settler colonial studies blog

The last settler fantasy? Julie Cohen, ‘”Flipping the Script”: Alma Whitaker, Newspaperwomen, and the Settler Fantasy in Los Angeles’, California History, 100, 1, 2023, pp. 27-55

21Feb23

Abstract: This article examines the work of Alma Whitaker—feminist, reporter, and columnist for the Los Angeles Times from 1910 to 1944. Widely known in her time but almost totally forgotten today, Whitaker’s work illustrates the formative role of newspaperwomen in the expansion of Los Angeles in the early twentieth century, and specifically in promoting a settler fantasy that redefined notions of white women’s selfhood in the frontier space of Los Angeles. Her popular articles and columns both bolstered the white settler campaign to create Los Angeles as a white settlement and challenged patriarchal norms. Situating Whitaker within the emergence of the mass-circulating urban newspaper industry and the colonization of Los Angeles, this article contributes to the fields of women/gender history, hegemonic feminism, borderlands/California, and recent scholarship on settler colonialism as a framework for understanding U.S. history.

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Media settler colonialism: Cecilie Larsen, Settler Colonialism, Environmental Justice and the Media: A Thematic Analysis of the National, Regional, Local, and Indigenous Newspaper Coverage of the Keystone XL Pipeline in theUnited States, MA dissertation, University of Agder, 2022

21Feb23

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this thesis is to explore what thematic frames national, regional, local, and Indigenous newspapers have used when reporting on the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. Specifically, by analyzing the newspaper articles which were published in six different newspapers, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, and Indian Country Today, over the course of 12 months, this thesis discusses to what extent the media coverage can be an example of settler colonialism as the conflict surrounding the Keystone XL has largely been located to Indigenous land across several states, including Nebraska. Methodology – By using collected data from newspaper articles, this thesis processed more than 200 articles which included the search term “Keystone XL” in order to label the various articles with a thematic frame. Multiple frames could be used in any given article, but one main frame was assigned to each article. The descriptive statistics break down the different thematic frames per newspaper. Then, excerpts from the different articles were extracted and prescribed into the four main thematic frames that emerged from the analysis. Each thematic frame also contains sub-themes which support the overall main thematic frame. Findings – Four main thematic frames were identified in the newspaper coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline: ‘Politics and Economy’, ‘Climate’, ‘Grassroots Mobilization and Indigenous Opposition’, and ‘Foreign relations.’ The thematic frames contextualize the dispute surrounding the expansion of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in different manners, in the different newspapers to cater to the different audiences. Notably, it was mainly the local and regional newspapers in Nebraska which reported on the local opposition and the alliance of white farmers, landowners, environmentalists, and Indigenous people. Originality – This thesis uses the Keystone XL pipeline as a case for studying settler colonialism in American newspapers, by arguing that settler colonialism is more than physical land acquisition and genocide. The way settler media refers to ecological violence on native land are present-day forms of settler colonialism. Acknowledging this is an important step both towards decolonization, and to work for environmental justice for Indigenous communities.

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Settler achievers? Diana M. Barrero Jaramillo, ‘Achievement as White Settler Property: How the Discourse of Achievement Gaps Reproduces Settler Colonial Constructions of Race’, education policy analysis archives, 31, 13, 2023

19Feb23

Abstract: Racialized narratives of academic ability, perpetuated by ahistorical interpretations of student performance data, have led to educational policies focusing on short-term solutions, instead of the ongoing legacies of racism and settler colonialism. The aim of this paper is to show how the racially defined achievement gap operates within the structure of settler colonialism. Informed by theories of settler colonialism (Tuck & Yang, 2012, Veracini, 2010) and critical race theory (Harris, 1993; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), I closely examine some Toronto District School Board documents that address the socalled achievement and opportunity gaps. Using critical discourse analysis, this paper shows how the notion of achievement is racialized to protect white settler property rights, and how the discourse of achievement gaps functions as a settler technology to concurrently include and exclude individuals from the settler project. Understanding the settler colonial constructions of race brings to the foreground the relations between Indigenous erasure, anti-Blackness, and othering of racialized communities within the contemporary multicultural nation (Haque, 2012; Tuck & Gorlewski, 2016).

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Settlers will inevitably see an Indigenous risk: Nicole M. Muir, Jodi L. Viljoen, Stephane M. Shepherd, ‘Violence Risk Assessment Tools and Indigenous Peoples: Colonialism as an Underlying Cause of Risk Ratings on the SAVRY’, International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, 2023

19Feb23

Abstract: Violence risk assessment tools are used around the world with people who have committed crimes to determine the risk factors that may have contributed to their offending. These tools can carry great consequences for people’s liberty. Violence risk assessment tools are also used with Indigenous people who are overrepresented in the Canadian justice system. A major issue with these risk assessment tools is that they do not use a colonial lens to understand the underlying mechanisms of violence. Using the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) as an example, we examined how colonialism underlies risk and protective ratings. Colonialism increases the probability that Indigenous youth will be rated higher on some risk factors on the SAVRY. Novel interventions to reduce Indigenous overrepresentation include addressing the colonial factors behind violence risk and protective factors. Given that colonialism underlies scores on risk assessment tools, service providers need to link risk ratings to colonialism in their service formulations, carefully attend to culturally relevant factors, and provide interventions and support that specifically address colonialism. Suggestions for future research that include Indigenous community involvement are also provided. A short case analysis, cultural formulation and treatment suggestions are provided as an illustration.

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The settler subject: Hans Skott-Myhre, Scott Kouri, Kathleen Skott-Myhre, ‘The Perversity of Colonial Desire: The Erotics of the Settler Unconscious’, Cultural Critique, 119, 2023, pp. 22-43

19Feb23

Abstract: This article engages a Lacanian psychoanalytic reading of the process of subjectification that produces the settler as a social subject. The analysis is rooted in a reading of Lacan through Deleuze and Guattari, which the article argues may offer an alternative nonessentialist and more historically grounded analysis. Specifically, this article attends to the role that the fetish plays in the ongoing cultural appropriation of Indigenous spirituality and culture within an ongoing neocolonial material context.

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Financial settler colonialisms: Paul Robert Gilbert, Clea Bourne, Max Haiven, Johnna Montgomerie (eds), The entangled legacies of empire: Race, finance and inequality, Manchester University Press, 2023

19Feb23

Check out chapters 4, 5, and 14.

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Settler crossings: Edward Sugden (ed.), Crossings in Nineteenth-Century American Culture: Junctures of Time, Space, Self and Politics, Edinburgh University Press, 2022

19Feb23

Description: A state of the field essay collection that offers new models for analysing time, space, self and politics in nineteenth-century American culture. Across four parts of exploratory, creative and speculative essays, this book provides provocative frameworks and readings of canonical and non-canonical literature. The essays cover off-the-map places, warped historical chronologies, excessive selves, unlikely meetings and systemic incommensurability. Collectively they define original methods, categories and terrains for the study of the American cultural past. Altogether, this collection interrogates some of the most dominant critical moves of the past two decades and proposes alternative ways of working and thinking with the American nineteenth century.

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If we represent it, we are near-Indigenous (we are not): Rob E. King, Christine Self, Robert G. Weaver (eds), David Lynch and the American West: Essays on Regionalism and Indigeneity in Twin Peaks and the Films, Jefferson, NC, McFarland, 2023

17Feb23

Description: This collection convenes diverse analyses of David Lynch’s newly conceived, dreamlike neo-noir representations of the American West, a first in studies of regionalism and indigeneity in his films. Twelve essays and three interviews address Lynch’s image of the American West and its impact on the genre. Fans and scholars of David Lynch’s work will find a study of his interpretations of the West as place and myth, spanning from his first feature film, Eraserhead (1977), through the third season of Twin Peaks in 2017. Symbols of the West in Lynch’s work can be as obvious as an Odessa, Texas street sign or as subtle as the visual themes rooted in indigenous artistry. Explorations of cowboy masculinity, violence, modern frontier narratives and representations of indigeneity are all included in this collection.

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If we are settlers, they are aliens (but are they?): Michael Lechuga, Visions of Invasion Alien Affects, Cinema, and Citizenship in Settler Colonies, Jackson, MS, University Press of Mississippi, 2023

17Feb23

Description: Visions of Invasion: Alien Affects, Cinema, and Citizenship in Settler Colonies explores how the US government mobilizes media and surveillance technologies to operate a highly networked, multidimensional system for controlling migrants. Author Michael Lechuga focuses on three arenas where a citizenship control assemblage manufactures alienhood: Hollywood extraterrestrial invasion film, federal antimigration and border security legislation, and various immigration enforcement protocols implemented along the Mexico–United States border. Building on rhetorical studies, settler colonial studies, and media studies, Visions of Invasion offers a glimpse at how the processes of alien-making contribute to an ongoing settler colonial project in the US. Lechuga demonstrates that popular films—The War of the Worlds, Predator, Men in Black, and more—participate in the production of migrants as subjective terrorists, felons, and other noncitizen personae vilified in public discourse. Beyond just tracing how alien invasion narratives circulate in popular media, Lechuga describes how the logics motivating early US colonists materialize in both the US’s citizenship control policy and in some of the country’s most popular texts. Beneath each of the film franchises and antimigrant political expressions described in Visions of Invasion lies an anxious colonial logic in which the settler way of life is seemingly threated by false narratives of imminent invasion from abroad. The volume offers a deep dive into how the rhetorical figure of the alien has been manufactured as a political subjectivity, one that plays out the anxieties, guilts, and fears of colonialism in today’s science fiction landscape.

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The truth about truth telling and settler colonialism (is that it depends): Sarah Maddison, Julia Hurst, Archie Thomas, ‘The Truth Will Set You Free? The Promises and Pitfalls of Truth-Telling for Indigenous Emancipation’, Social Inclusion, 11, 2, 2023

14Feb23

Abstract: First Nations in Australia are beginning to grapple with processes of treaty-making with state governments and territories. As these processes gain momentum, truth-telling has become a central tenet of imagining Indigenous emancipation and the possibility of transforming relationships between Indigenous and settler peoples. Truth, it is suggested, will enable changed ways of knowing what and who “Australia” is. These dynamics assume that truth-telling will benefit all people, but will truth be enough to compel change and provide an emancipated future for Indigenous people? This article reports on Australian truth-telling processes in Victoria, and draws on two sets of extant literature to understand the lessons and outcomes of international experience that provide crucial insights for these processes—that on truth-telling commissions broadly, and that focusing specifically on a comparable settler colonial state process, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The article presents a circumspect assessment of the possibilities for Indigenous emancipation that might emerge through truth-telling from our perspective as a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous critical scholars. We first consider the normative approach that sees truth-telling as a potentially flawed but worthwhile process imbued with possibility, able to contribute to rethinking and changing Indigenous–settler relations. We then consider the more critical views that see truth-telling as rehabilitative of the settler colonial state and obscuring ongoing colonial injustices. Bringing this analysis into conversation with contemporary debate on truth-telling in Australia, we advocate for the simultaneous adoption of both normative and critical perspectives to truth-telling as a possible way forward for understanding the contradictions, opportunities, and tensions that truth-telling implies.

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