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Eliminationist archeologists: Paul Edward Montgomery Ramírez, ‘Settlers to Solutreans: Alternative Archaeologies, Media, & Anti-Indigenous Violence’, in Lorna-Jane Richardson, Andrew Reinhard, Nicole Smith (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and the Media in the 21st Century, 2024

30Jun24

Abstract: The Canadian Broadcast Corporation’s (CBC) long-running documentary series, The Nature of Things, featured a controversial episode titled The Ice Bridge. This documentary forwarded and dramatically re-enacted a hypothesis known as the Solutrean Hypothesis, that asserts the Americas were peopled first by sailors from Europe. This hypothesis, having been thoroughly debunked, is one that gets re-considered with regularity among European and Euro-settlers in what is currently the United States and Canada. This fringe archaeology speaks directly to the settler colonial logic of elimination, which seeks to exterminate all traces of Indigenous people, to ‘indigenize’ the settler population. It is not alone in this but exists within a spectrum of ‘archaeologies’ from conspiratorial and paranormal pseudoarchaeologies, to fringe hypotheses, and accepted (in the past or currently) scientific approaches that continue the violence of settler colonialism. Each of these has a very real impact on the wellbeing of Indigenous peoples. Attachment to these understandings of the world also fuel white supremacy and colonial violence that can be expressed in dangerously physical ways. This chapter examines media’s engagement with archaeological approaches – mainstream, fringe, and pseudo – and their considerations of the people of the Americas. Cases in media coverage of pseudoarchaeological peopling of the Americas, more ‘scientific’ approaches in the Solutrean Hypothesis, and coverage of the controversial case of Kennewick Man are discussed for their contributions to the logic of elimination, anti-Indigenous violence, and narratives of white supremacy. This entry highlights how presenting archaeology is not neutral and while we may dismiss pseudoarchaeology, we must address it for the real damage it does. Not only this, but in the pursuit of scientific knowledge, more formal archaeologies and reporting around them can also replicate similar harm to marginalized people. Archaeologists must be responsible in action and mindful of the damage of settler colonialism in our work.


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Other settlers and other settlements: Amanda Hendrix-Komoto, Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific, University of Nebraska Press, 2022

30Jun24

Description: In the nineteenth century, white Americans contrasted the perceived purity of white, middle-class women with the perceived eroticism of women of color and the working classes. The Latter-day Saint practice of polygamy challenged this separation, encouraging white women to participate in an institution that many people associated with the streets of Calcutta or Turkish palaces. At the same time, Latter-day Saints participated in American settler colonialism. After their expulsion from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, Latter-day Saints dispossessed Ute and Shoshone communities in an attempt to build their American Zion. Their missionary work abroad also helped to solidify American influence in the Pacific Islands as the church became a participant in American expansion. Imperial Zions explores the importance of the body in Latter-day Saint theology with the faith’s attempts to spread its gospel as a “civilizing” force in the American West and the Pacific. By highlighting the intertwining of Latter-day Saint theology and American ideas about race, sexuality, and the nature of colonialism, Imperial Zions argues that Latter-day Saints created their understandings of polygamy at the same time they tried to change the domestic practices of Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto tracks the work of missionaries as they moved through different imperial spaces to analyze the experiences of the American Indians and Native Hawaiians who became a part of white Latter-day Saint families. Imperial Zions is a foundational contribution that places Latter-day Saint discourses about race and peoplehood in the context of its ideas about sexuality, gender, and the family.


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Sublimating settlers: Hannah Lorell Sparks, Indigenous Artistic Activism and the (Re)envisioned Landscape: Decolonizing Settler Land Knowledge, MA dissertation, Syracuse University, 2024

30Jun24

Abstract: In this thesis I investigate mimetic Indigenous artwork as a productive site of settler colonial disruption. More specifically, I attend to the potential of these artworks to disorient romantic habits of viewing landscapes. Framed as a critique of settler logics, I argue that the underlying ideologies of Euro-American romantic landscape art have tracked from the 19th century to today to produce an illusory, aestheticized view of nature as grand and empty, distancing settlers from the material realities of land use and the violence of settler colonialism. In a contributory attempt to decolonize settler understandings of and relations to land, I look to artworks by Indigenous artists Kent Monkman and Nicholas Galanin as examples of subversive critique, claiming that through mimetic, intertextual techniques, their works strategically engage with settler colonial systems as a challenge to romantic settler land relations, prompting new engagement with memory, land, and place. Using decolonial studies and visual rhetoric as centralizing frameworks, I constellate concepts such as détournement (Debord, 1959), moral shock (Jasper, 1997) and settler common sense (Rifkin, 2013) to highlight the ways that these artworks disrupt settler land logics and work to fracture the “settler sublime.” This thesis ultimately advocates for a critical rupture in romantic conceptions of land; while mimetic Indigenous artworks may not constitute a paradigm shift on their own, they actively work to dismantle settler ideologies, creating space for Indigenous epistemologies to emerge.


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Settler heritage, even when it’s not theirs: Carolyn Hill, ‘Cultural dissonance: heritage protests and their implications for heritage-making in settler colonial cities’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2024

30Jun24

Abstract: Heritage-making’s intrinsic dissonance has been thoroughly established in the field of critical heritage studies, and yet it is a reality that continues to be obscured in heritage practice in settler colonial cities. Authorised heritage discourse continues to project existing state-led systems of heritage-making as a self-evident ‘public good’ for current and future generations. In settler colonial cities, this increasingly includes attempts to incorporate Indigenous views and values into its framing. However, existing statutory processes that uphold normative approaches prove resilient to change. Continued prioritisation of tangible artefact amid private property rights impairs the heritage field’s ability to acknowledge alternative possibilities and to genuinely engage in decolonising transformation. This paper examines three cases where heritage dissonance has erupted into protest and protection action outside of the authorised heritage discourse: the Old Swan Brewery in Perth, Western Australia; Ihumātao in Auckland, New Zealand; and the West Berkeley Shellmound in Berkeley, California. It analyses the contestation of values that led to protest action, what ‘authorised’ attempts were made to heritagise each case and to what result. In so doing, the paper demonstrates how existing processes of statutory heritage-making continue to be inadequate for Indigenous and emerging heritage aspirations.


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Ambivalent settlers: Rona Rangsch, Ambivaland: cultural ambivalence in Newfoundland, PhD dissertation, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2024

30Jun24

Abstract: This project revalues the often underrated concept of ambivalence as a distinct concept pregnant with creative potentialities and applies it to settler Newfoundland culture as a research lens. In the process, our understanding and image of the place are enriched by reinterpreting a collection of charged contexts, which have hitherto been considered little related, as belonging to a pervasive and potentially creative web of cultural ambivalence. Contexts studied include the European colonization of the island, the precariousness in Newfoundland outports, the Smallwood era’s sociopolitical tangle, clashes between resource exploitation and love of the land, settler Newfoundlanders’ non-singular colonial identity, and the place’s puzzling quality as both centre and periphery. In terms of research questions, the project asks what a meaningful and productive understanding of ambivalence looks like and how it can be used to develop a richer understanding of settler Newfoundland.1 Methodologically, the research is based on discourse analysis with a focus on problematization, abductive reasoning, transversality, and speculation. These approaches share the capacity to open alternative trajectories of reasoning through the radical questioning or active ignoring of existing explanatory systems. This tenor is imperative for a project that attempts to reshuffle both the conceptual and interpretive packs by using an undervalued concept (ambivalence) to re-map a jagged terrain (an array of tensions in settler Newfoundland). Conceptual key findings include the unambiguity of ambivalence and its overlap with creativity. Within the Newfoundland case study, the lens of cultural ambivalence challenges supposedly demarcated spheres of agency and power in both colonial and postcolonial spheres and exposes Newfoundlanders’ enhanced capacity for creativity. Moreover, it allows me to debunk a number of persistent myths and to provide others with actual content. Finally, by assembling a variety of contexts not studied in this constellation before under the umbrella of cultural ambivalence, I am able to identify correlations that have previously gone unnoticed or underappreciated. The resulting web of ambivalence provides a rhizomatic explanatory grid that establishes a creative facet of the place and exposes new leverage points for addressing cultural tensions. This recommends cultural ambivalence as a potent prism for borderlands with complex colonial histories more generally. 1Please note that, with the local settler society and culture as my object of study, my focus is on the island part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, where the large majority of the settler population resides.


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Still undoing the settler story: S. Rose Bigheart O’Leary, The Regenarrative: How to Change the Story in Order to Change the Future, MA dissertation, Dartmouth College, 2024

30Jun24

Abstract: In the era of Climate Change, many are concerned that the end of the Anthropocene, or the end of the era of human life on Earth, is upon us. Western European colonialism and its subsequent systems (settler-colonialism, colonial-capitalism, and globalization – sometimes termed “neocolonialism”) have all been implicated in contributing to unsustainable behaviors linked to accelerating climate change (Calvin et al., 2023). In searching for possible solutions, some have called for listening to Indigenous Peoples, citing ethics of sustainability found among many Indigenous cultures (Suzuki, 2010). However, the cultural products of settler-colonialism are still dominant in ways that do not allow for Indigenous worldviews to spread or be understood. This thesis will show how the narrative structures of settler-colonialism in the United States persist in cultural products (e.g. films, television, video games, journalism) in ways that silence nondominant voices, and specifically Indigenous worldviews. This problem persists even among media makers claiming allyship to Indigenous Peoples and causes. In order to actually learn from Indigenous Peoples, the narrative structures of storytelling must be shifted so that true diversity of thought may be portrayed. To shift away from settler-colonial behaviors that overtax the world, people must first be able to perceive and conceptualize alternatives to them.


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And worrying fantasies about being Indigenous: Paul Simard Smith, Kurtis Boyer, ‘The Métis Nation, Epistemic Injustice, and Self-Indigenization’, Pawaatamihk: Journal of Métis Thinkers, 1, 2, 2024

29Jun24

Abstract: This paper considers epistemic dimensions of injustices associated with settlers self-indigenization through false claims to being Métis. First, we provide an analytic characterization of the act of self-indigenization. Afterwards we spell out how confusions surrounding the meaning of the term ‘Métis’ generate lacunae in the social imagination of the dominant society in Canada. These lacunae make it more difficult for Métis people to explain to  the dominant society why claims based on self-identification alone are inadequate bases upon which to claim to be Métis. Finally, we highlighting steps taken by the Métis Nation to assert their identity through citizenship registries.


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Meanwhile, worrying fantasies about settler ‘heroes’: Scott T. Allison, Rick Hutchins, ‘Heroes of Space Exploration and Planetary Settlement’, in Scott T. Allison, James K. Beggan, George R. Goethals (eds), Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies, Springer, 2024

29Jun24

Excerpt: Future space explorers and planetary settlers will face unique, immense challenges. The heroism demanded of future colonizers of the Moon, Mars, and beyond transcends our conventional understanding of courage and sacrifice. These pioneers will embark on perilous journeys into the unknown, facing the harsh trials of extraterrestrial environments, isolation, and the relentless pursuit of survival. Heroism in this context encompasses the courage to defy the comfort and security of Earth, the resilience to endure the psychological toll of isolation, and the ingenuity to navigate uncharted territories. These intrepid individuals will be the architects of new societies, confronting the inherent risks of space exploration while grappling with the responsibility of establishing the foundations for humanity’s expansion into the cosmos. 


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Settler-determined Indigenous childhoods: Heidi Morrison (ed.), Lived Resistance against the War on Palestinian Children, University of Georgia Press, 2024

29Jun24

Description: Despite the increasing volume of scholarship that shows children as political actors, prior to this book, a cohesive framework was lacking that would more fully examine and express children’s relationship with political power. Rather than simply hitching children’s resistance to standard theories of resistance, Heidi Morrison seeks to meet children on their own terms. Through the case study of Palestinian children, contributors theorize children’s resistance as an embodied experience called lived resistance. A critical aspect of the study of lived resistance is not just documenting what children do but specifically how scholars approach the topic of children’s resistance. With Lived Resistance against the War on Palestinian Children, the authors account for the vessel (i.e., the body in flesh and mind) through which such resistance generates and operates. The diverse group of chapter authors examine Palestinian children’s art and media, imprisonment, parenting experiences, bereavement, neoliberalism, refugee camps, and protest movements as aspects of their collective and individual political power. Through these outlets, the book shows consistencies and contends that these children’s relationship to political power operates from an inclusive model of citizenship and is social justice oriented, symbolically oriented, and contingently based.


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Settler-determined Native American masculinities: Dianne Baumann, ‘Beyond Fistfights and Basketball: Reclaiming Native American Masculinity’, Humans, 4, 2, 2024, pp. 200-211

29Jun24

Abstract: Substantial and necessary research examining the violence perpetrated against Native women continues to flourish, while violence and masculinity studies focused on Native men draws little attention. Meanwhile the murder rate of Native men is three times higher than Native women, twice as high as white men, and occurs at the hands of police more often than any other U.S. racialized group per capita. Colonization divided ‘Christians’ (white) and ‘heathens’ (Native), with settler whites identifying Native men as wild and threatening. I suggest the construct of settler colonialism and the ‘toxic gendering’ of Native masculinity continues today and impacts Native men internally (psychologically) and externally (rationally), contributing to violence perpetrated against and by them. This paper is an interpretive analysis of “Scary Brown Man” and Reservation Blues as examined through the intersection of the toxic gendering bias intrinsic to settler colonialism. Alexie’s novel offers a depiction of ‘typical’ reservation life and the conflicting struggle to maintain a healthy Native identity, while Ross’s article brings real-life situations into the conversation, encouraging the entry of intersectional discourse around Native masculinity into the arena of gender/bias research as applied to settler colonial studies while questioning the role of identity politics within disciplines.


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