settler colonial studies blog

Returning to return: Tiina Järvi, ‘Uncanny returns in settler colonial state: return, exile, and decolonization in Palestine/Israel’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2023

08Nov23

Abstract: In this article, I propose uncanniness as a defining characteristic of return as I explore the settler colonial context of Palestine/Israel, where return has starkly ethno-nationalistic connotations. For Palestinians, return is associated with the liberation of Palestine, while for Israelis, it is part of Zionist foundational narratives. By explicating academic research and biographical literature, I consider how the concept of uncanny can further our understanding of what it means to return in this context, and beyond. Uncanniness brings attention to feelings of disorientation, strangeness, and not-at-homeness, and by approaching return as uncanny, I suggest, it is possible to tap into the volatility of “being-at-home” and thus unsettle exclusive and essentialist notions of belonging that define settler colonialism. Consequently, the article offers a way to consider return in a manner that gets from nostalgia to a new beginning and, in the settler colonial context of Palestine/Israel, from settler anxiety to decolonization.

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Settler colonialism is a prison: Elizabeth Venczel, ‘Settler colonialism and prisons: a comparative case study of Canada, Palestine, and Australia’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2023

04Nov23

Abstract: Through an examination of the history of settler colonial violence against Indigenous peoples and lands in Canada, Palestine, and Australia, this paper exposes the links between colonialism and the penitentiary, across borders. This paper interrogates the differences and similarities between the use of prisons as a tool in settler colonial expansion in these three states. As a contribution to abolitionist thought and theory, this paper highlights the need for an intersectional analysis of the overlapping consequences of settler colonialism and international carceral regimes. Efforts to resist carceral expansion around the world must include efforts to resist colonial expansion, and the voices of Indigenous peoples must be centred throughout this process.

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The ‘politics of reminding’ and settler colonialism: Rafael Verbuyst, ‘Settler colonialism and therapeutic discourses on the past: a response to Burnett et al.’s “a politics of reminding”‘, Critical Discourse Studies, 2023

04Nov23

Abstract: In ‘A politics of reminding: Khoisan resurgence and environmental justice in South Africa’s Sarah Baartman district’, Burnett et al. scrutinize the memory activism of the Gamtkwa Khoisan Council, which is part of the wider ‘Khoisan resurgence’ sweeping across post-apartheid South Africa. Although the authors missed important nuances, they also pointed out flaws in the way I used Niezen’s ‘therapeutic history’ [Niezen, R. (2009). The rediscovered self: Indigenous identity and cultural justice. McGill-Queen’s Press] in my work to account for why Khoisan activists turn to the past. I therefore not only respond to their criticism, but also revise aspects of my theoretical framework. Therapeutic history is not divorced from material concerns. Nor is it representative of all engagements with the past by indigenous people or simply the opposite of academic history. Instead, by drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork and theorizing alongside the Khoisan, I show how it captures emic discourses on the past that entangle notions of indigenous identity, healing, and history in order to resist settler colonialism and its oppressive etic histories. While the concept of therapeutic history has its limitations, it effectively highlights indigenous people’s agency in the face of settler colonialism in South Africa and elsewhere.

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Settler theology: Joëlle M. Morgan, ‘The Stones Cry Out and the Trees Talk: A Praxis of Epistemic Disobedience Toward a Settler Theology of Aurality’, Political Theology, 2023

04Nov23

Abstract: Epistemic disobedience (Mignolo) to settler-coloniality in Canada requires conscientisation to Indigenous peoples’ stories and a decolonial turn (Maldonado-Torres) in epistemology and ontology of relations (Tinker) between Indigenous and settler peoples. One group of primarily settler Christians on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin/Anishnaabe territory engaged such a praxis, through Right Relations with their United Church in Ottawa, toward social healing (Lederach and Lederach) of colonial wounds, transformationally engaging in oral-aural praxis to relationally receive hi/stories of local Indigenous communities. Stan McKay, Cree elder and former moderator of the United Church of Canada, through Indigenous peoples’ understanding of creation invites a decolonial turn with hermeneutical listening in which one hears teachings of Jesus as cry of creation – such that even “the stones cry out” (Luke 19:40) and the trees teach – which has implications for a settler theology of aurality.

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Encountering settler colonialism: Mark Griffiths, Mikko Joronen (eds), Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence, University of Nebraska Press, 2023

04Nov23

Description: Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence, edited by Mark Griffiths and Mikko Joronen, sits at the intersection of cultural and political geographies and offers innovative reflections on power, colonialism, and anti-colonialism in contemporary Palestine and Israel. Organized around the theme of encountering and focusing on the ways violence and struggle are un/made in the encounter between the colonizer and colonized, the essays focus on power relations as they manifest in cultural practices and everyday lives in anti/colonial Palestine. Covering numerous sites in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel, Encountering Palestine addresses a range of empirical topics—from marriage and queer aesthetics to policing, demolition, armament failure, and violence. The contributors utilize diverse theoretical frameworks, such as hyperreality, settler capitalism, intimate biopolitics, and politics of vulnerability, to help us better understand the cultural making and unmaking of colonial and anti-colonial space in Palestine. Encountering Palestine asks us to rethink how colonialism and power operate in Palestine, the ways Palestinians struggle, and the lifeways that constantly encounter, un/make, and counter the spaces of colonial violence.

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Settler colonialism is a constraint on Indigenous reproduction II: Moana Rarere, Yara Jarallah, Tahu Kukutai, ‘Indigenous fertility in Aotearoa New Zealand: How does ethnic identity affect birth spacing and timing?’ Journal of Population Research, 2023

03Nov23

Abstract: The survival of Indigenous peoples in the CANZUS states of Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States is nothing short of remarkable. Not only have Indigenous peoples thwarted colonial tropes of the vanishing native but, for decades, Indigenous population growth rates have significantly outpaced those of the dominant settler populations. The future survival of Indigenous peoples fundamentally rests on continued natural increase, and understanding the causes and consequences of fertility behaviour is critical. While total fertility rates for Indigenous women in CANZUS countries are relatively low, childbearing tends to be concentrated at younger ages in contrast to the dominant white populations. The fertility transitions of both settler and Indigenous populations in the CANZUS states are well documented, however, a significant gap remains: how cultural factors shape contemporary Indigenous fertility behaviours. Using Aotearoa as a case study, we explore the relationship between Māori cultural identity, birth timing, and the duration of birth intervals. We use the 1995 New Zealand Women: Family, Employment and Education survey data to further test the impact of cultural identity on birth transition rates using the piecewise exponential model and Kaplan-Meier estimates. We find that women who identify Mainly Māori (exclusively or primarily) are at greater risk of bearing much earlier to first birth but not necessarily subsequent births. However, because of the earlier start, Māori have a longer reproductive window to bear more children, and at higher birth orders still bear earlier than non-Māori. The empirical evidence strengthens our case to suggest that cultural orientation has some influence on Indigenous fertility and contributes to the development of Indigenous-centred theories of fertility and demography more broadly.

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Settler colonialism is a constraint on Indigenous reproduction: Ñusta Carranza Ko, ‘Unacknowledged genocide: Coercive sterilization of indigenous women in Peru’, Violence, 2023

03Nov23

Abstract: From 1996 until 2000, under the pretense of upholding women’s rights and expanding access to family planning resources, the Peruvian government launched an aggressive sterilization campaign that disproportionately targeted Indigenous peoples. In total, 272,028 persons were sterilized, the majority of whom were of Indigenous descent and resided in rural and poor areas. Recent studies conclude this to be a case of genocide, with the state systematically subjecting an ethnic minority population—the Indigenous peoples—to a coercive sterilization campaign that sought to eliminate in whole or in part Andean and Amazonian Indigenous communities. Despite the alarming evidence about the genocide committed against Indigenous peoples, victims are yet to be recognized by the state. The denial of victims’ sufferings leaves the work of building and creating humanity after atrocity incomplete. This study focuses on the unacknowledged memories of genocide, engaging in an analysis of the norms of reparations. The denial of the state to grant integral reparations, despite the existence of a modified law on reparations, points to a purposeful silencing of these victims. Furthermore, these practices represent a new layer of genocide against Indigenous peoples that neglects their victimhood and raises questions as to the absence of humanity after atrocity.

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Settler colonialism is acclimatisation II: Dmitry V. Arzyutov, ‘The making of the Homo Polaris: human acclimatization to the Arctic environment and Soviet ideologies in Northern Medical Institutions’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2023

03Nov23

Abstract: This paper examines the history of the Soviet human acclimatization project in the North and Siberia, which spanned from medical experiments in Stalin’s forced labor camps to the subsequent wave of industrialization in the region. The author argues that human acclimatization in the North was a settler colonial science project aimed at facilitating Russian administrators and engineers in asserting control over the territory and its resources, while creating a new homogeneous ‘indigenous population’ in Siberia and the North. This envisioned population, referred to as Homo Polaris by the author, was intended to emerge through a two-way transformation: the adaptation of Indigenous peoples into Soviet ideologies and practices, and the acclimatization of settlers coming from the European part of the country to the Arctic environment. Although the administrators and medical doctors were unable to achieve this biopolitical objective, the complexities and dialogues surrounding these transformations shed light on the late Soviet settler-colonial ideologies and their impact on social life in Siberia from the 1950s to the 1980s. The research is based on a comprehensive analysis of both published and archival works by scholars involved in the project.

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Settler colonialism is acclimatisation: Netta Cohen, New under the Sun: Early Zionist Encounters with the Climate in Palestine, University of California Press, 2023

03Nov23

Description: New under the Sun explores Zionist perceptions of—and responses to—Palestine’s climate. Covering the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 1890s to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Cohen traces the production of climactic knowledge through a rich archive across medicine and botany, technology and economics, architecture and planning. As Cohen convincingly argues, this knowledge was not only shaped by Jewish settlers’ Eurocentric views but was also indebted to colonial practices and institutions. Zionists’ claims to the land were often based on the construction of Jewish settlers as natives, even while this was complicated by their alienated responses to Palestine’s climate. New under the Sun offers a highly original environmental lens on the ways in which Zionism’s spatial ambitions and racial fantasies transformed the lives of humans and nonhumans in Palestine.

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The theology of settler colonialism: Dana Lloyd, Jan Pranger, ‘Decolonization at the Intersection of Political Theology and Settler Colonial Studies’, Political Theology, 2023

01Nov23

Excerpt: In March 2023, the Vatican issued a statement repudiating the doctrine of discovery. The repudiation is a result of dialogue with Indigenous Catholics: ‘In our own day, a renewed dialogue with indigenous peoples, especially with those who profess the Catholic Faith, has helped the Church to understand better their values and cultures. With their help, the Church has acquired a greater awareness of their sufferings, past and present, due to the expropriation of their lands, which they consider a sacred gift from God and their ancestors, as well as the policies of forced assimilation, promoted by the governmental authorities of the time, intended to eliminate their indigenous cultures’. There is a lot to unpack in this statement: for example, the acknowledgement of present suffering, not only past suffering (historian Patrick Wolfe would say that settler colonialism is a structure rather than a discrete event), that lands that were stolen from Indigenous peoples were – are – sacred to them, and the Catholic Church’s active (even if only tacitly admitted) role in executing policies of forced assimilation. There is a throughline that runs from the papal bulls that applied the doctrine of discovery in the Americas in the fifteenth century to the mass graves of Indigenous children unearthed at sites of Native American and First Nations residential schools in the United States and Canada. Investigating this throughline is one of our goals in gathering scholars to think at the intersection of political theology and settler colonialism.

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