settler colonial studies blog

The gendered frontier of settler colonialism: Marie Chase, Adrienne Johnson, ‘Oil extraction and Indigenous women: Examining the necropolitics of the settler state in the Bakken region’, Human Geography, 2023

05Aug23

Abstract: Emerging research shows that the health and well-being of Indigenous women is increasingly jeopardized in areas close to oil extraction due to heightened violence and criminal behavior. Our empirical findings reveal how the oil industry has impacted one Indigenous reservation located in the Bakken region—an area experiencing a major “boom” in shale extraction activities. We find that sexual assault and violence against Indigenous women has increased due to three settler tactics: (1) gendered economic inequalities and tribal divisiveness entrenched by structural poverty and uneven oil-derived wealth distribution, (2) industrialized “man-camps” and “risky” behaviors associated with transient oil workers, and (3) confusing jurisdictional spatialities structured by overlapping tribal authority and federal law. Employing a Native feminist reading of Mbembé’s necropolitics, we argue that the above tactics coalesce to form a spatial formation where Indigenous women are made vulnerable to death through the necropower of the settler state, and tribal governments are not able to criminally prosecute non-Native individuals involved in violent crimes on tribal lands. Multi-scalar pathways forward include support for Indigenous-led activism that enhances public awareness and efforts that protect the livelihoods and futures of all Indigenous peoples. The restoration of tribal sovereignty is also supported with the understanding that, unfortunately, this form of sovereignty continues to be highly circumscribed by the settler state.

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The reproductive work of Indigenous women under settler colonialism: Elise Klein, ‘Stolenwealth: Examining the Expropriation of First Nations Women’s Unpaid Care’, Australian Feminist Studies, 2023

05Aug23

Abstract: This article examines the intersections between coloniality and gender in the generation and maintenance of Australian wealth. Settler colonialism is ongoing in Australia and is intricately linked to wealth accumulation – where First Nations people’s labour, land and lives have been, and continue to be, expropriated. Whilst feminist scholars have long shown how the capitalist economy free rides on unpaid care work, understandings of care have centred around colonial and settler notions of care which can overlook First Nations meanings and practices of care such as those intricately linked to looking after country, and are at the forefront of struggles and endurance against settler colonialism, including the unpaid work of healing settler induced trauma and violence. Through examining these areas of unpaid care, and drawing on Indigenous, racial capitalism and settler colonial literature, this article outlines contemporary processes of expropriation of First Nations women’s unpaid care, in the making and maintenance of Australian wealth.

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The feelings of settlers: Sarah Kizuk, Place, Attachment, and Feeling: Indigenous Dispossession and Settler Belonging, PhD Dissertation, Marquette University, 2023

05Aug23

Abstract: I examine the problem of how settler colonial countries such as Canada have defined what places are as well as how their meaning and importance is both generated and maintained. It is my thesis that settler understandings of place, specifically the way emotion and affect have served to reify settled place, are a foundational part of the structure of the settler colonial state and of the settler self. I track the ways in which settled senses of attachment to place are a mechanism of settler colonialism bent on elimination and dispossession. That is, affective and emotional elements give fundamental structure to those senses of belonging and attachment from within a colonial structure and are themselves often occluded by forms of settled ignorance to the function of place-making. Further, this dissertation employs an ameliorative conceptual analysis of settler affects, specifically focusing on developing an account of the role of what I am calling emplaced affects play in the maintenance of the settler colonial state and on-going land theft from Indigenous peoples. I show that emotional responses to challenges of settler emplacement are not benign but political sites that exemplify both settler ignorance and settler privilege. The problem this research traces is thus not a definition of what place is, but, rather, how settler emotional attachments to place function politically to both structure place and ‘placed-identities.’ I argue that settler place-attachments are thus a crucial prong of the settler colonial system thus speaking to a lacuna in the philosophical literature on the function of affect in the maintenance of settler colonialism in Canada. The latter chapters of the dissertation examine two affective responses to challenges these place-attachments. Settled place-making and myths, once challenged, can result in affective responses such as settler fear and shame. I argue that these emotional tending-to of Canadian identity and land are evidence of the emotional mechanisms through which settler populations keep settler identity and place operational. The dissertation closes by thinking about the political and emotional commitments required by settler peoples who wish to disengage in both in the project of settler place-making and the affective re-making of settled identity ultimately arguing to begin to form the end of settler futures in the form of settler abolitionism.

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Beyond archeological settler colonialism: Ora Marek-Martinez, Sara L. Gonzalez, ‘Good Medicine: Prescriptions for Indigenous Archaeological Practice’, Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 2023

05Aug23

Abstract: While the history of North American archaeology points to a long engagement with tribal elders and scholars, these encounters largely consist of unequal, extractive relationships wherein Indigenous collaborators and Indigenous archaeologists have been treated more as objects of study and pity—what Bea Medicine refers to as “creatures”—rather than as equal research partners. As an Indigenous woman and a settler Chicanx woman, we reflect on the life journey and scholarship of Bea Medicine, a Lakota scholar-activist and mentor to Indigenous anthropologists. Dr. Medicine’s work has provided generations of Indigenous anthropologists with the means to participate in the discipline with their whole selves and, importantly, on their own terms. We argue that Medicine’s contributions provide good medicine for the field in the form of concrete strategies for continuing to decolonize the discipline and for doing work that centers the direct needs and perspectives of Indigenous peoples. When read alongside Indigenous archaeologies’ often overlooked grandmothers, mothers, and aunties, Medicine’s work also highlights continuing disparities in archaeological practice, from our relationships with and to Indigenous nations to the relations we cultivate in the Academy as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

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Plastic settler colonialism: Max Liboiron, Riley Cotter, ‘Review of participation of Indigenous Peoples in plastics pollution governance’, Cambridge Prisms Plastics, 2023

05Aug23

Abstract: There are increasing calls for Indigenous participation in plastic pollution governance as part of a larger trend in Indigenous-led environmental management. Yet what counts as “participation” is so varied that sometimes models of participation are antithetical to one another, such as inclusion that becomes tokenistic, or when stakeholders and rightsholders are conflated. Here, we start by reviewing the state of how Indigenous participation is currently articulated and enacted in published peer reviewed and grey literature. This helps identify some of the common gaps between discourses of participation and their practice within writing projects themselves. Then, we turn to the different models, goals, and characteristics of participation in plastics pollution governance that are most meaningful to Indigenous peoples. The text is for primarily non19 Indigenous or mixed groups who are looking to be more specific, deliberate, and just in their inclusion of Indigenous peoples in plastic pollution research, initiatives, and governance. We’ve designed what we hope is a fundamentally useful document so readers can be aware of the diversity, divisiveness, and opportunities of different modes of participation.

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The sky above settler colonialism: Jordan Reznick, ‘Indigenous Space: Hodinöhsö:ni’ Sky World and the Territories of American Art’, American Art, 37, 2, 2023

05Aug23

Abstract: The Hodinöhsö:ni’ Sky World is the realm that gave life to Turtle Island (North America). In contrast, the holy sky exalting U.S.-American landscape art suggests a land created for White settlers. This essay pursues several artists whose engagements with skies provide insights into how worldviews rooted in land shape Indigenous and settler perception: Caroline Parker (Tonawanda Seneca), Shelley Niro (Bay of Quinte Mohawk), Marie Watt (Seneca Nation of Indians), and Alfred Stieglitz. Where a sense of entitlement to Indigenous land guides settlers’ interpretation of the visual world, Hodinöhsö:ni’ women’s visual sovereignty supplies decolonial perceptual alternatives to colonial vision. I also consider the implications of this approach to the study of American art. By discerning the role non-Indigenous American arts play in naturalizing the ongoing theft of land, together with recognizing the unbroken legitimacy of Indigenous Title informing Native artworks, arts discourses might contribute to (re)imagining U.S.-American space as Indigenous space.

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Settler justice: Bryan Warde, Colorblind: Indigenous and Black Disproportionality Across Criminal Justice Systems, Springer, 2023

03Aug23

Description: This book uses settler colonialism, critical race, and tribal critical race theories to examine the relationship between settler colonialism and Indigenous and Black disproportionality in the criminal justice systems of the English-speaking Western liberal democracies of the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia. It argues that the colonial legacies of the respective countries established a set of subjugating strategies that continue to manifest today in criminal justice disproportionality. Erroneously thought of as a concluded historical event, the modern manifestation of the subjugating strategies is embodied in punitive law enforcement actions disproportionately targeting Indigenous and Black bodies. This book examines how we got to this point in history, opening the door for a discourse on how we might untether the respective criminal justice systems from their colonial practices in the name of social justice. Finally, the book offers educational opportunities for sociologists, criminologists, social workers, criminal justice reform advocates, and other stakeholders.

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The education of settlers: Bailey Britton, ‘Settler Colonialism and Education: What Haven’t We Learned?’, Live Ideas, 11/07/23

03Aug23

Abstract: The U.S. education system appears to be set up to not teach students about the dark side of colonialism. It tells the story of the colonizers, not the colonized. We see the effects of settler colonialism in our everyday lives, but we don’t even realize it because from a young age, we are educated to ignore it. Through this paper, I discuss my experiences as a student and a researcher and apply the theory of settler colonialism to monuments in the state of Kansas that reinforce settler colonial ideals.

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Neglected treaty, neglected treatise: Abbie LeBlanc, ‘The Míkmaw Concordat: Rethinking Treaty Making between Indigenous Peoples and Settlers’, American Journal of Political Science, 2023

03Aug23

Abstract: In 1610, the Míkmaq formed a treaty with French representatives of the Holy See. James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson argues in The Míkmaw Concordat (1997) that through this treaty the Míkmaq enfolded settlers into their existing international political order by extending to settlers their concept of sacred kinship. In the more than 25 years since the publication of The Míkmaw Concordat, it has received no attention from scholars of political science. This omission is unsurprising as political science struggles to account for Indigenous politics because of its traditional focus on the “Westphalian state.” This framework excludes many aspects of Indigenous political traditions, particularly their approaches to international politics, which are not reducible to state-centric frameworks. The Concordat, as a treaty between two nonstate entities, is an example of Indigenous treaty making that can illuminate both the history of settler colonialism and how contemporary social movements are resisting the settler state.

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Indigenous Palestine? Zahi Zalloua ,Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality, Bloomsbury, 2023

03Aug23

Description: Zahi Zalloua provides the first examination of Palestinian identity from the perspective of Indigeneity and Critical Black Studies. Examining the Palestinian question through the lens of settler colonialism and Indigeneity, this timely book warns against the liberal approach to Palestinian Indigeneity, which reinforces cultural domination, and urgently argues for the universal nature of the Palestinian struggle. Foregrounding Palestinian Indigeneity reframes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a problem of wrongful dispossession, a historical harm that continues to be inflicted on the population under the brutal Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. At the same time, in a global context marked by liberal democratic ideology, such an approach leads either to liberal tolerance – the minority is permitted to exist so long as their culture can be contained within the majority order – or racial separatism, that is, appeals for national independence typically embodied in the two-state solution. Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause not only insists that any analysis of Indigeneity’s purchase must keep this problem of translation in mind, but also that we must recast the Palestinian struggle as a universal one. As demonstrated by the Palestinian support for such movements as Black Lives Matter, and the reciprocal support Palestinians receive from BLM activists, the Palestinian cause fosters a solidarity of the excluded. This solidarity underscores the interlocking, global struggles for emancipation from racial domination and economic exploitation. Drawing on key Palestinian voices, including Edward Said and Larissa Sansour, as well as a wide range of influential philosophers such as Slavoj Žižek, Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe, Zalloua brings together the Palestinian question, Indigeneity and Critical Black Studies to develop a transformative, anti-racist vision of the world.

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