settler colonial studies blog

Land impact and environmental seizure: Lydia Moorman, ‘Indigenous Land Seizure & Environmental Injustice: Impacts of Settler Colonialism’, Journal of Earth and Life Science, 2026

27Jul26

Abstract: The fields of conservation and environmentalism prioritize ecosystem health, yet both emerged from western frameworks that displaced and criminalized Indigenous land stewardship. The idealization of “pristine wilderness” narratives served to justify the removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands and erased millennia of sustainable land stewardship that had maintained ecological balance long before western conservation existed. These narratives not only misrepresented Indigenous relationship with land but also constructed a false dichotomy between humans and nature that positioned Indigenous presence as a threat rather than a source of ecological knowledge. Simultaneously, anthropogenic expansion; such as pipelines, mining, railroads, and other extractive infrastructures, violated Indigenous sovereignty and intensified ecological disruption. These processes are not isolated historical events but ongoing forms of environmental racism that produce disproportionate harm to Indigenous communities through land dispossession, cultural erasure, and the degradation of ecosystems central to cultural health and identity. Current political rollbacks on environmental protections further exacerbate these injustices by weakening tribal consultation, expanding extractive development, and undermining Indigenous governance. Effective conservation and sustainability require Indigenous leadership, recognition of sovereignty, and the restoration of land-based governance systems that have supported ecosystems for generations. Repairing these fields demands centering Indigenous authority rather than erasing or appropriating Indigenous knowledge. Without Indigenous-led decision-making, conservation and environmental sustainability efforts risk reproducing the same colonial structures that created ecological and social harm in the first place.

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One paradigm among many: Nida Alahmad, ‘Deexceptionalizing not Reinventing: Genocide, Palestine, and Zionism’, Journal of Genocide Research, 2026

27Jul26

Excerpt: The Israeli genocide in Gaza amplified debates that question the paradigmatic, and sometimes also epistemic, foundations of different fields of scholarship, including Genocide Studies. These discussions are motivated by a need to re-examine key questions when addressing how the political problem of Palestine’s colonization and occupation can be framed in search of emancipatory politics. This essay is a theoretical intervention that zooms in on those discussions in the context of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. It offers a critique which prioritizes a sociologically grounded and historically sensitive approach to deexceptionalize paradigmatic experiences when re-examining conceptual categories such as genocide. These debates have brought together related, even if distinct, strands of literature: Settler Colonial Studies (SCS), decolonial theory’s epistemic decolonization, Indigenous studies, Genocide Studies, and studies that focus on Palestine, Israel, and Zionism respectively. One result of this convergence, which is the focus of this critique, is an attempt to produce new conceptual categories (e.g. a reconceptualization of genocide) to decolonize knowledge and, possibly, pave the way for political possibilities of a just future. In this essay, I propose an alternative approach that centres political questions through deexceptionalizing paradigms that inform conceptual categories rather than replacing one hegemonic narrative (or paradigm) with another in an attempt to reconceptualize concepts. The proposed approach opens the space for political imagination rather than locks the discussion in epistemic games.

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The sex of settler statues: Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Vera Mackie, Ana Stevenson, Andrea Witcomb, ‘Statuary and a Gendered Reckoning with Australia’s Settler-Colonial Past’, in Sherene Baugher, John H. Jameson (eds), Monuments, Statues, and Commemorations of Women, Routledge, 2026

23Jul26

Abstract: It has long been commented – particularly by feminist scholars – that women are underrepresented in statues in public places. Statues across the Commonwealth and former British Empire overwhelmingly depict prominent white men who engaged in military pursuits, colonising ventures, politics, or industry. In recent years, these statues have become sites of protest because of their association with imperialism, militarism, dispossession, and oppression. Women, on the other hand, tend to be depicted in statuary as allegorical figures, representing abstract qualities of love, charity, or compassion. In these countries, Queen Victoria (1819–1901) stands out as one of the few ‘real’ women to be memorialised in statuary. However, in Australia, a settler-colonial nation that still maintains close ties with the British metropole, statues of Victoria have attracted criticism and protests. Not content for this monarch to be the sole representation of actual women, demands have emerged for a more diverse memory landscape, as seen in the Monument of One’s Own campaign, as well as campaigns for the memorialisation of specific women. To examine stories emerging from female statuary erected in Australia since 2021 for what they reveal about national memory, this chapter focuses on three case studies featuring Indigenous athlete and politician Nova Peris (b. 1971), pioneering politicians Dame Enid Lyons (1897–1981) and Dame Dorothy Tangney (1907–1985), and wartime nurse Vivian Bullwinkel (1915–2000). We analyse the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and racialised positioning as they play out against prevailing masculinised narratives of colonialism, the sporting nation, and the so-called ‘working man’s paradise’.

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Place and self (even settlers should think about it): Kerri Malloy, ‘Invoking Place to Confront the Settler-Colonial Self’, in Saghar Shahidi-Birjandian, Sarah Seiselmyer-Snyder (eds), Intergenerational Survivors of Genocide and Mass Atrocities: Lived Experiences of Knowledge Providers, Routledge, 2026

23Jul26

Abstract: Genocide was not a term Kerri Malloy grew up knowing, though its legacy shaped his family’s story. Coming to understand that his Indigenous ancestors survived United States extermination efforts meant confronting genocide not as distant history but as something deeply personal. The realization that his existence was predicated on the loss of other lives sparked his drive to examine humanity at its worst. His work goes beyond detached academic inquiry into genocide, drawing instead on the lived experiences and memories of family members who endured and fell victim to United States violence, weaving together intimate family stories with broader historical narratives. He grapples with how Indigenous voices and experiences have been systematically erased from official historical accounts. His scholarship emerges directly from the genocidal violence the United States inflicted on his family and the Yurok and Karuk communities. He reflects on what it means to pursue this research while navigating spaces such as policy circles, universities, and professional settings where Indigenous people remain vastly outnumbered. He confronts, too, how his work itself carries danger.

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Stepping out of the shadows: Aiswarya Sethumadhavan, Saraswathy Selvarajan, ‘Narrating otherwise: tracing settler colonial shadows and Indigenous futurism in the works of Darcie Little Badger’, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2026

23Jul26

Abstract: This study examines how Darcie Little Badger portrays the aftermath of settler colonialism on the Lipan Apache people in Elatsoe, A Snake Falls to Earth, and Sheine Lende: A Prequel to Elatsoe, and how these novels engage in the process of biskaabiiyang. Employing close reading textual analysis using settler colonial studies and Indigenous futurism, the study reveals that Little Badger subtly exposes settler colonial strategies, such as the elimination of food sources, authorised killings of Indigenous people, and the stereotypical attitudes of those in power, by using a nonlinear narrative style that often shifts between the past and speculative futures. The study explores how speculative worldbuilding, storied landscapes and spiral temporalities contribute to Indigenous continuity and biskaabiiyang. As theorised by Wolfe, territoriality has been the ultimate settler-colonial objective for the elimination of Indigenous peoples from their traditional territories, which Little Badger criticises. The study further proposes the concept of ‘narrative biskaabiiyang’ to describe how Indigenous futurism storytelling reconnects Indigenous cultures, land relations and storytelling with futures through storied landscapes and spiral temporality, thereby sustaining Indigenous survivance and continuity.

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Settler colonialism is an infrastructure not an event: Sarah Montoya, ‘Networking the Nation: Settler Colonialism as an Analytic in Critical Infrastructure Studies’, in Alan Liu, Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, James Smithies (eds), Critical Infrastructure Studies and Digital Humanities’, University of Minnesota Press, 2026

22Jul26

Excerpt: At the core of discussions of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructures are land and property ownership, the understandings of which are shaped by settler colonialism in the United States and administered by a constellation of global settler state formations. Settler colonialism names an orientation to the world and life; it is a way of being and relating to land, peoples, objects, and knowledge that prioritize the liberal humanist citizen-subject and the creation and acquisition of property and possession, and it is deeply characterized by white supremacy and enforced through various forms of targeted violence (Estes et al., 59, 107). When utilized as an analytical approach, settler colonial studies insists on making legible the relationship between land, infrastructure, private property, and the project of settler statecraft. This framework extends research in electronic and digital colonialism and makes explicit the spatial and racial violence required to maintain settler society. Bringing forth the connections between the settler state, surveillance projects realized through the military-industrial complex, and the impact of commercial interests in the shaping of the use of internet technology, this chapter argues that a web of networked settler logics emerges through a critical reading of ICT infrastructure that links the development of the telegraph, telegraphone, and the internet to settler colonial property regimes in the United States. While this chapter applies settler colonial studies as a lens through which to analyze ICTs in the United States, it is important to approach other geopolitical sites with attention to their specific imperial and colonial histories and understand that occupation is quotidian, ongoing, and altered by local conditions. The goal of this chapter is to confront and dismantle narratives of settler technological supremacy and consider anticolonial and decolonial approaches in critical infrastructure studies (CIS).

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Locke him up! David Armitage, Teresa M. Bejan, Felix Waldmann, ‘Locke and Settler Colonialism’, in David Armitage, Teresa M. Bejan, Felix Waldmann (eds), The Political Thought of John Locke: New Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2026

22Jul26

Abstract: Locke has become a central figure in postcolonial theory in ways that at times overextend the context and content of his writing. This chapter seeks to explain this appeal by examining recurring metaphors, lacunas, and linguistic manoeuvres in Locke’s writing, arguing that they capture essential elements within colonial practices or imaginaries. Through such a mode of literary reading, the chapter traces structures of self, sovereignty, and relations )to land and to others), and shows how Locke has identified, perhaps inadvertently, elements that would become key to colonial domination. Since many of these elements emerge from ambivalences and inconsistencies—ones we find both in Locke and in the logic of settler states’ operation—what is often seen as the weakness of Locke’s argument emerges here as part of what made it, sometimes despite itself, so relevant to understanding settler colonialism.

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It is matter of SETTLER taste: J. Zoe Malot, ‘Curating settler aesthetics: settler colonial erasures, urban artscapes, and artistic interventions in settler cities’, Journal of Cultural Geography, 2026

22Jul26

Abstract: This paper examines the governance of urban aesthetics by studying the curatorial and regulatory bodies behind public art productions in settler colonial cities. I demonstrate how public art regulations – through mural ordinances and city permits – (re)produce settler colonial agendas and perpetuate Indigenous invisibility. Drawing from in-depth interviews with artists, urban planners, city councilors, and community members throughout Aotearoa (New Zealand), I demonstrate how settler cities promote specific forms of (in)visibility through the public art that is created, contested, and censored. By paying close attention to the artists and aesthetics selected (and rejected) through arts-led development projects, we can see how public art in cities – despite varying geographic contexts – contributes to the (re)production of exclusionary conditions through settler aesthetics. Drawing from literary scholars, settler colonial scholarship and decolonial art theory, I use the term settler aesthetics to highlight how aesthetics function within evolving sociospatial practices where state and non-state actors exercise power, formulate settler representations of the city, and influence belonging. While this paper points to the visual logics of exclusion embedded in settler aesthetics, it also highlight artists who unsettle these logics through decolonial public art practices to offer a more engaged and just form of creative placemaking.

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Settler mush: Edith Snook, ‘”The Surest Plan”: Recipes, Joel Barlow’s “The Hasty-Pudding” (1796), and Settler Memory in the British Atlantic World’, Early American Literature, 61, 2, 2026, pp. 323-350

21Jul26

Abstract: This essay explores how recipes for hasty pudding circulating in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world are part of the settler history of colonial extraction. Hasty pudding recipes informed not just Joel Barlow’s republican mock heroic poem “The Hasty-Pudding” (New York, 1796) but also the recipe culture of those who remained loyal to Britain. Recipes in the Almon Scrapbook (Almon Family Fonds, MG1 vol. 14, Nova Scotia Archives) belonging to the family of Nova Scotia physician Dr. William James Almon were copied from Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical(London and Dublin, 1796) by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (1753–1814), a Massachusetts-born Loyalist. These recipes make corn, an Indigenous food, available for settler and colonial use and establish the domestic as a space of colonial power.

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The imprinting of a settler domination: Shelby Johnson, ‘Decolonial Methods and Early Indigenous Archives’, Early American Literature, 61, 2, 2026, pp. 389-406

21Jul26

Excerpt: Conversations across early American and early Indigenous studies—fields historically preoccupied with different questions, canons, and frameworks—have recently engaged in difficult methodological questions: How might we continue to reconceptualize the “archive” (or the “text”) to move beyond the codex, what Choctaw scholar Megan Peiser calls a “colonizing institution . . . predicated on written and pictorial knowledge transference and a dominance over any and all other forms of information sharing” (523; italics original)? How might Indigenous forms of “information sharing” exist beyond colonial technologies, such as print? Is it possible to recover Indigenous traditions that may exist in these forms, but without fetishizing the recovery of “originary” or “authentic” Indigenous knowledge-ways within communities or the interiority of individual Native people? And finally, how might Indigenous communicative practices support ongoing language revitalization projects and resurgent tribal sovereignty?

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