settler colonial studies blog

Suicides by settlers: Joanna Brooke, Caroline Lenette, Marianne Wobcke, Marly Wells, ‘Revaluing Indigenous Models in Suicidology: A Brief Narrative Synthesis’, Social Sciences, 2025

11Apr25

Abstract: This review uses an anti-colonial approach to explore the characteristics of Indigenous interventions and best practice relating to suicidality. Well-established interventions led by Indigenous communities exist globally, yet their prevalence in academic discussions of suicide is comparatively limited. This represents a missed opportunity for the field of suicidology to learn from Indigenous community-driven models, which have the potential to be translated across contexts. The challenges of sharing best practice Indigenous interventions in academic literature can be situated within a pervasive colonial discourse, which categorises suicide as an ‘Indigenous problem’ and creates ill-fitted evaluation and intervention methodologies. Here, we provide a brief narrative synthesis of contemporary research on Indigenous suicide intervention models in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the United States and Canada, focusing on key characteristics of interventions and a selection of Indigenous community-driven projects. These characteristics are: cultural and collective approaches as protective factors; recognising social determinants of health and the impact of colonisation; community control and governance; evaluation and available research; and relationships and connection. We discuss issues of sustainability, funding, decontextualised research, and publishing and put forward recommendations for future research. Rebalancing academic discussions to centre Indigenous leadership and culturally grounded research and practice is not without its challenges and complexity but can crucially enrich the field of suicidology.

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A history of settler colonialism: Rafael Verbuyst, ‘”Everything We Do Is About Our History”: Indigenous Resurgence and Its Critique of History’, Critical Sociology, 2025

10Apr25

Abstract: The role of history in perpetuating settler colonialism is well documented. However, the manner in which Indigenous people draw on the past to resist this oppressive structure remains undertheorized. An anthropological approach is needed to appraise how Indigenous people entwine past and present in the context of Indigenous resurgence. I illustrate this by drawing on the concept of historicity as well as ethnographic fieldwork conducted among ‘Khoisan revivalists’ in South Africa. I focus on how activists, academics, and artists have criticized popular and academic representations of the 17th century Khoisan woman Krotoa. These critiques, manifested through, among others, protests, theatrical performances, and the creation of alternative historical narratives, underscore the pursuit of healing, existential orientation, and empowerment that is characteristic of Indigenous resurgence. I conclude by analysing the tensions between this critique of history and conventional academic historiography, with particular attention to concepts of truth, objectivity, and Indigenous authorship.

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Subaltern settlers? Kirsten Emiko McAllister, Mona Oikawa (eds),After Redress: Japanese Canadian and Indigenous Struggles for Justice, UBC Press, 2025

08Apr25

Description: Indigenous peoples and Japanese Canadians have demanded justice from the Canadian state for its discriminatory systems of colonialism and racial management. Since the early aughts, critics have argued that state apologies co-opt those demands. Meanwhile, many Canadian institutions still attempt to control narratives about residential schools and other violences committed against Indigenous peoples, as well as the internment of Japanese Canadians. After Redress examines how struggles for justice continue long after truth and reconciliation commissions conclude and state redress is supposedly made. Contributors to this trenchant volume analyze the complex, often paradoxical process of redress from the perspectives of the communities involved. In a context where mechanisms for reconciliation and redress have been defined by the settler state, this book reveals how Indigenous peoples and Japanese Canadians have responded to Western liberal notions of justice, whether by challenging or conforming to them or pursuing their own approaches. It asks: What are the links between knowledge systems and governance, between narrative tactics and political strategy? After Redress uncovers the effectiveness and the effects of demands for reparations and strategies to assert resistance. This collection will have broad appeal for scholars and students of Japanese Canadian and Asian Canadian studies, Indigenous studies, critical race studies, and sociology. It is also necessary reading for activist members of Japanese Canadian and Indigenous communities, and for all those concerned with social justice alliances with Indigenous peoples and other racialized groups.

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Come and see settler colonialism: Rami K. Isaac, Michael C. Hall, ‘Resistance to settler colonialism in Palestine through tourism: the case of Kairos “Come and See”, Palestine’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

08Apr25

Abstract: Settler colonialism has been theorised as a form of oppression and domination distinct from other colonisation and imperialism processes. This paper aims to deconstruct settler colonialism domination by illuminating both the power of oppression and the power of resistance in Palestine and in the establishment by Israel of settler colonial tourismscapes. Building on Foucault’s examination of power and resistance, settler colonialism is theorised as a disciplinary, bio-power, and sovereign power, and the paper explores how different stakeholders resist the dominant settler discourse in a tourism context. Theoretically, this study contributes to understanding settler colonialism and tourism through the lens of power and resistance. The outcomes of the study find that Israel has contributed to the reorganisation of Palestine as a Jewish homeland and suppress stories of colonial brutality and oppression while selling imaginary geographies that normalise the presence of Jewish settlers in Palestine. Findings also shed some light on how Palestinian tourism initiatives, such as the Kairos Palestine in Bethlehem, produce spaces of constructed Palestinian visibility through tourism. This initiative highlights how alternative tours through the ‘Come and See’ experience might contribute to the re-articulation and reordering of venues, thereby forming a counter-discourse and resistance.

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A song of settler colonialism: Anthony Trujillo, Dylan Nelson, ‘Riding on the ‘City of New Orleans’: cosmos and cataclysm on settler colonialism’s dual-rail groove’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

08Apr25

Abstract: This article engages with the folk and country song ‘City of New Orleans’ to explore the meanings of structure, territoriality, spatial production, and historical process in settler colonial studies. We model a mode of interpreting the song’s lyrics, formal elements, gestures, and affect that reveals the habits, tastes, and dispositions (habitus) by which invasion proceeds and territoriality is reproduced. We propose the ‘dual-rail groove’ as a heuristic for identifying the interaction between historical processes (e.g. the political economy of railroads) and habitual and affective dispositions (shaped by expressive practices like songs) as constituting settler colonialism’s structure. Contemplating ‘City of New Orleans’ as a musical voyage and a tonal portrait of a railroaded American landscape invites us to ask what kind of world we not only venture into, but participate in producing, when we listen to the song and sing along with it. How are Native peoples, places, stories and histories erased through the making of this world? How are listeners enticed into hopping onto this train and accepting the logics, romance, and violences of a settler colonial world? Throughout, we also engage a chorus of Indigenous interlocutors to interrupt the settler colonial cosmos even as we tune into this world’s making and reproduction.

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Settler Identity and Colonialism 2.0: Emma Battell Lowman, Adam J. Barker, Settler Identity and Colonialism, 2nd Edition, Fernwood, 2025

08Apr25

Description: A decade ago, the first edition of this defining book explained what it meant to be Settler — acknowledging that Canada has been forged through ongoing violence, displacement, and assimilation of Indigenous communities and Nations — and argued that accepting this identity is an important first step towards changing relationships with Indigenous Peoples. The national conversation about settler colonialism has advanced significantly since that time, thanks to Indigenous struggles that have resulted in high-profile official apologies and inquiries into the devastating inequity between Indigenous and Settler lives in Canada. However, this progress is not enough — many of the same problems persist due to the underlying inequities at the core of Canadian identity, politics, and society. In this revised second edition, Battell Lowman and Barker reflect on the term’s changing, more nuanced, and continued importance. Touching on the rise of right-wing nationalism, the power and limitations of social media, and ten years of federal Liberal government, this new edition of Settler considers the successes and failures of Settler Canadians in supporting decolonization and charting our next steps towards transformative change.

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Settler colonial genomes: Jessica Kolopenuk, ‘Rethinking the Genomic Diversity Problem: Rejecting Inclusion in Defense of Indigenous Sovereignty’, Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, 26, 2025

08Apr25

Abstract: Interpretations of the so-called genomic diversity problem in precision medicine research reflect an enduring colonial logic tied to liberal identity/difference politics, prioritizing representational equity, diversity, and inclusion over substantive engagement with Indigenous sovereignties on their own ontological terms. This review critically analyzes not the underrepresentation of diverse populations in genomics but rather how the diversity problem is framed within genomics. It argues that liberal renderings of the diversity problem perpetuate colonizing knowledge production by reconstituting indigeneity as an identity/difference category. This review calls for a rejection of this reductive philosophical foundation in defense of Indigenous sovereignties and relationalities to transform scientific knowledge production.

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Colonial or settler colonial? Minori Takahashi, ‘Articulation, disarticulation, and the creation of hybridity: Tracing state–Indigenous relations through the Denmark–Greenland Case’, Polar Science, 2025

07Apr25

Abstract: This study aims to contribute to a comprehensive project to elucidate Arctic political processes that comprise the sum of conflicts and adjustments arising among multiple stakeholders. Using Denmark and Greenland as case studies, this study examines the nature of the master–servant relationship inherent in the colonization of indigenous societies by the state. It also explores how this relationship has influenced and continues to shape real-world politics following the decolonization process that began in the mid-20th century.

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The Methodists of settler colonialism: Claire Blencowe, Spirits of extraction: Christianity, settler colonialism and the geology of race, Manchester University Press, 2025

07Apr25

Description: Spirits of Extraction explores the civilisational metaphysics of race, which emerged with the evangelical revival of the eighteenth century, and helped to secure (settler) colonial sovereignty especially in the nineteenth century. Following the Methodist movement, the book traces a route from the evangelical awakening in eighteenth-century Bristol through the Methodist revivals of the Cornish mining diaspora in the nineteenth-century British Empire, through to the contested lives and lands of Anishinaabewaki / Upper Canada wherein Methodist missions and other evangelicals helped to secure the colonial extraction of copper, as well as territorial control, not least through the inscription of abuse in residential Indian schools. The book contributes to biopolitical theory by developing an original and nuanced case study of Christian religious biopolitics and the civilisational metaphysics of race. Highlighting the theme of exorcism and the role of wounding in the pursuit of ‘truly Christian life’, it adds to understanding of how biopolitical care for life enables and encourages racialised abuse. Expanding on Kathryn Yusoff’s analysis of the geology of race, the book also contributes to planetary social theory and geophilosphy, arguing that Methodism became a resonance machine for the quasi-divine claims of extractive industries. The civilisational metaphysics of race secures the race hierarchies that are essential technologies for extractive industries. At the same time evangelical experiences of salvation, exorcism and the affirmative spiral or faith engendered in modern Christianity became enmeshed with geological consciousness and the culture of the extractive industries, helping to establish their claim to manifest quasi-divine redemptive power.

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The settler colonial unconscious too: Siavash Saffari, Azadeh Shabani, ‘Palestine, and the Colonial Unconscious of German Critical Theory’, Middle East Critique, 2025

07Apr25

Abstract: By centering the question of Palestine, this article contributes to a decolonial critique of German critical theory à la Jürgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School. The article’s intervention is prompted by the November 2023 ‘Principles of Solidarity. A Statement’ (PoS), of which Habermas was a coauthor. Released amid a full-scale Israeli assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, which followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack in southern Israel, the PoS statement expressed unequivocal solidarity with Israel, and it defended the assault on Gaza as being ‘justified in principle’. Whereas some critics view the PoS statement’s conspicuous one-sidedness as a departure from Habermas’s universalist principles, this article argues that the statement’s neglect of Palestinian suffering aligns with the Eurocentric limitations and biases inherent in Habermas’s thought. These limitations and biases, the article contends, stem from a colonial unconscious running through successive generations of the Frankfurt School critical theory (FSCT). Recalling Edward Said’s warning that the FSCT’s silence on colonialism and imperialism undermines the tradition’s liberatory potential, the article identifies the PoS statement as marking the depletion of any such potential.

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