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Settler schooling: Sean Carleton, Lessons in Legitimacy: Colonialism, Capitalism, and the Rise of State Schooling in British Columbia, UBC Press, 2022

20Sep22

Description: Between 1849 and 1930, colonial, provincial, and federal governments assumed greater responsibility for education in what is now British Columbia, using schooling as a strategy to catalyze and legitimize the development of a capitalist settler society. Lessons in Legitimacy brings the histories of different kinds of state schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples – public schools, Indian Day Schools, and Indian Residential Schools – into one analytical frame. Schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children and youth had distinct yet complementary functions in building British Columbia. Students were given lessons in legitimacy that normalized settler capitalism and the making of British Columbia, first as a British colony and then as Canada’s westernmost province. Sean Carleton combines insights from history, Indigenous studies, historical materialism, and political economy to present different histories of education for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples together. In the process, this important study reveals how an understanding of the historical uses of schooling can inform contemporary discussions about the role of education in reconciliation and improving Indigenous–settler relations. Historians, Indigenous studies scholars, and those in the field of education history will find this work illuminating, as will educators and general readers with an interest in schooling’s role in truth and reconciliation.


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Indigenous sovereignty is sustainable (settler colonialism is not): Melissa Catherine Helen Gorrie, Transformation beyond the settler legal paradigm: grounding ecologically-focused legal theories in relational accountability to address settler colonialism and support Indigenous sovereignty, MA dissertation, University of Calgary, 2022

18Sep22

Abstract: In this thesis, I explore what is required to address settler colonialism and support Indigenous sovereignty in the environmental law context, and assess the extent to which ecologically-focused legal theories or ELTs align with what is required. I conclude that a rebalancing of power and authority is required towards nation-to-nation, legally pluralistic spaces that centre Indigenous sovereignty and the revitalization of Indigenous legal paradigms. In these spaces, settler-Indigenous legal paradigms co-exist as equals in mutually respectful and reciprocal relationships. To create such spaces requires several inter-related efforts on behalf of settlers, including: i) efforts to dismantle settler colonialism in settler legal paradigms and support the revitalization of Indigenous legal paradigms, ii) restitution and reparations for past and ongoing harms, and iii) efforts to engage and interact with Indigenous peoples and their legal paradigms in a manner that reflects the legally pluralistic vision set out herein. I conclude that ELTs mostly advocate for transformation within the settler legal paradigm, failing to challenge the state’s source of law-generating authority over Indigenous peoples and their lands. They also generally fail to centre and support Indigenous sovereignty and the revitalization of Indigenous legal paradigms. There is also virtually no mention of the need for restitution or reparations, or consideration of the need for relationship building and dialogue with Indigenous peoples and their legal paradigms. As a result, ELTs mostly maintain the settler colonial status quo. Nonetheless, there are some leading examples that demonstrate the possibility of ELTs being developed in a decolonized and pluralistic manner that addresses settler colonialism and supports the revitalization of Indigenous legal paradigms. These examples also demonstrate efforts towards creating respectful and reciprocal relationships and dialogue where settler and Indigenous scholars and their legal paradigms co-exist as equals. Moving forward, ELTs should be grounded in problematizing and challenging settler colonialism and supporting Indigenous sovereignty and legal revitalization. Settler ELT scholars should also engage in concerted efforts to build relationships of mutual respect and reciprocity with Indigenous colleagues, where their needs are centred. Such relationship building can enable meaningful cross-legal dialogue and the co-creation of collaborative, decolonized and pluralistic spaces.


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Settler colonial ableism: Alec Moore, Tracing the Colonial Dimensions of ‘Special Education’: History, Disability, and Settler Colonialism, MA dissertation, Brock University, 2022

18Sep22

Abstract: This thesis proposes that there are intersections between settler colonialism, disability, and education, that can help to clarify how and why national recognition of violence against Indigenous communities is a central project of the nation-state. For this reason, the exacerbating impacts of ableism and (settler) colonialism are studied for their impact on schooling and education in Canada. Using Critical Discourse Analysis as a method of inquiry, the Ontario First Nations Special Education Review Report is analyzed for its relation to history, pedagogy, and colonialism. The report is useful to investigation of the connection between current and historical conceptualizations of disability and the history/present of settler colonialism within the Canadian nation-state. The thesis is framed through the understanding that ableism and colonialism, as they appear in “special education”, are intertwined forces which are often founded upon white supremacy and framed through Eurocentric discourse. As such, this thesis engages the fields of Critical Disability Studies, Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Studies, and Education, to describe how special education is informed by colonial constructs of schooling. Conclusions drawn through applying these theories to a reading of the Ontario First Nations Special Education Review Report suggested that there is an apprehension to adopt disability discourse because of the history of colonialism and the ongoing presence of Debility. As well, there is an immediate need to address the systemic issues regarding funding, resource access, and self-determination because of the historical and continued injustices that occur within First Nations education.


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Can it even be a question? Yitzhak Benbaji, ‘Is Egalitarian Zionism Wrongful Colonialism?’ Philosophia, 2022

18Sep22

Abstract: Many observers argue that in its very beginning, Zionism was an instance of wrongful settler colonialism. Are they right? I will address this question by examining the vision of Egalitarian Zionism in light of various theories of the wrongfulness of colonialism. I will argue that no theory decisively supports a positive answer.


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Comparing settler colonial environments: Tom Lynch, Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary, University of Nebraska Press, 2022

18Sep22

Description: Outback and Out West examines the ecological consequences of a settler-colonial imaginary by comparing expressions of settler colonialism in the literature of the American West and Australian Outback. Tom Lynch traces exogenous domination in both regions, which resulted in many similar means of settlement, including pastoralism, homestead acts, afforestation efforts, and bioregional efforts at “belonging.” Lynch pairs the two nations’ texts to show how an analysis at the intersection of ecocriticism and settler colonialism requires a new canon that is responsive to the social, cultural, and ecological difficulties created by settlement in the West and Outback. Outback and Out West draws out the regional Anthropocene dimensions of settler colonialism, considering such pressing environmental problems as habitat loss, groundwater depletion, and mass extinctions. Lynch studies the implications of our settlement heritage on history, art, and the environment through the cross-national comparison of spaces. He asserts that bringing an ecocritical awareness to settler-colonial theory is essential for reconciliation with dispossessed Indigenous populations as well as reparations for ecological damages as we work to decolonize engagement with and literature about these places.


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Comparing settler colonialisms: Jacob Tropp, ‘U.S. Indian Affairs, British Imperial Africa, and Transcolonial Dialogues over Conservation and “Native Development” in the 1930s’, Journal of World History, 33, 3, 2022, p. 459-489

18Sep22

Abstract: Throughout the 1930s, as technical officers from multiple territories in British imperial Africa toured the United States to study federal soil conservation efforts in the wake of the Dust Bowl, they made particular observations of programs among southwestern Native American populations and conferred with colleagues in the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs (OIA). These previously unexplored exchanges extended far beyond purely technical matters: they became significant opportunities for both British imperial and OIA officials to reflect comparatively on America’s enduring settler colonialism, colonial situations in eastern and southern Africa, and parallel state agendas of “native development.” This article focuses on three case studies—involving visitors from colonial South Africa and Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Kenya to various reservations and Pueblos in New Mexico and Arizona—to reveal how officials used these transcolonial dialogues to articulate their particular interests in and promote their preferred approaches to managing colonized peoples and their landscapes.


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Agrarian reform against settler colonialism in Latin America: Joanna Crow, ‘Indigeneity, Land and Property’, in Joanna Crow, Itinerant Ideas, Palgrave, 2022, pp. 69-100

15Sep22

Abstract: This Chapter focuses on the question of land ownership. After exploring Chilean-Peruvian intellectual and artistic exchanges (via Mexico) about the urgency of agrarian reform in defence of indigenous communities in the 1920s and 1930s, this chapter shows how successive governments in both countries proceeded to reduce indigenous land tenure over the course of the first half of the twentieth century. It then explores the transnational aspects of the violent cyclical history of dispossession, indigenous rebellion (against dispossession), and state repression (of rebellion) from the 1910s through 1930s. Finally, it shows how indigenous intellectuals in both countries made it clear that their problems with landowners and the state were not just about the economic worth of land.


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The reconciliation of one Asian settler society: Scott E. Simon, Jolan Hsieh, Peter Kang (eds), Indigenous Reconciliation in Contemporary Taiwan: From Stigma to Hope, Routledge, 2023

15Sep22

Description: This book draws attention to the issues of Indigenous justice and reconciliation in Taiwan, exploring how Indigenous actors affirm their rights through explicitly political and legal strategies, but also through subtle forms of justice work in films, language instruction, museums, and handicraft production. Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples have been colonized by successive external regimes, mobilized into war for Imperial Japan, stigmatized as primitive “mountain compatriots” in need of modernization, and instrumentalized as proof of Taiwan’s unique identity vis-à-vis China. Taiwan’s government now encapsulates them in democratic institutions of indigeneity. This volume emphasizes that there is new hope for real justice in an era in which states and Indigenous peoples seek meaningful forms of reconciliation at all levels and arenas of social life. The chapters, written by leading Indigenous, Taiwanese, and international scholars in their respective fields, examine concrete situations in which Indigenous peoples seek justice and decolonization from the perspectives of territory and sovereignty, social work and justice. Illustrating that there is new hope for real justice in an era in which states and Indigenous peoples seek meaningful forms of reconciliation, this book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Taiwan Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Social Justice Studies.


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The expansion of two Asian settler societies: Tinakrit Sireerat, Looking North: Hokkaido’s Farms, Lanna’s Forests, and the Colonial Nature of Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Japan and Thailand, PhD dissertation, Cornell University, 2022

15Sep22

Abstract: This dissertation presents a comparative enviro-colonial history of the northward expansion by Japan and Siam between the late-nineteenth century and the early-twentieth century. The term “enviro-colonial history” connotes the entanglements between environmental history and colonial history that are enabled by the practices of knowledge production and mobilization. In the case of Japan’s colonization of Hokkaido, the promotion of “scientific agriculture” became a means to transform the unfamiliar environment of the northern island into a thriving settler colony for Japanese migrants. Meanwhile, in Siam, the institutionalization of “scientific forestry” was aimed at reconfiguring the relationships around the flourishing timber trade in the northern frontier, to facilitate both the annexation of the Lanna states and the centralization of forest regulation. As I will elaborate in the chapters that follow, the production and mobilization of agricultural science in Hokkaido and forestry in Lanna enabled the imagination of “envirocolonial rule” – a form of governance that entangled environmental management with colonial
administration as if they were part of the same process.


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The reproductive politics of a settler colonial project: Bayan Abusneineh, Chosen and Imagined: Racial and Gendered Politics of Reproduction in Palestine and Israel, PhD dissertation, UC San Diego, 2022

13Sep22

Abstract: Chosen and Imagined: Racial and Gendered Politics of Reproduction in Palestine and Israel, traces how Israel manages, subjugates, and seeks to erase populations deemed threatening to the modern nation-state and its pursuit of homogeneity through racial and reproductive violence. This project aims to unravel Israel’s pronatalist fertility regime as co-produced simultaneously by ongoing histories of Zionist settler colonialism, Islamophobia/ Orientalism, anti-Semitism, and anti-blackness. Employing an interdisciplinary and transnational methodology, Chosen and Imagined combines archival research, oral history, testimonials, film and media analysis, to reveal the state’s efforts to deploy reproduction as a path to become part of the civilized, modern, and “superior” West. Through an analysis of a state sponsored child kidnapping and adoption campaign, forced sterilization, family separation and anti-miscegenation laws, and deployment of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs), I examine how discourses around reproduction are couched within eugenics. By critically engaging with critical race and settler colonial studies, Palestine studies, and reproductive histories, my project complicates traditional discourses of Israeli settler colonialism, which typically configure a relationship between the Native (Palestinian) versus the Settler (Israeli), by highlighting nuances within the figure of the settler/Israeli. For instance, I trace how Israel’s reproductive management of Black and Arab populations aids in the formation of a new European/Ashkenazi Israeli identity, the idealized subject who must be protected against abject, racialized populations.


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