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Truth and settler colonialism: Vanessa Barolsky, ‘Truth-telling about a settler-colonial legacy: decolonizing possibilities?’ Postcolonial Studies, 2022

13Sep22

Abstract: In 2017, the Uluru Statement calling for Voice, Treaty and Truth was released by Australia’s Referendum Council. The Uluru Statement calls for a Makarrata Commission to oversee a process of
‘agreement-making’ and ‘truth-telling’. I argue that it was in the regional dialogues held by the Referendum Council prior to the release of the Uluru Statement that this demand for truth-telling
was substantively articulated by dialogue participants. This article explores this grassroots invocation of truth-telling within the context of the desire for political transformation, most recently expressed in the Uluru Statement. I argue that truth-telling is conceptualized by regional dialogue participants as an opportunity for First Nations and non-Indigenous Australians to participate as equals in a process of place-based dialogic engagement about the ‘truths’ of colonial history that may or may not lead to local reconciliation. This type of ‘agonistic’ political encounter, therefore, does not assume an outcome of national or even local reconciliation. I contend that these types of encounters may have the potential to create local decolonizing spaces in which more equal terms of association are negotiated. However, they could also be appropriated to pursue ideological forms of consensus that undermine this possibility, as occurred in previous periods of Australian history.


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Settler and indirect rule: Youssef Mnali, Settling Palestine : logics of Israeli (in)direct governance of the occupied west bank since 1967, PhD dissertation, European University Institute, 2022

13Sep22

Abstract: Settling Palestine: The logics of Israeli (In)direct governance of the West Bank since 1967 In June 1967, after Israel’s dramatic victory in the Six-Day War, the Israeli army occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Syrian Golan Heights. With the exception of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the other territories were not annexed. Instead, they remained under military occupation and were slowly settled by diverse and heterogeneous groups of Jewish Israeli citizens. The dissertation argues that there is a profound difference between capturing territory in war and occupying it in peacetime. By necessity and design, Israel’s military occupation is built on indirect governance, with Jewish settlers serving as intermediary agents of the Israeli state. The longstanding Israeli occupation has reinforced the image of Israel as a strong state capable of enforcing its authority over the territory under its control. The dissertation reveals how many Israeli governments have been plagued by operational, reputational, and institutional capacity deficits that have hindered their attempts to govern the new territories effectively and to reign in Palestinian resistance directly with the Israeli army and other state agencies. To overcome these deficits, Israeli governments have mobilized different types of settlers who had the partial or complete capacity required by the state of Israel. In return, the state has become increasingly dependent on the administrative, logistic and security services provided by settlers on the ground and on the recruits they provide for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) at a time when Israel was experiencing a decline in the numbers of non-settler Israeli citizens joining the military and when the increasing integration of the Palestinian population and territories into Israel’s de facto and judicial sovereignty was expanding its responsibility in the eyes of the world and hindered the use of lethal violence by the army. State dependence increased the bargaining position of the settlers and gave them increasing influence in Israeli politics. These changes destabilized the initial indirect governance arrangement. Settlers constantly adapted these arrangements in order to twist them in their favour. The central question posed by the dissertation is: Why and how does the Israeli state mobilise settlers? And how have the reactions of settlers shaped state and society in Israel? The answer is provided by seven chapters which reconstruct state-settler interactions through selected episodes of Israeli occupation in the period 1967–2020. 6 The thesis is structured into seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the research question and sketches the main argument. Chapter two explains case selection and fieldwork methodology. Chapter three provides a broad ranging review of the theoretical and empirical literature. Chapter four presents a historical overview of the early decades of the occupation. It analyses the politics of the settlements, the indirect governance arrangements that emerged between the government and the religious Zionist sector, the implicit contract underlying these arrangements in terms of deficits in government capacity and settler competences, as well as the convergence and divergence of interests. Chapter five analyses the establishment of ‘illegal’ outposts in the 1990s and their subsequent transformation into permanent settlements. After the Oslo Accords’ Memorandum on new settlements, the Israeli authorities have rebalanced their emphasis away from establishing new settlements through ‘delegation’ towards establishing ‘illegal outposts’ with their subsequent silent ‘conversion’ into ‘legal’ settlements. The last empirical chapter 6 examines the indirect governance of violence. It analyses the arrangements to deal with indirect violence adopted by the Israeli government and the national-religious sector and the changes these arrangements underwent over time. Issues include soldiers’ refusal to follow orders in evacuating settlers on the grounds of their religious convictions and settler violence targeting the Israeli army, especially in the aftermath of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Chapter seven concludes with a short summary of the argument and possible extensions. The thesis builds on a theory-guided process-tracing approach (TGPT). It is based on over fifty in-depth interviews with current and former IDF officers, state officials in the Civil Military Administration, soldiers, politicians, diplomats and settlement residents and their representatives. The thesis engages with theories of settler colonialism, indirect governance, religious radicalism, and military sociology. It constitutes an innovative study of the Israeli settler movement and its historical evolution from the perspective of indirect governance and is one of a few studies focusing on radical right social movements in a non-Western political context.


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Setter women organizing: Eleanor Glenne Thompson, Class, Gender, Race, and Resistance The United Farm Women of Manitoba, 1916–1936, MA Dissertation, University of Manitoba/University of Winnipeg, 2022

13Sep22

Abstract: In the second decade of the twentieth century, the resistance of Canadian prairie farm women to the inequities of the Dominion government’s national policies, coupled with their growing awareness of women’s unequal rights, gave rise to the formation of semi-autonomous farm women’s organizations in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. These women were part of the agrarian protest movement that has left its mark on the political, economic and social structures of Canada. Considerable research has shed light on the organized farm women of Saskatchewan and Alberta, but little has been written about the United Farm Women of Manitoba (UFWM). Drawing on the extensive files of the UFWM preserved in the Archives of Manitoba as well as relevant secondary sources, this thesis situates members of the UFWM in the context of settler colonialism and utilizes the intersectional analyses of gender, class, race, religion, ethnicity and region to examine these women’s lives and work, both on the farm and in the public sphere, between 1916 and 1936. The UFWM resisted the economic and political structures of monopoly capitalism that served the interests of the wealthy and privileged while oppressing those who laboured to produce that wealth and the Indigenous nations whose land was stolen. They worked tirelessly to build an alternative society based on principles of cooperation and a more equitable sharing of the earth’s resources, and they fought for women’s right to vote, to hold public office, to have an equal share in the assets they worked to produce, as well as equality in divorce, separation and child custody. Their strong agrarian class identity prevented them from affiliating closely with urban middle-class women’s groups and they felt a closer affinity with the working class. They stood in solidarity with First Nations when the Dominion government tried to take additional reserve land for returning soldiers after World War I. However, as determined as UFWM members were in their resistance to the constructed hierarchies of gender and class, their strong identity with their British Anglo-Saxon race and Protestant religion eventually led them to support assimilation and eugenics practices. While the UFWM has much to teach us about the liberating possibilities of collective action in the building of a more equitable society, their strong adherence to constructed racial and religious hierarchies reminds us of the ways racism impedes the fight for truth, reconciliation and social justice.


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Settler colonial agroecologies: Kase W. Wheatley, Beyond Land Grab Settler Agriculture: Toward a Transformative University Agroecology, MA dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 2022

11Sep22

Abstract: As a practice, agroecology can trace its roots to Indigenous and peasant farmer knowledge developed over centuries, yet as a term, agroecology has existed for over ninety years. The term has become institutionalized through universities like the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a Land Grant University where a number of staff and faculty from different disciplinary backgrounds practice agroecology, often in collaborative efforts. At the same time, through efforts like the High Country News exposé Land Grab U, more attention is being brought to the settler colonial origins of Land Grant universities like UW-Madison and the ongoing implications of these origins on research. Through twenty-one interviews with UW-Madison practitioners affiliated with the Agroecology program and others from the university who work with Indigenous communities, I sought to understand 1) perceptions of agroecology, 2) how settler colonialism and Indigeneity are considered in this work, and 3) what a “transformative university agroecology” could look like. Since its inception as an academic program at UW in the early 2000s, agroecology has steadily embraced a more explicit political orientation challenging individual disciplinary boundaries and the broader “productivist” paradigm of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. However, what actually constitutes the broader social context of agroecology was contested among interviewees, especially across disciplinary boundaries. Interviewees from the social sciences and humanities acknowledged settler colonialism more frequently than interviewees However, among all Agroecology program-affiliated interviewees, the depth to which settler colonialism was integrated into their work was generally limited. Interviewees from outside the agroecology program called upon their colleagues to do more and begin these efforts by building relationships based in collaboration.


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Indigenous cinematics: Robert Jackson, ‘Grounded abstractions: an interview with Conor McNally‘, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 61, 2022

11Sep22

Excerpt: McNally’s documentary practice is rooted in Indigenous philosophies that emphasize balanced and healthy relationships between humans and the more than human world. Read in and against the framework of settler colonialism—which attempts to reinscribe all social relations within capital’s grammars of possession, accumulation, and domination—McNally’s focus on Indigenous social relations offers both a critique of settler colonialism’s dispossessive order and an affirmation of Indigenous lives, lifeways, and aesthetics.


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A complex settler colonial past must be represented: David A. Nichols, ‘Telling Hoosier Stories: Promised Lands and Proving Grounds’, Indiana Magazine of History, 118, 3, 2022, pp. 222-228

11Sep22

Abstract: Originally a living history museum celebrating Indiana’s homogeneous pioneer past, Conner Prairie began in the late 1990s to tell a more complicated story, one that included the expulsion of Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans. With the new “Promised Land as Proving Ground” exhibit, scheduled to open in 2023, Conner Prairie will even more radically enlarge its subject matter, examining the lives that free persons of color voluntarily built in a state with an antagonistic white majority. Curatorial Director Charlene Fletcher, who designed the new exhibit from the ground up, described in an interview with David A. Nichols the layout, media components, and modern community partners of “Promised Land.” Dr. Fletcher also explained the exhibit’s goals: to introduce visitors to antebellum Black Hoosiers, who were some of central Indiana’s pioneer settlers (and the ancestors of future Black professionals), and to remind audiences of modern Hoosiers’ ongoing struggle for inclusion and equity.


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Dickens studies and the question of settlers abroad and what they do: Dominic Rainsford, ‘Transported to Botany Bay: Class, National Identity, and the Literary Figure of the Australian Convict by Dorice Williams Elliott, and: Familial Feeling: Entangled Tonalities in Early Black Atlantic Writing and the Rise of the British Novel by Elahe Haschemi Yekani, and: Literature in a Time of Migration: British Fiction and the Movement of People, 1815–1876 by Josephine McDonagh, and: Settler Colonialism in Victorian Literature: Economics and Political Identity in the Networks of Empire by Philip Steer (review)’, Dickens Quarterly, 39, 3, 2022, pp. 394-400

06Sep22

Excerpt: Each of these recent books touches on international relations, empire, and race in the nineteenth century. Each contains a single chapter that focuses specifically on Dickens. Each might have been written slightly differently, perhaps, if the authors had all had the chance fully to digest one another’s work. As it is, they collectively provide a significant unfolding of the map of Dickens studies.


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Nordic settler colonialism: Lynette McGuire, ‘The Fragmentation of Sápmi: A Nordic Model of Settler Colonialism’, Scandinavian-Canadian Studies, 29, 2022

05Sep22

Abstract: While the Nordic countries are frequently renowned as some of the most peaceful societies in the world, such a conception of peace cannot fully encapsulate the experiences of the Sámi. Likewise, the global movement toward settler-Indigenous reconciliation since the 1960s has set the Nordic response apart from the rest of the world. Building upon existing understandings of internal colonialism and structural violence, this paper analyzes how pragmatic attempts by Finland, Norway, and Sweden to reconcile with the Sápmi have constituted a unified Nordic model of continued settler colonialism, as well as how differences between the National Sámi parliaments contribute to that model. Finally, this paper examines the impact that the Nordic model of settler colonialism has had on pan-Sámi politics, particularly concerning problems of Sámi reunification since the fall of the Soviet Union.


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An interview with Shannon Speed on settler colonialism and Latin American Studies: Lynn Stephen, Settler colonialism in Latin American and Native studies’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2022

05Sep22

Excerpt: ‘Well, as you know, it has been a lifelong or career-long preoccupation of mine as a citizen of a Native nation located in what we currently call the United States to do academic and political work in what we now refer to as Latin America. I have long been frustrated by the lack of engagement between Indigenous scholars north and south of the US-Mexico border, which, of course, is a settler-imposed distinction and one that we too often reify with our scholarly work‘. 


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Reforming settler colonial education is easier said and not done: Ellen Bees, Manitoba Education Reforms, White Settler Discourses, and the Marginalization of Indigenous Perspectives, MA dissertation, University of Manitoba, 2022

05Sep22

Abstract: In 2019, the province of Manitoba started a process of reforming the education system, however it is important to question the role of white settler colonialism in this process. This critical discourse analysis examined how white settler colonialism is normalized and advanced through the discourses found in selected Manitoba education reform documents. Contrasting discourses emerged in the government documents and the briefs submitted from education organizations and school divisions. The dominant discourse, found particularly in the government documents and other documents, featured colour-blind ideology that normalized whiteness. Indigenous students were frequently discussed using a deficit narrative, while ideological discourse structures put distance between the Indigenous community and the education system. Neoliberal views of learning and achievement were emphasized in the dominant discourse, which conflicted with definitions of achievement put forth by Indigenous scholars. Attributes of Indigenous learning were often omitted or instrumentalized to further neoliberal views of learning and achievement. Superficial integration of Indigenous content and perspectives was evident, running counter to a more transformative trans-systemic integration of Indigenous and Eurocentric knowledge systems. In summary, these discourses worked to normalize and advance white settler colonialism and marginalize Indigenous perspectives, while contrasting discourses offered a transformative vision of an education system based in principles of equity.


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