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Another strawman argument (if it is a ‘structure and not an event’, and therefore not only ‘a structure’, it is also a relationship and a process): Warren Bernauer, ‘Canadian settler colonialism: Structure, event, relationship, or process?’ Canadian Geographies, 2024

07Jul24

Abstract: Geography scholarship examining Canadian colonialism often draws upon concepts and
categories from the field of Settler Colonial Studies, including Patrick Wolfe’s definition of
settler colonialism as a “structure rather than an event.” In this brief intervention, I argue
that historical Marxist debates about structuralism and social class have important
lessons for the way geographers characterize Canadian colonialism today. The definition
of class as both relationship and process is especially relevant, because Indigenous
intellectuals and activists tend to speak about (de)colonization in similar terms. By
reframing Canadian colonialism as relationship and process rather than structure, we can
better engage Indigenous criticisms of Settler Colonial Studies, understandings of (de)
colonization, and epistemologies and ontologies.


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Settler gastrocolonialism in action: Evelyn Lambeth, ‘Settler Colonial Classifications of Edibility’, Gastronomica, 24, 2, 2024, pp. 43-57

06Jul24

Abstract: The pastoral economies introduced during the colonial invasion have radically transformed Australian diets, cultures, and ecosystems. Stolen land was tenured to settlers and emancipated convicts to develop profitable and productive enterprises for the British Empire. Land rights and animal care are intrinsically linked to modern food systems, yet there is a gap in Australian literature regarding the legacy of colonial pastoralism and its connection to current food systems. This essay questions how introduced species evolved to command the Australian diet. Wallabies and kangaroos were legally relegated to national emblems, and thus inedible. Their conditions of being, whether edible, iconic, or wild, were dictated by the Commonwealth Government. The taboo nature of these native marsupials leaves them largely unconsumed, and therefore, unprotected. Modern conditions of edibility are less concerned with physical metabolic matters, instead driven by historic cultural attitudes and political and economic motives. Nourishment was commodified. My research uses Tasmanian legal archives in conjunction with cookbooks and popular iconography to trace the historical legacies of foodways since the invasion. Scholarship around waste, sociology, ecology, and food justice and sovereignty are incorporated to consider how modern agricultural practices perpetuate violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and ecosystems. Modern agriculture affects every being on the planet, both human and more-than-human. My research goal is to encourage people to question their metabolic practices to ascertain how everyday acts of consumption implicate them within unjust systems. Though consumptive wallaby culling is legal, the industry remains privatized, and Indigenous Australians have little agency to influence how their native species are used, and who profits from their utility. By sharing these concerns with researchers from a broad range of disciplines, I hope to connect with individuals who can help to make future metabolic matters more inclusive, more ethical, and more sustainable.


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Settler gastrocolonialism on display: Zoe Tennant, ‘Terra Nullius on the Plate: Colonial Blindness, Restaurant Discourse, and Indigenous Cuisines’, in Shelley Boyd, Dorothy Barenscott (eds), Canadian Culinary Imaginations, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022

06Jul24

Excerpt: On any given night in a Canadian city, it is possible to eat at restaurants offering a wide variety of cuisines – from Moroccan to Vietnamese, from French to Sri Lankan. However, it is almost impossible to go to a restaurant that serves Indigenous cuisines. In Canada, there are foods that are considered “Indigenous” (taas guz, whipped soapalillie, and roe-on-kelp, to name a few), but one is hard pressed to find these dishes on a menu. French gastronomic writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s oft-quoted “Tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are” – better known as “you are what you eat” – sums up the basic tenet of the social science of food: that what we eat and the way we eat reflect wider cultural, social, and political processes. What if we were to flip this? What does it mean when a cuisine is not consumed? Cultural anthropologist Carolyn Morris, writing about the absence of Maori cuisine in restaurants in New Zealand, argues that restaurants are signifiers of the public visibility of cuisines and are indicators of capital. According to Morris, “the public culinascape can be read as a map of the field of race relations.” What do Morris’s remarks suggest about the culinary field, the restaurant culture, and the state of settler colonialism in Canada?


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Social work is settler social work: Jill Hoselton, ‘Implicated Subjects: Social Workers, Settler Colonialism, and the Quest for Non-innocence’, Canadian Social Work Review, 41, 1, 2024, pp. 113-132

06Jul24

Abstract: Drawing from Michael Rothberg’s (2019) concept of the “implicated subject,” this paper examines Canadian social work’s implication in settler colonialism from past to present through its role in Indigenous child removal from the Indian Residential Schools to the Sixties Scoop and contemporary child welfare. The “implicated subject” untangles social work from dominant discourses that position social workers as morally superior, innocent, and good, which prevents practitioners from seeing how their professional role perpetuates unintentional harm towards service-users. A practice of non-innocence is proposed, which centres the development of a critical consciousness among social workers regarding the profession’s implication in historical and contemporary harm towards Indigenous Peoples (and other marginalized populations) by way of settler colonial practices. This awareness positions practitioners as political actors with a responsibility to engage in political action dedicated towards social justice.


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Settler colonial PSYOPS: Desmond Hassing, Settler Dreams and Affective Warfare: The Communications Campaign that Formatted the United States of America, PhD dissertation, University of California San Diego / University of California Irvine, 2024

06Jul24

Abstract: “Settler Dreams and Affective Warfare: The Communications Campaign that Formatted the United States of America” proposes a methodology of analysis which (re)considers cultural products as intentional war messaging, or what is commonly referred to in military circles, as psychological operations (PSYOPS). By conducting a close reading of Indigenous representation, and the rhetoric that surrounded its production in the films, mascots, and comic books of the 20th and 21st century, this dissertation argues that the purpose of what we think of as Indian tropes was to further a wartime message of national identity creation, and further that cultural products are the best strategic weapon available to minoritarian subjects in the present for altering national identity formation.


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Indigenous parenting against settler colonialism: Danielle Bergevin, Chelsea Kelly, Kristine Heaney, ‘A collaborative approach to develop indigenous specific parenting education’, Family Court Review, 2024

06Jul24

Abstract: Discrimination against Indigenous peoples is ongoing and perpetuated by systemic structures such as Eurocentric educational systems that often require learners to suppress their Indigeneity and conform to the dominant culture. Previous attempts at incorporating Indigenous cultures and values into education have often perpetuated harmful and negative stereotypes to the detriment of Indigenous learners. Parenting education courses for separating or divorcing parents are designed to support emotional wellbeing and promote positive co-parenting relationships. While it is widely known that Indigenous worldviews vary from Western worldviews, there is little research on parenting education courses for Indigenous families and few culturally responsive programs designed for non-dominant cultures or offered in other languages. Walking in two worlds is a reality for Indigenous peoples; needing to conform to the dominant systems in society while also honoring their teachings and ways of being. This article describes how a parenting education course for Indigenous families was created by employing the principle of collaboration with full involvement of all participants resulting in a course that bridges the gap between two different worldviews.


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Late Spanish settler colonialism in Mindanao: Joshua Philip Castillo, ‘Unrealized Ambitions of Proyecto de Colonización: Exploring Spanish Colonial Projects and Identity in 1890s Mindanao’, TALA Kasaysayan, 7, 1, 2024

06Jul24

Abstract: Characterized by demands for reform and calls for revolution, Spanish colonial rule was perceived to be at its waning phase during its last decade in the Philippine historical memory. The Proyecto de colonización en Filipinas: Remitido por varios españoles residentes en Buenos Aires por conducto del Ministerio de Estado provides a contrarian response and a new perspective on Spain’s design in Mindanao, one of the many overlooked regions in Philippine historical studies during colonial period. This study aims to extract the historical narrative, uncover the authors’ intentions, and clarify the underlying ideology behind the colonial project outlined in the Proyecto de colonización. The 17-document folio, with additional context, reveals that Spanish immigrants in Argentina suffered from the political and economic aftereffects of the Baring crisis in South America. Seeking to pursue their economic aspirations under the tutelage of Spanish protection, they ask the Madrid government’s permission to migrate to its overseas territories. In 1895, the news of the Spanish victory in Marawi inspired various personalities in Buenos Aires to submit proposals for an agricultural colony in Mindanao by acquisition of land favorable for settlement. Nevertheless, analysis of the documents written by the authors in the folio reveals their intention to implement settler colonialism in the Philippines, a departure from the existing Spanish policy of imperial and commercial exploitation. Even though the proposals failed to seek approval for implementation, early perspectives were provided of what was to come when Christian settlers arrived in Mindanao. The study demonstrates that the 1890s Philippines transcends the age of revolution and highlights the understudied nature of settler colonialism in the country, both in the hands of foreigners and fellow Filipinos.


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‘You have died’ (settler colonialism beyond the grave): Sarah Keyes, American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023

06Jul24

Description: In popular mythology, the Overland Trail is typically a triumphant tale, with plucky easterners crossing the Plains in caravans of covered wagons. But not everyone reached Oregon and California. Some 6,600 migrants perished along the way and were buried where they fell, often on Indigenous land. As historian Sarah Keyes illuminates, their graves ultimately became the seeds of U.S. expansion. By the 1850s, cholera epidemics, ordinary diseases, and violence had remade the Trail into an American burial ground that imbued migrant deaths with symbolic power. In subsequent decades, U.S. officials and citizens leveraged Trail graves to claim Native ground. Meanwhile, Indigenous peoples pointed to their own sacred burial grounds to dispute these same claims and maintain their land. These efforts built on anti-removal campaigns of the 1820s and 30s, which had established the link between death and territorial claims on which the significance of the Overland Trail came to rest. In placing death at the center of the history of the Overland Trail, American Burial Ground offers a sweeping and long overdue reinterpretation of this historic touchstone. In this telling, westward migration was a harrowing journey weighed down by the demands of caring for the sick and dying. From a tale of triumph comes one of struggle, defined as much by Indigenous peoples’ actions as it was by white expansion. And, finally, from a migration to the Pacific emerges instead a trail of graves. Graves that ultimately undergirded Native dispossession.


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Settler New Peasants? Tammi Jonas, Catie Gressier, ‘Australia’s new peasantry: towards a politics and practice of custodianship on agroecology-oriented farms’, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2024

06Jul24

Abstract: Since settlement, colonial values of productivity and improvement have transformed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Country into a site of agricultural extraction. We examine the nascent peasantisation movement in Australia driven by small-scale farmers rejecting colonial capitalist agriculture within an agroecological transition. Our case studies explore how new peasants seek guidance from First Peoples and peasants in developing a politics and practice of custodianship, while fostering degrowth economies. Custodianship, we argue, offers a theoretical and practical framework for the agroecological transition in settler contexts through foregrounding social and ecological reparations across scales from the farm to global food sovereignty activism.


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Healing away from settlers: Edward Anthony Polanco, Healing Like Our Ancestors: The Nahua Tiçitl, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Central Mexico, 1535–1660, The University of Arizona Press, 2024

06Jul24

Description: Offering a provocative new perspective, Healing Like Our Ancestors examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Nahua healers in central Mexico and how their practices have been misconstrued and misunderstood in colonial records. Early colonial Spanish settlers defined, assessed, and admonished Nahua titiçih (healing specialists) and tiçiyotl (healing knowledge) in the process of building a society in Mexico that mirrored Iberia. Nevertheless, Nahua survivance (intergenerational knowledge transfer) has allowed communities to heal like their ancestors through changes and adaptations. Edward Anthony Polanco draws from diverse colonial primary sources, largely in Spanish and Nahuatl (the Nahua ancestral language), to explore how Spanish settlers framed titiçih, their knowledge, and their practices within a Western complex. Polanco argues for the usage of Indigenous terms when discussing Indigenous concepts and arms the reader with the Nahuatl words to discuss central Mexican Nahua healing. In particular, this book emphasizes the importance of women as titiçih and highlights their work as creators and keepers of knowledge. These vital Nahua perspectives of healing—and how they differed from the settler narrative—will guide community members as well as scholars and students of the history of science, Latin America, and Indigenous studies.


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