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A settlers’ paradise: Chhavi Mathur, Paradise Found: The Settler Colonial Legacy of Beautiful British Columbia Magazine, MA dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2024

03Jun24

Abstract: The Okanagan Valley of British Columbia is often depicted in Canadian settler culture as an oasis in a desert, or a Garden of Eden, thanks to its exceptional climate and semi-arid shrub steppe biome. With its fruit, tourism, and wine industries, it is best known today as place of leisure and plenty. This idyllic and utopic image of the place is, however, complicated by the complex history of its cultural and material landscape. The Okanagan idealized by Canadians is, in fact, the traditional unceded territory of, primarily, the Syilx people. Since the late 19th century, through successive phases of settler colonialism in the Okanagan, the material and cultural landscape of the area has been written over, reshaped, transformed, and remains contested in many ways. This thesis contributes to a discussion on the making of environmental cultures through an ecocritical reading of the role of the Beautiful British Columbia magazine – with a focus on the years 1959-1983 when it was funded by the provincial government – in shaping the idealized narrative and landscape aesthetic of the Okanagan Valley that persist to this day. The visual and textual analysis of the magazine is framed by the socio-political, economic, and material history of the region from the mid to late decades of the 20th century. While international tourists were presumably the primary audience of the magazine, this thesis argues that the magazine also served the province’s campaign to attract Anglophone migrants and to ‘sell’ British Columbia and more specifically the Okanagan as an idyllic home for white settler populations. It traces and uncovers some of the recurring aesthetic tropes that have constructed and framed both the British Columbian landscape generally and within that, the Okanagan Valley, as an idyllic place to live. It contrasts the white settler colonial landscape aesthetic of the Okanagan with Indigenous imaginations of the place. It brings out the fault lines and contradictions between the imposed settler aesthetic and the material affordances of the environment.


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The genocidal context: The Society for Social Studies of Science, Palestine Forum, 2024

03Jun24

Contents:

  1. Working Group on War on Genocide
  2. Preamble
  3. The Algorithmically Accelerated Killing Machine
    Lucy Suchman
  4. Land, People, and Palestine: Lessons From Jewish Genetics
    Noah Tamarkin
  5. Resistance is Fertile: No Reproductive Justice Without Freedom for Palestine
    Michal Nahman, Sigrid Vertommen, Rodante van der Waal, Rishita Nandagiri, Elif Gül, Weeam Hammoudeh, and Fatimah Mohamied
  6. An Ode to Gazans
    Jess Bier
  7. Mapping a Catastrophe
    Christine Leuenberger

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The settler colonial context: Sharri Plonski, ‘Introduction: Decolonizing Palestine—the content of liberation’, International Politics, 2024

03Jun24

Excerpt: In May 2021, in response to ongoing expulsions of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah—and later, against the bombs falling on Gaza—Palestinians/Palestine called for unity. They marched in streets on both sides of the Green Line, they arrived at Al-Aqsa, they stood in solidarity around the world, and they marched on and beyond borders. And they imagined new liberated futures.


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Dispossessing for settler sport: Shawn Forde, Audrey R. Giles, Rochelle Stewart-Withers, Steven Rynne, Jeremy Hapeta, Lyndsay Hayhurst, Daniel Henhawk, ‘Sport for Reconciliation? Federal Sport Policy in Settler-Colonial States’, The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 15, 1, 2024

03Jun24

Abstract: In settler-colonial contexts, the use of sport for reconciliation (SFR) has received increasing attention from national governments and their sporting agencies, though researchers have yet to track the development of SFR across settler colonial contexts. In this study, we examined how government sport policies in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand frame understandings of reconciliation.
Through the application of both policy and frame analysis to 82 documents from 1970s to 2020, we argue that policy framings have shifted from presenting Indigenous peoples as a homogenous disadvantaged group to more inclusive considerations of Indigenous cultures. Nevertheless, an assimilative agenda continues to guide policy, as understandings of Indigenous self-determination are absent from sport policy documents and reconciliation is primarily understood as Indigenous peoples being reconciled to the status quo.


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A denial of Indigenous water is settler sovereignty: Teagan Autumn Johnson-Moore, Follow the Water: Colorado Ute’s History in Water Allocation and Dispossession, MA dissertation, University of Chicago, 2024

03Jun24

Abstract: This thesis explores sovereignty, settler-colonialism, and water rights in Indigenous spaces, focusing on the experience of the Colorado Ute tribes in southwestern Colorado. Drawing on historical analysis and contemporary scholarship, this study examines how the lack of water allocation until 1988 has impacted the sovereignty of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe (“SUIT”) and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe (“UMUT”). It argues that the dispossession of water rights has served as a tool to undermine Indigenous sovereignty and perpetuating settler-colonial structures and policies. The research delves into nineteenth to twenty-first century water laws, settler-composed compacts, and regulations revealing how the legacy of dispossession continues to affect SUIT and UMUT. Through an exploration of legal documents, court cases, and scholarly perspectives, this thesis highlights the marginalized voices of Indigenous peoples in water governance and law while acknowledging and rectifying past injustices by advocating for water for the Colorado Ute tribes. By centering Indigenous sovereignty and challenging settler colonial narratives, this thesis aims to contribute to broader discussions on Indigenous rights, water governance, and decolonial efforts in Colorado.


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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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