms emerge: conditional recognition, in which tribal policing is acknowledged only when structured through state-defined standards and oversight; and jurisdictional siphoning, through which authority that appears to flow toward the tribe is simultaneously pulled back into county and state regulatory systems. Ethnographic analysis shows how officers’ daily practices create working geographies that assign most tribal officers to predominantly Native, economically marginalized spaces while select tribal officers police whiter, wealthier areas—producing racialized boundaries of belonging, risk, and deservingness. The dissertation argues that these agreements do more than coordinate policing; they reorganize colonial power while Indigenous leaders engage in strategic, pragmatic forms of governance within these constraints.

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Humanitarian settlers are absolutely settlers: Darren Reid, ‘Indigenous Rights, Philanthropy and Humanitarian Governance across the Anglo World, 1837–1951’, The Historical Journal, 2026

09Feb26

Abstract: This article examines how three nineteenth- and twentieth-century philanthropic organizations– the British Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS), the American Indian Rights Association (IRA), and the Australian Association for the Protection of Native Races (APNR)functioned simultaneously as opponents of colonial violence as well as instruments of colonial governance. These groups were vociferous advocates for Indigenous rights and welfare, yet they also directly contributed to building administrative structures of empire. The APS workedtogeneratemetropolitaninterestinIndigenousaffairs,framingprotectoratesasboth economically beneficial and a matter of national security. The IRA positioned itself as a factf inding body, supplying the US government with on-the-ground surveillance that enabled moreprecise administrative control. The APNR acted as a public relations arm for Australian settler governments, deflecting criticism of state violence while promoting assimilationist policies. All three organizations reinforced colonial authority by outsourcing key governmental functions to private actors, and their reliance on voluntary labour and philanthropic donations underscores the contingency of imperial rule on non-state institutions. Bridging historiographies of humanitarian activism and colonial governance, this article argues that these groups were not merely critics or collaborators but infrastructural components of empire.

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The great settler unpollination: Gabriella R. Altmire, Richard York, ‘The Anthophilic rift: advancing a sociology of biodiversity loss through the pollination crisis’, Environmental Sociology, 2026

09Feb26

Abstract: We develop a theoretical foundation for understanding the social drivers of biodiversity loss through an analysis of the pollination crisis. Together, settler colonialism and capitalism have disrupted the relationship between insect pollinators and the flowering plants that they pollinate on a global scale, what we call the ‘Anthophilic rift.’ Settler colonialism reshapes ecologies while capitalism homogenizes landscapes through its drive to make profits and its reliance on technological fixes. The result has been a precarious global dependency on one animal, the western honey bee, for an essential ecosystem service. We conclude with showing how the Anthophilic rift theorization serves as a useful tool for situating various social and ecological processes in understandings of biodiversity loss.

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The well being of a settler society: Krista Maxwell, Indigenous Healing as Paradox: Re-Membering and Biopolitics in the Settler Colony, University of Alberta Press, 2025

09Feb26

Descriptoion: Indigenous healing is a paradox in the liberal settler colony where efforts to foster well-being can simultaneously undermine distinct Indigenous societies. This book examines the prominence of “Indigenous healing” in Canadian public discourse through a historical and ethnographic lens. It focuses on late twentieth-century Indigenous social histories in Treaty 3 territory and cities in northern and southern Ontario to show practices of re-membering—drawing on traditional ways of being and knowing for social repair and collective rejuvenation—against the backdrop of the social dismemberment of Indigenous Peoples. Expansion of re-membering is often enabled by tactical engagements with the settler state which have fuelled an Indigenized biopolitics from below. Maxwell offers an analysis of the possibilities, tensions, and risks inherent to these biopolitical tactics. Informed by Indigenous feminist scholarship that emphasizes relationality, care, and the everyday, as well as the intimate workings of settler colonialism, this book aims to enrich critical conversations about reconciliation and resurgence politics and challenge their perceived dichotomy.

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A regional settler identity: Andrew Watson, Making Muskoka: Tourism, Rural Identity, and Sustainability, 1870–1920, UBC Press, 2023

09Feb26

Description: Making Muskoka traces the evolution of the region from 1870 to 1920. Over this period, this rocky section of Ontario underwent a profound transition from Indigenous homelands to a settler community and a part-time playground for nature tourists and wealthy cottagers. But what were the consequences for those who lived there year-round? As the late nineteenth century turned into the early twentieth, settler colonialism upended Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee communities through homesteading, steamboat navigation, commercial logging, and industrial leather tanning. The region was unsuited to farming, however, and within the first generation of resettlement, tourism became an integral feature of life. Andrew Watson considers the impact of this development on rural identity, tensions between large- and household-scale logging operations, and the dramatic effects of consumer culture and the global shift toward fossil fuels on settlers’ ability to control the tourism economy after 1900. Making Muskoka uncovers the connections between lived experience and rural identity in communities shaped by tourism at a time when sustainable opportunities for a sedentary life were few on the Canadian Shield. Scholars and students of environmental history, Canadian history, and historical geography will want to add this book to their libraries, as will permanent and part-time Muskoka residents.

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Positionality against settler colonialism: Dan Frederick Orcherton, ‘From Dust We Came and from Dust We Shall Return: Settler Scholar Positionality, Equity and Collaborative Commitment in Higher Education Reform’, Journal of Policy & Governance, 5, 2, 2025, pp. 21, 56

06Feb26

Abstract: This essay interrogates settler scholar positionality in relation to equity and collaborative commitment within higher education reform, arguing that meaningful decolonization requires reflexive, ethically grounded partnerships with Indigenous communities. Drawing on frameworks such as Two-Eyed Seeing, Movement-based Participatory Action Research, and transformative leadership, the paper situates settler scholars within colonial legacies that shape knowledge production, curriculum, governance, and climate justice narratives. It explores how entrenched power dynamics and systemic barriers—manifested in curricula, institutional policy, and philanthropic reconciliation discourses — undermine Indigenous epistemologies and perpetuate exclusion unless actively addressed. Through case studies and theoretical synthesis, the work articulates models for equitable engagement, including the institutionalization of Indigenous Knowledge Holders Councils, co-created research agendas, and culturally responsive pedagogy. The analysis emphasizes the necessity of accountability, sustained reflexivity, and ethical research practices that center Indigenous agency, data sovereignty, and shared governance. Challenges in forming genuine partnerships are examined, including historical distrust, divergent epistemic expectations, and institutional inertia, along with strategies to overcome them. The essay concludes with a call to action for settler scholars: to move beyond performative allyship toward sustained structural change by embedding Indigenous methodologies, supporting Indigenous leadership, and co-developing knowledge systems that advance equity, resilience, and reconciliation.

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