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

20Sep22

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.


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.


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

18Sep22

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

18Sep22



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

15Sep22


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.