settler colonial studies blog

The ‘placental politics’ of US settler colonialism: Christine Taitano DeLisle, Placental Politics: CHamoru Women, White Womanhood, and Indigeneity under U.S. Colonialism in Guam,University of North Carolina Press, 2022

20Aug23

Description: From 1898 until World War II, U.S. imperial expansion brought significant numbers of white American women to Guam, primarily as wives to naval officers stationed on the island. Indigenous CHamoru women engaged with navy wives in a range of settings, and they used their relationships with American women to forge new forms of social and political power. As Christine Taitano DeLisle explains, much of the interaction between these women occurred in the realms of health care, midwifery, child care, and education. DeLisle focuses specifically on the pattera, Indigenous nurse-midwives who served CHamoru families. Though they showed strong interest in modern delivery practices and other accoutrements of American modernity under U.S. naval hegemony, the pattera and other CHamoru women never abandoned deeply held Indigenous beliefs, values, and practices, especially those associated with inafa’maolek–a code of behavior through which individual, collective, and environmental balance, harmony, and well-being were stewarded and maintained. DeLisle uses her evidence to argue for a “placental politics”–a new conceptual paradigm for Indigenous women’s political action. Drawing on oral histories, letters, photographs, military records, and more, DeLisle reveals how the entangled histories of CHamoru and white American women make us rethink the cultural politics of U.S. imperialism and the emergence of new Indigenous identities.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Unhealthy settler colonialism: Bram Wispelwey, Chidinma Osuagwu, David Mills, Tinashe Goronga, Michelle Morse, ‘Towards a bidirectional decoloniality in academic global health: insights from settler colonialism and racial capitalism’, The Lancet, 11, 9, 2023

20Aug23

Abstract: This Viewpoint considers the implications of incorporating two interdisciplinary and burgeoning fields of study, settler colonialism and racial capitalism, as prominent frameworks within academic global health. We describe these two modes of domination and their historical and ongoing roles in creating accumulated advantage for some groups and disadvantage for others, highlighting their relevance for decolonial health approaches. We argue that widespread epistemic and material injustice, long noted by marginalised communities, is more apparent and challengeable with the consistent application of these two frameworks. With examples from the USA, Brazil, and Zimbabwe, we describe the health effects of settler colonial erasure and racial capitalist exploitation, also revealing the rich legacies of resistance that highlight potential paths towards health equity. Because much of the global health knowledge production is constructed from unregenerate contexts of settler colonialism and racial capitalism and yet focused transnationally, we offer instead an approach of bidirectional decoloniality. Recognising the broader colonial world system at work, bidirectional decoloniality entails a truly global health community that confronts Global North settler colonialism and racial injustice as forcefully as the various colonialisms perpetrated in the Global South.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

The settler progressive: Miguel Montalva Barba, White Supremacy and Racism in Progressive America: Race, Place, and Space, Bristol University Press, 2023

17Aug23

Description: This book examines the connections between race, place, and space, and sheds light on how they contribute and maintain racial hierarchies. The author focuses on the White residents of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, which, according to the Cooks Political Report Position Voting Index, is the most liberal district in the state and 15th in the United States of America. The book uses settler colonialism and critical race theory to explore how self-identified progressive White residents perceive their gentrifying neighborhood and how they make sense of their positionality. Using the extended case method, as well as in-depth interviews, participant observation, content analysis and visual/media analysis, the author reveals how systemic racialized inequality persists even in a politically progressive borough.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Refusing settler colonialism begins with its imagination: Isaac Rivera, Mapping The Terms of Freedom & The Ongoing Refusal of Settler Imaginaries, PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 2023

17Aug23

Abstract: Originating in Denver, Colorado in 1907 and exported as a national holiday in 1934, Columbus Day enacts the logic and institutionalization of conquest. Yet despite the seemingly totalizing imaginary of ongoing settler colonialism, Indigenous peoples continue to resist erasure. My dissertation, Mapping the Terms of Freedom & The Ongoing Refusal of Settler Imaginaries, traces the making and unmaking of settler imaginaries in Denver and the ways in which the city’s Indigenous communities choose to represent their stories of resistance to the world. I connect the way institutions of knowledge maintain settler imaginaries in place through the entanglement of visual and digital knowledge practices in settler colonialism. Using ethnographic, archival, and participatory research methods, I trace self-determined Indigenous representations of strength through the community-curated (Re)Mapping Native Denver art exhibit that maps Indigenous geographies and dismantles the logics implicated in the settler imaginary. Held at Denver University (DU) in 2021, the (Re)Mapping Native Art Exhibit stood as a site of public facing education, demonstrating the liberatory power of retelling geo-history on the terms of Indigenous peoples.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

The truth of truth about settler colonialism: Brendan Ciaran Browne, ‘Reclaiming truth recovery against the backdrop of ongoing Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine’, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 2023

17Aug23

Abstract: Purpose –This article argues that truth recovery practices that take place against the backdrop of ongoing settler colonial erasure, as is the case when considering Zionist colonial violence in Palestine, must focus on combating state-sponsored attempts at erasure, rather than solely providing a platform for the expression of settler guilt. Design/methodology/approach – The article analyses existing literature on truth recovery practices that take place in Palestine, including the work of a variety of local NGOs engaged in such praxis, with a view to considering how this form of transitional justice has germinated incrementally in the space. Critical reflection on the work of a variety of grassroots NGOs is situated alongside other forms of transitional justice intervention. Findings – The article argues that in the context of enduring settler colonialism, the truth regarding past Zionist atrocities in historic Palestine must avoid being curated in the present day in such a way as to allow for damage limitation rather than the platforming of conversations around meaningful repair. Truth recovery for recovery’s sake serves only to reinforce the settler colonial status quo rather than properly agitate for a full decolonisation, one that demands and facilitates indigenous Palestinian return. Originality/value – The article challenges prevailing notions of the role of truth recovery practices in spaces of enduring settler colonial value. It makes clear that the role of truth recovery interventions in sites where colonial violence endures must be to actively and meaningfully support activities that reinforce native identity, history and presence on the land. Moreover, by reference to existing grassroots attempts at truth recovery in Palestine, the article provides an original and clear argument that states it is simply not enough to platform the revelation of uncomfortable truths or to provide opportunities for settler violence of the past to be “confessed” in public if it is disassociated from challenging the present-day structures of ongoing oppression. Keywords Palestine, Israel, Transitional justice, Truth recovery, Settler colonialism.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Food for settler thought: Michael D. Wise, Agriculture, Indigeneity, and Settler Colonialism in American History, Arkansas University Press, 2023

17Aug23

Description: In Native Foods: Agriculture, Indigeneity, and Settler Colonialism in American History, Michael D. Wise confronts four common myths about Indigenous food history: that most Native communities did not practice agriculture; that Native people were primarily hunters; that Native people were usually hungry; and that Native people never developed taste or cuisine. Wise argues that colonial expectations of food and agriculture have long structured ways of seeing (and of not seeing) Native land and labor. Combining original historical research with interdisciplinary perspectives and informed by the work of Indigenous food sovereignty advocates and activists, this study sheds new light on the historical roles of Native American cuisine in American history and the significance of ongoing colonial processes in present-day discussions about the place of Native foods and Native history in our evolving worlds of taste, justice, and politics.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

The settler rehearsal of a future re-enactment (can you imagine of a less imaginative mind?): Jorge Palacios, Martian Borderlands: Colonizing (Outer) Space in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, MA dissertation, University of Chicago, 2023

16Aug23

Abstract: SpaceX’s rocket launch site, Starbase, lies at the bottom tip of Texas on Boca Chica Beach, where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico. With SpaceX maintaining a presence in the region since 2014, Starbase is seen as a bridge between Earth and Mars that will generate economic development in the area by SpaceX and government officials. In recent years, increased road closures, gentrification, and explosive rocket tests in proximity to Boca Chica beach, sacred Esto’k Gna sites, local wildlife refuges, the U.S.-Mexico Border, and the cities of Brownsville and Matamoros have been a cause of distress for environmental scientists, activists, the Carrizo-Comecrudo Tribe, and local residents. Brownsville, previously named the poorest city in the United States, sits twenty miles from Starbase with a ninety-four percent Hispanic/Latinx population of mixed citizenship status. Local residents who contend with the region’s militarization and history of racially motivated violence are now faced with the fast-moving aerospace engineering industry, space tourism, and Mars colonization. This study seeks to understand how SpaceX’s presence and activities are politically legitimized within South Texas and what they mean for Indigenous and Latinx residents. This will be done through interviews and Participatory Action Research (PAR) conducted in Brownsville with activists, Carrizo-Comecrudo tribal members, and local residents of Brownsville. Data from fieldwork will be compared with online media and accounts taken by the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Town Hall meetings in October 2021. This research identifies sites of discursive incommensurability that arise between modern scientific rhetoric and the Esto’k Gna, Mexican, and Tejano cosmologies that define the identity of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. In seeing how technoscientific enterprises make universalizing claims of modern science to appeal to liberal notions of technological progress, we can see how space ventures coordinate with neoliberal policies to colonize and dispossess lands here on Earth and in outer space. I argue that SpaceX colonizes the Lower Rio Grande Valley using the same strategies as those used by settlers of the Western frontier. Similar to how Texas public history and education curate an image of Texan mythologies, SpaceX propagates an image of Starbase online through aesthetic images of the technological sublime, devoid of any trace of local ethnic Mexican people and sanitized of any harm done to the area. Theorizing alongside my interlocutors, I illustrate how these conditions in turn create the phenomenon that I call Martian Borderlands, diffuse regions marked by entry-points between Earth and Mars that alienate land for the sake of rocket launches and effectively render local inhabitants alien in the process.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

The paper is actually about settler colonialism: Leticia Nogueira, Narjust Florez, ‘The Impact of Climate Change on Global Oncology’, Hematology/Oncology Clinics, 2023

16Aug23

Access the article here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Feminism and environmentalism will not make you Indigenous: Arlie Alizzi, ‘Utopianism, Eco-Criticism and Colonial Fantasy: Germaine Greer’s White Beech as a case study in settler futurity’, in Bronwyn Carlson, Madi Day, Sandy O’Sullivan, Tristan Kennedy (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Australian Indigenous Peoples and Futures, Routledge, 2023

16Aug23

Abstract: This chapter reflects on white feminist anti-trans rhetoric and European utopianism as examples of settler futurity. It outlines my relationship to utopianism and feminism using the example of Germaine Greer’s memoir, White Beech. White Beech traces Greer’s return to Australia from the United Kingdom and her acquisition of property on Yugambeh land with the intention of turning it into a forest conservation project and ‘rewilding’ it. I use White Beech to reflect on utopianism’s complex and consumptive relationship to Aboriginal peoples, with particular attention to settler engagements with the Gold Coast and surrounds.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Fathering a settler society (is not that easy): Laura Y. Merrell, Settler Colonial Fatherhood in New South Wales and Ontario During the Long Nineteenth Century, PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 2023

16Aug23

Abstract: “Settler Colonial Fatherhood in New South Wales and Ontario During the Long Nineteenth Century” is a comparative study of Indigenous, white, and mixed-race fathers in the British Empire as they navigated, and in turn, shaped cultural ideas of fatherhood. Using child custody cases, popular medical guides, newspaper articles, correspondence, memoirs, and wills, this project analyzes men’s lived experiences against the backdrop of colonial institutions and imperial ideologies. Examining race, respectability, and reproduction, it uses fatherhood as an entry point into the broader theme of settler colonialism, including the formation of settler states and the reach of their authority. To interpret constructions of colonizer fatherhood, I examine legal and medical institutions. In addition, I analyze the effects of settler colonization on nonwhite fathers and the strategies they used to counter dispossession. In existing narratives of nineteenth-century colonial power relations, white male colonizers were at the top of the gendered, racialized hierarchy. They are assumed to have benefited from privileges withheld from non-white men and white women. In the arenas of medicine, law, and lives, I argue that settler colonialism put fathers under pressure. While the typical agents of colonial power—government officials, judges, missionaries, and medical professionals—make their appearance in this project, informal political actors also materialize. When confronted with families who blurred racial lines, white relatives and neighbors policed colonial boundaries. In addition, my dissertation argues that, in many instances, white men were unwilling or unable to meet normative fatherhood expectations. They placed pressure on settler colonial structures and justifications for rule.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

what’s new

contribute