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Indigenous and French? Elliot Mur, ‘Indigenous Peoples in French Guiana: will France ever recognize their right to self-determination, land, territory, biodiversity and Free, Prior and Informed Consent?’ Student Journal for the Study of Human Rights, 1, 2024

17May24

Abstract: French Guiana, located in South America, hosts over 10,000 Indigenous Peoples, principally the Kali’na Tileuyu, Lokono and Pahikweneh, Wayãpi, Teko and Wayana people. Despite making up around 4% of the total population, Indigenous Peoples in French Guiana continue to face systematic challenges in being able to fully enjoy their human rights and rights as Indigenous Peoples. As an overseas territory of France, French Guiana falls under the governance of France and is fully integrated as an overseas department, separate from other overseas territories such as New Caledonia. This full integration has classified Indigenous Peoples as French People, making it not only difficult to get estimates of the actual number of Indigenous Peoples in French Guiana as the French Constitution prohibits ethnic statistics, but also prevent the ability of Indigenous Peoples to obtain their right to self-determination and control over their own land as provided in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Therefore, this paper will discuss the violations of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples committed by France that hinders their attainment to their fundamental freedoms and basic human rights. To do so, this paper will firstly begin by discussing the implementation of the UNDRIP in French Guiana in reference to several articles. In explaining the various articles, it will demonstrate how the French government’s recent actions continue to lead to the destruction of Indigenous territories and threaten their survival. Moreover, this paper will focus on articles 3, 10, 25, 29 which pertain to the right to self-determination, the right to land and territories, and the right to protect biodiversity. These rights alongside the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) should allow Indigenous Peoples to exercise control over decisions that essentially affect not only their way of life but also their existence, particularly considering the history of Indigenous Peoples that have frequently been the “first victims of development activities.”


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Artful settlers: Jacob Johnson, Taylor Mullins, ‘Knowledge between Romanticism and Reverence: German-American Perceptions of Native Americans through the Art of Friedrich Richard Petri’, Migrant Knowledge, 02/05/24

17May24

Excerpt: In 1847, John O. Meusebach was seeking to set up a peace treaty with the Native American tribe, the Penateka Comanches. Meusebach’s negotiation of a peace treaty with them was crucial to the success of the German settlement project in Texas, spearheaded by the Mainzer Adelsverein for which Meusebach served as a commissioner-general. Ultimately, the treaty sought to ensure the settlers’ safety and regulated trade relations between the two parties.1 However, entering Comanche territory was risky as one could not foresee how the Comanches would react to settlers crossing into their territory. Hence, Meusebach’s knowledge of and diplomatic skills with the Comanches were critical. He gained these from three sources, in particular: Meusebach’s predecessor as commissioner-general, Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, the colonial director of Fredericksburg, Friedrich Armand Strubberg, and noted geologist Ferdinand Roemer, who was part of the expedition into native territory in early January 1847; all provided oral and written reports that contributed to Meusebach’s knowledge of these Native Americans.


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Sexed and settler colonial: Selina Wijesooriya, ‘Unravelling the Nexus: Gender, Sexuality, and Settler Colonialism in Palestine-Israel’, The Security Distillery, 06/04/24

16May24

Abstract: This article undertakes a comprehensive examination of the intricate intersections between gender, sexuality, and settler colonialism within the context of Palestine-Israel dynamics. Drawing upon insights from Palestinian studies and queer theory, it delves into the multifaceted manifestations of pinkwashing and homonationalism, critically analysing their implications. Through in-depth exploration and nuanced discourse, it navigates the complexities of Palestinian queer activism, resistance strategies, and the challenges faced in post-Oslo Palestine. Ultimately, it envisions a future where intersectional struggles for liberation and social justice prevail.


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And yet forgetting settler colonialism! Colin Shindler (ed.), Routledge Handbook on Zionism, Routledge, 2024

16May24

Description: This Handbook, the first of its kind, provides an in- depth examination of the evolution, ideology, history and culture of Zionism and its various movements. Distancing itself from the slogans and cliches of advocacy, the volume provides much-needed context and background on the emergence of Zionism. The Handbook is divided into eight parts – with contributions from some forty of the world’s leading scholars on Zionism –to elucidate its various strands. These include underrepresented areas such as Zionism in the Arab World before the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionism and Marxism, the emergence of the Zionist Right, the language war between Hebrew and Yiddish, the struggle for Jewish women’s suffrage, the poetry of Lea Goldberg, and Zionism in emerging new Jewish communities in locations like Papua New Guinea, Guatemala and Zimbabwe. Another section on Zionism in repressive states stretches from an examination of Zionism in Hitler’s Germany to the Ayatollahs’ Iran today; from subterranean Zionism in Stalin’s Russia to apartheid South Africa. The volume concludes by examining current issues, including the relationship between evangelicals and Zionism in the US, and the representation of Zionism in the age of the internet. Providing a sweeping overview of Zionism in its many forms, the volume will appeal to students, researchers and general readers interested in Jewish studies in the Middle East and beyond, as well as those seeking to understand the roots of contemporary Israel.


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Indigenous in another colony: Maurice Jr. Labelle, ‘Re-Presenting Palestine Sami Hadawi and the Palestinian Revolution in Canada’, in Jeremy Wildeman, M. Muhannad Ayyash (eds), Canada as a Settler Colony on the Question of Palestine, University of Alberta Press, 2024

16May24

Excerpt: Sami Hadawi (1904–2004) was no stranger to Western misrepresentations of the land of Palestine and its Indigenous Arab population. In fact, he dedicated most of his life to re-orienting a global Zionist program and its imperial ways of seeing, perpetuated in the Canadian media and buttressed by Ottawa, that dehumanized Palestinians like himself.


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The first Australian settler frontier (thank you Lyndall): Lyndall Ryan, ‘Australia’s Tasman Wars: Colonial Australia and Conflict in New Zealand, 1800–1850 by Craig Wilcox (review)’, New Zealand Journal of History, 58, 1, 2024, pp. 143-144

14May24

Excerpt: The renewed interest by Australian historians in colonial Australia’s involvement in the New Zealand Wars has inspired military historian Craig Wilcox, whose previous work includes Red Coat Dreaming (2009), to interrogate the Tasman frontier from the perspective of the Colony of New South Wales between 1788 and 1850. He contends that during this period, the maritime frontier was more important economically to New South Wales than the land frontier. Securing food from New Zealand for the rapidly growing colony, as well as engaging in sealing and whaling on the South Island and in Bass Strait, brought great wealth to Sydney traders, enabling them to bankroll the more volatile sheep and cattle industries on the inland frontier. Despite missionary endeavours in New Zealand, Wilcox argues that the Tasman frontier was a site of increasing violence between the Sydney traders and Māori communities, exacerbated by the increasing availability of firearms for purchase in Sydney.


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The real estate of settler colonialism: Julien Migozzi, ‘Maps, Apps, and Race: The Market as a Theoretical Machine’, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 2024

14May24

Abstract: My commentary situates Desiree Fields’ lecture within a long-standing movement that, paying attention to real estate data and techniques of property, turned the housing market into a theoretical machine. I understand her intervention as a fourth and pivotal conceptual moment in the study of housing markets and inequalities for the discipline of geography, for it brings racial capitalism and settler colonialism as theoretical starting points to analyse the political economy of housing in the era of digital property technologies. As such, her lecture opens up a welcome, ambitious, yet also uncertain terrain to advance global urban theory under platform capitalism and stimulate relational approaches in housing studies. Discussing the regularities through which race, technology and property shape housing and wealth inequalities across variegated sites of market-making provides a conceptual horizontality that acknowledges the United States as a testing ground, rather than a ground truth, for the production of geographical knowledge.


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Social welfare as a settler tool: Ashraf Othman Bader, Asem Khalil, ‘Colonial Paternalism under Israeli Military Rule (1967-1977): Social Welfare as a Case’, Omran, 48, 2024

14May24

Abstract: This paper examines the colonial paternalistic system during the first decade of Israeli military rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, along with its legal and financial framework and forms of resistance. Drawing on new archival material from sessions of the Israeli ministries’ directors–general committee and records of Israeli military orders, in addition to interviews, the article illustrates how the Israeli social welfare system aimed to cement policies of control, regulation, and exploitation of the Palestinian population. This included forcing Palestinians to financial transactions and purchasing Israeli subsidized goods from the Israeli market, while simultaneously portraying itself as a caring guardian of their interests. The study helps enrich the theoretical debate on the concept of settler colonialism in Palestine.


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Soviet indigeneities and the end of the Cold War: Naomi Caffee, ‘Indigenous Internationalism and the Art of Recognition: A Soviet Trace on a Global Stage’, Comparative Literature Studies, 61, 2, 2024, pp. 221-245

14May24

Abstract: This article explores the contributions of Soviet writers to global discourses of Indigenous rights. The author focuses on the work of three writers, Yeremei Aipin (Khanty, b. 1948), Vladimir Sangi (Nivkh, b. 1935), and Yury Vella (Nenets, 1948–2013), as they entered into transnational Indigenous movements and navigated a rapidly changing political landscape in the final years of the Soviet Union. The author argues that they engaged in a complex “art of recognition,” working across genres and modalities in order to reckon with legacies of colonialism and usher in new visions of identity and political sovereignty. This approach highlights the Soviet Union as a locus for international congresses and solidarity movements, such as the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement, the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders, and the 1990 Sacred Run for Land and Life, led by American Indian Movement cofounder Dennis Banks. Ultimately, an Indigenous-centered approach to the end of the Cold War provides a counterbalance to prevailing narratives of this era, which cast the ascendance of a Western-dominated capitalist world order as an inevitable conclusion.


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A settling rhetoric: Jeff Branson, Examining the Role of Rhetoric in Settler Colonialism and Imperialism Through the Occupations of the Shoshone Peoples of Western North America and of the Philippines, MA dissertation, Harvard University, 2024

13May24

Abstract: This thesis seeks to determine the role of rhetoric in the American process of occupation that includes Settler Colonialism and Imperialism. I explore the connection between these two ideas using an example of each: the United States’ occupation of the tribal territory of the Shoshone peoples of North America as an example of Settler Colonialism and the United States’ occupation of the Philippines as an example of Imperialism. I examine the contributions of rhetoric to these processes of occupation and describe each process. This thesis expands upon the basic research of Walter L. Williams, who posited that the occupation of the Philippines was an expansion of the earlier “Indian Policy.” While the terminologies of “Settler Colonialism” and “Imperialism” were not used by Williams (in fact were not formed to the degree they are today at the time he published his work), modern scholars such as Paul A. Kramer and Julian Go have explored the use of these terms. I argue that all three authors describe a similar occupational process and that rhetoric from both the American government and from the press was a key part of executing each occupation. Most of my research on the connection to rhetoric comes from primary sources: newspaper articles, presidential speeches, Congressional arguments, and military briefs that describe both types of occupation. I demonstrate how using rhetoric to frame the story was one key to justifying the occupation while also describing the belief system that produced it. I depict how the rhetoric of a unified American process of occupation used internal, external, and press sources to lay out the steps to justify an occupation. First, the occupied nation is characterized as weak and incapable of managing its land, resources, and population; it is deemed in need of either reestablishment or civilization by the Americans. Next, as the occupation takes shape and the occupied peoples resist, the depiction of them changes; the centers of information paint them as bloodthirsty, almost inhuman sources of danger that need to be quelled. Finally, once resistors inside the occupied nation are incapacitated (either through death, capture, or threat of both), the initial characterization of hapless native peoples returns, and the rhetorical channels depict the benevolence of the United States to help them. As a result of my research, I outline a unified rhetorical process called American Occupation, with branching outcomes: American Settler Colonialism and American Imperialism. These differing outcomes are essentially based on (1) whether the goal of occupation was to expand the physical border of the United States by relocating the occupied peoples and settling their lands, as in Settler Colonialism, or (2) expanding the ideological border of the United States by controlling the occupied peoples and altering their lives to be more aligned with an American image, as in Imperialism. While these end goals differ, the occupational process that approaches them is unified, and the rhetoric that surrounds it is consistent.


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