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Upsetting the settlers for sport: Chen Chen, Dan Mason, ‘Indigenous sport nationalism, settler borders, and (in)convenient solutions: media framing of the 2010 Iroquois Nationals passport dispute’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2023

23Dec23

Abstract: This study examines mainstream media coverage of the Iroquois Nationals’ withdrawal from the 2010 men’s World Lacrosse Championship as a result of failing to meet the requirements of US and UK immigration authorities. While the team’s refusal to use either US or Canadian passports in international travels raised important questions about Indigenous sovereignty in settler states, mainstream media largely framed the incident as an issue readily resolvable by short-term bureaucratic and technical solutions. The findings shed some light on the limitations of this coverage but also highlight the value of sport as a site where the underlying tensions within settler colonial states manifest.


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Settler utopias: Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Musab Bajaber, ‘Utopia, the Imperial Settler Utopia, and Imperial Settler Science Fiction’, in Cathy Shrank, Phil Withington (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Thomas More’s Utopia, Oxford University Press, 2023, pp. 553–566

23Dec23

Abstract: This chapter argues that Utopia is groundbreaking because it established the notion of ‘imperial settler utopias’ that influence attempted and fantasized manifestations of utopianism. Unlike settler utopias that are isolated and focused on inward development, imperial settler utopias—whether real or fictional—are settler colonies so entranced by their own ideals that they envision themselves as predestined to be dominant on the merit of their superiority. The interaction between fictional and attempted imperial settler utopias is cyclical. More’s Utopia influenced the development of real-world imperial settler utopian colonies and in return these colonies, combined with the legacy of Utopia, contributed to the rise of literary genres that extrapolate on imperial settler colonialism. These rising literary genres, again, continue to feed fantasies of imperialism. This chapter illustrates this cyclical interaction by, first, examining More’s influence on the development of settler colonies that eventually made up the United States. Then, it explains how, in return, the United States’ imperial settler utopian foundations led to the development of science fiction that fantasizes expansion into space as exemplified in Star Trek. These science fiction fantasies, again, affect actual attempts to explore space. This cycle of influence is one of the best examples illustrating More’s remarkable influence on the direction of history and literature since the publication of Utopia.


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Imagining the re-enactment: Alessandra Calanchi, ‘De-colonizing the Earth to Re-enact Colonialism on Mars: New Forms of “Transplantation” in Outer Space’, Iperstoria, 22, 2023

23Dec23

Abstract: In the current rush to Space ‘colonization,’ a term which moved from Science Fiction to reality in just a few decades, it becomes necessary to (re)define not only the borders of the known ‘world’—which projects itself far beyond the galaxy where we live—but also the lexicon of exploration, invasion, and belonging. The analogies with the ‘conquest’ of the New World—something that, as far as the US is concerned, went down in history under the mythopoeic term ‘Frontier’—are striking. In my essay I intend to deal with the linguistic and cultural implications of the terms used by those who wish or are planning to organize interplanetary travels aimed at taking human beings onto the Red Planet in the next decades. Such projects are based on a shared vision of ‘new worlds’ waiting to be discovered and occupied: therefore, their lexicon is heavily influenced by such a vision, though at international conferences you may happen to meet someone who prefers the more neutral term ‘settlement’ to ‘colony.’ On the opposite side we find ethic environmentalists, the defenders of post- and de-colonial thought, and the supporters of an equitable future. Language, which is never neutral, does, in fact, reveal in its choices and in its prefixes (re-, de-, trans-, inter-, post-, neo-, un-, etc.) what really lies behind these projects. Rarely do they concern the safety of the whole human race or a sustainable use of resources: on the contrary, they are more often driven by economic profit, safety just for a few, and total indifference to ecology and ethics.


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A settler cover up: Tyla Betke, ‘”Not a Shred of Evidence”: Settler Colonial Networks of Concealment and the Birtle Indian Residential School’, The Canadian Historical Review, 104, 4, 2023, pp. 519-545

23Dec23

Abstract: This article examines how the network of settler colonial systems in Canada worked to ensure the widespread and intentional cover-up that allowed one man to remain in the Indian Residential School (IRS) system for over two decades (from 1910 to 1932) despite overwhelming evidence of his abuse. Using genocide scholar Andrew Woolford’s metaphor of settler colonial mesh as a framework, this article details the 1930 case against Birtle Indian Residential School Principal Henry B. Currie to understand the multiple strategies of concealment used to protect him. A multitude of actors and institutions were involved in the coverup: the Indian agent and the Department of Indian Affairs, the Presbyterian Church, the court systems, and the public press. Strategies of concealment included blatant bribery, transferring accused principals to other schools, document falsification, forced marriages, and misreporting runaways, along with the IRS system itself, which kept children from their families and support systems. The article concludes with a discussion of settler claims of ignorance and the role archives play in revealing the truth about abusers within the IRS system.


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Settler women with blood on their hands: Caroline Abbott, ‘Axes on the Ground: Wolves and Women in Euro-America’, Environment & Society Portal, Arcadia, 19, 2023

23Dec23

Abstract: Nineteenth-century US print media is rife with interactions between white settlers and the wolves (and other wild canids) they slaughtered. Print played host to the evolutions of folkloric villains, heroes, and gender norms in ways that directly impacted national identity and settler conceptions of the so-called American frontier. North American frontiers provided an opportunity for settler women to embody gender roles different from those handed down to them in European folklore. What would we learn about these ideas by approaching the settler women with blood on their hands?


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On the idea of Australia: Dan Tout, ‘The Idea of Australia: A Search for the Soul of the Nation’, Journal of Australian Studies, 2023

21Dec23

Reviewing Julianne Schultz, The Idea of Australia: A Search for the Soul of the Nation, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2022, 472 pp., $34.99 (paperback), ISBN: 1760879304


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A sin of omission: Stephanie A. Fryberg, J. Doris Dai, Arianne E. Eason, ‘Omission as a modern form of bias against Native Peoples: Implications for policies and practices’, Social Issues and Policy Review, 2023

21Dec23

Abstract: The omission of Native Peoples’ existence, experiences, and perspectives is systematic and widespread across numerous societal domains, referred to as Native omission. In mainstream media, for example, less than 0.5% of representations are of contemporary Native Peoples. We theorize that Native omission is a tool furthering settler colonial goals to oppress and eventually erase Native Peoples. To make this case, we will review both experimental and national survey studies that unpack how Native omission shapes psychological processes among non-Native and Native individuals and contribute to discrimination, oppression, and disparities facing Native Peoples. We then discuss ways in which Native Peoples are actively resisting Native omission. Finally, we provide a series of policy recommendations to address Native omission and promote Native equity. By making visible the pernicious consequences of omission for Native Peoples, we chart a path for creating a more equitable future.


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The negative against settler colonialism: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Recognition beyond recognition!’ Interventions, 2023

20Dec23

Abstract: This essay focuses on the subject position of settler colonizers to interpret the developing global politics of Indigenous recognition in the settler societies and in Australia in particular. It focuses on the dynamics of recognition in the specific context of Indigenous–settler relations, on the contribution settlers may make to decolonial passages, on the ways perpetrator trauma shapes the settler colonial polity, and on the role truth telling and creative shame may play in overcoming the resulting impasse.


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The settling of outer space: Janne Lahti, ‘Settler Colonial Solutions to Settler Colonial Problems: Settler Cinemas and the Crisis of Colonization of Outer Space’, in John L. Hennessey (ed.), History and Speculative Fiction, Palgrave, 2024, pp. 65-81

20Dec23

Abstract: Settler colonialism tries to master the land, use it, and derive bounty from it, putting tremendous strain on and wrecking environments. This chapter examines settler colonial crises and failures by discussing how the recent blockbuster films Ad Astra and Interstellar tackle imaginary settler projects in outer space in the context of environmental problems and the precariousness of habitability. In both films, the remedy for settler colonial crisis seems to be more settler colonialism. This involves a denial of the fundamental problems settler colonization causes. These films show how settler projects refuse to end, to die out, or to turn back, and how settler colonialism rejects critical self-reflection in the face of human and environmental disasters.


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Settler apocalypse in an infrastructure: Sean Grattan, ‘Settler Colonialism and Apocalyptic Infrastructure in Almanac of the Dead’, symploke, 31, 1-2, 2023, pp. 119-131

20Dec23

Excerpt: This is a story of hubris, settler colonialism, and waterWalking onto the University of Arizona campus the dissonance of the lawns is instantly and oppressively apparent. In Tucson there are not a lot of lawns; they still appear in some parks, but it is certainly not a prevalent landscaping decision. Grass, however, is perhaps meant to be inviting to incoming first-year students. The green, green grass of home. I begin here as a way of articulating the construction of spaces through water infrastructure as illustrating the imagination of water in a landscape that cannot support the excess of water necessary for that imaginary project. In “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang describe settler colonialism as a process that is different from other forms of colonialism because “settlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain” (2012, 5). These lush lawns on a land-grant university are a symptom of hundreds of years of violence and domination in which infrastructure plays an integral part. As a non-Indigenous queer white man who has just arrived in Tucson, who is writing on and occupying Yaqui and Tohono O’odham land, it is perhaps not my place to blithely enter a conversation about the long history of pervasive violent extractive practices and logics that still continue around Indigenous water rights. Moreover, as a new transplant to Tucson, I don’t want to be taken in by a desire to assume a sense or right of knowledge that I cannot necessarily possess. However, sometimes the newness of a place can cause forms of estrangement that make certain narratives rise to the surface that illustrate ways ideology works through banality. Tracking shifting examples of climate chaos in different locales illustrates the interlocking localities of the large-scale and wide-ranging effects of anthropocentric climate change.


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