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Shock, horror! Settler frontier: Robert G. Parkinson, Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier, W. W. Norton, 2024

11Jan25

Description: We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans. Drawing skillfully on Joseph Conrad’s famous novella, Heart of Darkness, he demonstrates that imperialism in North America was neither heroic nor a perfectly planned conquest. It was, rather, as bewildering, violent, and haphazard as the European colonization of Africa, which Conrad knew firsthand and fictionalized in his masterwork. At the center of Parkinson’s story are two families whose entwined histories ended in tragedy. The family of Shickellamy, one of the most renowned Indigenous leaders of the eighteenth century, were Iroquois diplomats laboring to create a world where settlers and Native people could coexist. The Cresaps were frontiersmen who became famous throughout the colonies for their bravado, scheming, and land greed. Together, the families helped determine the fate of the British and French empires, which were battling for control of the Ohio River Valley. From the Seven Years’ War to the protests over the Stamp Act to the start of the Revolutionary War, Parkinson recounts the major turning points of the era from a vantage that allows us to see them anew, and to perceive how bewildering they were to people at the time. For the Shickellamy family, it all came to an end on April 30, 1774, when most of the clan were brutally murdered by white settlers associated with the Cresaps at a place called Yellow Creek. That horrific event became news all over the continent, and it led to war in the interior, at the very moment the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Michael Cresap, at first blamed for the massacre at Yellow Creek, would be transformed by the Revolution into a hero alongside George Washington. In death, he helped cement the pioneer myth at the heart of the new republic. Parkinson argues that American history is, in fact, tied to the frontier, just not in the ways we are often told. Altering our understanding of the past, he also shows what this new understanding should mean for us today.


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A settler society’s failed reconstitution: Tristan Partridge, ‘Indigenous Representation: How Recognition, Reciprocity, and Reserved Seats Shaped the Constitutional Convention’, in Javiera Barandiaran, Tristan Partridge (eds), Demanding a Radical Constitution: Environmentalism, Resilience, and Participation in Chile’s 2022 Reform Efforts, Palgrave, 2025, pp. 25-43

11Jan25

Abstract: When the Constitutional Convention began rewriting Chile’s constitution in 2021, 17 of the 155 assembly seats were reserved for Indigenous representatives. This unprecedented achievement, though a compromise, was the result of decades of ongoing struggle for Indigenous recognition and representation as well as intensified organizing during, and after, the 2019 estallido. This chapter relays how the agreement took shape, noting key debates and exchanges in the formation of this landmark in Chilean politics, highlighting the influence of persistent anti-Indigenous sentiment across Chile, and placing the move for Indigenous representation and visibility in constitutional politics within the context of parallel struggles across Latin America.


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Higher education against settler colonialism: Benjamin E. Norquist, Christopher S. Collins, ‘Higher Education Resisting Settler Colonial Transfer in Palestinian Bethlehem’, Comparative Education Review, 2025

09Jan25

Abstract: This article analyzes the perceptions and actions of Palestinian faculty and administrators at colleges and universities in Palestinian Bethlehem. We explore the meaning of higher educational practices and structures under settler colonial conditions of gradual dispossession of ancestral land. The physical conditions and policies of occupation and settler colonialism create a hostile epistemological environment for Palestinian people and bodies of knowledge. Within the knowledge production/distribution environment of higher education, there are ways in which institutions recreate or resist oppression. Participants in this study described their aspirations for students, the challenges they perceive that their students face, and their efforts to help students resist forces to weaken connection to land and knowledge. Finding that Palestinian educators seek to nurture student commitments to remain rooted to the land, this article surfaces the notion of adaptive pedagogies and epistemological resistance.


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Policing settlers: Sophie Hamel-Touchette, RCMP Officers Posted to Nunavut Communities: Exploring the Policing and Private Life Challenges of Qallunaat Police in Inuit Nunangat, MA dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2025

09Jan25

Abstract: As a result of a signed agreement between the Government of Canada and Nunavut, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is contracted to police Nunavut hamlets. This iteration of contracts began when the Territory was formed in 1999 and involves the recruitment of Regular Members from across Canada. To better understand the experiences of these Members, this thesis project engages with the literature on rural and remote policing, and explores the uniqueness of policing in Nunavut (Ruddell & Jones, 2018). Inspired by informal Member comments about the “harsh reality” of these posts, this project investigates accounts of everyday policing in several hamlets. Through a qualitative approach, specifically semi-structured interviews, and framed by Settler Colonialism theory and Bourdieu’s theory on Habitus, this project applies “policing habitus” to understand the daily living and working conditions of police officers in Nunavut. The analysis shows that officers identify a number of obstacles in their “field” of work, including insufficient resources for the communities of Nunavut, a complex array of responsibilities and requests that fall outside of police duties and yet to them, the complexities of negotiating relationships in small hamlets, and the frustration of feeling as though they are a “band-aid” solution to deep and historical issues. The thesis concludes with a series of policy recommendations.


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Time, settler occupied: Natalia Gutkowski, ‘Cultivating Indigeneity – Producing Time, Israel/Palestine, 2013’, in Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, Danielle Elliot (eds), Fieldnotes, Raw and Unedited, Minnesota University Press, 2024

07Jan25

Excerpt: Time is central to power and domination in the agrarian environment of Israel/Palestine. Seemingly, agriculture is governed by seasonality, harvest time, and market temporalities. Yet, time in agriculture is mediated by governments, scientists, technologies, and preexisting social orders of power and domination. The excerpt of fieldwork that I share below is part of my book Struggling for Time: Environmental Governance and Agrarian Resistance in Israel/Palestine. In this book, I argue that a settler society must claim native time in its endeavor to inhabit and colonize the land. By erasing native time and settling social time, the settler society makes moral claims to justify its settler project. 


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With a chapter on apologetic settler colonialism: Seraphine Appel, ‘Commemoration and (Re)Conciliation: Memorial Culture under Apologetic Settler Colonialism in Canada’, in Tomas Macsotay, Nausikaä El-Mecky (eds), Toppling Things as Memorial Contestation: Spectacle and Affect of Monument Removal, Brill, 2024

07Jan25

Access the chapter here.


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A settler colonial wasteland: João Marcelo Pereira Ribeiro, Gabriel Maculan, Brisa Oliveira de Ávila, Vinícius Augusto Morais, Lenoir Hoeckesfeld, Leonardo Secchi, José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra, ‘Deforestation by production displacement: expansion of cropland and cattle ranching on Amazon’, Environment, Development and Sustainability, 2025

06Jan25

Abstract: Deforestation in the Amazon Forest has increased exponentially in recent years. This is a consequence of local, regional, and global dynamic economical processes changing land-use and land cover (LULC) in the Amazon Forest. There is evidence that land deforested to be used for pasture is now being used for crop production. In this circumstance, this paper analyzes the Amazon deforestation by agribusiness production displacement on the southeastern region of the Brazilian Amazon Forest. The investigated area is located in the north of the Brazilian State Mato Grosso. The data was collected from the MapBiomas project in a raster format, from 1985 to 2020, identifying 13 LULC classes, with forests, agriculture, and pasture being the most significant. The study employed map algebra to process spatial and temporal LULC changes, photointerpretation for visual validation, and correlation statistics to explore relationships between deforestation, pasture, agriculture, and fires. The results found a strong correlation (0.98) between deforestation and conversion of forest to pasture, and moderate correlation (0.59) between forest to crop conversion and deforestation. Over the last 20 years, 59,663.51 km2 of native forests were lost, primarily converted into pasture (17,047.27 km2) and agriculture (42,034.18 km2). Indigenous territories showed minimal deforestation compared to non-demarcated areas. A historical analysis of policies on deforestation in Brazil, and in the State of Mato Grosso, was carried out, demonstrating that in recent years there has been decreased control over the issue. This study provides insights for policymakers to leverage the global policy window for Amazon conservation under the Paris Agreement.


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The owners of settler ownership: Clare Davidson, ‘Cultivation and Commodification: Regulating Gendered Status and Settler Colonial Title to Land’, Australian Historical Studies, 2025

06Jan25

Abstract: The processes by which settler colonial rights to manage land were assigned to legal persons were structured by the South Australia Act 1834 and the Real Property Act 1858. Colonial corporations – including the Crown – managed land and natural resources by regulating how rights were held by the family as a gendered, property-holding institution, and by individuals, including women. This article examines the legal processes by which the management of land and resources was directed towards goals of cultivation and commodification in colonial Australia to show how property rights shaped ideas of gendered and nongendered personhood. Changing priorities relating to land ownership led to new modes of transferring property and contributed to a reduction in the significance of gender as a marker of relative legal status between men and women in private law in colonial Australia.


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Settler town, settler exclusion: Myriam Guillemette, ‘An Insight into the Extent of the Sundown Town Phenomenon in Canadian Company Towns; the Thompson, Manitoba, Case Study’, Journal of Urban History, 2025

06Jan25

Abstract: The notion of “sundown town” broadly encompasses the various methods employed by American towns and counties to exclude specific racial or ethnic groups from their borders. This paper mobilizes the sundown town notion to explore the dynamics of exclusion present within Canadian company towns by first establishing a sundown exclusion scale that categorizes cases of sundown towns in the United States. Using this framework, it then specifically examines the case of Thompson, Manitoba, a Canadian mining community established in 1956 by the International Nickel Company (INCO). Findings reveal that there appeared to be a voluntary absence of consideration by the parent company of the issues relating to employment and housing discrimination faced by the town’s First Nations and Métis population during the town’s first years of existence. The paper further discusses the lasting effects of these dynamics of exclusion and marginalization on the city’s residents of Indigenous identity.


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Settler literary land claims: David Kootnikoff, ‘A Romance of Denialism: In the Skin of a Lion as a Settler Literary Land Claim’, Canadian Literature, 257, 2025

06Jan25

Abstract: In “A Romance of Denialism: In the Skin of a Lion As A Settler Literary Land Claim,” I identify an aesthetic theme in Michael Ondaatje’s 1987 novel, In the Skin of a Lion, that parallels settler colonialism’s political response to Indigenous peoples and their lands. I argue that Ondaatje’s novel adheres to what Margery Fee identifies as a “literary land claim” (2015), one that legitimizes settlers as indigenes on “terra nullius” by denying Indigenous presence. I demonstrate this by extending GW Hegel’s aesthetic model of “romantic fiction” (592) to In the Skin of a Lion and suggest the latter embodies the attributes of a narrative that comforts settlers (Battell Lowman & Barker). By analyzing the inward quest of “electability,” which relies on a subject who retreats from the social world, I expose how a “violence of denialism” functions to invisibilize Indigenous presence.


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