settler colonial studies blog

Appropriating settler philanthropists: Cheryl Ellenwood, Raymond Foxworth, ‘Data Back: Indigenous Material Culture, Philanthropy, and Indigenous Data Sovereignty’, The Public Historian, 46, 2, 2024, pp. 123-143

04May24

Abstract: Grounded within the field and practice of philanthropy, the authors discuss the relationship between Indigenous material culture and philanthropy. This tangled relationship between philanthropy, colonial institutions, and Indigenous material culture continues to cause harm for Indigenous Peoples. We illustrate the problematizing nature of museums viewing material culture detached from current Indigenous Peoples with the case of the Nez Perce Wetxuuwíitin Collection. The Nez Perce Wetxuuwíitin Collection case shows how elite philanthropy and museum practices can negatively harm Native nations. Native collections are living Indigenous data and connected to Indigenous Peoples today. Material culture is not relegated to the past; it is Indigenous data and should be governed by Native nations. Without a change in practice, Indigenous Peoples will continue to be negatively impacted. To educate elite philanthropic partners and improve museum practices, we introduce principles from Indigenous Data Sovereignty that can help guide the partnerships and collaborations with Native nations. Indigenous Data Sovereignty can not only reduce harm and maximize benefits for Indigenous Peoples but also bring Indigenous data back home.

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Settler nationalists internationally: Freg J. Stokes, ‘Socialist Settlers on a Capitalist Frontier: The Contradictions of New Australia, Paraguay’, Labour History, 126, 1, 2024

04May24

Abstract: This article assesses the socialist colony of New Australia, founded in Paraguay in 1893, in its wider historical and environmental context. Drawing on archival research, the article contends that New Australia was founded as part of a broader settler colonial deforestation frontier in the southern Atlantic Rainforest. Despite the utopian socialist ideology of its founders, New Australia’s establishment was made possible by Paraguay’s violent integration into the capitalist world-system in the late nineteenth century. This integration had previously been obstructed by centuries of resistance by Indigenous Guaraní and Guaraní-descendant peoples to colonisation. Nevertheless, New Australia’s subsequent failure as a settler colony also ensured that its impact on the Atlantic Rainforest was relatively minimal, with the colony’s inhabitants themselves becoming integrated into Paraguay’s rural Guaraní-speaking population.

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Internationalism against settler nationalism: Padraic Gibson, ‘Communists and the 1933 Campaign that Ended Frontier Massacres in Australia’, Labour History, 126, 1, 2024

04May24

Abstract: In August and September 1933, agitation by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) led trade unions and unemployed workers’ organisations to join a national campaign for Aboriginal rights for the first time in history. Police in the Northern Territory were publicly planning a “punitive expedition” to kill Yolngu people, in response to the spearing death of an officer. Public mobilisation stopped the expedition, effectively ending the practice of frontier massacres that had long characterised the colonisation of Australia. Existing histories have emphasised the leading role of missionaries and other middle and upper-class intellectuals, who led humanitarian organisations playing an increasingly influential role in Aboriginal affairs. While acknowledging the significance of these efforts, this article makes a new argument about the central role of communist agitation and the participation of working-class organisations in forcing a complete police retreat. Animating this initiative was a Marxist anti-imperialist politics that appealed to anti-war traditions within the workers’ movement.

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Parallel settler colonialisms: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, ‘Settler Colonialism in the U.S. and Israel’, In These Times, 48, 4, 2024

03May24

Abstract: This article discusses the concept of settler colonialism in the United States and Israel. The author shares their personal experiences and perspectives on the issue, highlighting the displacement and mistreatment of Indigenous peoples in North America and Palestinians in Israel. Settler colonialism is described as a process in which settlers establish new political orders and carry their sovereignty with them, erasing and replacing existing societies. The article emphasizes the importance of understanding the settler colonial context in order to comprehend the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

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The intelligence of settlers: Abigail Escobedo, Simon Herbert, ‘Gaining Knowledge about the Comanches: Meusebach’s Path Towards a Notable Treaty’, Migrant Knowledge, 18/04/24

03May24

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. 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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Indgenous-settler state making: Ibrahim Abdullah, ‘Indigenes, Settlers and Citizens: Multiple and Conflicting Subjectivities in Nation State Making’, Development and Change, 2024

03May24

Access the review article here.

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Is settler internationalism even possible? A special issue of Labour History: 126, 1, 2024

03May24

Access the special issue here.

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Settler trainspotting: Katie Maher, ‘They put me on a train: Assimilation and the Australian railways’, Geographical Research, 2024

02May24

Abstract: This article explores the involvement of the Australian railways in the forcible removal of Aboriginal children. Focusing on the visions and voices of Aboriginal peoples who were taken away from their families by train, the article considers how railways were used in the attempted assimilation of First Nations peoples into White society. The last train ride, an artwork by South Australian Yankunytjatjara artist and Stolen Generations survivor Kunyi McInerney, serves as a point of departure to study how the settler colonial infrastructure of rail operationalised the Australian government policies of assimilation. I ask how railway infrastructures have affected Aboriginal peoples and how Aboriginal peoples have responded to railway infrastructures. In centring the artworks and narratives of Aboriginal people taken away by train, I extend an invitation to readers to rethink geography through the visual expressions and stories of First Nations peoples. Close attention to the perspectives of affected peoples opens possibilities to view infrastructures in a different light. The visions and voices of Aboriginal families impacted by assimilation policies show that the railways played a pivotal role in the separation of Aboriginal children from families and that railway infrastructures have also been sites of resistance to and subversion of assimilation and child removal. Paying careful attention to First Nations voices and visions, the article informs how the Australian railways have been complicit in assimilation policies and how Aboriginal peoples have used the railways to resist and survive such settler colonial projects.

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Undoing settler climate change: Acton Éamon McHenley, Landback As A Way Forward: The Return of Stolen Public Lands as Adaptation in the Alaskan Climate Crisis, MA Dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2024

02May24

Excerpt: Access to land and property ownership has been racialized since the inception of the US settler colonial state, with the relocation, resettlement, and genocide of Indigenous peoples through the dispossession of their traditional homelands serving as a key origin point. Today, Alaska Natives are facing a similar process, having lost around 80% of their traditional lands to colonization via the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, and losing more land each day with upwards of 70 of their 200 communities facing imminent threats from the colonially created climate crisis. With climate change and the associated increase in frequency and intensity of natural hazards putting millions of people at risk around the world, especially Indigenous Peoples, the cycle of dispossession and forced relocation could start all over again if the US government fails to address the colonial past and present. Yet, despite increasing climate impacts globally, no single set of policies or strategies exists to determine if or when communities can no longer be protected in-place in the face of climate impacts. So, while the federal government has a duty to assist Alaska Native communities in proactive, preventive community relocation in the face of rising sea levels and eroding coastlines, the current legal and funding structures have thus far limited federal and state response to piecemeal, reactive projects, and left ANVs with little recourse to address climate change. However, investing in Indigenous land return, often referred to as “Land Back,” could provide a way forward. Land Back, rematriation, or land return—defined sometimes as the return of Indigenous lands to Indigenous hands—is a process that “addresses the root of colonization—the theft of Indigenous lands (including their destruction through resource extraction), the violence committed against Indigenous peoples to build capitalism across the country, and the effects that [Indigenous] communities still experience today”. As an Indigenous-led movement and a decolonial set of actions, the structure and strategy of Land Back are built with the tacit understanding that existing systems are what is causing climate change, not what will solve the climate crisis. Looking to a tool such as Land Back to address the urgent needs of Alaska Native communities, and recognizing the difficulty faced by these communities in accessing their rights in existing legal and policy frameworks, it is essential to reassess existing (and inadequate) disaster recovery and climate adaptation systems. Recent legal research on the duty of the federal government—via the Federal Trust Doctrine and international Indigenous human rights law—combined with the social pressure for reparations and climate justice, could create an environment that is ripe for systemic change, which could leave the door open for the beginning of Indigenous land return and just climate adaptation via existing but underused legal tools.

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Settler colonialism’s replacement paradigm’: Niall Martin, Ilios Willemars (eds), The Replaceability Paradigm: Replacement and Irreplaceability from Dante to DeepDream, De Gruyter, 2024

02May24

Description: The trope of humans being ‘replaced’ by ‘AI’ is one of the most familiar examples of the rhetoric of replaceability. Not only have questions about what is unique and what is replaceable gained momentum in digital culture, but notions of ‘fungibility’ have emerged in many other contexts as well such as ecology, management theory, and, more sinisterly, in racist and conspiracist thinking. This volume argues that there is a ‘replaceability paradigm’ at work throughout the culture of modernity, from the European Renaissance, through Freudian psychoanalysis, Chinese science fiction and postcolonial theory, all the way to neural network programs such as Google’s DeepDream. This collection will be of interest to anybody engaged with the conceptual architecture of contemporary culture, whether through film, literature, or new digital media.

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