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Training settler colonialism: David Laurence Jones, New World Dreams: Canadian Pacific Railway and the Golden Northwest, Heritage, 2023

26Aug24

Description: An in-depth exploration of how a transportation company created a vision for a burgeoning nation and played a leading role driving immigration to the Canadian West. Best known for its monumental achievements in transportation technology, Canadian Pacific Railway (or “CP”) was instrumental in constructing the concept—and the reality—of the country we now call Canada. In addition to building the railroad that connected the country from coast to coast, CP was also highly effective at selling the idea of a vast and rich land of opportunity and triggering a massive wave of immigration to what was dubbed the “Golden Northwest” (later the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta). No other independent corporation in the world made such a profound contribution to the creation of a national enterprise, nor outspent a national government in populating its frontiers with settlers from specifically targeted areas, often at the expense of Indigenous populations and their traditional territories. Tracing the history of this highly influential corporation from the initial CP contract and land grant, historian David Laurence Jones explores CP’s involvement in carving out routes to the region, building towns, promoting Western Canada’s arable land and economic potential to Europeans and Americans, operating steamships, spearheading some of the largest irrigation projects in the world, and devising unique settlement schemes such as ready-made farms. Illustrated with more than four hundred archival photos and colour advertisements, New World Dreams is the most extensive history of Canadian Pacific ever published.


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Allotted Indigeneity is still Indigeneity: David Dry, ‘Autonomy Through Allotment: Political Strategies of the Ottawa Tribe in Indian Territory, 1870-1892’, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2024

25Aug24

Abstract: The late nineteenth-century policy of allotting tribal lands into individually owned tracts is appropriately interpreted as a destructive federal effort to expropriate Native land and eliminate tribal identities. The Ottawa Tribe in Indian Territory, however, had divergent objectives in supporting allotment. This article argues the Ottawa advocated for allotment and U.S. citizenship to escape intrusive federal control over their lands and resources. Although they embraced policies aimed at eliminating tribal existence, the Ottawa rejected the intentions behind those policies, and instead, they drew on long-established community attributes of mobility and interconnection with outsiders to resituate their nation within American society. By centering Ottawa perspectives, this article disrupts progressive narratives that denote the pursuit of U.S. citizenship as an effort to secure equal inclusion. It underscores U.S. citizenship and allotment as tools of settler colonial domination and demonstrates how the Ottawa subversively deployed U.S. citizenship and private property rights to combat colonial administration and maintain tribal sovereignty. Examining a policy often glossed over as invariably imposed on Native nations, this article underscores the necessity of analyzing Native community dynamics and political strategies to understand the implementation and impact of allotment.


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Defensive Indigeneity: Chloe Cairncross, Dana Dougherty, ‘In Defense of Identity: A Comparative Analysis of Indigenous Self-Defense Movements in North America’, Microdynamics of Mass Atrocity Working Paper Series, 2024

25Aug24

Abstract: This paper conducts a comparative analysis of two significant historical events of Indigenous resistance in North America: the Northwest Rebellion of 1885 in Canada and the Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973 in the United States. The Métis during the Northwest Rebellion and the Lakota Oglala along with American Indian Movement activists during the Wounded Knee Occupation both sought to assert their rights against encroaching government policies and settler expansion. By examining the actors, agendas, actions, and outcomes of these movements, the paper explores the nuanced nature of self-defense within a settler-colonial context. Comparative analysis highlights the persistent efforts of Indigenous peoples to protect their communities and cultures despite enduring oppression and genocide. It also investigates how media portrayal and the dynamics of authority influence the success of resistance efforts, revealing the distinct challenges faced by Indigenous communities in Canada and the United States. Through an exploration of these cases, we underscore the ongoing struggles of Indigenous self-determination and the importance of solidarity in resisting colonial legacies. Ultimately, this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted nature of Indigenous resistance and the critical role of self-defense in preserving cultural identity and autonomy. Understanding the paths of self-defense that were taken in the past is key to guiding the ongoing struggle against genocide, oppression, and the destruction of indigenous communities.


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Canadian settler colonialism, then and now: Emily Grafton, Jérôme Melançon, Alyssa Parker, Ibukun Fasunhan (eds), Canadian Settler Colonialism: Reliving the Past, Opening New Paths, University of Regina Press, 2024

25Aug24

Description: The contributions to this volume highlight how the Canadian settler state affects different groups of people: Indigenous peoples, first and foremost, but also new migrants as well as long-established settlers. Each contribution is an act of solidarity among these groups, against the segregation academic disciplines tend to create. The contributors study attitudes and ideas as well as laws, policies, and processes that make settler colonialism and genocide possible, reinforce them, and justify them.


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Forgetful settlers, then and now: Donalyn White, Anthony Ballas, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Engineering of Historical Amnesia’, Counterpunch, 11/07/24

25Aug24

Excerpt: It should come as no surprise to those of us with even a cursory understanding of the history of U.S. imperialism that the once sovereign Kingdom of Hawai’i became the very first state in the nation to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Hawai’i is an occupied nation, and has been since 1893 when the U.S. launched a coup to overthrow the sovereign rule of Queen Liliʻuokalani. We don’t need to dive that far back into historical memory to discover that even this imperialist overthrow was acknowledged by none other than then president Bill Clinton, who, in 1993 (on the centennial of the coup) issued an official apology to the Hawaiian Kingdom—an apology that notably did not include a return of the land to the people of this occupied island nation.


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Internationalist settler colonialism: Oleksa Drachewych, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Communist International’, in Immanuel Ness, Zak Cope (eds), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, Palgrave, 2021, pp. 2417-2428

25Aug24

Abstract: The Bolsheviks led international communism through the Third International (also known as the Communist International or the Comintern), which operated from 1919 to 1943. A major target for the Comintern was world imperialism. The Comintern proclaimed itself as a partner of all oppressed peoples and supported colonial liberation. As part of its efforts, it gradually grew to appreciate the differences in the colonial world and developed some consideration of settler colonialism and its effects. Communist parties around the world attempted to create platforms in their local contexts which dealt with their understanding of their country’s history and the treatment of Indigenous peoples. Despite realizing that settler colonies had different aims than exploitative colonies, the Comintern tended to still treat the colonial world uniformly.


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Postsettlers? Avril Bell, Becoming Tangata Tiriti: Working with Māori, Honouring the Treaty, Auckland University Press, 2024

24Aug24

Description: Becoming Tangata Tiriti brings together twelve non-Māori voices – dedicated professionals, activists and everyday individuals – who have engaged with te ao Māori and have attempted to bring te Tiriti to life in their work. In stories of missteps, hard-earned victories and journeys through the complexities of cross-cultural relationships, Becoming Tangata Tiriti is a book of lessons learned. Sociologist Avril Bell analyses the complicated journey of today’s partners of te Tiriti o Waitangi, and asks: Who are we as tangata tiriti? How do we identify in relation to Māori? What are our responsibilities to te Tiriti? What do we do when we inevitably stumble along the way? With words by champions in their fields, including Meng Foon, Andrew Judd and others, this concise paperback acts as a guide for those just beginning their journey towards a Tiriti-based society – and is a sound refresher for others well along the path.


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Performative settler colonialists: Aoife Connolly, Performing the Pied-Noir Family: Constructing Narratives of Settler Memory and Identity in Literature and On-Screen, Nomos, 2024

24Aug24

Description: Performing the Pied-Noir Family: Constructing Narratives of Settler Memory and Identity in Literature and On-Screen sheds new light on the memory community of the pieds-noir from the Algerian War (1954-1962) as it continues to resonate in France, where the subject was initially repressed in the collective psyche. Aoife Connolly draws on theories of performativity to explore autobiographical and fictional narratives by the settlers in over thirty canonical and non-canonical works of literature and film produced from the colony’s imminent demise up to the present day. Connolly focuses on renewed attachment to the family in exile to facilitate a comprehensive analysis of settler masculinity, femininity, childhood, and adolescence and to uncover neglected representations, including homosexual and Jewish voices. Connolly argues that findings on the construction of a post-independence identity and collective memory have broader implications for communities affected by colonization and migration. Scholars of literature, film, Francophone studies, and film studies will find this book particularly useful.


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The settler romantic: Lisa Kasmer, ‘Leonora Sansay’s Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo and Frames of Personhood’, European Romantic Review, 35, 3, 2024, pp. 511-523

24Aug24

Abstract: Leonora Sansay’s Secret History; or, The Horrors of St. Domingo (1808), which recounts the culmination of the Haitian revolution against French colonialism (1791–1804), evokes a nostalgia for colonial order even though colonialism would remain in the Caribbean for decades. The epistolary novel’s narrator, an American visiting Saint Domingue (colonial Haiti), yearns for the “paradise” that she imagines has been destroyed by the revolution, aligning Sansay with Paul Gilroy’s notion of postcolonial melancholia. More insidiously, in Secret History, the longing for the reinstatement of the colonial system in Saint Domingue positions people of African descent outside “frames of recognition,” as Judith Butler in Frames of War conceptualizes the way in which biopolitical forces constitute personhood. I argue that for Sansay, the norms that constitute a living being as recognizable as a life are the ideologies of Romantic settler colonialism, as well as American exceptionalism. As such, within Secret History, Sansay reifies a stratified racial and national hierarchy while also actively denying the state violence that sustains it.


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The mathematics of settler colonialism: David W. Stinson, Jayasree Subramanian, Cathery Yeh, ‘Strengthening Equity and Social Justice Research in Mathematics Education Through Critical Interrogations of White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism’, in M. A. Clements, B. Kaur, T. Lowrie, V. Mesa, & J. Prytz (eds), Fourth international handbook of mathematics education, Springer, 2024

24Aug24

Abstract: In this chapter, we contextualize a suggested approach of strengthening equity and social justice research in mathematics education by inserting the mathematics education enterprise into two world events of 2020: the global COVID-19 pandemic and the global resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. Our intent in doing so is to underscore how white colonialism is forever present everywhere in structures and institutions around the globe, including those of the mathematics education enterprise. The logics of both white supremacy and settler colonialism are described next and then combined into a compounding scheme of colonizing white supremacist logics. To illustrate that colonizing white supremacist logics are not a manifestation of only the West, a discussion of the conflicts and contradictions of white supremacy and Brahminical supremacy in the mathematics education enterprise of postcolonial India is offered. Brief summaries of the five chapters in the Trends in Equity and Social Justice section of this volume are then provided; we highlight how the chapter authors interrogated colonializing white supremacist logics within their respective chapters and point toward additional opportunities. In concluding the chapter, we feature recent USA-based mathematics education research to illustrate some different possibilities when equity and social justice research is indeed strengthened through critical interrogations of white supremacy and settler colonialism.


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