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Astropelagic rather than settler colonial: Alexandra Ganser, Jens Temmen, Clemens Rettenbacher, ‘A Sea of Stars? Towards an Astropelagic Reading of Outer Space with Jacques Lacan and Hannah Arendt’, Journal of Transnational American Studies, 14, 1, 2023, pp. 273-301

01Jun23

Excerpt: With his novel The Martian (2015), author Andy Weir is credited with having almost single handedly reinvigorated space exploration in general and Mars colonization in particular as popular narratives both within science and fiction. Weir’s fictional account of US astronaut Mark Watney and his accidental exile on Mars has been praised for its scientific accuracy and compelling writing style in depicting Watney’s strategies of survival in the hostile environment of the Red Planet. Read through the lens of theories of imperialism and mobility, this survival essentially relies on Watney’s ability to navigate the alien territoriality of planet Mars. In the story, the protagonist cycles through different approaches to conceptualizing Martian territoriality in order to make sense of and survive on the planet. Initially, Watney—a botanist by training—relies on planting potatoes in the arid soil of Mars to replenish his supplies. This introduction of agriculture to a territory resisting cultivation carries with it the distinct logic of nineteenth-century US settler-colonialism—a discourse that privileges agricultural use of land and ultimately serves as a way of legitimizing white settler land ownership.


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Settler colonial in(ex)clusion: Allison K. Moncrieff, Settler colonialism, race & space: articulating the criteria and disparities of municipal in(ex)clusion in Lethbridge, Alberta, MA dissertation, University of Lethbridge, 2023

30May23

Abstract: This Master of Arts thesis aims to discover if criteria for inclusion is present within the City of Lethbridge through surveying business owner and City Council perspectives on the community’s former supervised consumption site (SCS). My research complements and builds upon previous academic work done in Lethbridge and shows that Indigenous inclusion is interpreted through a settler colonial lens which alternatively seeks to reinforce Indigenous exclusion. Inclusion premised through a settler colonial ideology and intent – or, as I have coined, in(ex)clusion – undermines the cultivation of authentic municipal inclusion. The SCS case study highlights the range of settler transfers that emerge when normative expectations about Indigenous social participation are challenged or unmet. Settler colonialism’s presence in municipal environments demands greater study if, in the spirit of reconciliation, authentic municipal inclusion is to develop.


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The birth of settler colonialism: Samir Shaheen-Hussain, Alisa Lombard, Suzy Basile, ‘Confronting medical colonialism and obstetric violence in Canada’, The Lancet, 401, 10390, 2023, pp. 1763-1765

30May23

Excerpt: On Sept 28, 2020, just moments before her death, 37-year-old Joyce Echaquan sent a message to her family via Facebook Live, expressing her distress about treatment administered by hospital staff at an emergency department in Joliette, QC, Canada. She had been admitted there a few days earlier with severe abdominal pain. Echaquan was entitled to respectful, dignified care. Instead, capturing health-care workers treating her disdainfully with slurs and taunts based on degrading stereotypes of Indigenous women, Echaquan’s live-stream video made headlines worldwide, exposing the racist and sexist violence Indigenous women face all too often in the Canadian health-care system. However, initial media coverage did not reveal the repeated discrimination Echaquan had experienced during her encounters with the medical establishment over the years.


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Determining the health of settlers: Bram Wispelwey, Osama Tanous, Yara Asi, Weeam Hammoudeh, David Mills,’Because its power remains naturalized: Introducing the settler colonial determinants of health’, Frontiers, 2023

30May23

Abstract: Indigenous people suffer earlier death and more frequent and severe disease than their settler counterparts, a remarkably persistent reality over time, across settler colonized geographies, and despite their ongoing resistance to elimination. Although these health inequities are well-known, they have been impervious to comprehensive and convincing explication, let alone remediation. Settler colonialism, the focus of a fast-growing multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field, is a promising candidate to rectify this impasse. Settler colonialism’s relationship to health inequity is at once obvious and incompletely described, a paradox arising from epistemic coloniality and perceived analytic challenges that we address here in three parts. First, in considering settler colonialism an enduring structure rather than a past event, and by wedding this fundamental insight to the ascendant structural paradigm for understanding health inequities, a picture emerges in which this system of power serves as a foundational and ongoing configuration determining social and political mechanisms that impose on human health. Second, because modern racialization has served to solidify and maintain the hierarchies of colonial relations, settler colonialism adds explanatory power to racism’s health impacts and potential amelioration by historicizing this process for differentially racialized groups. Finally, advances in structural racism methodologies and the work of a few visionary scholars have already begun to elucidate the possibilities for a body of literature linking settler colonialism and health, illuminating future research opportunities and pathways toward the decolonization required for health equity.


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The virulent settler state: Theresa Rocha Beardall, ‘Social-Distancing the Settler-State: Indigenous Peoples in the Age of COVID-19’, in Glenn W. Muschert, Kristen M. Budd, David C. Lane, Jason A. Smith (eds), Social Problems in the Age of COVID-19, Vol 2, Cambridge University Press, 2023

30May23

Excerpt: The global spread of COVID-19 is quickly exacerbating existing racial and economic disparities, and in its wake, revealing the spatial dynamics of health and interlocking social inequalities that burden marginalized communities. Among Indigenous Peoples, increased risk of exposure is linked to the enduring settler-colonial logics of Indigenous elimination and present-day mistreatment of tribal communities by settler-states that occupy their lands. Specifically, Indigenous communities face social problems such as access to quality, affordable healthcare, sustainable public infrastructure, opportunities for economic self-sufficiency, nutritious food, and clean water. Relatedly, Indigenous cultures and languages are often stigmatized and othered, which may dissuade some Indigenous Peoples from seeking out medical and social services when in need.


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Carbon settler colonialism: Faith Elizabeth Howard, An Analysis of the Suruí Forest Carbon Project in Context of Settler Colonialism, MA dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2023

30May23

Abstract: This thesis analyzes the Suruí Forest Carbon Project in the context of settler colonialism. By exploring the three core principles of settler colonialism as outlined by settler colonial scholar Patrick Wolfe: access to land, elimination of the native, and the understanding that settler colonialism is a structure and not an event, I will demonstrate how each one of the three principles helped contribute to creating the context within which the Suruí Forest Carbon Project was situated. By taking this approach, I will be able to demonstrate the limits and possibilities of the project for the Suruí indigenous peoples. This analysis will allow me to present the challenges and contradictions associated with implementing REDD+ carbon credit projects in settler states such as Brazil and how, due to settler colonialism’s structural limitations, these types of projects could be a possibility of providing some agency for indigenous peoples trying to find ways to assert their autonomy. The Suruí Forest Carbon Project was the first and still one of the only examples of an indigenous-led carbon emissions reduction project operating through the sale of carbon credits. During the first five years the project was operational, it drastically helped reduce deforestation levels within the Suruí’s territory, leading many to deem the project a success. However, in 2015 and 2016, following the discovery of gold and diamonds on the Suruí’s territory, the project’s sight was eventually overrun by garimpeiros (small-scale gold miners), and in 2018 the project was suspended, leading some to consider it a failure. Therefore, I will present some of the challenges that arise when neoliberal conservation efforts, such as carbon credit projects, struggle to address factors outside their initial control, in this case, settler colonialism. Also, by analyzing the different components going into the project’s creation, implementation, and suspension, I will present how carbon credit projects working directly with indigenous peoples can successfully halt deforestation for limited periods. But how settler colonialism makes these groups of people and their land vulnerable, which can help contribute to projects being undermined. Through my analysis, I will help demonstrate some factors that impact these types of projects’ longevity and some things that would need to be implemented in the future to succeed in the long term.


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The early Soviet stance against settler colonialism: Alexey Golubev, ‘No natural colonization: the early Soviet school of historical anti-colonialism’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2023

30May23

Abstract: This paper discusses Soviet Marxist historical narratives of the 1920s and early 1930s that sought to reframe Russian history as a process driven by commercial capital and analyzed Russian territorial expansion and its historical scholarship in terms such as settler colonialism and indigenous erasure. As of now, the corpus of works by early Soviet Marxist historians still represents the most massive and sustained effort to challenge imperial narratives of Russian history from within the Russian academic community. Resonating with current conversations about Russian imperialism and colonialism, this intellectual tradition represents a major contribution to the postcolonial turn in studies of Russian history.


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Indigenous veterans in a settler colonial system: William John Pratt,’ William John ‘Indigenous Veterans of the First World War and their Families in the Prairie West’, Canadian Military History, 32, 1, 2023, pp. 1-16

30May23

Abstract: This study of forty-five military pension files of Indigenous First World War veterans of the Treaty 4, 6 and 7 regions shows that the racist perspectives and structures of settler colonialism on the Prairies could prevent just administration of benefits. Pension files of Indigenous veterans expose the tragedy of their lives during and after the First World War. Many soldiers had lingering pains and ailments as a result of the war, as well as continuing problems shaking the gaze of settler colonialism, which seemed unable to view them as both Indigenous and veterans. Despite the numerous legal and cultural obstacles to being treated equally to other veterans, many Indigenous men and their families were paid pensions, which were valuable, especially during the hardships on First Nations reserves in the interwar years.


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On the settlerization of war: Garrett DeWayne Hall, Rangers and Rebels: The Americanization of War in the Colonial South, PhD dissertation, Liberty University, 2023

30May23

Abstract: Some historians have used the phrase Americanization of war to describe the process in which Anglo-American settlers adopted or appropriated the military tactics of American Indians. However, both proponents and opponents of the idea of the Americanization of war have focused on the northern colonies. This is likely because the Americanization of war in the colonial period has been closely associated with American rangers, most notably those commanded by Benjamin Church, John Gorham, and Robert Rogers. While these men and the soldiers they commanded are all demonstrative of the Americanization of war, Church, Gorham, and Rogers all conducted operations in New England, New York, and Canada. These studies do not address the unique process of the Americanization of war in the southern colonies. A study of the colonial wars in the South reveals that a process of Americanization of war did take place, although it varied somewhat from that in the North. Unlike their northern counterparts, the settlement patterns of the colonial South produced a ranger that was more inspired by English practices than American Indian tactics. Still, over the course of several colonial wars in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the southern ranger became exemplary of the Americanization of war, yet distinct from his northern counterpart. The Americanization of war in the South happened though a complex process that involved trade, hunting, military alliances, slavery, and frontier life. By the mid-eighteenth century, southern rangers reflected the Americanized society that was developing in the colonial South. Ultimately, understanding the distinct process of the Americanization of war in the colonial South is important to understanding southern culture and its exceptional place in American identity.


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The religion of settler colonialism (on the assimilation of indigeneity): Joseph Wiebe, Sydney Thackeray, ‘The Mennonite case for counter-sovereignty through Indigenous assimilation: Settler colonialism, self determination and relation to place in religious identity’, Studies in Religion, 2023

28May23

Abstract: This essay analyses settler colonialism’s impact on religious settler identity through one community’s perceptions and interactions with Indigenous peoples. It combines a normative commitment to Indigenous self-determination with an empirical study of Mennonite settlement narratives by drawing on Indigenous sources to interpret Mennonite descriptions of Indigenous communities between 1880 and 1939. Specifically, using two central characteristics of Indigenous religion and politics to frame the analysis – relationality and self-determination – reveals how Mennonites narrated Indigenous presence to establish their own self-determination. The study identifies the evaluative categories that Mennonites used to narrate Indigenous communities and then uses those categories with a focus on relationality and self-determination to assess North American Mennonite religious history in the same period. It demonstrates how Mennonites’ arguments for Indigenous peoples’ assimilation to settler society were motivated not just by Christian conviction but also by their desire to secure their own sovereignty. Mennonites’ interest in assimilation has at least as much to do with their relation to place as it does with their religious claims.


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