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The settler prophecy: Kaden Mark Jelsing, Sovereign Futures: Indigenous and Settler Prophecies in Two Nineteenth0Century American ‘Northwests’, PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2023

07Jun23

Abstract: This dissertation argues that settler colonialism unfolded in various North American Wests through a clash of prophetic visions, each of which expressed fundamentally different modes of relationality. Through two case studies—the “Old Northwest” of the early nineteenth century Ohio Valley, and the “new” Northwest of the Columbia Plateau region later in the century—I explore how Indigenous prophecies and settler prophecies articulated divergent visions of the future in language that was declarative, often couched in future perfect tense: what will have come to be. Scholars have long framed Indigenous prophetic movements as either religious or political, traditionalist or innovative, as autochthonous or existing only in reaction to contact and colonialism. I move beyond these binary formations by reframing Indigenous prophecy through Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies. Through these frameworks, Indigenous prophecy can be seen as a diagnostic tool, a theoretical and critical apparatus, and a guide for either maintaining or refusing relations with humans and other-than-human beings. Accompanied by new prescriptions and ceremonies on how to live properly with other beings and thus renew a world of interdependent relationships, Indigenous prophecy may be seen as simultaneously legal, political, and religious even as it resists these categories. It is oriented toward a future on and with the land against, or despite, the presence of settler colonial jurisdictional claims. For their part, settlers prophesied a future free from vulnerability and dependences, of technological perfection and environmental mastery. For this future to come to pass, the interdependent relations carefully forged by generations of Indigenous communities on and with the land had to be severed and reoriented toward an ever-expanding market. Settlers confidently proclaimed the immanent fulfillment of a “manifest destiny,” yet they simultaneously expressed anxiety when a future of technological progress, flourishing republican institutions, market connectivity and private land ownership seemed compromised. Settler prophecy was always in reaction to the continued presence of Indigenous peoples who professed their own temporal sovereignty. With the constant specter of Indigenous endurance, settler future imaginaries have always been fragile and doomed to fail.


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Against settler colonial stewardship: Natalie Avalos, ‘Indigenous Stewardship: Religious Praxis and “Unsettling” Settler Ecologies’, Political Theology, 2023

03Jun23

Abstract: Settler colonialism has been described as a structure, not an event, meaning it is sustained over time through discursive and material means. As settlers began to monopolize lands, new ecologies were built from Indigenous ones, transforming the landscape but also human relations with lands. I expand on Kyle Whyte’s concept of settler ecologies to understand these ecologies as drawing from a metaphysic, a Christian cosmo-logic of divine hierarchy that positions some humans as having ontological superiority over the natural world and other humans. I draw from decolonial, Indigenous, and settler colonial theory to explore how settler ecologies reterritorialize the land through racial-religious formations, what Aboriginal scholar, Aileen Moreton-Robinson calls the white possessive, and become naturalized in a modern context through secular, biopolitical discourses of development. I argue that these settler ecologies are “unsettled” through the sacred directive of stewardship movements that emerge from the unifying, intersubjective relations of ceremonial life.


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Settler colonialism is surveillance: Susan Cahill, ‘Surveillance frontierism: art and the colonial project of surveillance’, Media Practice and Education, 2023

03Jun23

Abstract: In this paper, I analyse Shaheer Tarar’s artwork Jack Pine (2019) to question how settler colonialism is produced and reproduced through surveillant visualisations of the land. Specifically, I explore how Tarar’s representations of surveillant images of the land critically engages with historical and ongoing narratives of white settlement in the Canadian territory. As such, I ask: what knowledges are produced through looking at the land with a surveillant lens? And how does art reveal, trouble, challenge, and resist these knowledges? The underlying premise of my discussion is that surveillance and colonialism are twin logics, that they work in reciprocity to define ownership, extraction, and histories of the land that naturalise white settlement. In centralising Tarar’s art installation as producing new ways of understanding this context, I explore how surveillance art here can reveal the relationship between settler colonial histories and surveillant viewing through how they imagine and represent the land.


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Settler colonialism’s nationalist dress: Paul Litt, ‘Settler colonial theory and Canadian cultural nationalism’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2023

03Jun23

Abstract: This article examines Canadian cultural nationalism since Confederation through the lens of settler colonial theory, engaging with questions arising from this exercise. Along the way it discusses how settler colonial theory meshes with other theoretical perspectives, particularly nationalism theory. The main body of the paper is a historical overview of how settler cultural production colonized Indigenous peoples symbolically from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Appropriation from and stereotyping of Indigenous peoples are analyzed. While these forms of indirect erasure were common, a direct erasure that simply ignored the Indigenous fact was far more prevalent. Nationalist cultural producers focused instead on Eurocivility, settler colonizations of other settlers, and Canada’s dual imperia. Moreover, settler colonialism was not the only form of colonialism influencing cultural nationalism: extractive colonialism affected it as well. Settler cultural discourse changed dramatically in the late twentieth century. Radical shifts in the realpolitik of settler-Indigenous relations and settler morality delegitimized erasure practices. Some cultural producers responded by integrating Indigenous peoples into new formulations of national identity, while others popularized representations of settler guilt. The article concludes with observations on the historicity of these new perspectives and how Canada’s legacy of cultural nationalism might constructively inform decolonization.


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Even if someone wants to buy, it is not a commodity: Gabi Kirk, ‘Commodifying Indigeneity: Settler colonialism and racial capitalism in fair trade farming in Palestine’, Historical Materialism, 2023

03Jun23

Abstract: The recent proliferation of settler colonial and Indigenous studies of Palestine have addressed historical and present-day enclosure of Palestinian land, yet the question of ‘indigeneity’ is underexamined in this literature. Claims to indigeneity in Palestine straddle varied definitions: a racial category; as constructed through the colonial encounter or preceding colonialism; and as a local relation or an international juridico-political category. Using discourse analysis of a specific Palestinian sustainable agriculture initiative. I show how for Palestinians, claiming indigeneity brings into tension potential political economic gains, social relations of struggle, and discursive formations of collective subjectivity. A valorisation, commodification, and privatization of indigeniety narrows notions to the biological-cultural, offering challenges for Palestinian struggles for sovereignty. I conclude by asking what theorizing from Palestine offers to Marxist theories of racial capitalism and settler colonialism, and whether indigeneity can exceed its commodification.


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Protecting the environment of the settlers: Sharon Stein, Cash Ahenakew, Shyrlene Oliveira da Silva Huni Kui, Evan Bowness, Wilson Mendes, Steve Evans, ‘Towards Settler Responsibility in Conservation’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 22, 2, 2023, pp. 894-920

03Jun23

Abstract: This conceptual paper reviews recent efforts to confront colonialism in conservation, with an emphasis on the challenges and complexities that have emerged among settler organizations engaged in this work. We consider recent academic and grey literature in the field in order to map different approaches to conservation, including the emerging interface of Indigenous and western approaches. We also map different approaches to Indigenous engagement undertaken by settler conservation organizations, including representation, recognition, redistribution, and reparation. We suggest that regardless of their approach, in order to create the conditions for truly reciprocal collaborations with Indigenous Nations, settler conservation organizations would need to accept their responsibilities to interrupt and redress western conservation’s colonial foundations, support Indigenous sovereignty, rights, and resurgence (including by supporting Indigenous approaches to conservation), and commit to the difficult, long-haul work of reorienting their approach to relationships away from patterns of paternalism and extraction toward trust, respect, reciprocity, consent, and accountability.


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‘Benevolent’ settler perpetrators: Stefanie Kunze, ‘US Federal Off-Reservation Boarding Schools and Ethnocide’s Benevolent Perpetrator’, Genocide Studies International, 14, 2, 2020, pp. 133-156

03Jun23

Abstract: The United States federal off-reservation Indian boarding schools of the twentieth century have been the locale for ethnocide and cultural genocide of the Native American population. While in any critical discussion of mass atrocity crimes, such as genocide and ethnocide, the question of the perpetrators always ranks central, not much attention has been paid to the perpetrators of ethnocide who operated in these off-reservation boarding schools. Furthermore, scholarship has focused on perpetrators in genocide but has not spent much time considering the definitional nuances between perpetrators in ethnocide and genocide. In this paper, I highlight an additional perpetrator type that applies specifically to ethnocide, which is an addition to existing perpetrator typologies. This benevolent perpetrator, who is specific to ethnocidal crimes, can for instance be found in United States federal off-reservation Indian boarding schools between 1878 and 1934. Paying attention to these perpetrators and considering them as a unique type, will allow for furthering and developing our understanding of ethnocide, perpetration and complicity, and assimilation practices in off-reservation boarding schools. Furthermore, this discussion is embedded in the debate about the applicability of the terms genocide and ethnocide in a settler-colonial context.


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Fresh from hysterical materialism: Jack Davies, ‘The World Turned Outside In: Settler Colonial Studies and Political Economy’, historical materialism, 2023

01Jun23

Excerpt: This article criticises the political economic analysis of settler colonial studies, which it draws out through an immanent critique of its most famous practitioners.


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Settler soccer on Indigenous lands! Bevan Erueti, Andrew Grainger, Hillary J Haldane, ‘The marketing and branding of Indigeneity in the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023: Marketing Māori’, in Adam Beissel, Verity Postlethwaite, Andrew Grainger, Julie E. Brice (eds), The 2023 FIFA Women’s World CupPolitics, Representation, and Management, Routledge, 2024

01Jun23

Access the chapter here.


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Settler colonialism across the mountain: Isaac Thornley, ‘TMX and the crisis of consent: Cracks in Canada’s settler-colonial political order’, Canada Watch, 2023

01Jun23

Excerpt: In this article, I will present fossil fuel pipelines as symptoms of settler colonialism and fossil capitalism…


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