settler colonial studies blog

Radical healing as decolonisation: Laurie D. McCubbin, Christine Park, Fei Bi Chan, ‘Indigenous Resurgence as Radical Healing Among Native Hawaiians’, in Zed Zhipeng Gao, Maria I. Medved (eds), Global Perspectives on Cultural Politics in Indigenous Psychology, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025, pp 239-259

27Nov25

Abstract: Given the pervasive and detrimental effects of colonialism on Indigenous people, Indigenous resistance and resurgence to colonial politics and policies are essential in sustaining Indigenous peoples’ capacity to protect, restore, and celebrate Indigenous knowledge, values, and practices through ancestral connections. Like many Indigenous communities, Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiians) face structural and systemic oppression through settler colonial violence, capitalism, and commodification of their land and culture. Recognizing the importance of Indigenous resistance and resurgence in the context of oppression, this chapter expands the discourse of Indigenous Psychology by centering on the political, land-based resistance movements among Kānaka ʻŌiwi. As original stewards of the land, connection to ʻāina (land) is essential for the overall wellness of the Kānaka ʻŌiwi. Re-centering Indigenous systems, structures, values, and practices with the ʻāina creates spaces for cultural revitalization and perpetuation, creating viable pathways toward social justice and radical healing. The intersection between the connection to the land, resistance to colonial forces, and the resurgence of Indigenous systems of knowledge can be illustrated in three key political land and water rights events: Kaho’olawe, Mauna Kea/Thirty Meter Telescope, and the Red Hill fuel storage facility. These land and water rights activism events exemplify Kānaka ʻŌiwi refusal, resistance, and resurgence.

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Displaceable in the settler city: Uri Ansenberg, Erez Tzfadia, Oren Yiftachel, Oded Haas, ‘Displaceable! Precarious urban citizenship in Israel/Palestine’, Politics and Space C, 2025

27Nov25

Abstract: This article introduces the special issue dedicated to the ‘displaceability’ of urban citizenship. Centred on Israel/Palestine as a ‘laboratory’ of ‘southeastern’ urban governance under conditions of conflict, settler-colonialism, and neoliberal restructuring, the collection conceptualizes displaceability not simply as forced removal but as a chronic condition of contemporary urban citizenship– one marked by continous mobility, governed through precarity, insecurity, and uneven rights. The seven articles in this volume explore key questions such as: where and how is displaceability produced– legally, fiscally, and through planning and redevelopment? Who enacts itstate, municipal, market, settler, and civic actors, and to what ends? And how do affected communities endure, resist, or transform displacement into forms of ‘emplacement’? Together, the contributions range from Jerusalem’s property, digital and colonial regimes, to heritage-led renewal in Tel Aviv–Jaffa, Bedouin forced urbanization in the Negev/Naqab, LGTBQ urban rights, and the ceaseless displacement of Palestinians under settler expansion in the West Bank. The articles collectively establish a critical agenda for examining displaceability as a defining condition of contemporary urban citizenship, articulated from a southeastern perspective rooted in Israel/ Palestine.

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Settler refugeeism: Khoi Nguyen, ‘Beyond Kinh(ship): The Making of Vietnamese Settler Refugeeism Through Land and Dispossession’, Journal Journal of Transnational American Studies, 16, 2, 2025

27Nov25

Abstract: In 1954, the US expanded its military presence in South Viet Nam following decolonization from France, claiming to help refugees escape communism. However, Vietnamese people rarely use the term “refugee,” seeing themselves as internally displaced people who never crossed international borders. I examine how the concept of “refugee” functions as a settler colonial technology that fosters Vietnamese settler refugeeism, serving both the US empire and Vietnamese ethnonationalist goals. The article explores two key points: first, how refugee resettlement in the Cái Sắn canals consolidated Kinh dominance and dispossessed Indigenous Khmer Krom in the Mekong Delta; second, what it means to engage with the land as a form of relationshipbuilding. Centering internally displaced Vietnamese within the land’s history, this work offers a counter-narrative to US state-sponsored historiography. Grounded in migration and settler colonial studies and engaging with Vietnamese studies, I posit that the internal refugees should not be treated solely as a pathological or juridical object, but rather as an analytical category linked to broader practices of domination and exploitation.

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Settler ghosts, settler storytelling: Jamie Ashworth, ‘”The ghosts of bygone ages rude”: Ecology, Religion, and the Gothic in the New Zealand Settler Fable, 1845-1878’, AJVS, 29, 2, 2025, pp. 56-72

27Nov25

Excerpt: In mid-nineteenth century Aotearoa New Zealand, settler-colonial literary encounters with the Indigenous ecologies of the archipelago only served to reinforce this Gothic “mechanism of repression and haunting” (Kavka 59). For instance, in 1888, settlerpoet Douglas Sladen described his view on “the oppressiveness of the forest,” concluding that “the forest means ennui – and a prison” (28). To Sladen, the “very depth” of the colonial environment was a near-personified entity embodying both “hidden beauty” and “cruel” wilderness (Sladen 28), a perfect setting for the construction of “literary animals” (Blackham 33).

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Unracial settler colonialism in Aotearoa: Luka Budak, Marijana Borić, ‘Scientific, linguistic and migration research: Croatian Dalmatian communities in New Zealand’, Časopis Hrvatskih studija, 20-21, 1, 2025

27Nov25

Abstract: Croatian immigration to New Zealand dates back to the 1850s. Today, there are well over 100,000 New Zealanders of Croatian descent. The earliest Croatian settlers were almost exclusively from Dalmatia. Over 90% of them came from Makarska and the surrounding area (Podgora, Drašnice, Drvenik, Zaostrog, Živogošće), then from the islands of Korčula, Hvar, Brač and the Pelješac peninsula. After World War II, immigrants also came from other parts of Croatia for economic reasons. In the last ten to twenty years, more than 10,000 highly educated Croats have immigrated to New Zealand. Croatians are the second largest immigrant group in New Zealand after the Irish. Generally speaking, Croats in New Zealand are successful and respectable, and a fairly large number of them play an important role in the economic life of New Zealand. In February/March 2023, in the initial phase of research into Croatian/Dalmatian communities in New Zealand, Dr. (Hon. Causa) Luka Budak, Dr. Marijana Borić and Dr. Josip Lasić began to unlock layers of rich cultural heritage through field research, recording the speeches and migration stories of members of local Croatian/Dalmatian communities on the North Island, through lectures and meetings in their societies/clubs, their museums and libraries, and in addition collecting material and creating numerous contacts and collaborations that will enable further research into Croatian heritage and the contribution of Croats to the development of New Zealand’s multicultural society, and the systematic monitoring of their trace preserved not only in archives, museums and libraries, but also in the places where their daily lives took place: from gum-digging fields and churches to final resting places in cemeteries. The research study showed that in each of the visited cities in New Zealand, the Croatian community was and remains closely connected, preserving language and tradition, creating its own collections and funds filled with memories, with the aim of preserving identity, tangible and intangible heritage. By preserving their community and Croatian heritage, to which they added the contributions they made in their new homeland, they simultaneously successfully integrated into New Zealand multicultural society while preserving their Croatian identity.

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Racial settler colonialism in Aotearoa: Heather Gao, ‘Chinese racialisation and colonial complicity: connecting capitalism, white supremacy and settler colonisation in Aotearoa’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

27Nov25

Abstract: Building on theorisations examining the colonial positionalities of Asian diasporic communities in settler societies such as Canada, Hawai’i and the U.S., this article investigates the role of Chinese racialisation and discursive positioning vis-à-vis Pākehā and Māori in bolstering, obscuring or otherwise entrenching White supremacy, settler colonisation, and capitalism in Aotearoa. Specifically, I offer a critical analysis of historical texts, building upon and expanding existing narratives within secondary sources through the theoretical framework of colonial racial capitalism. I argue that Chinese racialisation and discursive positioning in Aotearoa has and continues to be shaped by the material interests of ‘New Zealand’ as a settler-colonial project founded upon the subjugation of Māori land and life, and reliant on the alienation of racialised tauiwi from the national identity and body politic. At once a Yellow Peril, model minority and essentialised Other, Chinese immigrants have been differentially racialised and positioned in society in order to produce and reproduce the conditions necessary for the preservation of colonial racial capitalism. Our racialisation as Chinese people can then be understood as inseparable from the settler-colonial project, and so to resist against White supremacy thus also requires that we resist against the violences of capitalism and (settler) colonisation.

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Prosthetic settler colonialism: Caroline Lieffers, ‘Disability, Spirituality, and Settler Colonialism: The Story of Joseph La Flesche’s Artificial Leg’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 99, 3, 2025, pp. 457-487

24Nov25

Abstract: This article is a microhistorical examination of a settler medical technology in an Indigenous community: Umonhon leader Joseph La Flesche’s artificial leg, which he wore from the early 1860s until his death in 1888. This case study illustrates how La Flesche’s disability and prosthesis were deeply entangled with Euro-American challenges to Umonhon ways of life, including relational care, land use, and spiritual practices. Although the artificial limb, from a Euro-American perspective, was a medical technology to resolve disability, from the perspective of some Umonhon the limb represented unwanted changes to their land and culture, changes that also compromised crucial community rituals and engendered new forms of “spiritual disablement.” The medical technology’s significance cannot be removed from the larger context of settler colonialism and its ableist assessment of Indigenous bodyminds, lands, beliefs, and ways of life.

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Leveraging the settler ecostory: Caitlin Morton, Settler Colonialism and the Australian Environment: A Sociolegal Discourse Analysis of Decolonising Narratives Mobilised by First Nations Peoples in Modern Australian Environmental Conflicts, PhD dissertation, University of Sydney, 2025

24Nov25

Abstract: This thesis uses a historical discourse analysis of sociolegal narratives mobilised by First Nations peoples in environmental conflicts in modern Australia to develop three case studies on (1) the Wild Rivers Act 2005, (2) the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (3) the McArthur River mine. Each case triggered social, legal, and political action by affected Traditional Owners who mobilised narratives that contributed to decolonisation by critiquing and replacing colonial assumptions about the environment and environmental governance. The sources evidencing these decolonising narratives are diverse, reflecting the diverse forms of legal, social, and political participation within First Nations peoples’ resistance to ongoing settler colonialism and its effects on their lands and waters. It is this fact that necessitates the analysis of a broad scope of sources such as petitions; open letters; protest narratives; and legal documents such as court transcripts, submissions, and reports, with O’Brien (2018) providing important precedents for decolonising projects based on the extensive historical study of petitions and related documents. By exploring the sociolegal achievements and narrations of First Nations peoples (individually and collectively) asserting rights to their lands and waters, this research adopts a decolonising approach adept at critiquing and replacing colonial normativity (Mignolo, 2009, 2021). This approach allows the research to answer questions on how decolonisation is framed by First Nations peoples within public debates about the environment, and the implications for understanding environmental politics and policy in Australia and other settler colonial contexts. The results, which are particularised to each case, support the overall argument that the mobilisations and narrations of First Nations peoples defending their lands and waters are decolonising because they critique and replace colonial environmental norms in public fora.

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The death of settler colonialism: Rye Purvis, ‘A conceptual review of a land-informed Native American Death Pedagogy: Overcoming settler colonialism and the Western Death System’, Death Studies, 2025

24Nov25

Abstract: Land is central to and holds agency in death and dying belief and knowledge systems within Native American communities in North America. these land-informed belief and knowledge systems serve as the foundation for a Native American Death pedagogy. possibilities and futurities of Native American Death pedagogy has been negatively impacted by historical and ongoing effects of settler colonialism. As settler colonialism functions to eliminate Native American lifeways, it simultaneously makes space to replace with Western socio-political systems and frameworks. for death and dying practices, these Western socio-political systems and frameworks can be referred to as a Western Death System—an expansion of Robert Kastenbaum’s theory of the Death System. through experiential knowledge and a conceptual review, this article will address the significance of land in Native American Death pedagogy and the challenges from the Western Death System.

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Once they were migrants (then they were settlers): Fotios Papadopoulos, From migrants to settlers: the history of Greek communities in colonial Zimbabwe and Tanganyika, 1890s-1960, PhD dissertation, EUI, 2025

24Nov25

Abstract: This doctoral thesis examines the position of Greek migrants in the colonial societies of sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on their transformation from migrants to settlers. Through the cases of colonial Zimbabwe and Tanzania from the 1890s to the 1950s, it explores how Greeks, as marginal Europeans without a colonial background, were positioned both materially and culturally within these societies. Although generally classified as Europeans in the 20th century, Greeks lacked direct colonial rule background, having themselves been subjects of British and Italian rule in the Ionian Islands, Cyprus, and the Dodecanese. The study argues that Greek migrants’ racial and settler status was fluid, shaped by their economic activities, class, and interactions with European settlers, indigenous communities, and other immigrant groups, such as Indians. In the early period (1890s– 1920s), most Greeks worked as laborers, small shopkeepers, or traders with indigenous populations, often occupying peripheral roles in colonial society. However, from the late 1920s to the 1960s, their status shifted: in Southern Rhodesia, Greeks entered politics and even held mayoral positions in major cities, while in Tanganyika, they acquired extensive agricultural estates—land ownership on a scale rarely seen in their homeland. This dissertation examines the conditions that allowed only certain social classes to access the privileges of settler colonialism and how individuals from a non-imperial background—lacking capital, foreign language skills, and religious or ethnic alignment with ruling elites—were able to integrate into, and sometimes thrive within, colonial structures. Ultimately, it challenges approaches to settler colonialism as an exclusive domain of imperial powers, demonstrating how ‘smaller’ European migrant communities strategically navigated, participated and even influenced colonial systems.

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