settler colonial studies blog

The settler game: Souvik Mukherjee, ‘How to Read a Colony on a Game Board: Settlers of Catan and Postcolonial Thinking’, Jonathan Gray, Daphne Gershon (eds), Reading Media: How to Do Textual Analysis, New York University Press, 2026

02Mar26

Abstract: Mukherjee demonstrates how we can apply postcolonial theory— which is more commonly used to consider film and liter a ture’s geopolitical, racial imaginaries, and power structures—to board games and their own icons of power, especially given the medium’s fondness for exploration and conquest.

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A history of settler colonialism: Arnon Degani, ‘Zionism’s flipside: a reconsideration of settler colonialism in Israel/Palestine’, Journal of Israeli History, 2026

02Mar26

Abstract: This article offers a corrective for how the concept of settler colonialism is often understood and used in research and commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For more than a decade, the term “settler colonialism” has become central to scholarly and activist discussions about Zionism, the Palestinians, and their ongoing conflict – especially after October 7, 2023. This article applies a settler-colonial framework to Zionism to explain two simultaneous trends: the aggressive ethnonationalism that impacts Palestinians today and a historical drive toward Jewish-Arab parity and integration. In doing so, this article suggests that current perspectives on Zionism frequently overlook its historical dynamism and the role of Palestinians in shaping it. Such a shift in understanding of settler colonialism and Zionism promises not only a richer historical analysis but also a more constructive approach to engaging with the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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A settler colony is nature remade: Allison Carruth, Novel Ecologies Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech, Chicago University Press, 2025

02Mar26

Description: Tracing the convergence of ecology and engineering over the last three decades, this book pinpoints a new environmental paradigm that the author calls Nature Remade. Allison Carruth’s Novel Ecologies shows how the tech industry has taken up the wilderness mythologies that shaped one strain of American environmentalism over the last century. Calling this twenty-first-century environmental imagination Nature Remade, Carruth describes a distinctly West Coast framework that is at once nostalgic and futuristic. Through three case studies (synthetic wildlife, the digital cloud, and space colonization), the book shows Nature Remade to be a quasi-religious belief in venture capitalism and big tech. This paradigm thus imagines a future in which species, ecosystems, and entire planets are re-generated and re-created through engineering. Novel Ecologies challenges the conviction that climate change and other environmental crises must be met with ever larger-scale forms of technological intervention. Against the new worlds conjured by Google, Meta, Open AI, Amazon, SpaceX, and a host of lesser-known start-ups, Carruth marshals writers and artists who imagine provisionally hopeful environmental futures while refusing to forget the histories that have made the world what it is. On this track of the book, Carruth discusses the works of Octavia Butler, Becky Chambers, Jennifer Egan, Ruth Ozeki, Craig Santos Perez, Tracy K. Smith, Jeff VanderMeer, Saya Woolfalk, and many more. Their novels, poems, installation artworks, and expressive media offer a speculative world built on livable communities rather than engineered lifeforms.

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The Marvel of settler colonialism: Shelagh Roxburgh, ‘Mainstreaming mutants: the colonization of Danielle Moonstar in film and TV adaptation’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026

27Feb26

Abstract: This article explores the ways that critical representations of injustice are suppressed in the adaptation of comic book content to television and film. This analysis focuses on how the mainstreaming of Marvel X-Men comic books and related titles has produced watered-down representations of the political and social conflicts depicted in the original works. Centering on the character of Danielle Moonstar, an Indigenous mutant in the Marvel Universe, this article demonstrates how rare and radical commentary on settler colonialism presented by this character is suppressed and distorted in television and film. Through this example, this article demonstrates how instead of maintaining the core elements of this character, popular adaptations co-opt Danielle to reproduce and reinforce colonial discourses that normalize violence against Indigenous women and girls.

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Destroying to replace, destrying to not rebuild: Mohammed Nijim, ‘The dialectics of reconstruction in Gaza: settler colonialism and the impossibility of rebuilding Gaza’, Settler Colonia Studies, 2026

27Feb26

Abstract: This paper explores the reconstruction process in Gaza, which I see as dialectical, emphasizing its impossibility, at least on organic Indigenous terms. I suggest that any organic reconstruction of the native sector under Zionist settler colonialism is highly unlikely, especially when Western powers support such a regime and its pursuit of native destruction. I contend that genuine efforts at reconstruction stand in stark contradiction to Zionist ideology, which demands the full elimination of the natives, making calls for reconstruction highly dialectical. These dialectics are reflected in the settler regime’s unruly desire to eliminate Palestinians from Gaza, while seemingly engaging with reconstruction initiatives. The unprecedented destruction in Gaza is not a break from an old pattern but rather emphasizes the character of the Zionist project. Israel’s destruction, now and in the past, occurred without a solid response from Western actors, which further suggests the dialectics of sudden calls for reconstruction. As such, I argue that organic reconstruction is not possible without decolonization and genuine pressure from regional and Western actors. I build on existing literature on settler colonialism, genocide, and reconstruction. I also use survivor testimonies to highlight destruction in the current genocide.

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Seeing like a settler colony: Peter K. Hazlett, Patrick Fitzsimmons, ‘Seeing Like a Colony: The Virginia Land Surveyor’, European Economic Review, 185, 2026, 105274

27Feb26

Abstract: Surveyors in colonial Virginia were among the wealthiest members of society, with a social status rivaling that of members of the House of Burgesses and plantation owners. Many received large land grants from the Governor’s Council, which directly led to their wealth. We argue that allowing surveyors to acquire extensive land holdings advanced the colonial government’s ambition to expand the boundaries of the colony, most effectively achieved by settling people on the frontier. Surveyors, who had a comparative advantage in knowing the geography, location, and quality of unclaimed land, could reduce the measurement and search costs associated with locating fertile tracts. By granting property rights to the western frontier to surveyors, the government enabled them to identify the best lands and sell them to settlers, thereby lowering transaction costs in land markets. Using newly constructed data on Virginia surveyors, land grant records, and maps of surveyors’ land, we provide evidence of how surveyors acquired agriculturally productive land to sell to incoming settlers.

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The health of settler ‘health’: Adam Kersch, ‘Health Freedom as Biopolitical Entitlement: Whiteness and COVID-19 in Sheet’ká’, Research Square, 2026

26Feb26

Abstract: Background: Public opposition to COVID-19 public health measures in the United States is often understood as a product of misinformation, political polarization, or distrust. Such explanations, however, obscure how histories of race, governance, and moral authority shape resistance to pandemic mitigation, particularly in settler colonial contexts. Theoretical Rationale and Methodology: Drawing on scholarship on whiteness, settler colonialism, and biopolitical governance, this article examines pandemic resistance as a racialized and moralized political formation. The analysis is based on qualitative research conducted in Sheet’ká (Sitka, Alaska), including digital ethnography, interviews, and analysis of public testimony delivered at Sitka City Assembly meetings between September 2020 and September 2021. Results: Findings show that white settlers articulated “health freedom” through opposition to mask mandates, appeals to Christian nationalism, and discourses that dismissed death among those deemed “vulnerable.” Speakers mobilized claims to bodily sovereignty, divine authority, and inevitability to justify noncompliance while disavowing collective responsibility. Notably, pandemic discourse oscillated between denying the danger of COVID-19 altogether and acknowledging risk for an abstract and marginalized “vulnerable” population, an oscillation that functioned as a key mechanism of entitlement rather than a contradiction. Discussion/Implications: I conceptualize these dynamics as biopolitical entitlement: a racialized assumption that authorizes certain populations to determine how risk, exposure, and loss are distributed without accountability for the consequences of those decisions. By situating pandemic discourse within histories of whiteness, settler colonialism, and biopolitical governance, this article demonstrates how public health crises can intensify, rather than disrupt, racialized hierarchies of life, death, and collective responsibility.

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Digital settler colonialism: Harriett Jernigan, ‘Watching the Well Run Dry: Digital Settler Colonialism*’, in Crystal Chokshi, Robin Mansell (eds), The Need to Rename Tech, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026, pp. 115-133

26Feb26

Abstract: While the companies behind generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, DALL-E, and Midjourney (Big Data) have amassed a flood of enthusiastic users and advocates, they have also prompted a tidal wave of criticism and legal action. Most critics and litigants focus their arguments on the theft, misappropriation, and blurring of individuals’ content, emphasising potential economic threats and the erasure of creativity. Additionally, critics underscore the implicit bias in such tools, due to the homogenous composition of the companies that build them, and how those biases contribute to the perpetuation of systemic oppression. These critiques, however, often neglect exploring the fundamental drive behind the theft, erasure, and implicit bias that characterises generative AI: digital settler colonialism. Settler colonialism still persists to the present day, one of the most significant manifestations being bottled water (Big Water), and harming minoritised folk around the globe. This chapter draws parallels between Big Water and Big Data to illustrate the digital settler-colonialist framework within which Big Data operates and how that framework, if regulatory measures do not keep pace, will place natural resources and human rights in peril.

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Indigenous peoples and settlers against landlords: BJ Lillis, ‘To the Heart of Empire: Contesting Capitalism in the Hudson Valley and Pressing Indigenous Land Claims in London, 1766’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 83, 1, 2026, pp. 3-36

25Feb26

Abstract: In the summer of 1766, a group of Wappinger and Mohican diplomats sailed to London. There, they petitioned the crown to support their land claims against some of New York’s wealthiest landlords, who had amassed vast estates on the basis of fraudulent Native titles. These Native diplomats crafted a powerful narrative about their place in the British Empire and had a real impact on British imperial policymakers. The Wappingers’ and Mohicans’ trip was financed by settlers, who had enlisted Indigenous support in their own contests with New York landlords. In the 1760s, some landlords intensified their approach to market-oriented agriculture, replacing customary lease terms with shorter leases and money rents in an effort to consolidate, rationalize, and “improve” their estates. Tenant farmers responded first with nonviolent resistance, and then with armed insurgency. Only by looking at the tactics and motivations of tenants and Native people side by side can we see the full stakes of this moment for both groups. Just as settlers deployed Native land claims to advance their interests, Native people used settlers’ grievances as a potent political tool. At the same time, a shared vision of empire, as well as their own interests, united settlers and Native nations against New York landlords.

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The settler colonies are alike: Zeina Houneini, Settler Colonialism and Justice: From Turtle Island to Palestine, MA dissertation, American University of Beirut, 2026

25Feb26

Abstract: This thesis investigates the inherent limitations of state-led justice within the structure of settler colonialism through a relational analysis of the Indigenous peoples of Canada and the Palestinian people. Central to this inquiry is erasure—an ongoing “logic of elimination”, as articulated by Patrick Wolfe, which seeks to dissolve native societies to facilitate settler replacement and territorial acquisition. By evaluating Canadian mechanisms of reconciliation, such as official apologies, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and land acknowledgments, this study argues that these symbolic gestures often function as “settler moves to innocence”, a framework developed by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. These mechanisms frequently historicize colonial violence as a “sad chapter” of the past, thereby neutralizing ongoing dispossession and securing settler futurity through what is identified as the “erasure of erasure” or “double denial”, drawing on the work of Saree Makdisi. The research further critiques the application of transitional justice frameworks to non-transitional colonial contexts, contending that such models create a “post-colonial” façade while leaving oppressive structures intact. In response to these liberal narratives, the thesis centers Indigenous and Palestinian modes of resistance, including Audra Simpson’s politics of refusal, resentment as moral protest, and Sumud (steadfastness) as a grounded rejection of state-led “gifts” and normalization. The final analysis reflects on Palestinian futures, contrasting the “liberal trap” of the two-state solution with the material necessity of the Right of Return. Ultimately, this work contends that “true” justice and settler colonialism are mutually exclusive, asserting that decolonization requires the dismantling of settler structures and the physical restoration of the relationship between the people and the land.

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