settler colonial studies blog

Russian resettlers in unlikely places: Stepan Serdiukov, ‘The Russians ‘Americanize’ Hawai‘i: Russian Molokan Migrants and the Failed Labour Domiciling Experiment in Kaua‘i, 1905-6’, Journal of Pacific History, 2024

19Nov24

Abstract: Drawing on the archival correspondence between the parties involved and the English-language newspaper coverage, this article analyses the failed scheme to settle 110 Russian Molokan migrants in Kaua‘i in 1905–6. Supported by a part of Hawai‘i’s sugar planter elite, the experiment was to provide a blueprint for gradually replacing the predominantly Asian labour force with a White one, thus opening the door to a decisive ‘Americanization’ of the archipelago. I argue that the myth of the Molokans as model colonists, originating in the South Caucasus (where they had aided the Russian colonization effort in their capacity as settlers from the 1840s on), intersected with American settler mythologies. The article also discusses reasons for the experiment’s eventual demise, such as the Molokans’ struggles with unfamiliar climate conditions and agricultural technology and the resistance of the incumbent Asian and European labour force on the plantation where the Molokans settled.

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Science fiction at the end of the settler Americas: Caleb Benjamin Green Delorme, The Initial Frontier: Science Fiction Between Argentina and the United States, PhD dissertation Rutgers University, 2024

19Nov24

Abstract: This dissertation describes how the specific settler-colonial histories of the United States and Argentina led to similar types of counter-colonial science fiction taking shape in both countries. In Argentina, as opposed to parts of Latin America where ideas of racial mestizaje are more dominant, colonial discourse has exalted a “pure” whiteness that would “civilize” the frontier by murdering indigenous people outright. This idea has much in common with genocidal notions of Manifest Destiny in the United States. The dismal commonality of these two colonial discourses led, in turn, to both countries appropriating the style of European proto-science fiction — which tended to allegorize and rearrange the key terms of colonial discourse — in parallel ways. While the majority of this science fiction tended to support the settler-colonial ideology of Argentina and the U.S., there were also authors in both countries that used the genre to subvert the frontier ideology of their respective nations. The focus of my analysis is the latter, more subversive type of writing. In describing the shape this science fiction took in Argentina and the U.S., I hope to contribute to documenting the prehistory of the anticolonial and antiracist science fiction that has risen to prominence since the 1990s, as well as to highlight how certain formal features of the genre become salient in geographically specific colonial contexts.

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Settlers and no vitamins: Joris Delanghe, Marijn Speeckaert, Marc De Buyzere, ‘Climate change, vitamin D and the Viking abandonment in Greenland’, Hormone Molecular Biology and Clinical Investigation, 2024

18Nov24

Excerpt: Recent interest in climate change has fostered researchregarding the role of dietary vitamin D and the rise in sea-level rise in Southwest Greenland as a contributor to Vikingabandonment. Even in Scandinavian populations withpreexisting advanced adaptation to living at high latitudes,the availability of vitamin D is an important factor deter-mining the possibility of successful migration. Long-termmortality due to vitamin D deficiency and inbreedingeventually led to the discontinuation of the Viking settle-ments in Greenland. The skeletons which have beenunearthed in the Brattahlíð Viking settlement (Greenland)are very informative in this respect. Initially, many settlerswere taller than 1.80 m. Vikings hardly changed during thefirst few generations after their arrival. However, later, theeffects of inbreeding began to manifest at increasing rates.Skeletons from the late 14th to early 15th century demon-strated that men were 1.55–1.70 m tall, and the averageheight of women was only 1.40 m. Spine curvature, defor-mation of the limbs, narrowed pelvis, rickets, and osteo-malacia, and pathological fractures were found in manyskeletons. Women with pelvis pathology were destined to diein childbirth. High infant mortality and short lifespanwere characteristic of that time. Norlund stated:“Powerless handful of individuals debilitated by diseases,scrubby and ugly, that’s all that was left of them”.

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Settler returns, with a twist: Adrian De Leon, ‘The settler homeland: racial violence, frontier colonialism, and Filipino repatriation’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2024

18Nov24

Abstract: On March 1938, representatives from the Philippine Commonwealth and Filipino American community organizations organized the First Official Filipino National Convention in Seattle. A committee proposed to send their less-educated kababayan (countrymen) to the Philippines to colonize Mindanao, the archipelago’s Moro (Muslim) and Lumad (non-Muslim and non-Christian Indigenous) South. For Filipino American leaders, state expansion into the archipelago’s south was a project of recuperating the utility and respectability of destitute Filipino migrant men, and thus, for the growth of the provisional nation itself. By following Filipino repatriation schemes within migrant communities, and their relationship with the Philippine state’s aspirations to expand into the south, I argue that Filipino diasporic nationalism – the consolidation of migrants’ affiliations not with their regions and hometowns, but with a bourgeois patriotism that lays claim to the entire Philippine archipelago – constitutively imagined the ‘home country’ as a settler homeland, a simultaneous place of homeward return as well as economic development and conquest. Probing the intersections between Asian American history, Southeast Asian statecraft, and settler colonial studies, I critical reconsider two fundamental questions in Asian migrant life: Where exactly is the home country—and what does it mean to ‘go back to where you came from’?

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Late neosettler colonialism: Max Ajl, ‘Settler-colonialism in the Late Neocolonial Period’, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 2024

17Nov24

Abstract: This essay discusses settler-colonialism in Palestine and the world system during late neocolonialism. It offers a materialist methodology for interpreting settler-colonial social formations, showing the linkage between settler-colonialism, class, imperialism, and world accumulation. It then considers how race continues to structure local reactions and condition local and international attempts at transformation. It concludes with some reflections on contemporary orientations to Palestine in the periphery, especially within racialized social formations.

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The mobility of settler tourists: Firenze Leem, ‘Mobility and Immobility and the Indigenous “Sacralized” Land in Australia: From the Settler Colonial Past to the Decolonial Future of Indigenous Tourism to Uluru’, in Maximiliano E. Korstanje, Vanessa GB Gowreesunkar (eds), Anthropology of Tourism: Exploring the Social and Cultural Intersection, Apple Academic Press, 2024

17Nov24

Abstract: Australia globally promotes itself as a country of diversity, immigration, and tourism, which implies that modern mobilities and travel have been actively occurring in the country. In other words, national branding in Australia cannot be separated from the modern concepts of mobility. Modern mobility and travel to and within Australia, however, can be traced back to the late 19^th century, when settler colonialization started in Australia. In other words, mobility and travel were keys to the history of Australian nation-state building, even before multi-racial immigrants started to compose the diversity and the tourist industry flourished in Australia. In this chapter, Indigenous tourism to Uluru, considered one of the most appealing tours in the Australian tourist industry, in the colonial past, post-settlement current, and decolonial future will be mainly dealt with. Exploring the tourism at Uluru in a time-linear structure, the chapter 90will further discover how the nation-state building, white Australian nationalism, and socio-political circumstances of Australia have been entangled with Indigenous tourism, with concepts of “othering” and “outsiders inside.” Tracking back to the settler colonialist era and reflecting on the current limits of Indigenous tourism, a decolonial and sustainable future of Uluru tourism will be imagined.

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Settlers cropping up: Gabi Kirk, ‘”A fairly good crop for white men”: The political ecology of agricultural science and settler colonialism between the US and Palestine’, Journal of Political Ecology, 2024

17Nov24

Abstract: From 1919 through the early 1950s, agricultural scientists affiliated with the University of California and agricultural scientists setting up settlements in Mandatory Palestine traveled between California and Palestine on a series of research trips. Building on conversations in historical political ecology and critical political ecologies of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, this article sets out to answer, how was agricultural science part of the project of settler colonialism in both California and Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century? Through an analysis of archival materials–field notes, professional and personal correspondence, and scholarly and popular media publications by US and European Jewish Zionist scientists—I argue that these scientists naturalized and made universal racial hierarchies through transnational technoscientific collaboration. US and Zionist scientists engaged in exchange and debate in two topics: over the proper physical organization of and location of farms, and over the concept of carrying capacity of the land of historic Palestine. In both, agricultural science was used as an objective reason to elevate Western ideologies of proper cultivation and capitalist yield. This justified the dispossession of Palestinians from their land because they were “poor stewards.” This historical case study holds implications for contemporary issues around land and population by Zionists in Israel today, and related debates in global sustainable development at large.

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NEPA settler colonialism: Michelle L. Edwards, ‘Resisting settler colonialism: comments from tribes on NEPA “modernization”‘, Environmental Sociology, 2024

15Nov24

Abstract: In 1969, the United States passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which became a model for environmental policies across the globe. These regulations were intended to improve federal agency actions by bringing information on social and environmental impacts into decision-making. In 2020, the United States Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) drastically changed, or in their terms, ‘modernized’ NEPA regulations. Critics have called these changes socially and environmentally harmful. Indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by changes to the NEPA process; thus, I argue that it is critical that we consider the viewpoints of Tribal-affiliated organizations and individuals on these changes. I analyze the officially submitted comments from Tribal-affiliated organizations and individuals on the 2020 NEPA rule changes. I provide quantitative and qualitative data demonstrating views on 1) the rulemaking process, 2) five specific NEPA changes, and 3) the proposed changes overall. Using these data, I explore how the NEPA changes represent continued settler colonialism, and how these comments represent a form of resistance.

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Firing up the resistance: Sherena Razek, ‘Fire as Elemental Intifada in Colonized Palestine’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 2024

15Nov24

Abstract: In August 2021, wildfires erupted in the southwestern hills of Jerusalem, engulfing and ultimately destroying up to 20,000 dunums of pine forests planted by Israeli settlers. The burned landscape revealed a stunning vista of terraced hillsides, a visual testament to the existence of Palestinian land-based relations hidden under the camouflaging foliage. In this experimental visual essay, fire is postulated as an elemental force of Indigenous Palestinian resistance to the ongoing conditions of environmental and human Nakba imposed on Palestinian lands and bodies under Zionist settler colonialism. Fire, as a transformative and atmosphere-altering medium, is thus theorized and visualized as elemental intifada.

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Indigenous highway: Stuart Taylor, Retracing the Keowee Trail: A Deep Map of the Cherokee Path in the History of the Carolinas, Cascade Books, 2024

15Nov24

Description: In Retracing the Keowee Trail, the author tells the story of the Cherokee Path that connected the low country of colonial Carolina with the mountain homeland of the Cherokee Nation. The Keowee Trail was a busy trading route for a burgeoning deerskin trade. Along this same path, epidemic disease made its way inexorably from the colony toward Cherokee society, reducing their population by more than half. Along this path, warfare was waged in both directions, by Cherokee war parties determined to defend their homeland and by settlers like the author’s Scots Irish ancestors, evermore hungry for land. That ancestral history is an entry point into this larger narrative. A “deep map” approach to the Keowee Trail will hold together multiple lines of perspective, including memoir, family history, migration patterns, religious history, Indigenous wisdom, trauma theory, ghost stories, mythology, archeology, geography, the watersheds, and the flora and fauna of the Southern Appalachians.

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