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The sites of national history: Cody Groat, Always a Part of the Land: Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Histories, and the Commemoration of National Historic Sites, 1919- 2019, PhD dissertation, Laurier University, 2023

05Dec23

Abstract: This thesis critically examines the commemorative activities of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada (HSMBC) from its creation in 1919 to its centennial celebrations in 2019. The HSMBC provides recommendations to the federal government regarding the designation of national historic sites, people, and events as being ‘nationally significant’ through commemorative plaques erected across the country. This thesis demonstrates how the HSMBC and both amateur and professional historians involved in its work have advanced the ongoing processes of settler colonialism by supporting the intellectual displacement of Indigenous histories through commemorative practices and through the public discourses associated with these. It further argues how definitions of ‘national significance’ have been actively constructed throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to advance the objectives of the federal government and, more generally, colonial society. Using Ontario as a case study, this thesis articulates how intellectual trends associated with Indigenous peoples have impacted the interpretation of Indigenous histories by the federal government, showcasing how individual historians on the HSMBC influenced these interpretations based on their lived experiences. The work of the HSMBC was never passively accepted by Indigenous peoples who not only challenged the narratives that were being presented as ‘nationally significant’ but also contested the central premises of commemoration within Western society. This was reflected through examples of Indigenous peoples supporting the commemoration of cultural landscapes, reinterpreting archaeological sites to show cultural and societal continuity, asserting the significance of oral histories as a method of conveying historical information, and decentralizing the importance of specific dates to recognize cyclical patterns as being meaningful within their communities. These interventions have not only reformed the work of the HSMBC and the realities of Canada’s commemorative landscape, but have also contested the principles of settler colonialism that have actively sought to erase the histories of Indigenous peoples.


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The settlers on their cars: Thalia Anthony, Juanita Sherwood, Harry Blagg, Kieran Tranter, Unsettling Colonial Automobilities: Criminalisation and Contested Sovereignties, Emerald, 2023

05Dec23

Description: Exploring the vehicle’s role in imposing colonialism on Indigenous people, this book proposes an Indigenous automobility that reclaims sovereignty over place and centricity.


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Insigenous studies on the study of settler colonialism: Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, ‘(Re)Mapping Worlds: An Indigenous (Studies) Perspective on the Potential for Abolitionist and Decolonial Futures’, American Quarterly, 75, 4, 2023, pp. 847-857

05Dec23

Excerpt: The impacts of settler colonialism, and its tentacles of white supremacy, settler masculinity, and heteronormative patriarchy, are far-reaching and multifarious.


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A special issue of Anthropological Theory on Mahmood Mamdani’s Neither Settler nor Native: In Search of Decolonized Political Futures, Engaging Mahmood Mamdani’s Neither Settler Nor Native, 23, 4, 2023

05Dec23

Access the special issue here.


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Institutionalised children: Felicity Jensz, Rebecca Swartz, ‘Children and institutions in settler colonial contexts: a trans-imperial perspective’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2023

02Dec23

Abstract: Children in settler colonial settings engaged with institutions in diverse ways. They were sometimes coerced, benignly encouraged or lured into these engagements and sometimes they actively engaged and shaped the nature of these institutions over their childhood and subsequent adult years. This lead article provides the historiographical, methodical and conceptual framework for the special issue of Settler Colonial Studies on children, institutions and settler colonial contexts. It provides the basis for the discussion of the following articles which examine children’s interactions with and experiences of institutions in settler colonial contexts in Australia, Palestine, the Philippines, Poland, and Southern Rhodesia that were affected by American, British, German, and Japanese imperialism. Studies of colonialism, and settler colonialism in particular, have tended to overlook the role and position of children in these contexts as objects and agent of change. Rather, focus has been predominantly placed upon the actions and agency of adults of various cultural groups, ones who have left larger traces in the colonial archives. In this article, we provide an overview of some of the broad concepts that frame the special issue being: childhood and race; Institutions and motives; and settler colonialism and imperial contexts.


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Settler magic: Tyler McCreary, Rebecca Hall, ‘The Healer, the Witch, and the Law: The Settler Magic That Criminalized Indigenous Medicine Men as Frauds and Normalized Colonial Violence as Care’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2023

02Dec23

Abstract: This article examines the puissance of psychospiritual geographies to Witsuwit’en–settler relations during the 1920s and 1930s in British Columbia, Canada. Specifically, we track the ontological politics of the psychospiritual that inhere to relationships between Indigenous healing traditions and a complex array of colonial institutions, including police detachments, courts, churches, residential schools, and asylums. Our entry point is the 1931 witchcraft trial of two Indigenous healers who police apprehended treating a person with cin sickness, a form of animal-spirit dream possession. The article highlights three central elements of the contested nature of psychospiritual care. First, it demonstrates the role that policing witchcraft played within the expansion of settler surveillance and control over Indigenous life. Second, we critically unpack court transcripts from the witchcraft trial, exploring how the Indigenous healers explained the treatment of dream sickness on the stand, as well as how courtroom mistranslations facilitated their criminalization. Third, we flip our gaze and interrogate the substance of colonial care, particularly focusing on the role of churches, residential schools, and asylums in causing psychospiritual harm to their Witsuwit’en wards. Through the article, we reveal the colonial deception that produces the illusion of benevolent settler institutions caring for Indigenous well-being while they actively disrupt the psychospiritual connections that define wellness within Witsuwit’en ontologies. To decolonize this foul settler magic, we argue that we must disrupt the universality of colonial ontologies, expose the violence inherent to settler regimes of care, and recognize the vitality of Indigenous psychospiritual relations to the more-than-human world.


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Terra Nullius as textus: Aimee Carrillo Rowe, ‘On Terra Nullius and Texts: Settler Colonialism, Native Disappearance, and the Introductory Cultural Studies Reader’, in Thomas K. Nakayama, Rona Tamiko Halualani (eds), Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Wiley 2023, pp. 197-210

02Dec23

Access the handbook here.


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Migrants and Indigenous struggles: Raquel Andrea González Madrigal, ‘Critical relationalities: Centering Indigenous land, presence, and sovereignty in immigrant/migrant rights discourses’, Latino Studies, 2023

29Nov23

Abstract: This article situates the US-Mexico border and anti-immigration law in the context of US imperialism and settler colonialism. It centers Tohono O’odham land, presence, and Indigenous sovereignty in an examination of Latin@/x migration, border policies, and im/migrant rights. Contributing to scholarship in critical Latinx indigeneities, this article contends that the structures and mechanisms of border militarization are inherently anti-Indigenous. While targeting migrants and refugees who often are Indigenous elsewhere, this racial profiling happens on Native land and against Native peoples. The article further examines discourses of sanctuary in relation to Indigenous sovereignty to spotlight the necessity of integrating Indigenous perspectives within im/migrant rights discourses.


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The logic of elimination in digital spaces: Arrow Kyle Keeler, ‘Knowledge, Experience, and Anti-Colonial Action: A Methodology for Combating Settler Colonial Erasure in Digital Spaces in the Indigenous Environmental Justice Classroom’, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2023

29Nov23

Abstract: This article provides new methodologies for combatting settler colonial erasure in digital spaces and working against reproduction of settler colonial narratives, specifically on Wikipedia, through assignments in the higher education classroom. By utilizing these assignments to edit Wikipedia, instructors will be better equipped to answer students’ calls for assignments that move beyond the classroom and into activity and activism. Recently, researchers Nicole VT Lugosi-Schimpf (Métis), Nicole Patrie, and Kris Cromwell have shown the potential for this work as an educational and anti-colonial tool. However, the methodologies for editing Wikipedia in the classroom up to this point have relied on Wikipedia’s Wiki-Edu program for student training, which presents a number of obstacles for student editors seeking to make lasting additions to the encyclopedia. The framework detailed here provides methodologies to bypass Wikipedia’s training modules and prepare students to make higher quality edits that are harder to remove by colonially minded editors. This framework works against settler colonialism in digital spaces, improves upon current training that prepares advanced undergraduate students to edit Wikipedia, and provides students with the ability to make lasting change beyond the classroom.


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Settlers over water: Erin O’Donnell, ‘Water sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples: Pathways to pluralist, legitimate and sustainable water laws in settler colonial states’, PLOS Water, 2023

26Nov23

Abstract: In settler colonial states, the doctrine of discovery that dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their lands also took their waters. The original water theft of colonization was underpinned by the erroneous assumption of ‘aqua nullius’ and remains almost entirely unacknowledged and largely unaddressed. Scholarly literature has focused on the injustice of this water theft and the human rights of Indigenous Peoples (under UNDRIP as well as their human right to water). This review shows that aqua nullius also renders settler state water law not fit for purpose in two important ways. Firstly, the legitimacy of settler state water laws is contested, presenting a foundational challenge to water governance, and failing to acknowledge the plurality of water laws in settler colonial states. Secondly, settler water law is experiencing a more widespread failure to deliver ecologically sustainable water management. In responding to the injustice of aqua nullius, foundational reform of settler state water laws can enable the settler state to learn from Indigenous laws that have supported thriving communities and genuinely sustainable water management for millennia. Drawing on examples from Aotearoa New Zealand, the USA, Canada, and Australia, this review shows how acknowledging, and challenging, the false assumption of aqua nullius creates novel pathways for reform, enabling pluralist water laws and water governance models that improve both legitimacy and sustainability of settler state water governance.


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