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Settlers represent: Moukli Brayan, Tegaoua Kenza, ‘Perpetuating Fixity: An Analysis Of Osage Representation And The Settlers In Killers Of The Flower Moon (2023)’, The Maghrebi Review of Manuscripts, 21, 1, 2025, pp. 188-211

04Jan25

Abstract: At the Los Angeles premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon on October 17th, 2023, Christopher Cote, an Osage consultant who worked on the film, expressed reservations about the depiction of the Osage and how their roles are attributed in the story. Because of Hollywood’s misrepresentation history, this comment echoed with issues that are deeply rooted in the manner in which American films are envisioned, even when they stand for the oppressed and denounce the oppressors. This paper seeks to analyse the position held by the Osage in the movie by focusing on their power relationships with the white American characters, with the aim of revealing how the picture conceals a colonial narrative. Postcolonial theory serves as the theoretical base upon which the study is conducted. The characters are analysed through Homi Bhabha’s concept of fixity of the “Other” as well as Elise Marubbio’s identified stereotypes of Native Americans in the cinema of the USA. This paper highlights how Osage voices are confined to the background, while the narrative is dominated by the settlers’ colonialist perspectives.


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Demonic settlers enable heavenly ones: Marc James Carpenter, ‘Settler colonial sin-eaters: disavowal of atrocity and its uses, in and beyond the late 1800s American Pacific Northwest’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2024

03Jan25

Abstract: Although attention to continuing and continuous structural elements of settler colonialism remains central to understanding the harms inflicted on Indigenous communities, there is always a risk that overfocusing on ‘a structure, not an event’ can leave little air for Indigenous actions and dynamism amid colonial systems of elimination and appropriation. Settler colonialism is not a monolith but a set of overlapping structures. Even with broad shared goals of appropriation, settlers have seldom agreed on the means or extent of elimination to be used in pursuit of those goals. In the late 1800s American Pacific Northwest (and elsewhere), Euro-Americans unwilling to face the extent of the genocidal violence their community used to seize land sometimes attempted to isolate the atrocities they could not ignore to a few fringe actors – turning them into what I call ‘settler colonial sin-eaters,’ and thus absolving the broader settler society of crimes in which nearly all were complicit. But in a context where many other Euro-Americans wanted their acts of genocide foregrounded and celebrated, some Indigenous people used these disavowals as a wedge to push against ongoing physical genocide and continued land theft. Disavowal of genocide is dangerous, but avowal of genocide is even more so.


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Heavenly settler colonial archives: Henria Aton, François Dansereau, Kate Nugent, ‘Archival Description, Land, Settler Colonialism, and World-Building in the Collection des archives du Collège Sainte-Marie’, The Canadian journal of information and library science’, 47, 3, 2024, pp. 70-82

03Jan25

Abstract: When the Society of Jesus returned to Turtle Island in the 1840s after the suppression of their order in 1773, searching for and consolidating the records they had been forced to leave behind was of utmost importance. The first Jesuit archivists set out to copy legal documents from Jesuits in Europe, records of their travels, and of correspondence between Jesuits in France, to build a coherent narrative of their order that foregrounded a sense of continuity with their forebears. The consolidation of these records led to the creation of the Collection des archives du Collège Sainte-Marie (CACSM). This article puts forward a case study that explores the description of records in the CACSM catalogue and the persistence and normalization of the catalogue descriptions into its later forms such as the index and internal database. It builds on recent scholarly examination of cataloguing systems and archival descriptions that have defined these as systems of knowledge, infrastructures of power, and tools of colonialism. We begin by arguing that the descriptive indicators of both original records and copies emphasized land as a means to assert Jesuit presence and influence, revealing the profound connection between the archive and settler colonialism. Then, we show that these descriptions were crucial actors that mobilized knowledge production by naming, framing or erasing information to meet the settler-colonial worldview. Finally, we demonstrate that the persistence of these catalogue descriptions, through the creation of other indexes and finding aids in the 1950s and beyond, signify their structural impact and functions.


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Heavenly terra nullius: Emily Ray, Sean Parson, ‘Caelum Nullius: Outer Space and the Colonial Logic of Property Rights’, Theory & Event, 28, 1, 2025, pp. 67-96

03Jan25

Abstract: Reimagining outer space as enclosed and privatized reinforces liberal property rights as universal and necessary to space programs. New space policies mark a return to terra nullius and a narrow conception of land-use that determines property rights. The liberal and colonial logic of property rights affirms hegemonic narratives of space as a limitless environment with no prior property claims. We analyze outer-space policies and the relationships between state and capital. We draw from Anker on Lockean freedom and Nichols on constructing property through theft. We argue that corporate colonization of space reinscribes the logic of settler-colonialism in space exploration.


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Neuro-settler decolonsation: Rochelle Star, ‘Reclaiming Wellness: The Land, Neurodecolonization, and Indigenous Resilience’, Convergence/ia/e, 45, 2, 2024, pp. 164-178

02Jan25

Excerpt: Indigenous knowledge systems provide a comprehensive, interconnected framework for understanding health, wellness, and resilience, particularly through the relationship with land. Colonization severed many of these relationships, leading to cultural, psychological, and physical trauma among Indigenous peoples. The process of neurodecolonization offers a way to heal these historical and ongoing traumas by re-integrating traditional practices—grounded in the land—with modern therapeutic techniques such as mindfulness, somatic experiencing, and intentional land-based healing.


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Formalising title, formalising settler colonial land regimes: Oren Shlomom, Michal Braier, ‘Threats and ambivalence in land formalization: The case of settler-colonial land regime in East Jerusalem/al-Quds’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2024

02Jan25

Abstract: Urban land formalization, i.e., land titling and registration, is commonly viewed as a primary policy tool for addressing urban poverty and fostering socioeconomic and spatial development, especially in the urban informalities of the Global Southeast. While critical perspectives on urban land formalization highlight the threats and risks associated with the market-driven logic of land formalization, in this paper, we examine the perils of displacement and property rights erosion in the context of settler colonial land regime. Through the analysis of Israel’s initiative to formalize Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, we contend that risks and benefits of land formalization programs are contingent upon the land regime whithin which they are implemented. We demonstrate how potential benefits of land formalization, alongside its potential threats, produce ambivalence among target communities. This ambiguity becomes ingrained in settler colonial land practices of land formalisation and translates into noncooperation by Palestinians with the Israeli land formalization initiative. Thus, we emphasize the significance of analyzing local land regimes and politics to better understand the specific threats and opportunities and their impact on target communities.


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Visualising settler colonial erasure: Azza El Hassan, The Afterlife of Palestinian Images Visual Remains and the Archive of Disappearance, Palgrave, 2024

01Jan25

Description: The Afterlife of Palestinian Images is a groundbreaking study of how colonial violence alters and changes visual objects – which in turn affects how a society and culture relates to its own images. Based on the practice-based creative methodology of Palestinian filmmaker and researcher Azza El Hassan, this book explores the re-use and re-appropriation of photos, film and media equipment that have survived looting and destruction, objects which become a constant reminder of what was and what has been lost. El Hassan goes beyond using these visual remains as simple evidence, demonstrating how artistic engagement can reconfigure them into new narratives and establish a renewed sense of cultural identity. While previous research has explored why colonial structures practice native archive plundering, as well as into how a culture reckons with the absence of archival records, this book uniquely addresses how plundered cultures relate to the actual remains of their archives. As a scholar and an artist, El Hassan reconciles a problematic past and present in the search for a new visual experience emerging out of the ruins, finding ways to move forward after destruction.


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Settlers seen from Korea: Nak-chung Paik, ‘Settler Colonialism and the “Open Road”: Apropos of Studies in Classic American Literature’, In/outside: English studies in Korea, 47, 2024, pp. 5-25

31Dec24

Abstract: This paper begins by citing Lawrence’s prediction in Studies in Classic American Literature that in the near future the influence of dead Native Americans on U.S. society will begin to work in earnest and that some “real changes” will occur. I then go on to examine whether or not we in the twenty-first century actually witness Lawrence’s ‘real changes’, and to what extent they may be attributed to “the demon of the place and the unappeased ghosts of the dead Indians”, as asserted by Lawrence. This examination rests on two assumptions regarding Lawrence’s Studies: 1) that its historical narrative represents a highly iconoclastic yet essentially coherent rendering of the history of white settlers in North America and their settler colonialism; 2) that his readings of classic American authors too, for all the idiosyncrasy of expression, manage to capture the deep meaning behind the ‘duplicity’ that characterizes creative American works. In this narrative the sinking of the whaling ship Moby-Dick marks the final destruction of the white man’s ‘blood being’. Lawrence’s greatness lies, however, in his going beyond mere diagnosis and in finding in Whitman’s ‘Open Road’ a new vision of true democracy, “the bravest doctrine man has ever proposed to himself”.


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Threatened! Danielle Endres, Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting, Ohio State University Press, 2023

29Dec24

Description: While research demonstrates how Indigenous populations have been disproportionately affected by the global nuclear production complex, less attention has been given to tactics that have successfully resisted such projects. Danielle Endres’s Nuclear Decolonization shifts the conversation around nuclear colonialism in important ways, offering an account of how the Western Shoshone, Southern Paiute, and Skull Valley Goshute peoples and nations prevented two high-level nuclear waste sites from being built on their lands. Using a decolonial approach, Endres highlights two sets of rhetorical tactics—Indigenous Lands rhetorics and national interest rhetorics—used to fight nuclear colonialism. The book reframes nuclear decolonization as fundamentally a struggle for the return of Indigenous lands while also revealing how Native activists selectively move between Indigenous nationhood and US citizenship in order to resist settler decision-making. Working at the intersection of Indigenous antinuclear advocacy, Indigenized environmental justice, and decolonization, Nuclear Decolonization centers Native activism and voices while amplifying the power and resilience of Indigenous peoples and nations.


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Threatened? Elian Weizman, ‘Thresholds of Threat: Processes of Criminalisation and Repression in the Israeli Settler State’, in Anna Di Ronco, Rossella Selmini (eds), Criminalization of Dissent in Times of Crisis, Palgrave, 2024, pp 333-355

29Dec24

Abstract: This chapter investigates processes of criminalisation and repression of dissident political activism of Israel’s citizens, both Palestinians and Jews, given the state’s particular political formation as a ‘liberal’ settler state. I argue that the operational logic of the settler state that guarantees the rights and privileges of the Jewish citizenry dictates the strategies used to tolerate, contain, limit or crush dissent altogether. This depends on the idea of threat that—for the settler state—is anyways always grounded in racial hierarchies. By unravelling the shifting threshold of threats, state vulnerabilities and fragility are exposed, in this way allowing us to gain a window into the precarity of such system of power as well as into the ways it can be challenged and transformed.


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