settler colonial studies blog

Pastoral complicity: Valerie Rohy, ‘Queer Complicity and the Colonial Anti-Pastoral’, Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture 1, 1-2, 2024

16Sep24

Excerpt: In fact, some queer subjects may be complicit with settler colonialism, just as they may profit from or fail to resist white supremacy, capitalism, or misogyny.³ This seemingly obvious reality is remarkably hard to keep in view, for doing so means abiding with discomfort, both the discomfort of responsibility and that of uncertainty, ambivalence, and contradiction. In pursuing that uncertain path, this reading furthers efforts within the environmental humanities to trace the ways in which the “natural” environment is socially constructed–including its structuration by literary forms such as the pastoral–and how these formations are, in turn, implicated in questions of Indigenous survival in the face of colonization, particularly in the global South.

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Indigenous modernist traditions: Matt Hooley, Against Extraction: Indigenous Modernism in the Twin Cities, Duke University Press, 2024

16Sep24

Description: In Against Extraction Matt Hooley traces a modern tradition of Ojibwe invention in Minneapolis and St. Paul from the mid-nineteenth century to the present as that tradition emerges in response to the cultural legacies of US colonialism. Hooley shows how Indigenous literary and visual art modernisms challenge the strictures of everyday life and question the ecological, political, and cultural fantasies that make multivalent US colonialism seem inevitable. Hooley analyzes literature and art by Louise Erdrich, William Whipple Warren, David Treuer, George Morrison, and Gerald Vizenor in relation to histories of Indigenous dispossession and occupation, enslavement and Black life, and environmental harm and care. He shows that historical narratives of these cities are intimately bound up with the violence of colonial systems of extraction and that concepts like Indigeneity and sovereignty extend beyond treaty-granted promises of political control. These works, created in opposition and proximity to the extraction of cultural, political, and territorial resources, demonstrate how Indigenous claims to life and land matter to rethinking and unmaking the social and ecological devastations of the colonial world.

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Owning settler colonialism: Ari Hallgrímur Finnsson, “Stable and Four-Square”: A Colonial History of Property-Owning Democracy’, Global Intellectual History, 2024

14Sep24

Abstract: This paper explores the colonial history of the theory of ‘property-owning democracy.’ Focusing on R.R. Torrens’ title registration system, the paper links property-owning democracy to nineteenth-century debates on land rights and title registration. Instituted in South Australia in 1858, Torrens’ system linked the simplification of transactions in land to visions of a property-owning society. Seeking to replace complex land laws, Torrens’ system’s emphasis on speeding up land transactions appealed both to settler society and metropole. This transformation facilitated the dispossession of Indigenous lands and intertwined property law with colonial narratives of progress, liberty, and democracy. Ultimately, Torrens’ vision identified democracy with a new property regime securing the future of property title and political rights. Through a common engagement with nineteenth-century Britain’s ‘land question,’ Torrens’ project in South Australia is linked to the development of the twentieth-century political concept of property-owning democracy. The paper makes the case that exploring land registration debates reveals the importance of secure property rights and human capital in the history of ideas of property-owning democracy. Legal and bureaucratic innovations like the property register were considered to free individuals to invest in their own economic development and create the economic conditions for democracy.

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Dispossession upon dispossession: Kyle T. Mays, City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of Modern Detroit, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022

14Sep24

Description: In July 2013, Detroit became the largest city in U.S. history to declare bankruptcy. The underlying causes were decades of deindustrialization, white flight, and financial mismanagement. More recently it has been heralded a comeback city as wealthy white residents resettle there. Yet, as Kyle T. Mays argues, we cannot understand the current state of Detroit without also understanding the longer history of Native American and African American dispossession that has defined the city since its founding. How has dispossession impacted the development of modern U.S. cities? And how does comparing the historical experiences of Native Americans and African Americans in an urban context help us comprehend histories of race, sovereignty, and colonialism? Using archives, oral and family histories, and community documents, City of Dispossessions is a cultural, intellectual, and social history that argues that physical and symbolic forms of dispossession of Native Americans and African Americans, and their reactions to dispossession, have been central to Detroit’s modern development. The book begins with the first settlement by the Frenchman Cadillac in 1701 and chronicles how the logic of dispossession has continued into the present, through a wide range of forms that include memorialization of the “disappearing Indian,” the physical dispossession of African Americans through urban renewal, and gentrification. Mays also chronicles the wide-ranging forms of expression through which Black and Indigenous Detroiters have contested dispossession, such as the Red and Black Power movements and culturally relevant education. Through lively, accessible prose as well as historical and contemporary examples, City of Dispossessions will be of interest to readers of urban studies, Indigenous Studies, and critical ethnic studies.

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Indigenous nationalism requires recognition: Kurtis Boyer , Chris Andersen, ‘Defining a Nation: Métis Nation Building in the Face of Epistemic Injustice’, Native American and Indigenous Studies, 11, 2, 2024, pp. 71-94

14Sep24

Abstract: Over the past four decades, Indigenous political claims “in” Canada have come increasingly to assume a nationalist form. Efforts at instilling a national identity play an abundantly clear role in Indigenous nation (re)building: they hold the potential to concretize internal solidarity, mobilize community to pursue long-term goals, and they aid in overcoming a host of collective action problems. However, for national claims to play such a role, it is necessary that outside groups recognize a community’s national identity and accept it as distinct. That is to say, nationhood must be thought about in terms of its occurrence in an (unequally) relational context: claims to a national distinction occur in competition with other claims, in a field of struggle and competition in which actors possess varying abilities to enforce/support claims and to have those claims recognized by others. In this regard, the concept of epistemic injustice is especially useful to engage with the differential capacity of communities to claim and enforce national claims unto others. Our analysis, which focuses specifically on the case of the Métis, pays particular attention to the widespread misrecognitions that occur when a dominant social group marginalizes Métis claims to nationhood. Through this exploration, our article contributes to a better understanding of relational conditions overall and the ways in which identity and nationhood can support the process of Indigenous nation building.

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Unreconciliation (it can go the other way too): Elisabeth Alber, ‘New Caledonia:a Promising Attempt to Constitutionalize a Sovereignty Conflict Going Wrong’, Perspectives on Federalism, 16, 1, 2024

14Sep24

Abstract: New Caledonia is a French autonomous territory in the South Pacific whose constitutional status is designed to be transitional. It derives from the 1998 Nouméa Agreement, based on the 1988 Matignon-Oudinot Agreements. These Agreements ended violence between loyalist and indigenous groups and delayed a promised independence referendum by 30 years, in return for territorial and non-territorial autonomy. Indeed, the Nouméa Agreement provided the New Caledonian divided society with a power-sharing system that up to 2021 worked well. It recognizes the ‘Kanak people’ and ‘shared sovereignty’. It also entrenches procedural rules for a series of referendums that, if the restricted electorate had voted in favour, would have guaranteed full sovereignty to New Caledonia. In early 2024, two years after the inconclusive third and last independence referendum, tensions escalated and in May 2024, following deadly riots over a voting reform proposal, the French Government declared a 12-day state of emergency. There is no consensus on New Caledonia’s final constitutional status. Instead, dialogue between the parties has eroded and a true ‘Indigenous-settlers’ reconciliation is far from being reached. Combining historical background with recent legal and political analysis, this paper offers insight into the intricate history – and problematic present – of New Caledonia.

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Resettlers: Sulyn Bodnaresko, Reciprocal Citizenship: Settling into the Responsibilities of Living on Indigenous Lands, PhD dissertation, University of Calgary, 2024

14Sep24

Anstract: This study examined newcomer-settler citizenship as a personal and scholastic response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 94. With the guidance of Indigenous principles, including relationality, respect, interconnectedness, and reciprocity, I engaged with newcomer-settlers and Indigenous peoples working in the immigration and settlement sector to consider, “How can I be the best relative that I can be, and learn from others, while living on these Blackfoot, Stoney Nakoda, Tsuut’ina, and Métis lands that my settler-colonial family and I call home?” This Indigenist, interpretative, mixed methods research study has helped me to more fully understand the costs paid by Indigenous peoples to support my standard of living and comfort on these lands. Through relationships and this research process, I have also come to recognize an ethical and decolonizing way of being—called reciprocal citizenship—whereby non-Indigenous peoples can challenge settler-colonialism’s inherent oppression by centering Indigenous truths, dignity, and liberty in their thoughts, actions, and words. Reciprocal citizenship is about the ethical acts of giving back for the gifts of living on these lands, and seven actions revealed through this study include: respecting Indigenous-settler relationships; critically self-reflecting on oppression in Canada; acknowledging one’s own moves to innocence and comfort; seeking to learn; growing settler-colonial awareness; imagining shared futures; and actioning personal responsibilities that are guided in relationship with Indigenous peoples, knowledge systems, and the land. Reciprocal citizenship brings together citizenship education, transformative learning, and reconciliatory education. It asks both newcomer-settlers and established-settlers to step into their citizenship responsibilities, so that all can live in mutual respect and flourish on these lands that that we now call Canada.

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Who gets to be indigenous (settler colonialism decides)? Dina Gilio-Whitaker, ‘Indigeneity, Nationhood, Racialization, and the U.S. Settler State: Why Political Status Matters to Native ‘Identity’ Formation’, Genealogy, 8, 3, 2024

14Sep24

Abstract: This essay is a chapter excerpted from my forthcoming book, Who Gets to be Indian: Ethnic Fraud and Other Difficult Conversations about Native American Identity The chapter shows the ways that Indianness, framed as Indian or Native American “identity”, is inseparable from state subjectivity based on the history of political relations between tribes and the United States. It argues that tribes’ political status and relationship to the state are central to how Native American identity is shaped, rejecting the understanding of Native identity as race-based. The term “Indigenous” is discussed as not being equivalent to “Native American” and is not a racial formation in international fora. Social changes during the twentieth century brought new ways to diffuse and co-opt Nativeness through disaggregating it from political status and reinforcing racialization with the rise in urban pan-Indianism and neo-tribalism. Distinguishing Nativeness as political status from racialization is critical given ongoing attacks on tribal sovereignty in Supreme Court challenges based on alleged violations to the equal protection principle. Native American “identity” is inextricable from tribal nationhood and state formation, and thus cannot simply be dismissed as a colonial construct.

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Postsettler transition?Jeremie M. Bracka, ‘”It Begins with Victoria” — The Yoorrook Justice Commission & Innovating Transitional Justice for First Nations in Australia’, Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity, 12, 1, 2024, pp. 29-65

14Sep24

Abstract: Transitional justice is long overdue to address colonialism and ongoing harms to First Nations people in Australia. The full truth of Australian history is ripe for recognition; yet, until recently, national efforts to address the colonial past have been partial, disconnected and Statecentric. Moreover, the Federal government has often used the term ‘reconciliation’ politically as a rhetorical device, rather than a term of transitional justice.Nevertheless, in 2021, the State of Victoria established Australia’s first ever comprehensive truth-telling process with the Yoorrook Justice Commission. Seeking to address the harms since colonisation, the state process is unprecedented, based on its scope, First Nations ownership, powers of a Royal Commission and ability to hold the state accountable. This article examines the Commission’s contribution to structural truth-telling, First Nations empowerment, and institutional reform. It also identifies the Victorian initiative as a ground-breaking transitional justice model for settler-colonialism. Despite the challenges, incorporating truth and reconciliation through a First Nations lens might allow actual healing and practical change to occur.

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The other settler tea party: Blair McIntosh, Addicted to Empire? Tea, Sugar and Whiteness in Colonial New Zealand, MA dissertation, University of Auckland, 2024

13Sep24

Abstract: Tea and sugar have long been a mainstay of New Zealanders’ diets, but how these foodstuffs intersect with histories of racism, white protectionism and debt slavery remains underexplored in local scholarship. This thesis uses tea and sugar as mediums for interrogating Pākehā-settler identity. Crucially, it argues the discourse around these commodities in late-colonial New Zealand reflects the construction of Pākehā identity as superior, pure and progressive. While ostensibly ‘British’, these traits were actually a proxy for whiteness. Moreover, the discourse around tea and sugar—seen in advertisements, parliamentary debates, colonial exhibitions and more—worked to silence the working conditions non-white, indentured labourers endured to produce these commodities. However, this did not mean that New Zealanders were ignorant of where their tea and sugar came from. The use of indentured labour on Ceylonese, Fijian and Queensland plantations was well-known in colonial New Zealand. Pākehā were generally untroubled by the coercive nature of this labour too, unless there was a threat of intrusion into white spaces or competition against white workers. When there was such a threat, indentured labourers were scapegoated as the source of tea and sugar’s troubles. The race and class of indentured labourers was treated as the problem, rather than the inherently exploitative and imperialistic nature of indenture itself. The importance of tea and sugar for reinforcing Pākehā identity, then, was two-fold; its domestic marketing helped Pākehā identify what they were, while the imagined spectre of indentured labour sharpened the boundaries of what Pākehā were not. This thesis contributes to a wider argument within New Zealand historiography that race was equally important as class in shaping Pākehā identity. Humble, everyday commodities like tea and sugar are key mediums for understanding that identity because they reflected and shaped its formation in colonial New Zealand. Moreover, where current scholarship has focused on the vesting of meaning in such commodities, this thesis focuses on how these meanings relate to or diverge from commodities’ actual conditions of production. Indeed, the disconnect between production and consumption, coloured and white, ‘out there’ and ‘over here’, arguably endures to this day.

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