settler colonial studies blog

Indigenous children under settler colonialism (a scoping review): Akilew Awoke Adane, Tracy Reibel, Ailsa Munns, Carrington C. J. Shepherd, Helen Doreen Bailey, Fiona Stanley, Rhonda Marriott, ‘Child Development Interventions Among Indigenous Peoples in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States: A Scoping Review’, Children, 13, 2, 2026, #252

18Feb26

Abstract: Background: Children’s development is dependent on a range of factors influencing their life course outcomes. Protective and challenging social and cultural determinants impact how Indigenous families support their children’s developmental foundations. However, there is a lack of international evidence investigating Indigenous child development interventions. To gain a perspective across nations with comparable settler-colonial histories, this scoping review summarised studies on family and community-centred approaches among Indigenous populations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, focusing on outcomes and evidence gaps. Methods: A scoping review followed PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Medline, CINAHL, and PsycINFO (Ovid) were searched from their inception to October 2025, including grey literature sources from Aboriginal HealthInfoNet, the Lowitja Institute and the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care. Empirical studies, including quantitative, mixed-methods, evaluation studies, and descriptive or case-study designs, were included provided they reported empirical data on intervention outcomes. Due to study heterogeneity, data were synthesised narratively. Results: Following screening of 2355 records, eight from 2013 to 2020 met the inclusion criteria. These were mostly small-scale, non-randomising designs evaluating different interventions, with the behavioural and emotional domain being the most frequently assessed outcome, alongside developmental vulnerability and academic/educational areas. There was limited consideration of protective cultural determinants of health in the study design and implementation. Six studies reported positive associations between interventions or programmes and early childhood development outcomes. Conclusions: While the number and rigour of identified interventions were limited, several demonstrated potential benefits for Indigenous children’s early childhood development. However, strengthening the evidence base requires culturally grounded, adequately powered evaluations using rigorous study designs that include culturally co-designed adaptations conducted with Indigenous families and communities. Support is recommended for capacity building and funding.

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West of the Western (and a bit south too, and still bloody settler colonial): Brian McFarlane, Outback: Westerns in Australian Cinema, Intellect, 2026

18Feb26

Description: A study of the role of the Western film genre in Australia’s changing political and cultural landscape. Focusing on the influence of the cinematic Western in Australian cinema history, Outback explores how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social, political, and cultural contexts of their production, including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population. Brian McFarlane emphasizes the ways film can, without didacticism, provide evidence of changing politics and culture. McFarlane explores Australian history with the genre by analyzing such films as Charles Tait’s 1906 The Story of the Kelly Gang and Justin Kurzel’s 2020 adaptation of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang. He further explores other key matters, including the changing attitudes to and representation of Indigenous peoples and of women’s roles in Australian Westerns. Brian McFarlane is adjunct professor in the Department of Media and Communications at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He is the editor of The Encylopedia of British Film and coeditor of The Oxford Companion to Australian Film, among others.

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With a chapter by Zahi Zalloua: ‘Critique of Indigenous Reason: The Case of Palestine’, in P. Khalil Saucier (ed.), Practices of Disciplinary Refusal for New Futures: On Critique and Humanism, Bloomsbury, 2026

18Feb26

Access the chapter here.

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Settler colonialism’s moving image: María Guadalupe Arenillas, ‘North-South Filmmaking, Settler Colonialism, and Indigenous Resurgences’, JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 65, 2, 2025, pp. 150-156

17Feb26

Excerpt: While film and photography have traditionally played a part in the extermination of Indigenous peoples and in their misleading representations, Indigenous filmmaking (also known as Fourth Cinema) activates a gaze that centers on Native perspectives, brings awareness to imbalanced filmic practices, and contributes to projects of sovereignty.

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The hostile environments of settler colonialism: R. Anna Hayward, Rohini Guin, Noura Kiridly, Ariek Barakat Norford, Julian Maceren, Narmin Mekawy, Christine Wang, ‘Settler Colonialism, Ecocide, and the Climate Crisis in Occupied Palestine: Environmental Injustice, Health Inequities, and the Imperative for Public Health Social Work’, Social Work in Public Health, 2026

17Feb26

Abstract: Environmental devastation in occupied Palestine is a direct outcome of settler colonialism, which systematically dispossesses Indigenous Palestinians of land, resources, and sovereignty. Land confiscation, water diversion, and the deliberate destruction of native species constitute forms of ecocide that exacerbates economic inequality and worsen public health crises, including food and water insecurity, toxic exposure, disease, and prolonged displacement. The climate crisis is further intensified by military activities, including the prolonged bombing of Gaza, which devastate ecosystems, deplete fisheries, erode coastlines and arable land. This paper examines the intersection of settler colonialism, environmental degradation, and health inequities in occupied Palestine, emphasizing how olive grove destruction, land and water contamination, and military violence produce direct social and health harms for an already oppressed population. We call for public health social work to advance environmental justice, health equity, and decolonial practices through advocacy, global solidarity, and centering Indigenous Palestinian voices.

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Settler colonialism’s geography: Isaac Rivera, ‘Settler Colonialism, GeoMedia, and the Geographical Imaginary’, The Professional Geographer, 2026

17Feb26

Abstract: Geographical imaginaries are always in a state of struggle, rooted in logics of exception, dispossession, and radical possibility. This article connects the theoretical, methodological, and political uses of geographical imaginaries to geomedia, connecting their coconstituted entanglements in settler-colonialism and role in maintaining settler-colonial hegemony. In doing so, the author traces the ideological roots of geomedia and their role in animating geographical imaginaries, making visible the ways social movements challenge and refuse settler-colonial imaginaries head on. The article concludes with a discussion on the use of countermedia by Real Change News Paper and the Mestaa’ėhehe Coalition, to enact what Katz termed topographies of hope, reorienting sociospatial relations and geographical imaginaries toward liberatory futures.

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False opposition (the settler colonial scissors): Elian Weizman, Sai Englert, ‘Brothers in Arms: liberal genocide and intra-settler conflict in Israel’, Race & Class, 2026

17Feb26

Abstract: This article examines the ongoing genocide in Gaza as a culmination of long-standing Zionist settler-colonial practices, arguing that the apparent internal divisions within Israeli society obscure a deeper structural unity. It contends that these dynamics are better understood as generative tensions within a unified colonial project. Drawing on genocide studies, settler-colonial theory and political developments since October 2023, the article shows that liberal and illiberal Zionists have acted in concert to execute and justify mass violence against Palestinians. The liberal camp’s discourse of ‘permanent security’, rooted in assumptions of Palestinian collective guilt, pre-emptive violence and existential paranoia, has played a crucial role in legitimising genocide both domestically and internationally. Far from opposing the genocide in Gaza, liberal Zionists have supported it and participated in its execution – both ideologically and practically, many taking an active role in its execution as reservists. This collaboration between the different wings of the Zionist movement is not new, and historically, liberal Zionists led campaigns of dispossession and mass killing, notably in 1948 and 1967. The article argues that the internal conflict within Israeli society is not over the ethics of domination, but over its methods and the need to legitimise it internationally. Accordingly, conflicts between liberal and illiberal Zionism are generative and act as a Elian Weizman is a senior lecturer in international relations at London South Bank University. Sai Englert is a lecturer at the Leiden Institute of Area Studies. 1416705 RAC Race & ClassWeizman and EnglertBrothers in Arms 2 Race & Class 00(0) mechanism for settler-colonial endurance and expansion. By foregrounding the co-constitutive nature of liberal and illiberal genocidal practices, this piece offers a critical framework for understanding the present moment and the longue durée of Zionist violence.

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More settler made disasters: Kate Fitch, Treena Clark, Lee Edward, ‘Authentic or performative? Social licence to operate in settler colonial contexts – Rio Tinto, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples and the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters’, Communication and the Public, 2026

10Feb26

Abstract: In May 2020, global mining corporation Rio Tinto destroyed the historic Juukan Gorge rock shelters, prompting
a public outcry, a government inquiry, and financial and personal sanctions for the company’s senior management,
suggesting that the company’s actions were both surprising and shocking. We challenge Rio Tinto’s interpretation
and reasoning of the rock destruction by drawing on theories of social licence to operate and settler colonialism to
illustrate how their actions were a logical outcome of its operating context. We treat the destruction of Juukan Gorge
rock shelters as an explanatory case study, which reveals how Indigenous Australian voices were curtailed in the
pursuit of mining wealth, despite Rio Tinto’s public commitment to a highly regarded Reconciliation Action Plan. We
conclude that the effectiveness of a social licence to operate is determined by its relationship to both political and legal
licences to operate in the same space; that Reconciliation Action Plans, as a mechanism for claiming a social licence to
operate, have limited impact on corporate practice; and that Indigenous stakeholder engagement with the Australian
extractive industries remains a fragile exercise.

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Settler made disaster: Jackie Erlon-Baurjan, ‘The Fugitive Steppe: Climate and Colonialism on the Kazakh Steppe, 1860–1916’, Environment and History, 2026

10Feb26

Abstract: This article examines how Russian imperial ambitions to transform the Kazakh steppe between 1840 and 1914 were shaped by and in turn reshaped understandings of climate. As Russian scientists and administrators encountered Central Asia’s continental climate, with its extremes of heat and cold, they developed theories that recast the steppe’s aridity from an immutable natural barrier into a condition that could be ‘improved’ through European cultivation and settlement. It reveals how environmental theories became instruments of empire. The resulting transformations not only made Kazakhs increasingly vulnerable to the climate, but would set off the changes that would magnify the scale and tragedy of ensuing famines. This history illuminates both the origins of Russian schemes to engineer climate – which would culminate in the Soviet era’s Great Transformation of Nature – and the broader relationship between environmental knowledge and imperial power in the nineteenth century.

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Settler self-government leads to settler colonialism (I know, right?): Jarett Henderson, ‘Elections, Self-Government, and Settler-Colonial Rule in British North America’, in Eduardo Posada-Carbó, Andrew W Robertson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Revolutionary Elections in the Americas, 1800–1910, Oxford Academic, 2026

10Feb26

Abstract: The decades of political unrest that erupted in widespread violence in Canada in 1837–38 were followed by efforts to implement responsible self-government, culminating with the federal union of the British North American colonies in 1867. This evolution of liberal imperial rule consolidated white male authority and legitimized England’s settler-colonial projects across northern North America. Many early Canadian historians were perhaps reluctant to draw attention to events such as the rebellions—historians worked to explain the economic, social, and national factors that led British North Americans to demand the abolition of the irresponsible system of colonial self-rule that had governed their lives since the American Revolution. In doing so, they taught us much about the political machinations of establishment, reform, and imperial politicians and the social and political movements they ushered in or resisted. Canadian historians have shown little interest in how demands for self-government in settler colonies were linked to settler colonialism itself.

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