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When eviction is settler colonial: Sarah Buhler, Patricia Barkaskas, ‘The Colonialism of Eviction’, Journal of Law and Social Policy, 36, 2023, pp. 23-43

08Apr23

Abstract: Very little scholarship has specifically considered the phenomenon of eviction as a colonial process, or examined the role of the eviction legal system in reproducing colonial structures and relations. Our aim in this article is to address this gap and
thereby extend to the eviction legal system context the work of scholars who have theorized the colonialism of the criminal justice, child welfare, and carceral systems. This article begins with an overview of current issues relating to urban Indigenous housing in Canada. The next section introduces Indigenous concepts of home and homelessness, which are distinct from dominant understandings. We then place the discussion within the larger context of settler colonialism and critiques of this relation of power. We look specifically at Indigenous conceptions of home and homelessness, as well as how settler colonialism has shaped dominant ideas about property and ownership that underlie the right to evict in Canadian law. The paper then turns to a discussion of how the eviction legal system functions in a “classical” colonial sense to both destabilize and dispossess Indigenous families, and to reinscribe settler claims to property. Fundamentally, we believe there is a need for research and storytelling about the relationship between Indigenous peoples and eviction legal systems in Canada, and we think there is room to imagine decolonizing the eviction legal system.


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The poetic importance of Indigenous life against settler death: Khadija El Alaoui, Maura Pilotti, ‘Laudable Madness: Seizing Life from the Teeth of Death’, Interventions, 2023

08Apr23

Abstract: This essay zooms in on the story of the Palestinian body condemned to suffer unspeakable injustices so that a system based on inequity keeps working for the few. It relies on poetic texts written or performed by those whose bodies are controlled by the interrelated forces of settler colonialism, authoritarianism, and imperialism. The storms these forces unleash and the prices they exact in terms of human life cement the condition of the body whose life bears witness to the fall of justice. The essay argues that these poets practice what we would like to call “seizing life from the teeth of death” wherein their determination to fight oppression exceeds national and regional boundaries to embrace and learn from the indigenous nations in the United States.


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Resurgence vs. Reconciliation: Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, Aimée Craft, Hōkūlani K. Aikau (eds), Indigenous Resurgence in an Age of Reconciliation, University of Toronto Press, 2023

08Apr23

Description: What would Indigenous resurgence look like if the parameters were not set with a focus on the state, settlers, or an achievement of reconciliation? Indigenous Resurgence in an Age of Reconciliation explores the central concerns and challenges facing Indigenous nations in their resurgence efforts, while also mapping the gaps and limitations of both reconciliation and resurgence frameworks. The essays in this collection centre the work of Indigenous communities, knowledge, and strategies for resurgence and, where appropriate, reconciliation. The book challenges narrow interpretations of indigeneity and resurgence, asking readers to take up a critical analysis of how settler colonial and heteronormative framings have infiltrated our own ways of relating to our selves, one another, and to place. The authors seek to (re)claim Indigenous relationships to the political and offer critical self-reflection to ensure Indigenous resurgence efforts do not reproduce the very conditions and contexts from which liberation is sought. Illuminating the interconnectivity between and across life in all its forms, this important collection calls on readers to think expansively and critically about Indigenous resurgence in an age of reconciliation.


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Playful settler colonialists: Thomas Lecaque, ‘Against the Grain? Native Farming Practices and Settler-Colonial Imaginations in Empire: Total War’, Age of Revolutions, 27/03/23

08Apr23

Excerpt: All of this is, of course, a representation of ongoing white supremacist mythologies, the narrative of settler-colonialism that demands replacement of indigenous peoples—much like in the game itself. Native groups are put in place only to die. Quests are given to destroy them. Playing as them is impossible. 


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On the Indigenous origins of settler colonial studies: Kēhaulani Vaughn, ‘The Slyly Reproductive Lessons of Haunani-Kay Trask’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 46, 1, 2023, pp. 99-113

08Apr23

Excerpt: In her seminal work, Haunani-Kay Trask (HKT) brilliantly named and articulated the contours of what we call settler colonial violence and laid the important groundwork for the theorization of Indigenous feminisms. Trask’s influential scholarship is accessible and clear, and written years before the aforementioned fields became acceptable in current scholarship. Trask’s definition of settler colonialism emphasizes the need to identify who is a Native and who is a settler in any locale and the responsibility to do so for future generations. Emphasizing the genealogical caretakers in a given place, Trask contests Native erasure in settler colonial societies.


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Theological assessments of settler colonialism: Marthie Momberg, ‘Apartheid then and now – where are we heading? The case of Israel’, Stellenbosch Theological Journal, 9, 3, 2023, pp. 1-19

06Apr23

Excerpt: These stark ecclesial differences prompted the writing of this article. The questions churches face is whether or not Israel has an apartheid regime, and how to respond. My aim is to critically assess the possibility of Israel as an apartheid regime and to construct knowledge for critical theological discernment. The interdisciplinary research in the field of theological ethics offered here starts with a brief overview of the influence of Zionism on theological views. I then contextualise the concepts “ethnic cleansing”, “occupied” and “settler-colonialism” to argue that …


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Settler fathers: Paulien Petronella Martens, Founding Fathers: Fatherhood, family and aspiration in colonial Dunedin, PhD dissertation, University of Otago, 2023

04Apr23

Abstract: Taking the Wakefieldian colonial project in Otago as the starting point, this thesis examines fatherhood in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Dunedin, linking masculinity and family to the colonial project in Aotearoa. Histories of masculinity and fatherhood have burgeoned since the 1980s, with important studies on topics such as class, war and Empire. Yet the intersection between masculinity, family and settler colonialism has not received much attention to date, especially regarding personal experiences of fatherhood. In particular, the roles and experiences of fathers in nineteenth and early twentieth-century New Zealand remain largely unexplored. This research seeks to bridge this gap by asking in what ways fathers were connected to their children, families and wider kin in a colonial society, and how religion, cultural background and class impacted on fathering styles.The thesis is comprised of seven thematic chapters structured around key features of the colonial society of Dunedin and wider Otago. The five core chapters focus on religion, welfare, mobility, business and education, which are bookended by two chapters that focus on links between fatherhood and the colonial project of Otago, with the final chapter reflecting on the broader legacies of colonial fathers in a particular place. Throughout the thesis, attention is given to changes in Dunedin over time, and how these are reflected in the experiences of fathers and families.Based on a rich array of family correspondence, business archives, and published sources related to a select number of Dunedin families, this thesis argues that examining personal experiences of fatherhood enriches our understanding of family, relationships, kin networks and settler colonialism in New Zealand. It concludes that aspiration was a key feature of fatherhood, with fathers invested in their children’s prospects in various ways. This could take the form of breadwinning, but also included moral and religious guidance, education, and children’s involvement in the family business. Extracts from family correspondence are evidence of the close bonds between children and their fathers in Dunedin at this time. Family aspirations were not always met due to the vicissitudes of colonial life, but fathers were anxious to direct their offspring to reap the rewards that settlement could bring.


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Reconciliation is a rhetorical device: Sheryl Lightfoot, ‘Rhetoric and Settler Inertia: Strategies of Canadian Decolonization by Patrick Belanger, and: Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission by Dylan Robinson and Keavy Martin, and: Research & Reconciliation: Unsettling Ways of Knowing through Indigenous Relationships by Shawn Wilson, Andrea V. Breen and Lindsay Dupré (review)’, Native American and Indigenous Studies, 10, 1, 2023, pp. 78-80

04Apr23

Excerpt: Since 2015, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) issued its Final Report and 94 Calls to Action, which described the proper pathway for reconciliation in Canada, there has been a virtual explosion of academic literature on how the TRC’s Calls to Action can and should be operationalized. Many have taken the position that reconciliation—and decolonization—must be Indigenous directed, while also holding settler society primarily responsible and accountable for most of the actions that reconciliation requires. Numerous scholars also hold that academia, especially its research function, have a key role to play in reconciliation processes. This collection of three books advances both ideas.


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The Indian agent is a settler agent: Ann Fayles, The American Indian Agent, 1791-1861: Questioning the Literary and Cinematic Stereotype as well as Historical Narratives to find the real Indian Agent, PhD dissertation, Swansea University, 2023

04Apr23

Abstract: The American Indian Agent is a known figure in the national drama. Originally defined by nineteenth century political opponents, settlers, frontier business interests, the American military, Indian policy reformers and even Indians, the Indian agent ranges from inept to cupidinous; cruel to inhuman. Western fiction writers, screenwriters and episodic television dramatists of the twentieth century took the agent’s tarnished reputation and created a stereotype stock character for Westerns emphasising all his malevolent attributes. The historical profession has largely perpetuated the cultural and literary perception of the Indian agent, until some historians began to identify individualized exceptions to agent perfidy. As examples of benevolent agents grew, the profession revised its analysis allowing that some agents assisted Indians while most remained obdurately delinquent.Most historical research on Indian agents has focused on the period from 1861–1888, the Civil War to the end of the Apache Wars. Large swaths of history remain lightly explored as the Indian agent existed from 1791–1908. This thesis examines the Indian agent in the early years of the Republic, from 1791–1861, interacting with Indians from New York to Puget Sound, from Georgia to New Mexico and the vast Great Plains in between. Crucially this thesis places the agent in the world of the Indian agency as well as the competing worlds of politics, business, religion, settlement, and government administration of which he was also a part.The results are surprising. Although there were a few criminals and several men overwhelmed by conditions, most agents of Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Antebellum America were honest, sincere public servants, many coming to favor the Indians and spending their own money, and in a few cases, their blood to aid Indian development and freedom.This conclusion runs counter to both popular and historical perceptions. It seems almost everyone has adopted the old Aristotelian idea of petitio principii or “begging the question”. The bad and inept Indian agent must be bad and inept. No longer. These are the real Indian agents of 1791–1861.


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The reproductive labour of Indigenous women: Jessica O’Leary, ‘The Uprooting of Indigenous Women’s Horticultural Practices in Brazil, 1500–1650’, Past & Present, 2023

30Mar23

Abstract: In the land now known as Brazil, Indigenous women were responsible for cultivating and preparing a tuberous root called mandioca (cassava). Following the arrival of Europeans in 1500, mandioca replaced wheat bread to become the staple carbohydrate in settlers’ diets. Travellers’ accounts between 1500 and 1550 describe how Indigenous women taught settlers to prepare the tubers for consumption through the use of special tools and processes of soaking, drying and pulverizing. However, with the arrival of the Jesuits, European sources began to elide or problematize knowledge among Indigenous women that did not cohere with Christian normative values. By the mid seventeenth century, naturalists were no longer acknowledging the original female informants who had taught Europeans how to identify and cultivate the plant. In line with recent scholarship on the history of science and medicine in colonial contexts, a close reading of the sources reflects the importance of Indigenous knowledges to imperial expansion, on the one hand, and the interactive nature of cross-cultural knowledge sharing that became hidden by early modern European epistemological practices. Drawing on a broad body of colonial documentation, this article examines how European representations of the cultivation of mandioca identified, exploited, assimilated, suppressed and, finally, alienated Indigenous women’s knowledges from their original holders between 1500 and 1650.


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