settler colonial studies blog

The future is beyond settler colonialism: Bronwyn Carlson, Madi Day, Sandy O’Sullivan, Tristan Kennedy (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Australian Indigenous Peoples and Futures, Routledge, 2023

09Aug23

Description: Providing an international reference work written solely by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors, this book offers a powerful overview of emergent and topical research in the field of global Indigenous studies. It addresses current concerns of Australian Indigenous peoples of today, and explores opportunities to develop, and support the development of, Indigenous resilience and solidarity to create a fairer, safer, more inclusive future. Divided into three sections, this book explores: What futures for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples might look like, and how institutions, structures and systems can be transformed to such a future; The complexity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island life and identity, and the possibilities for Australian Indigenous futures; and The many and varied ways in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples use technology, and how it is transforming their lives. This book documents a turning point in global Indigenous history: the disintermediation of Indigenous voices and the promotion of opportunities for Indigenous peoples to map their own futures. It is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Indigenous studies, as well as gender and sexuality studies, education studies, ethnicity and identity studies, and decolonising development studies.

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Borderless Palestine against settler colonialism: Hanine Shehadeh, ‘Palestine in the Cloud: The Construction of a Digital Floating Homeland’, Humanities, 12, 4, 2023

05Aug23

Abstract: A widespread revolt during the months of April and May 2021 in the Palestinian city of Jerusalem, also known as Habbet Ayyar, responded to Israeli actions aiming to ethnically cleanse and force out residents from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, where approximately 3000 people reside, and to limit the movement and entry of Palestinians to Al-Aqsa Mosque. These measures were met with an unprecedented wave of youth-led protests against the Israeli army, police, security agencies, and settlers. Habbet Ayyar stands out not only for its innovative and effective use of new media to amplify the protests beyond Israel’s sphere of influence and control, but also for the unity displayed by fragmented Palestinians as they confronted Israel. By exploring the larger historical and geographical context of the movement that led to Habbet Ayyar, this article aims to understand how Palestinians have utilized, for the past 20 years, new media as a battleground—despite enforced digital colonialism—and how these media served to articulate and create what I call a digital “floating homeland”. The concept of a “floating homeland” is useful for exploring how the Palestinian virtual social movement has redefined and reconnected with Palestine beyond Israel’s control and fragmentation. This digital homeland is constructed through new technologies that have reshaped Palestinian self-identification and allowed for a virtual and digital reconceptualization of a borderless Palestine.

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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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