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Settlers need expanses (they manufacture them): Kristen Simmons, ‘Expanse’, Journal for the Anthropology of North America, 22, 2, 2019, pp. 103-105

24Nov19

Abstract: The federal government owns more land in Nevada than any other state. While the acquisition of land as territory is central to the project of settler colonialism, this essay expands the frame by considering the atmospherics of rural America through an indigenous analytic. Reflecting on aboveground atomic testing, the growth of Air Force bases, and conservation imaginaries, the essay examines the work that goes into producing emptiness and what the dream of the expanse allows.


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The settler home is mobile: Nicholas Shapiro, ‘Manufacturing Home’, Journal for the Anthropology of North America, 22, 2, 2019, pp. 121-124

24Nov19

Abstract: Making the colonist’s home mobile, disregarding local ecologies and building practices, is foundational to the settler‐colonial project. This article tracks the mobile home from its role as a key architecture of occupation and settlement by the British Empire to being a superlative embodiment of hydrocarbon‐infused commodities and homes after World War II. As the violences of mobile home ownership are coterminous with the violences of settler colonialism, an equitable vision of affordable housing cannot stop at achieving racial parity for toxic/classist loans (for often toxic homes) or greater protections for colonial land tenure.


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Indigenous women rights are the end of settler colonialism: Talia Yousef, Settler-Colonialism and Indigenous Women’s Rights: A Comparative Analysis of the Socioeconomic Impact endured by Indigenous women within ‘Canada’, and Indigenous Palestinian women within ‘Israel’, MA dissertation, Carleton University, 2019

24Nov19

Abstract: This research compares the socioeconomic realities of Indigenous women resisting settler colonialism, such as Palestinian women resisting Israel, and women of varying Indigenous nations resisting Canada. The purpose of the research aims to address the socio-economic impact of settler-colonialism on Indigenous women as a causal relationship. In doing so, the research addresses factors such as Indigenous relationships to land, genocide (which will be defined and situated within the context shortly), and continued mechanisms of systemic oppression and discrimination. This comparative analysis uses lenses of anti-colonial feminism and marxism, while relying on the academic work of Indigenous authors as well as statistical data indicating various measures of socio-economic welfare. The observed outcomes situate the rights of Indigenous women at the heart of liberation from settler colonialism, and inversely address settler-colonialism as a key mechanism oppressing the rights of Indigenous women.


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Why forgive? Sam Grey, ‘Returning to the Source: Revisiting Arendtian Forgiveness in the Politics of Reconciliation’, Theoria, 66, 161, 2019, pp. 37-65

24Nov19

Abstract: The idea of forgiveness is omnipresent in the transitional justice literature, yet this body of work, taken as a whole, is marked by conceptual, terminological and argumentative imprecision. Equivocation is common, glossing moral, theological, therapeutic and legal considerations, while arguments proceed from political, apolitical and even antipolitical premises. With forgiveness as a praxis linked to reconciliation processes in at least ten countries, concerns have grown over its negative implications for the relationship between the state and victims of state-authored injustices. Many of these debates reference Hannah Arendt. Drawing from a range of Arendt’s published and unpublished work, this article challenges the academic claim that forgiveness has no place in the politics of reconciliation. Through this ‘returning to the source’, it presents a promising mode of thinking about political forgiveness in contemporary Settler-colonial states.

 


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Settlers tell even more stories: Edward Guimont, From King Solomon to Ian Smith: Rhodesian Alternate Histories of Zimbabwe, PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut, 2019

22Nov19

Abstract: In the eleventh century CE, the Shona people of Central Africa built the city of Great Zimbabwe, an administrative center and royal home. Connected to the Indian Ocean gold trade, it would become the largest pre-colonial city in sub-Saharan Africa. However, it entered into decline and was ultimately abandoned by the sixteenth century – when the first Portuguese expeditions came in contact with the region. The fact that this city entered into decline just as Europeans encountered it set it up to become the center of a number of fantastical legends about its origins, typically linking it with the Biblical King Solomon and his gold mine of Ophir.

Most prior studies of the “foreign builder hypothesis” have focused on the fact that white supremacist ideologies of explorers and settlers tended to reject the idea that Africans could have built a city like Great Zimbabwe. This study instead focuses on how successive regimes in Central Africa approached the legend of Great Zimbabwe for their own political ends. In doing so, this study reveals how settler colonialism not only builds off of, but facilitates the construction of “mythic histories” to justify rights not only to the land, but its history. Further, this project illuminates how those approaches to mythic history formed in the nineteenth century persisted after the end of formal colonialism, and have helped feed not only mainstream white supremacist discourse in former imperial metropoles, but served as the origin of modern anti-intellectual and anti-government political movements in the United States.


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Settlers tell stories: John R. Legg, ‘White Lies, Native Revisions: The Legacy of Violence in the American West’, Great Plains Quarterly, 39, 4, 2019, pp. 331-340

22Nov19

Abstract: This essay examines particular episodes of violence between Native peoples and white settlers in the American West and the competing narratives created by the two groups. The contested memory of the US-Dakota War, the Sand Creek Massacre, the Modoc War, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the legacy at Fort Smith, Arkansas, all provide a lens through which to view the formation of white victimhood and the idea of American innocence. Key works about the historical memory of these episodes of violence are explored for the issues surrounding the politics of memory and how Native peoples face the contestation head-on.


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The settlers’ dream: Alejandra Mancilla, ‘A continent of and for whiteness?: “White” colonialism and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty’, Polar Record, 2019

22Nov19

Abstract: There are at least four ways in which Antarctic colonialism was white: it was paradigmatically performed by white men; it consisted in the taking of vast, white expanses of land; it was carried out with a carte blanche (literally, “blank card”) attitude; and it was presented to the world as a white, innocent adventure. While the first, racial whiteness has been amply problematised, I suggest that the last three illuminate yet other moral wrongs of the Antarctic colonial project. Moreover, they might be constitutive of a larger class of “white” colonialisms beyond the White Continent.


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Settler colonialism reorganises the natural world: Kari Marie Norgaard, Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People Colonialism, Nature, and Social Action, Rutgers University Press, 2019

20Nov19

Description: Since time before memory, large numbers of salmon have made their way up and down the Klamath River. Indigenous management enabled the ecological abundance that formed the basis of capitalist wealth across North America. These activities on the landscape continue today, although they are often the site of intense political struggle. Not only has the magnitude of Native American genocide been of remarkable little sociological focus, the fact that this genocide has been coupled with a reorganization of the natural world represents a substantial theoretical void. Whereas much attention has (rightfully) focused on the structuring of capitalism, racism and patriarchy, few sociologists have attended to the ongoing process of North American colonialism. Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People draws upon nearly two decades of examples and insight from Karuk experiences on the Klamath River to illustrate how the ecological dynamics of settler-colonialism are essential for theorizing gender, race and social power today. 


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How does decolonisation look like? Dara Potts, Hybrid Government Institutions: Reconciliation or Institutional Colonialism? The Case of the Tłįchǫ Peoples, Northwest Territories, MA dissertation, Carleton University, 2019

20Nov19

Abstract: On August 25, 2003, the Tłįchǫ Peoples of the Northwest Territories signed a combined comprehensive land claim and self-government agreement with the Government of Canada. In addition to transferring ancestral lands back to the Tłįchǫ Peoples, the Agreement provides the Tłįchǫ Peoples with the right and freedom to define how their lands and its resources are managed. The establishment of such an Indigenous government presents an opportunity to create new institutions of governance that meaningfully include Indigenous values and that reflect traditional knowledge and practices of the Tłı̨chǫ Peoples. This thesis poses two questions. Has Tłįchǫ self-government resulted in the creation of unique Indigenous government institutions that incorporate Indigenous approaches, customs and habits (Indigenous perspectives)? Have these Indigenous institutions been meaningfully incorporated by formal government institutions at the watershed and territorial level? This study is situated within the broader debates surrounding reconciliation. It argues that meaningful reconciliation requires more than simple acknowledgement of rights or a duty to consult; it requires meaningful integration of Indigenous practices and perspectives into formal institutions, and most importantly, formal government institutions. A combined structural institutional analysis and discourse analysis of formal government institutions and documents of the Tłı̨chǫ Government, the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Management Board and the Government of the Northwest Territories was conducted. Analysis focused on land and water management. It was found that the Tłı̨chǫ Government has created unique hybrid government institutions, grounded upon Tłı̨chǫ history, culture and practices and augmented by modern knowledge and practices through the principle of knowing two ways. However, the integration of Indigenous practices and perspectives remains limited in the formal government institutions and documents, and therefore formal practices, at the watershed and territorial levels. This suggests the possibility of a new “two solitudes” separating Indigenous peoples and their governments from territorial, provincial and federal governments in the day-to-day activities of governance. This study also raises the question of whether hybrid formal government institutions can be created and if they can, whether these can become institutions of reconciliation or remain expressions of institutional colonialism under resilient settler colonialism.


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Can settler consciousness be transformed? Jesse Whattam, The Possibilities of Transforming Settler Consciousness: Community Spaces and White Settler Responsibility, MA Dissertation, Carleton University, 2019

20Nov19

Abstract: In Settler Colonial Theory, there is a growing body of work that looks at the ways settler colonization is being challenged. The understanding of how settlers are engaging with these potential transformations remains unclear. I build on Davis et. al’s (2017) idea of “transforming settler consciousness” to consider what conditions, spaces, and practices are facilitating white settlers to challenge settler coloniality. Working with five white settlers in community groups, I use a narrative inquiry methodology to ask what about these initiatives did, or did not, catalyze transformed settler consciousness? Through a political ontology framework, the stories shared reveal the paradoxes, challenges and complexities about what facilitates a politics of recognition (Coulthard 2014) and what facilitates spaces of ontological negotiation. While the former does not demand a transformation in settler consciousness, the later does and with that transformation, settlers have the potential to contribute to a radical transformation of settler coloniality.


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