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The carnivals of settlers are a serious matter: Adrian Franklin, ‘Carnival Relocated? Popular Culture and the Carnivalesque in Colonial Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)’,Cultural and Social History, 2023

11Oct23

Abstract: This article re-evaluates the historical research on the carnivalesque rituals that arrived in Van Diemen’s Land (VDL) with British convicts, their colonial minders and free settlers. The revaluation deploys more theoretically informed understandings of carnivalesque ritual (using Bakhtin, Zemon Davis, le Roy Ladurie, Bristol, Underdown, Durston and others), coupled with more recent historical understandings of carnivalesque ritual in Britain at the time of convict transportation and new evidence on how carnivalesque ritual specific to VDL responded to changes in penal policy and practice. It is argued that carnivalesque rituals persisted as a means for building social solidarity, belonging, cultural-political expression and resilience.


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Crazy settlers at the end of the world after the end of the world: Andrew Nickson, ‘Great Britain and the War of the Triple Alliance: The Lincolnshire Farmers Colonization Scheme to Paraguay and the Fourth Ally Thesis’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 2023

11Oct23

Abstract: This article challenges the fourth ally thesis, which argues that Great Britain was a crucial actor underpinning the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay that defeated Paraguay in the 1864–70 War of the Triple Alliance. To date, the debate has focused on British involvement in the genesis and financing of the allied war effort. This article instead focuses on the postwar behavior of the British government, exploring its attitude to the 892 mainly English colonists of the failed 1872–73 Lincolnshire farmers emigration scheme to Paraguay. The British government’s open hostility to the scheme and its lack of concern for the plight of the colonists offer new evidence suggesting that the War of the Triple Alliance was of little interest to British imperialism in general and to settler colonialism in particular.


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Stating the inevitable: Joanie Bouchard, Sabrina Bourgeois, ‘An Unheard Confidence Crisis? An Analysis of Indigenous Peoples’ Perception of Settler Institutions and Politics’, Representation, 2023

11Oct23

Abstract: Focusing on the case of Canada, this paper offers an investigation of how members of Indigenous nations perceive the system of government using data from the 2019 Canadian Election Study (CES). Given the legacies of colonialism, we consider if Indigenous individuals in Canada adopt a distinct outlook on political institutions, actors, and democracy when compared to other Canadian voters by leveraging quantitative tools. We find that Indigenous people have a significantly more negative perception of several political institutions, politicians, and democracy in Canada.


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Visual settler colonialism: Mishuana Goeman, Settler Aesthetics: Visualizing the Spectacle of Originary Moments in The New World, University of Nebraska Press, 2023

11Oct23

Description: In Settler Aesthetics, an analysis of renowned director Terrence Malick’s 2005 film, The New World, Mishuana Goeman examines the continuity of imperialist exceptionalism and settler-colonial aesthetics. The story of Pocahontas has thrived for centuries as a cover for settler-colonial erasure, destruction, and violence against Native peoples, and Native women in particular. Since the romanticized story of the encounter and relationship between Pocahontas and Captain John Smith was first published, it has imprinted a whitewashed historical memory into the minds of Americans. As one of the most enduring tropes of imperialist nostalgia in world history, Renaissance European invasions of Indigenous lands by settlers trades in a falsified “civilizational discourse” that has been a focus in literature for centuries and in films since their inception. Ironically, Malick himself was a symbol of the New Hollywood in his early career, but with The New World he created a film that serves as a buttress for racial capitalism in the Americas. Focusing on settler structures, the setup of regimes of power, sexual violence and the gendering of colonialism, and the sustainability of colonialism and empires, Goeman masterfully peels away the visual layers of settler logics in The New World, creating a language in Native American and Indigenous studies for interpreting visual media.


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The question of indigeneity is not settled (in South Africa): Rafael Verbuyst, ‘Indigeneity, Autochthony, and Belonging: Conceptual Ambiguity as an Impediment to Decolonisation in South Africa’, in Decolonising Political Concepts, 2023

11Oct23

Excerpt: On 18 March 2022, a South African judge delivered an unprecedented judgement: “the fundamental rights of First Nations Peoples” were insufficiently considered in the context of a multi billion-rand property development in Cape Town …


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The children of settler colonialism: Julia R. Shatz, ‘”On this project depends the glory of Palestine”: childhood and modern futures at the Ramallah clinic’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2023

11Oct23

Abstract: In 1925, one of the first infant welfare clinics to specifically serve Arab children in Palestine opened in the city of Ramallah. This article examines how that institution brought together various political ideologies that used the Palestinian child’s body as a vehicle for a modern future. The clinic targeted poor children and mothers in an attempt to eradicate local knowledge and indigenous practices of infant care in the name of progress and science. Supported and funded by American missionaries, Palestinian philanthropists, local medical practitioners, colonial administrators, and Zionist health organizations, it produced conceptions of modern Palestinian childhood at the intersections of Zionist settler colonialism, interwar global humanitarianism, and indigenous political claims. The Ramallah clinic, along with other infant welfare projects in Palestine, offers a complicated view of the on-the-ground operation of settler colonial projects and the role of children within them. Based on a study of the different constituencies involved in opening the clinic, this article argues that discourses of infant health became means for articulating different – and sometimes opposing – political futures. In doing so, this article illuminates how settler colonialism interacted with, shaped, and was shaped by other local and global forms of coloniality as well as resistance to colonial structures.


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Whose country? Richard Abel, Our Country/Whose Country? Early Westerns and Travel Films as Stories of Settler Colonialism, Oxford University Press, 2023

07Oct23

Description: The concept of settler colonialism offers an invaluable lens to reframe early westerns and travel pictures as re-enactments of the United States’ repressed past. Westerns in particular propose a remarkable vision of white settlers’ westward expansion that reveals a transformation in what “American Progress” came to mean. Initially, these films tracked settlers moving westward across the Appalachians, Great Plains, and Rockies. Their seizure of “empty land” provoked continual resistance from Indigenous peoples and Mexicans; “pioneers” suffered extreme hardships, but heroic male figures usually scattered or wiped out those “aliens.” Some films indulged in nostalgic empathy for the Indian as a “Vanishing American.” In the early 1910s, westerns became increasingly popular. In Indian pictures, Native Americans ranged from devious savages, victims of white violence, and “Noble Savages” to “in-between” figures caught between cultures and “mixed-descent peoples” partnered for security or advantage. Mexicans took positions across a similar spectrum. In cowboy and cowgirl films, “ordinary” whites became heroes and heroines fighting outlaws; and bandits like Broncho Billy underwent transformation into “good badmen.” The mid to late 1910s saw a shift, as Indian pictures and cowgirl films faded and male figures, embodied by movie stars, dominated popular series. In different ways, William S. Hart and Harry Carey reinvented the “good badman” as a stoic, if troubled, figure of white masculinity. In cowboy films of comic romance, Tom Mix engaged in dangerous stunts and donned costumes that made him a fashionable icon. In parodies, Douglas Fairbanks subverted the myth of “American Progress,” sporting a nonchalant grin of effortless self-confidence. Nearly all of their films assumed firmly settled white communities, rarely threatened by Indians or Mexicans. Masked as “Manifest Destiny,” the expropriation of the West seemed settled once and for all. Our Country/Whose Country? offers a rich and expansive examination of the significance of early westerns and travel pictures in the ideological foundations of “our country”.


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The healthcare workers of stetler colonialism: Billie-Jo Hardy, Sam Filipenko, Diane Smylie, Carolyn Ziegler, Janet Smylie, ‘Systematic review of Indigenous cultural safety training interventions for healthcare professionals in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States’, BMJ Open, 13, 10, 2023

07Oct23

Abstract: Objective To synthesise and appraise the design and impact of peer-reviewed evaluations of Indigenous cultural safety training programmes and workshops for healthcare workers in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and/or the United States. Design Systematic review. Data sources Ovid Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America, Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts, ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, Sociological Abstracts, and Web of Science’s Social Sciences Citation Index and Science Citation Index from 1 January 2006 to 12 May 2022. Eligibility criteria Studies that evaluated the outcomes of educational interventions for selecting studies: designed to improve cultural safety, cultural competency and/or cultural awareness for non-Indigenous adult healthcare professionals in Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the United States. Data extraction and synthesis Our team of Indigenous and allied scientists tailored existing data extraction and quality appraisal tools with input from Indigenous health service partners. We synthesised the results using an iterative narrative approach. Results 2442 unique titles and abstracts met screening criteria. 13 full texts met full inclusion and quality appraisal criteria. Study designs, intervention characteristics and outcome measures were heterogeneous. Nine studies used mixed methods, two used qualitative methods and two used quantitative methods. Training participants included nurses, family practice residents, specialised practitioners and providers serving specific subpopulations. Theoretical frameworks and pedagogical approaches varied across programmes, which contained overlapping course content. Study outcomes were primarily learner oriented and focused on self-reported changes in knowledge, awareness, beliefs, attitudes and/or the confidence and skills to provide care for Indigenous peoples. The involvement of local Indigenous communities in the development, implementation and evaluation of the interventions was limited. Conclusion There is limited evidence regarding the effectiveness of specific content and approaches to cultural safety training on improving non-Indigenous health professionals’ knowledge of and skills to deliver quality, non-discriminatory care to Indigenous patients. Future research is needed that advances the methodological rigour of training evaluations, is focused on observed clinical outcomes, and is better aligned to local, regional,and/or national Indigenous priorities and needs.


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The mixed materials of settler colonialism: Penni Russon, ‘Longing and Belonging in the Green Worlds of Jeannie Baker’, in Melanie Duckworth, Annika Herb (eds), Storying Plants in Australian Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Roots and Winged Seeds, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, pp. 75-87

07Oct23

Abstract: Jeannie Baker uses mixed materials, including real plants, to illustrate relationships between nature, humans and suburban and urban development in her textless collage picturebooks Window (1991) and Belonging (2004). These popular texts are read and studied in the classroom to raise environmental awareness and explore themes of sustainable development and community action. How can a reading of these two books through the lens of Indigenous writer and academic Ambelin Kwaymullina’s verse manifesto, Living on Stolen Land, reveal and disturb the mechanisms of settler-colonialism as they appear in Baker’s work? Placing these texts in juxtaposition with each other generates new understandings and new narrative possibilities.


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The institutions of settler colonialism: Nell Musgrove, ‘Settler colonial expansion and the institutionalisation of children in Victoria, Australia’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2023

07Oct23

Abstract: Recent histories have underlined the importance of understanding the nineteenth-century gold rushes which took place in various parts of the anglophone world in relation to settler colonialism, and this work has advanced understandings of gender, race and Empire in significant ways. However, the field has yet to seriously grapple with questions about the role, treatment and positioning of children. This article will examine the Australian colony of Victoria, which was profoundly transformed by a gold rush beginning in 1851. Through case studies of three families – one white, one Chinese and one Aboriginal – the article will illustrate the complex relationships between poverty, colonialism and carceral institutions for children during the second half of the nineteenth century. These case studies allow an exploration that centres on the lives of the children and families forced to navigate an often-inescapable network of institutions, thereby demonstrating the impossibility of separating these institutions (which form the foundations of our modern-day child protection system) from the project and philosophy of settler colonialism.


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