settler colonial studies blog

Settler disacclimatisation: Lisa Fink, ‘Unsettled Ecologies: Alienated Species, Indigenous Restoration, and U.S. Empire in a Time of Climate Chaos’, PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 2024

14Jan24

Abstract: This dissertation traces environmental thinking about invasive species from Western-colonial, diasporic settlers of color, and Indigenous perspectives within U.S. settler colonialism. Considering environmental discourses of species invasion through the lens of settler colonialism helps us better understand how ideas about race, Indigeneity, and nature continue to shape invasion biology’s language and practices—which erase Indigeneity and contribute to the marginalization of those constructed as “alien” within dominant U.S. racial discourse. Synthesizing Indigenous Studies, Asian American Studies, and environmental humanities, I argue that dominant invasive species discourses and management practices contribute to a broader settler colonial project of maintaining control over Indigenous lands and waters. I emphasize that such species’ ecological, economic, and social impact directly results from colonialism and capitalism, which prompts a necessary shift in language from “invasive species” to alienated species, an alternative term I propose to signal this interconnection. Reading various media such as U.S. Congressional proceedings, popular science, YouTube videos, social media, and reality TV shows like Duck Dynasty, I demonstrate how dominant discourses of species invasion rely on racial logics of purity and colonial logics of possession to construct such species as alien Others against which nativity and whiteness are defined. Close readings of contemporary literature emerging from communities constructed as “alien,” such as Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats (1998) and Marwa Helal’s Invasive Species (2019), reveal that, far from being value-neutral, these mainstream discourses and practices have as much to do with colonialism and race as they do with biology. As a counterpoint, I investigate differences between Indigenous and settler-colonial understandings of species’ migration, emphasizing relationships between Indigenous and so-called “alien” communities under settler colonialism. Focusing on approaches by the Anishinaabeg and CHamoru, I highlight how Indigenous ecologies, ecological knowledge, and practices focus on the possibilities of emerging relations with alienated species and envision radical alternatives for imagining place, migration, and belonging. I identify these responses in interview data from fieldwork conducted with nine Anishinaabe nations and in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s (Potawatomi) Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) and Craig Santos Perez’s (CHamoru) from unincorporated territory [hacha] (2008).

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Settler colonial acclimatisation: Barrie Ryne Blatchford, America’s Acclimatization Exchange: Animal Acclimatization, Settler Colonialism, and the Transformation of American Nature, 1840-1975, PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2024

14Jan24

Abstract: This dissertation argues that the significance and extent of American animal “acclimatization”—the nineteenth-century term for the purposeful introduction of non-native wild animals—has been drastically underestimated in previous historiography. Far from a negligible “fad” that only briefly interested a small number of hunters and wildlife enthusiasts, American acclimatization was in fact a large-scale and enduring exercise in bioengineering that introduced dozens of new species to the nation over the course of more than a century. At first led by private individuals and organizations, American acclimatizers introduced several new birds and fish into the country from the mid-nineteenth century, including modern-day mainstays like the English sparrow, ring-necked pheasant, and German carp. While private organizations devoted to animal acclimatization mostly dissipated by the late nineteenth century, the federal government’s biologist-bureaucrats made the acclimatization of new animals a central component of vast efforts to supply America’s hunters and fishers deep into the twentieth century, a persistence that has been heretofore overlooked. In composing the first dedicated study of American animal acclimatization, I visited a dozen different archives and have brought hundreds of previously unexamined sources to bear. These revealed the enduring popularity of animal acclimatization and its persistence as a wildlife rejuvenation tool. These sources also laid bare the ideological motivations for animal acclimatization. Far from salving a nostalgic yearning for the fauna of Europe, Euro-Americans often saw animal acclimatization projects as progressive techniques of environmental management instead. Animal acclimatization projects, moreover, were intertwined with the Euro-American colonization of the American West. Settler-colonial ideology, that fusion of Euro-American racial supremacy with grandiose notions of national identity and expansion, runs through the rhetoric of many acclimatizers. More concretely, the United States Fish Commission effected the violent dispossession and subordination of the Winnemem Wintu People on California’s McCloud River in order to set up the nation’s first chinook salmon hatchery. The USFC used the hatchery to artificially spawn tens of millions of salmon to replenish American waters as well as establish chinook salmon in American and international watersheds where the fish had never existed before. Finally, I argue that the story of American acclimatization—what I call the American “acclimatization exchange”—offers important nuance and modification to the two most famous paradigms in environmental history: the conservation movement and Alfred Crosby’s “Columbian Exchange.” Massive parallel efforts in animal acclimatization indicate that the conservation era featured far more interventionist environmental management than usually appreciated. The early adoption of “fish culture” in 1860s American also suggests that the conservation era’s periodization should be significantly backdated. Furthermore, the sheer popularity and endurance of foreign species acclimatization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, plus the fact that Americans often obtained and exchanged species from Asia, India, and the broader Pacific World, temporally and geographically expands on Crosby’s notion of an Atlantic World “Columbian Exchange” in the wake of initial European discovery and colonization.

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Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – the Settler Colonial Perspectives: Settler Colonial Studies, 02/01/24

14Jan24

The October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas against Israeli targets and the subsequent assaults by Israel in Gaza have turned the world’s attention on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The more traditional news media as well as various social media sites currently overflow with reports and commentaries as we collectively attempt to understand the relations between Israelis and Palestinians. What some of these voices seem to be missing is an understanding of the long and complex history of this conflict. Wanting to react to this escalating crisis, the editors of Settler Colonial Studies looked to the past volumes of the journal and compiled an article collection shedding light on the trajectories and nuances of the ongoing violent struggle. While some people around the world dispute it, for the editors of this journal Israel constitutes a settler colonial state created by the UN in 1948 from territories already occupied by the Palestinian people. Our work as an academic journal constitutes examining the complexities of such settlement situations globally – in Israel but also in the US, Australia, and elsewhere where a group created a nation out of already occupied land, often by denying the humanity and rights of Indigenous peoples. The current situation in Gaza approximates a violent act of settler colonialism, of pushing the Palestinians out of the land and replacing them. We do not dispute any nation’s right to defend itself, just as we support the rights of Indigenous groups globally to pursue their sovereignty. We hope Israel’s leaders grasp their situation as a settler colonial state, recognize the rights of those whose lands were unlawfully ceded, and work to find a two-state compromise accepting historical and current realities of settlement. We also hope Palestine’s leaders strive for sovereignty in a peaceful manner. We condemn the taking of human life on all sides and encourage collaboration and humane compromise.

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The biosameness of settler colonialism: Brock Bersaglio, Charis Enns, ‘Settler Ecologies and the Future of Biodiversity: Insights from Laikipia, Kenya’, Conservation and Society, 2023

14Jan24

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between settler colonialism and biodiversity. Focusing on Laikipia, Kenya, we argue that the types of plant and animal species present in the landscape have been shaped by historical and present power relations and often support settler colonial projects. We introduce five modes of violent ecological transformation that have been used to prolong and advance structures of settler colonialism in Laikipia: eliminating undesirable species from landscapes; rewilding landscapes with species deemed more desirable; selectively repeopling nature to create seemingly inclusive wild spaces; rescuing species at risk of extinction to shore up moral support for settler ecologies; and extending the range of settler ecologies by scaling wild spaces. Through these modes of ecological transformation, ecological relations of use and value to settler colonialism live on while other(ed) ecological relations are suppressed or erased. As efforts to implement the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) gain momentum, attention to settler ecologies is vital. Although there is no denying that radical action is needed to halt and reverse global biodiversity loss, there is a pressing need to question what types of nature will be preserved through the GBF and whose interests these natures will serve.

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‘Innocent settlers’: Yann Allard-Tremblay, ‘Dispelling the Fantasy of Innocence: Complicity and the Cultivation of Transgression in Settler Colonial Contexts’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 2024

09Jan24

Abstract: This article critically engages with the Canadian framing of settler colonial/decolonial politics in terms of guilt and innocence. I argue that centring innocence, even as something to be snatched away from settlers, as with the theorization of settler moves to innocence, can corrupt the practice of moral responsibility. Furthermore, I argue that the desire for and expectation of innocence, in the face of structural injustices such as settler colonialism, are illusionary and that complicity is widespread. In contrast, I follow Iris Marion Young’s focus on political responsibility, but I argue that public collective actions need not be as centred as she suggests. Given the nature of settler colonialism and of coloniality, I argue for the acknowledgment of the political significance of daily individual acts and for the cultivation of dispositions that disrupt unjust structures, such as a disposition to transgress.

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Settler colonialism in Kashmir: Haris Zargar, Goldie Osuri, ‘The Distinct Dispossessions of Indian Settler Colonialism in Kashmir: Land, Narrative and Indigeneity’, Development and Change, 2024

09Jan24

Abstract: India’s annexation of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019 has generated debates within Critical Kashmir Studies regarding the kind of settler colonialism that is operating in this disputed Himalayan region. To illuminate the current relationship between land dispossession and narratives that legitimize land grab (for the settlement of Hindu Indian settlers), this article traces the logics and genesis of this ongoing settler project in Kashmir, going back to the historic Dogra feudal rule. The authors argue that the Hindu Dogra dispensation installed a revenue surveillance system that enabled it to engage in institutionalized land grab, and show how that extractive land administrative structure has been repurposed by the Indian state for its settler project. The article demonstrates how the Indian state engages in the (epistemic/discursive) erasure of local voices to ensure that the Kashmiri (Muslim) native is stripped of the position of indigeneity both over land and over the narrative of an expropriatory land grab. It further illustrates how the state strives to create facts on the ground to (re)define the ‘native’ and (re)claim the land for Indian Hindu settlers.

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Triangular settler colonialism: Cristina Stanciu, The Makings and Unmakings of Americans Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1879-1924, Yale University Press, 2023

09Jan24

Description: Challenges the myth of the United States as a nation of immigrants by bringing together two groups rarely read together: Native Americans and Eastern European immigrants. In this cultural history of Americanization during the Progressive Era, Cristina Stanciu argues that new immigrants and Native Americans shaped the intellectual and cultural debates over inclusion and exclusion, challenging ideas of national belonging, citizenship, and literary and cultural production. Deeply grounded in a wide-ranging archive of Indigenous and new immigrant writing and visual culture—including congressional acts, testimonies, news reports, cartoons, poetry, fiction, and silent film—this book brings together voices of Native and immigrant America. Stanciu shows that, although Native Americans and new immigrants faced different legal and cultural obstacles to citizenship, the challenges they faced and their resistance to assimilation and Americanization often ran along parallel paths. Both struggled against idealized models of American citizenship that dominated public spaces. Both participated in government-sponsored Americanization efforts and worked to gain agency and sovereignty while negotiating naturalization. Rethinking popular understandings of Americanization, Stanciu argues that the new immigrants and Native Americans at the heart of this book expanded the narrow definitions of American identity.

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The settler conquest of the ‘desert’: Carolyne L. Ryan, ‘The Conquest of the Desert and Argentina’s Indigenous Peoples’, Latin American History, 2023

09Jan24

Abstract: The Conquest of the Desert was a military campaign launched by the Argentine state (1878–1885) to remove the Indigenous peoples of the Pampas and Patagonia in order to open the region for Argentine occupation. Then Minister of War Julo A. Roca led the campaigns and subsequently became president of Argentina in 1880. Argentine state makers described this campaign as a necessary step in growing the national economy and making Argentina a “modern” and “civilized” nation. The conquest was also celebrated by many contemporaries as marking the emergence of a “White” Argentina. Despite this rhetoric, Indigenous peoples from the pampas and Patagonia have endured throughout the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. The contentious legacies of the conquest have continued to shape Indigenous peoples’ experiences in Argentine society and with the state through the early 21st century, affecting issues including land rights, cultural recognition, state violence, citizenship rights, historical memory, and social experiences of marginalization and discrimination.

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Settler voting: Ron Hayduk, Marcela Garcia-Castañon, Vedika Bhaumik, ‘Exploring The Complexities of “Alien Suffrage” in American Political History’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 43, 2, 2023, pp. 70-118

07Jan24

Abstract: Although historians and political scientists have long acknowledged the significant place of immigrants in American political history, the role of “alien suffrage” has not been well appreciated, and gaps remain in the scholarship about the nature of its practice. How extensively was “alien voting” practiced and what were its effects? This study addresses these questions by examining eleven of the forty states that allowed non-citizens to vote before obtaining citizenship. These states, located in the Midwest, South and West, were selected because immigrants comprised a significant proportion of their total population and allowed alien suffrage for an extended period of time (1848–1920). We develop estimates of non-citizen voters and examine ethnic voting patterns in these states to gauge their impacts on partisan dynamics in gubernatorial elections. Our findings show non-citizens voted and factored into election outcomes, furthering the incorporation of European immigrants. We also shed light on the unsavory side of alien suffrage, which contributed to a form of settler colonialism and functioned to block or delay the enfranchisement of African Americans and women. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for our understanding of immigrant political incorporation in American political history, as well as for contemporary debates about the revival of the legal practice of non-citizen voting in the United States.

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Settler dreaming: Dan Tout, ‘Dreaming of an Indigenised Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, 2023

07Jan24

Abstract: This article offers a critical engagement with Billy Griffiths’s award-winning book Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia as a departure point towards uncovering and examining a significant tradition of Australian cultural reflection and interpretation it terms, following Anthony Moran, indigenising settler nationalism. Tracing the genealogy of the indigenising settler-nationalist tendencies that shape Deep Time Dreaming, and to which the text itself contributes, the article situates Griffiths’s contribution as a recent and notable exemplar of a longstanding historiographical tradition that responds to the continuing crisis of settler-national belonging and legitimacy by attempting to incorporate the historical depth of Indigenous occupation into its own national, nationalising narrative, and so to indigenise the settler nation itself. The tradition is not Griffiths’s alone. When read in the context of a broader indigenising settler-nationalist tradition, Griffiths’s approach is revealed as neither unusually problematic nor uniquely complicit in the dynamics the article draws attention to. On the contrary, the genealogical reading of Griffiths’s work I offer here is important precisely to the extent that it facilitates an understanding of the underlying tendencies towards settler indigenisation that continue to condition Australian settler-national/ist historiography, and culture at large.

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