settler colonial studies blog

Settler wastes: Sarah Elizabeth Fox, Vexed Forgetting and Unruly Plumes: Tracing the Settler Wasting Cycle in the Pacific Nortwest across the Long Twentieth Century, PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2024

26Nov24

Abstract: Generated by the movement of waste materials from their point of origin or dispersal, a plumescape is an eco-social landscape resulting from the integration of waste materials into interconnected ecosystems and bodies, which hold or circulate those materials for varying periods of time. These contamination geographies may be produced, described, or altered by human technologies and behaviors, but they do not abide by socially constructed borders, timescales, or ideas about the purported separation of “nature” and “humanity” held by EuroAmerican societies. In the North American West, the production of plumescapes has proliferated since the mid-nineteenth century, illustrating a distinct cycle of environmental decision-making characteristic of settler colonial projects, a phenomenon I call the settler wasting cycle. Based on the survey and analysis of themes and patterns in archival materials, public testimonies, oral histories, and scientific studies, this study examines patterns in the histories of the Victoria, British Columbia sewage plumescape, the Tacoma, Washington ASARCO copper smelter plumescape, and the Hanford plutonium production plumescape, initiated in eastern Washington and spread widely around the larger region. The late establishment of EuroAmerican settler colonialism in this multinational region meant the production of these waste plumes coincided with new scientific understandings of disease, driving settler policy and infrastructural development designed to remove potentially dangerous wastes from proximity to white setter bodies. This dissertation charts the distinct stages and mechanisms responsible for perpetuating the settler wasting cycle, which fails to eliminate dangerous wastes from lived environments, but excels at creating vexed forgetting of the presence and danger posed by those wastes. This vexed forgetting relies on the production of scientific doubt about the health impacts of wastes, and the introduction of new technological and infrastructural strategies which promise (and inevitably fail) to diffuse or contain wastes. This study also traces counter-epistemologies developed from embodied knowledges and community networks, and the influence of those local ways of knowing on social movement organizing within and beyond the plumescapes which shaped them. This dissertation contributes to ongoing discussions in Discard Studies, Environmental History, and studies of the North American West.

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Settler literary regionalism and the conquest of deep time: Michael Boyden, ‘Deep Time and Settler Literary Regionalism in Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm and Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!’, American Literary Realism, 57, 2 2025, pp. 118-130

26Nov24

Excerpt: The emergence of literary regionalism toward the final quarter of the nineteenth century was largely coterminous with the discovery of what we now call deep time. It might seem ironic that just as theories of evolution started to situate human history within larger temporal scales, the literary imagination appeared to contract, both temporally and spatially, by thematizing small-scale communities seemingly unaffected by the passing of time. However, regional fiction did register the time revolution brought on by new scientific findings. As I argue in this article, it did so specifically in settler colonial situations where an awareness of deep time served to negotiate the complicated dynamic of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion that characterizes such a system of domination. The discovery of deep time in literary regionalism thus should be linked to a specific representational regime predicated on the synchronous erasure and appropriation of Indigenous alterities in settler contexts. This representational regime, I suggest, relied on a discourse of primitivism that allowed it to reconcile the conflicting tendencies of the settler colonial situation.

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There’s something in the (settler) water: Joonsoo S. Lyeo, Yagana Samim, Kate Decter, Nehul Agarwal, Eric N. Liberda, Sarah R. Haines4, Nicholas D. Spence, ‘A Scoping Review of Strengths-Based Drinking Water Policies in Indigenous Communities in Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia’, Environmental Reviews, 2024

25Nov24

Abstract: The Indigenous Peoples of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States have faced a shared history of disenfranchisement under settler-colonial paradigms. One consequence of this marginalization has been the widespread deprivation of secure access to safe drinking water in Indigenous communities. To date, much of the literature on Indigenous drinking water access has taken a deficit-based approach, focusing on the factors that are ‘lacking’ in Indigenous communities. Deficit based approaches have been criticized for perpetuating cycles of negative experiences, fostering dependency within the target community, and leading to interventions that are unsustainable and limited in scope. In contrast, this scoping review used a strengths-based investigation of successful Indigenous drinking water policy in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. Through this review of the gray literature published from 2000 to 2024, we identified methods for measuring the success of Indigenous drinking water policies; common features of Indigenous drinking water policies that are said to be successful; and external factors which have been found to contribute to the success of Indigenous drinking water policies. The subsequent thematic analysis revealed a need to leverage the assets within Indigenous communities, drawing upon the strengths inherent to Indigenous knowledge systems and cultural practices, by involving Indigenous Peoples as key stakeholders in the development of drinking water policy. There is an opportunity for policymakers to engage in an iterative process that considers the larger problems we have identified in this review, as well as the community-specific concerns of the Indigenous groups being served.

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Religiously decolonising settlers: Richard A. Davis, ‘The Christian ministry of reconciliation and settler decolonization in Aotearoa New Zealand’, in Pauline Kollontai, Sue Yore (eds), Religion in Diverse Societies: Crossing the Boundaries of Prejudice and Distrust, Routledge, 2024

25Nov24

Abstract: In this chapter, Richard A. Davis, a Pakeha New Zealander, navigates the terrain of decolonization and reconciliation in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand’s settler colonialism. He examines the allure of reconciliation to Christians and the critical challenges it faces, particularly in resistance from indigenous communities. From the perspective of Decolonial Settler Theology, Davis identifies five boundaries between settlers and indigenous peoples that cannot be ignored in addressing settler colonialism. He advocates for a reconciliation grounded in corrective justice, repentance, and genuine transformation, cautioning against superficial gestures that perpetuate assimilationist agendas. This chapter offers valuable insights into the imperative of decolonial reconciliation and the potential role of Christians as leaders in this ongoing work in Aotearoa New Zealand.

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Deliberative democracy vs settler colonialism: Justin McCaul, ‘Deliberative democracy must first engage with settler colonialism’, Centre for Deliberative Democracy & Global Governance working paper series, 2024

25Nov24

Abstract: Settler colonialism and its effects on deliberative engagement between Indigenous peoples and government is, I believe, under-theorised and therefore largely absent in the literature of deliberative democracy. Before the field of deliberative democracy asks, can it be decolonized, the field must first engage with the work of Indigenous scholars on settler colonialism and political struggle.

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Deacay against settler colonialism: Soile Ylivuori, ‘Settler Colonialism and Infrastructural Decay: A Historical Perspective’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 58, 1, 2024, pp. 11-18

23Nov24

Abstract: This essay provides an overview of analytical possibilities provided by a historical investigation of infrastructure’s temporal fragility within a settler colonial context. Since infrastructure was a tool for forging white supremacy through the creation of a capitalist and exploitative plantationoscene, the essay suggests that the tropicality-induced accelerated decay of plantation works, dwellings, and roads worked to both entrench and subvert colonial power relations. Examining infrastructure as assemblages of human and non-human animals, matter, space, labor, and emotion can bring out the tensions embedded in Enlightenment racial thought, European imperial power, and economic, ecological, and epistemological subjugation of colonized space. Moreover, the essay concludes, such analyses can help us shift our analytical gaze towards less anthropocentric actors, agencies, and histories.

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Settlers, parked (illegally): Ghada Sasa, ‘American Colony in Jerusalem: Rebuilding the Eight Palestinian Villages Buried by USA Independence Park’, Middle East Critique, 2024

23Nov24

Abstract: In 1976, Israel physically planted USA Independence Park over the ruins of eight Palestinian villages it depopulated during the Nakba, which are located near Jerusalem. The creation of this ‘protected area’ over ‘Allar, Bayt ‘Itab, Dar al-Sheikh, Dayr Aban, Dayr al-Hawa, Jrash, Khirbat al-Tannur, and Sufla was sponsored by US taxpayers. This article critically analyzes Israel’s design of this park as a device to seize Palestinian land, bar the original inhabitants from returning, purge their memories, and greenwash its settler colonial undertaking. Zionism and Western environmentalism are featured as the ideological underpinnings of Israeli green colonialism. Subsequently, this research unearths the history of the eight villages Israel desperately attempted to bury, comprising the Arabic names of central landmarks, and reaffirms the claims of the Indigenous inhabitants to their stolen lands. By translating and transcribing interviews with Nakba survivors, the article not only salvages Palestinian memory, but also maps the return of refugees. Its aim is to serve as an anticolonial archive, while sketching the pre-1948 lifeways, wisdoms, and values of these villagers to galvanize readers into action oriented towards universal justice.

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Settlers dig settlers: Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, ‘Settler mining and mineral extraction: new developments in an old discussion’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2024

23Nov24

Access the review article here.

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The settlers’ home at the settlers’ home: Eileen Chanin, ‘Australia House: shaping Dominion status in the imperial capital, 1907-63’, in Alex Bremner , Daniel Maudlin (eds), Inner empire: Architecture and Imperialism in the British Isles, 1550-1950, Manchester University Press, 2024

23Nov24

Excerpt: Australia House was the first of London’s so-called Dominion Houses, those High Commission buildings that housed offices for the governments of Britain’s self-governing colonies, or ‘Dominions’, as they were known from 1907.1 These buildings opened in central London from 1918. To federationists of the New Imperial era, who held hopes of uniting a Greater Britain, these prominent semi-public government buildings materially expressed the empire (much like the Greenwich Meridian confirmed London’s central world position). More than the ‘nerves of empire’ (over 121,000 miles of submarine telegraph cable linking the Britannic world), these prominent buildings embodied the connectedness of a hoped-for ‘imperial commonwealth’ to London as ‘the “heart” of the imperial organism’.2 In the first quarter of the twentieth century, imperialists believed that the Dominions would be the key to maintaining British power. Thus, these ‘Empire Houses’ also became a key part of London’s transformation when it was ascendant as a self-consciously financial, imperial, and regal capital. Architectural landmarks occupying prime sites, designed by eminent architects , and characterised by a high order of finish, they invested London with an imperial character, even long after the term ‘British Dominions’ applied in the process of decolonisation. The Dominion houses reveal, as Alex Bremner has argued, how enmeshed were London-centric and Dominion conditions and experience.

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Storytelling in settler colonial times: Shantel Martinez, Kelly Medina-López (eds), Monsters and Saints: LatIndigenous Landscapes and Spectral Storytelling, University Press of Mississippi, 2024

23Nov24

Description: Monsters and Saints: LatIndigenous Landscapes and Spectral Storytelling is a collection of stories, poetry, art, and essays divining the contemporary intersection of Latinx and Indigenous cultures from the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central and South America. To give voice to this complicated identity, this volume investigates how cultures of ghost storytelling foreground a sense of belonging and home in people from LatIndigenous landscapes. Monsters and Saints reflects intersectional and intergenerational understandings of lived experiences, bodies, and traumas as narrated through embodied hauntings. Contributions to this anthology represent a commitment to thoughtful inquiry into the ways storytelling assigns meaning through labels like monster, saint, and ghost, particularly as these unfold in the context of global migration. For many marginalized and displaced peoples, a sense of belonging is always haunted through historical exclusion from an original homespace. This exclusion further manifests as limited bodily autonomy. By locating the concept of “home” as beyond physical constructs, the volume argues that spectral stories and storytelling practices of LatIndigeneity (re)configure affective states and spaces of being, becoming, migrating, displacing, and belonging.

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