settler colonial studies blog

Stonefaced settlers II: Katrina-Eve N. Manica, ‘Imperial Canada as a training ground for empire’, Sculpture Journal, 33, 2, 2024

31May24

Abstract: This article uses decolonial methods to examine four monuments in St Paul’s Cathedral which are associated with the settler-colonial state of Canada. It also demonstrates strategies for Indigenizing the pantheon to reassert viewership beyond imperial narratives which have been inscribed into British and Canadian histories. The four monuments are George Edward Wade’s bust John A. Macdonald (c. 1881–92), Sir Richard Westmacott’s monument to Major-General Isaac Brock (c. 1815), Carlo Panati’s monument to John Hawley Glover (c. 1886–87), and Francis Derwent Wood’s monument to John Eardley Wilmot Inglis (1896). Through these monuments, the article wrestles with, and troubles, the mythos of ‘Canadian’ identity as written into settler-colonial narratives and the ongoing pressures of colonialism throughout Canada. Importantly, the article articulates Indigenous presences – the Shawnee, Inuit and Mi’kmaq – and perseverances at the core of each monument, and further demonstrates that the presence of Black refugees in Nova Scotia and the Hausa people of West Africa are key to understanding and witnessing these monuments in St Paul’s Cathedral.

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Stonefaced settlers I: Kate Nichols, ‘Monuments to ‘settlement’: Australia in St Paul’s Cathedral, 1888–1913’, Sculpture Journal, 33, 2, 2024

31May24

Abstract: This article conceptualizes the relatively small and visually modest presence of Australia in St Paul’s as monuments to British ‘settlement’, rather than invasion. It examines three plaques to politicians and colonial Governors General, and the presence of Australia in the larger-scale memorial to the South African War (1899–1901). I argue that these monuments naturalized the idea of Australia as a place of peaceful White settlement, contributed to the formation of global White settler identities, and relocated violence and warfare primarily to the African continent. I employ Goenpul woman and feminist scholar Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s notion of ‘white possessive logics’ to explore how these monuments work to legitimize Indigenous dispossession in the heart of the British metropole.

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A moral economy of care against settler colonialism: Megan Muller da Silva, ‘A moral economy of care: How clinical discourses perpetuate Indigenous-specific discrimination and racism in western Canadian emergency departments’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2024

30May24

Abstract: Recent research has unveiled the pervasiveness with which Indigenous patients are subjected to racialized stereotypes within the Canadian health system. Because discrimination in health care is associated with poor health outcomes and undertreated illness, there is a need to better understand how racism is perpetuated systemically in order to rectify the policies, practices, and attitudes that enable it. This article outlines a moral economy of care in emergency departments in western Canada by exploring the discourses that medical professionals employ when discussing cases of medical racism. While these discourses respond to the everyday realities of working in hospitals, they are also rooted in the colonial genealogy of health care in Canada and perpetuated by neoliberal shifts in health care services.
By exploring the moral economy of care, this article sheds light on the way pervasive discourses contribute to reproducing and circulating Indigenous-specific racism and its role in decision-making.

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After the settlers leave: Dorothee Apfel, ‘Connecting Memory with Transnational Space Making: The Case of German-Kyrgyz Relations’, Central Asian Affairs, 2024

29May24

Abstract: In the 19th century, Mennonites of German origin began to found numerous settlements in Central Asia. Of the once large number of German settlers, only a few remain in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan today, most having emigrated to Germany after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the village of Rot-Front in Kyrgyzstan is an exception: there are still German-Mennonite families living there who maintain a relationship with those who once left. The aim of this article is to investigate these relations with regard to the creation of transnational spaces. Memory can play a central role in the process of formation of such transnational spaces. This article explores these processes through the lens of cultural geography, applying insights of theories of practice to the study of memory landscapes using the case of the village of Rot-Front in Kyrgyzstan. The study is based on a case study approach, including field observation, qualitative interviews, biographical records and discourse analysis. The results of the study unfold in four ways: First, the formation of a collective identity is the main characteristic associated with the village of Rot-Front. Second, the role of artifacts play a minor role in memory practices. Third, the individual memory of Rot-Front is idealized by today’s ‘senior’ generation and fourth, the close exchange between those who emigrated and those who stayed is the basis of a transnational social space of Rot-Front, which will exist only as long as the generations have a personal bond with Rot-Front.

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Wikisettlers! Kyle Keeler, ‘Wikipedia’s Indian problem: settler colonial erasure of native American knowledge and history on the world’s largest encyclopedia’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2024

28May24

Abstract: This article details settler colonial erasure of Native American and Indigenous histories, knowledges, and philosophies on Wikipedia. I show that long-time Wikipedia editors follow the settler colonial logic of elimination to omit Native histories from Wikipedia’s American history pages; block Native and allied editors from adding scholarship that centers Native experience; and ban Native and allied editors from the website so that settlers can lay claim to digital space. To do so, I concentrate on Wikipedia’s United States and American history pages, and I detail editor discussions regarding Native histories on Wikipedia’s talk pages, noticeboards, and off-Wikipedia message boards where editors congregate. I supplement this information with interviews of Wikipedia editors engaged in editing these topics. I argue that digital erasure on Wikipedia is done in the service of claiming digital space, much like settler erasure in physical space is done to claim land. I ultimately provide suggestions for the Wikimedia foundation to combat settler colonial erasure on Wikipedia. This study contributes to recent work in the digital humanities that clarifies historical manipulation for public consumption by Wikipedia editors, and it provides key insights into the ways that settler colonialism manifests in digital space.

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Again, on settler-Decolonizing Palestine: Ajay Parasram, ‘The refrain of settler-colonialism in Decolonising Palestine’, International Politics, 2024

28May24

Excerpt: Decolonizing Palestine offers a deep dive into the everyday politics and governance of the Gaza Strip in particular, and the operation of settler colonialism more generally. Sen’s ethnography brings to light everyday frustrations, contradictions, and resiliencies in Gaza while offering important methodological considerations and reflections about conducting work of this nature as a non-Palestinian, anti/post colonial researcher. I leave analysis and consideration of Sen’s work on Gaza and Hamas to people better qualified and attuned to the local context than I am, and instead focus on the theoretical implications the book poses for the territoriality of settler-colonialism at a time when the “method” of settler-colonization is growing in popularity and usage in post-colonial places. In this way, I am engaging Sen’s work as an anti/post colonial fellow traveller who researches colonial state formation in both postcolonial South Asia (specifically Sri Lanka and India) and settler-colonial Canada. Consequently I also grapple with some of the same challenges of originating from post and settler colonial territory in Trinidad while working from Canada.

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Germany’s settler colonialism: Gert Krell, ‘Germany, Israel’s Security, and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism: Shadows from the Past and Current Tensions’, Analyse & Kritik, 46, 1, 2024, pp. 141-164

28May24

Abstract: The Gaza War is a watershed moment not only in the Middle East. It has also increased political divisions in Germany, where Israel’s security and the fight against anti-Semitism are part of its historical legacy and political and moral identity. Incidents of anti-Semitism have increased dramatically, as have overdrawn accusations of it. An analysis of controversies about the definition of anti-Semitism, about the use of the term apartheid for the situation in the West Bank, of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), and particularly the characterization of Israel as a settler-colonial state shows how difficult it has become to maintain a fair, honest, and frank discussion considering different points of view. The current crisis should be used as an opportunity for Germany to, on the one hand, face the unavoidable contradictions in its responsibilities stemming from the crimes of its Nazi past and, on the other hand, come to grips not only with Arab and Iranian terrorism and eliminationist rhetoric but also with the deficiencies in Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. Germany’s new leitmotiv ought to be: ‘Between the River and the Sea, Jews and Arabs should be free’.

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The indigene’s settler colonialist dilemma: Thilo van der Haegen, ‘The Vancouver socioecological fix: indigenous real-estate development as the city’s imagination of sustainability, affordability, and reconciliation’, Urban Geography, 2024

27May24

Abstract: In Vancouver, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations are constructing several large real-estate developments that will deeply impact the Nations and the city itself. Developments such as Sen̓ákw, Heather Lands, and Jericho Lands envision the construction of thousands of new apartments that will yield billions of Canadian dollars in profits from the Vancouver housing market. This paper is concerned with the enabling conditions for such developments found within the city of Vancouver’s planning policies and underlying geographical imaginations. Through the application of the “socioecological fix”, the paper describes how Vancouver’s planning policies aim at fixing problems of sustainability, housing affordability, and reconciliation based on specific geographical
imaginations. This results in the conceptualization of reconciliation as the profit-oriented construction of green and affordable realestate. In light of scholarship that highlights the intertwined nature of colonialism and capitalism, the paper raises the predicament that the reconciliatory approach conceptualized in city strategies and actively pursued by the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh is envisioning reconciliation as the reproduction of Vancouver realestate capitalism. How should scholarship contend with reconciliatory approaches that are both reproductive of settlercolonial capitalism, while also offering reconciliation in a concrete form?

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The communist’s settler colonial dilemma: Luccas Gissoni, Paulo Roberto de Macedo Soares Oliveira Pires, Leonardo Griz Carvalheira, ‘Development Paths in a Settler Society: The Challenges of the Communist Movement in Brazil’, Agrarian South, 2024

27May24

Abstract: This article addresses the challenges faced by the Communist movement in Brazil by revisiting the contradictions inherited from a colonial mode of accumulation. This was originally a class system based on slavery and composed of the metropolitan colonizer, the settler, and the colonized class. After independence in 1822, which entailed a settler rebellion against the metropolitan colonizer and the continuing exploitation of the colonized, the settlers reproduced the colonial mode of accumulation internally and oversaw the transition to a capitalist mode of production. An interclass, bourgeois–labor alliance occurred in the mid-twentieth century but was limited to the ranks of the settlers and underpinned by the myth of “racial democracy.” It included a degree of confrontation with imperialism coupled with industrial development but reproduced the colonial mode of accumulation internally. This article sheds light on the contradictions that followed, including the military regime installed in 1964 and the neo-colonial transition in the 1990s, under finance capital. In light of the bourgeoisie’s shifting alliances at the expense of the sovereign aspirations of the working people, an interclass alliance has become impossible. Only a truly popular political project is capable of liberating the nation and that is the only one the Communists should espouse.

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First, past the ‘post’: Shampa Biswas, ‘Unsettling settler colonialism: anticolonialism with and against postcolonialism’, International Politics, 2024

27May24

Excerpt: The term postcolonialism has a long and contested history. Indeed, there was at one time an active debate within the field of postcolonial studies on the insertion of a hyphen between the “post” and the “colonialism” of the term. Some argued that the absence of a hyphen mistakenly suggested the end of colonialism, thus making it more palatable in the West. Others suggested that that same absence foregrounded the continuity into the present of the relations and practices of classical colonialism, despite the latter’s formal demise. Thus, there is a sense in which hyphenating the two terms honors the contextual specificity of contemporary states trying to carve out a post-independence national identity after the formal dissolution of European empires, while removing the hyphen may erase the ways that formal independence can mask the colonial continuities that continue to shape the present. Implicit in this debate is the question of how much and what kind of rupture the formal departure of colonial rulers provides in the liberation of the colonized. But also implicit are two much less scrutinized assumptions: First, that the post of colonialism can only occur after the departure of the colonizers, which, second, is also the point at which anticolonialism, whose aim is to evict the colonizer, ceases. Rejecting both these assumptions, Somdeep Sen’s Decolonizing Palestine takes up as its subject of study the complicated relationship between the “post” and the “anti” of colonialism in the context of ongoing settler colonialism. What if postcolonialism and anticolonialism remain deeply imbricated, before and after the departure of the colonizers? How does that relationship manifest itself in the conditions of ongoing settler colonialism? What, in such conditions, does real liberation from colonialism look like?

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