settler colonial studies blog

Taiwan’s settler colonialism: Lin-chin Tsai, Re-conceptualizing Taiwan: Settler Colonial Criticism and Cultural Production, UCLA dissertation, 2019

12Jun19

Abstract: This dissertation examines a diverse body of postwar cultural production in Taiwan (1945 to the present), including literary, cinematic, and other forms of media texts, through the lens of settler colonial criticism. Taiwan, an island whose indigenous inhabitants are Austronesian, has been a de facto settler colony due to large-scale Han migration from China to Taiwan beginning in the seventeenth century. However, the prevailing discourse in Taiwan, particularly in the field of Taiwan literature studies, has been “postcolonial,” articulating Taiwan either in terms of the end of the Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945) or the lifting of the Martial Law (1949-87), neither of which acknowledges the continued colonization of indigenous peoples. Furthermore, Taiwan has long been excluded from the global arena of settler colonial studies. Owing to the twofold invisibility of Taiwan as a settler colony in both local and global contexts, I employ the analytical framework of settler colonialism—a specific colonial formation whereby settlers displace the indigenous residents and take over the land—so as to address the discursive limits and academic blind spots described above. More specifically, this research project mobilizes settler colonial criticism to critically reflect on various media/genres of contemporary cultural production by Han Taiwanese authors as settlers in order to challenge current academic trends and the Han settler structure of Taiwan. In so doing, this dissertation not only fills in the gaps of the postcolonial paradigm in Taiwan but also provides significant insights for global settler colonial studies based on Taiwan’s unique experience. As such, it contributes to the redistribution of knowledge production in Taiwan’s intellectual sphere, partaking of the recent calls for “indigenous transitional justice” as a means of decolonization. In this sense, to re-conceptualize Taiwan as a settler colony through examining its cultural production is not only to re-situate Taiwan onto the world map of settler colonial studies but also to reimagine a new form of relational ethics between the indigenous and non-indigenous communities in Taiwan.

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The settler-colonial exclusions of yoga: Tria Blu Wakpa, ‘Decolonizing Yoga? and (Un)settling Social Justice’, Journal Race and Yoga, 3, 1, 2019

12Jun19

Excerpt: What are our responsibilities not only to the Indigenous peoples whose lands we occupy, but also to the Indigenous peoples and people of color whose practices we benefit from? This special cluster of Race and Yoga recognizes the need to (re)center Indigenous lands, practices, and peoples locally and globally in discussions of decolonization and yoga. Settler colonial and/or dominant yoga discourses exclude peoples who are Indigenous to the partition of Turtle Island often referred to as the U.S. as well as the Indigenous South Asian, South Asian, South Asian American, and/or South Asian diasporic peoples from whose ancestors and lands yoga broadly originated. Whereas Native American/Indigenous, South Asian, and South Asian American studies have frequently overlooked embodied practices and the ways that movement means, academic fields that center the body, embodiment, and performance studies have often omitted Indigenous peoples and their contributions. With the primary exception of Native American/Indigenous studies, fields often do not account for settler colonialism or Indigenous futurities. In the U.S., discourses around “decolonizing yoga” frequently focus on globalization and likewise do not acknowledge settler colonialism or Native American sovereignties. That is, these discourses often do not recognize the over 900 federally recognized and unrecognized tribes within the settler state boundaries are actually nations and/or that yoga is practiced on Indigenous lands that are not acknowledged as such.

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Settler-colonial attribution: Jane Anderson, Kimberly Christen, ‘Decolonizing Attribution: Traditions of Exclusion’, Journal of Radical Librarianship, 5, 2019, pp. 113–52

10Jun19

Abstract: In this article we provide a structural critique of attribution as it is figured in colonial practices and ongoing settler-colonial logics that form the basis for creating, circulating, and sharing knowledge through research practices, methods, and platforms. Settler colonialism is a tradition, and as such, it has habits. One of these habits is to hide specific tactics and practices in operationalizing dispossession. Attribution is one of these tactics. Attribution functions as a key mechanism within a copyright/author/archive matrix which maintains hierarchies of knowledge production by reducing Indigenous and nonEuropean subjectivity and legitimating the ongoing appropriation of Indigenous1 cultural material by non-Indigenous authors. The colonial force of attribution and its practices of exclusion are hidden in the stacks and how they are populated; in the rights fields of databases and how they are cited; in archival processes of selection, appraisal, and accessioning; and through efforts to digitize content and collections in order to make them open without acknowledgment and ongoing relationships. We argue that one mode of decolonizing practices for libraries and archives is through remaking, reframing, and refiguring attribution through ongoing Indigenous connections to land and knowledge.

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The history of health, the health of history: P. Reid, D. Cormack, S-J. Paine,’Colonial histories, racism and health—The experience of Māori and Indigenous peoples’, Public Health, 2019

10Jun19

Abstract: The health of Māori, the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, New Zealand, like that of almost all Indigenous peoples worldwide, is characterised by systematic inequities in health outcomes, differential exposure to the determinants of health, inequitable access to and through health and social systems, disproportionate marginalisation and inadequate representation in the health workforce. As health providers, we are often taught that ‘taking a history’ is a critical component of a patient consultation to ensure that the underlying conditions are treated rather than the often superficial presenting symptoms. In the same way, attempts to make sense of the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples is inadequate unless health providers engage critically with the history of their respective nations and any subsequent patterns of privilege or disadvantage. Understanding this history, within the framework of western imperialism and other similar colonial projects, allows us to make sense of international patterns of Indigenous health status.

While health commentators acknowledge the unequal health outcomes of Indigenous people, and an increasing number also link these inequities to Indigenous marginalisation resulting from historic events, very few go further and expose the deep relationship between racism and coloniality and how these continue to be the basic determinants of Indigenous health today. This work includes honest examination of the role that science and the health disciplines have played historically in colonisation through the subjugation of Indigenous ways of knowing and knowledge production, as well as being complicit in the creation and maintenance of a fabricated hierarchy of humankind. Despite the ‘science’ of this racial hierarchy being discredited, it retains a false validity in our societies. As long as oppressive systems that continue to re-inscribe racism and white privilege remain in communities, including our academic communities, coloniality continues its discrimination.

Indigenous voices on migration, ethnicity, racism and health will always demand the elimination of inequities in health but to do so will require a parallel commitment to critically interrogating all of our histories and our disciplines, as well as examining how our practice, including research, disrupts or maintains global systems of racism and coloniality.

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The indigenous rights of indigenous children: Allyson Stevenson, ‘Child Welfare, Indigenous Children and Children’s Rights in Canada’, Direito e Práxis, 10, 2, 2019 pp. 1239-1260

10Jun19

Abstract: In Canada, Indigenous children have been removed from their families and communities for residential schooling and for adoption and fostering by the state. These historic and ongoing policies have contributed to a general lack of awareness and respect for the rights of Indigenous children as children, as well as Indigenous rights bearers. This paper examines the ways in which historic Indigenous transracial adoption projects acted as a means of public education for ignorance, and argues there is an urgent need for increased public and academic attention to Indigenous children’s rights as both universal children’s rights and Indigenous rights.

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With a chapter on ‘The environment as a site of struggle against settler-colonisation in Palestine’, by Abeer al-Butmeh, Zayneb al-Shalalfeh, and Mahmoud Zwahre: In Anne Harley, Eurig Scandrett (eds), Environmental Justice, Popular Struggle and Community Development, Polity Press, 2019

07Jun19

Access the article here.

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The monument of settler colonialism: Libby Porter, Sue Jackson, Louise Johnson, ‘Remaking imperial power in the city: The case of the William Barak building, Melbourne’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2019

07Jun19

Abstract: When the enormous drapes that had been covering a new building in central Melbourne were thrown off in early 2015, an extraordinary sight was revealed: a colossal image of a face staring down the city’s civic spine. This moment of unveiling marked a fascinating moment for Indigenous–settler relations in Australia, but especially urban, densely settled Melbourne. For the face is that of William Barak, ancestor and leader of the Wurundjeri people, whose country was stolen and remade into what we now know as Melbourne. That an early land rights champion is represented in the built form at such a pivotal location in the city that dispossessed his people offers an opportunity to consider the forms of violence, appropriation and misrepresentation that are perpetually constitutive of settler-colonial cities. Drawing together critical Indigenous scholarship, settler-colonial studies and geographies of memorialization, the paper analyses the building to demonstrate the contemporary workings of settler-colonial urbanization. The paper analyses the representational politics the building performs, the history of land sales since contact and the role of the site in a wider imperialist planning project to reveal the intimate nexus of land, property and recognition politics that work to continuously secure white possession of Indigenous lands.

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Sporting settler colonialism: Chen Chen, Daniel S. Mason, ‘Making Settler Colonialism Visible in Sport Management’, Human Kinetics Journal, 2019

05Jun19

Abstract: This study discusses how an epistemological shift—explicitly acknowledging the embedded position of the sport management field in settler colonial societies and its effect on knowledge production therein—is necessary for the field to mobilize social change that problematizes and challenges ongoing settler colonialism. Reviewing previous research examining social change in sport management, the authors then argue that settler colonialism, a condition that underlies some nation-states that produce leading sport management knowledge—the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—should no longer remain invisible in our research. Drawing upon Indigenous Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, and sport-related work from other social science disciplines, the authors contextualize the position of non-Indigenous scholars and then address three questions that highlight the relevance of settler colonialism to sport management research. They conclude with a discussion on possible ways in which settler colonialism can be visibilized and thus challenged by non-Indigenous scholars.

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Settler happiness is a nonindigenous future: Daniella Bendo, Taryn Hepburn, Dale C. Spencer, Raven Sinclair, ‘”Happy” Children: The Settler Family, Happiness and the Indigenous Child Removal System’, Children & Society, 2019

05Jun19

Abstract: We analyse 4300 advertisements of children featured in the Today’s Child column, a daily written by Helen Allen in The Toronto Telegram and The Toronto Star from 1964 to 1982, to understand how the Canadian public became accepting of the adoption of Indigenous children. While children of all ethnic backgrounds were featured, the Indigenous children who were displayed were part of a larger system of child removal, known as the ‘Sixties Scoop’. We demonstrate the ways Indigenous children are described with a specific form of happiness that is conjoined with colonial conceptions of the family and nation.

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Reading as a settler-colonial act: Jeffrey Sacks, ‘The Resistance to Boycott: Palestine, BDS, and the Modern Language Association’, Radical History Review, 134, 2019, pp 233-244

05Jun19

Abstract: This article traces the relations between the 2017 vote of the Modern Language Association (MLA) against supporting the boycott of Israeli academic institutions and the practices of reading and literary interpretation upon which the MLA is founded. It argues that the MLA’s affirmation of the exteriority of literature and literature studies to boycott advances a Bildungs-centric conception of language, literature, and self-understanding, which the MLA, through its vote, expansively promotes on a global scale—across literatures and languages. And it argues that the MLA, insofar as it advocates this bildungs-centrism, participates in a history of violence—of slavery, genocide, and settler colonialism—which remains constitutive for the formation of literary fields and objects of study. In doing so this article examines a single Hebrew-language novel, S. Yizhar’s Khirbet Khizeh (1949), which dramatizes, in the colonization of Palestine, the relationships between reading, literary form, and death-imparting, genocidal violence.

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