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Settler philanthropy reinforces settler colonialism (even when they say they’d rather not): Damien Lee, ‘Remaining Unreconciled: Philanthropy and Indigenous Governance in Canada’, aboriginal policy studies, 10, 2, 2023, pp. 3-32

04Feb23

Abstract: Canadian philanthropic foundations are increasingly engaged in reconciliation-focused activities with Indigenous peoples. However, reconciliation can uphold colonial relations if care is not taken to support the resurgence of inherent Indigenous governance systems. I therefore argue that to the extent that Canada and the philanthropic community are serious about decolonizing their relationships with Indigenous nations, Canadian tax law will need to find ways to defer to Indigenous leaders who prefer not to reconcile every aspect of their political systems with the Canadian state. The paper identifies the Income Tax Act as part of what upholds settler colonialism within the philanthropic sector, specifically exploring how the concept of “qualified donee status” impedes inherent Indigenous leaders from engaging with philanthropic foundations on their own terms. Examples of inherent Indigenous governance systems are provided.


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A settler is precisely someone who thinks that settlers do not exist: Noam Leshem, Jen Bagelman, ‘Unsettling “The Settler”‘, Society + Space, 23/01/23

02Feb23

Excerpt: Who is ‘the Settler’? What does this category animate and what does it bely? Despite the vast scholarship on histories of settler colonisation, the complex figure of the settler remains largely taken for granted. This lends itself to a banal decolonial politics that urgently requires critique.


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Again, about the university as a settler colonial space: Sharon Stein, ‘Reflections on “Unsettling the University” and Its Call to Responsibility’, Critical Internationalization studies Review, 2, 1, 2023

02Feb23

Abstract: This research brief shares reflections on the author’s recent book Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education. The book traces how US universities were built on and continue to reproduce settler colonialism, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy, in material and epistemic ways.


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Nested settler colonialisms and their interaction: Alexandra Allweiss, ‘”Where We Are Within That”: Chuj Sovereignty and Belonging Across Overlapping Settler Borders’, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 2023

02Feb23

Abstract: This article centers two “zones of sovereignty” that Maya Chuj youth organizers and educators in Guatemala and the United States created from within and across nation-states and settler colonial projects. It highlights how these spaces supported Chuj young people and educators as they navigated and (re)imagined relationality and belonging across transnational and diaspora spaces in ways that refused and challenged settler colonial and imperialist nation-state logics and boundaries.


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The university was and is a settler colonial space: Bindi Bennett, Kelly Menzel, Jacob Prehn, Trevor G. Gates, ‘Australian Universities, Indigenization, Whiteness, and Settler Colonial Epistemic Violence’, in Jioji Ravulo, Katarzyna Olcoń, Tinashe Dune, Alex Workman, Pranee Liamputtong (eds), Handbook of Critical Whiteness: Deconstructing Dominant Discourses Across Disciplines, Springer, 2023

02Feb23

Abstract: This chapter argues that despite numerous strategies, reports, and scholarship, Australian universities are still largely based on White Western worldviews and as a result continue to perpetrate and perpetuate settler colonial epistemic violence. To overcome the current settler colonial epistemic violence exerted by tertiary education providers, genuine relationships with First Nation peoples and communities need to be established, and space must be made for these communities to speak for themselves within the academy. Universities and governments should follow by providing appropriate allocation of resources for the indigenization of curricula and governance structures, within faculties and campuses. If this is achieved, the Australian tertiary education sector will become an international leader by deconstructing Whiteness, providing a greater educational experience, and exposing graduates to multiple worldviews. We address social work as a discipline and suggest ways forward.


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Settler citizenship and Indigenous diasporas: Patrick Saulmatino Thomsen, Lana Lopesi, Kevin Lujan Lee, ‘Contemporary Moana Mobilities: Settler-Colonial Citizenship, Upward Mobility, and Transnational Pacific Identities’, The Contemporary Pacific, 34, 2, 2022

01Feb23

Abstract: In this article, we deploy two theoretical concepts—settler-colonial citizenship and transnational identities—to explore the complex facets of what we term “contemporary Moana mobilities.” Drawing on the Samoan methodology su’ifefiloi, which embraces Pacific forms of storytelling as sites of knowledge production, we provide three first-person vignettes that recount the experiences of a Samoan New Zealander living in South Korea to frame settler-colonial citizenship as an intergenerational symbolic and legal privilege afforded to migrants and their descendants who settle in settler-colonial states. Further, we argue that this opens additional multinational mobility pathways into other countries for children of diasporic Pacific communities within settler colonies like New Zealand, which remain blocked off to our communities and families who reside on island. Given this, we also propose that the identities of upwardly mobile transnational Pacific Islanders are constituted through simultaneous embeddedness in the racial hierarchies of multiple nation-states and are performed for specific audiences in specific national contexts, which then shape the character and politics of these complex identity expressions. Ultimately, we gesture to the importance of better understanding the conditions and consequences of empire and settler-colonial citizenship as global processes—and how this is reshaping the landscape of contemporary Moana mobilities.


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Settler colonialism is incarcerating: Judah Oudshoorn, Towards ending incarceration of Indigenous peoples in Canada: A critical, narrative inquiry of hegemonic power in the Gladue report process, PhD dissertation, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2023

01Feb23

Abstract: This study is concerned with the possibility that Gladue perpetuates the hegemonic powers of settler colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and neoliberalism. Gladue is intended to remediate systemic anti-Indigenous racism by requiring judges to consider all alternatives to incarceration when sentencing Indigenous peoples, yet Indigenous incarceration rates continue to rise precipitously. On the surface, Gladue does not appear to disrupt the hegemonic status quo. How is it that the Canadian state, even when ‘remediating,’ keeps producing the same – colonial, oppressive, and tyrannical – result? This qualitative study used a critical, narrative methodology, interviewing Gladue report writers (n=9) and judges (n=12) about their perspectives and experiences with Gladue, particularly Gladue reports. The study purposefully emphasized settler accountability – research as reparation – in the research design, data collection, and analysis. A careful, ethical protocol for researching with Indigenous peoples (n=9) was followed, premised in Truth and Reconciliation ‘Call to Action’ number 30 to reduce Indigenous incarceration in Canada. This study found that Gladue is falling short of achieving its systemic aim because of (a) a hyper-individualistic, dehumanizing configuration that discursively shifts judges away from dealing with the systemic issue of anti-Indigenous racism, towards judging the individual Indigenous person before the court; (b) colonial mentalities (e.g., whiteness and patriarchy) persisting in the process; (c) a lack of funding for Gladue writers, as well alternatives to incarceration, constraining judges’ capacities to divert Indigenous away from prisons. The study points towards the need for a more radical framework for Gladue that honours Indigenous selfdetermination and foundational treaties such as the Two Row Wampum.


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Can one refuse the settler citizenship that is not even offered? Kiven Strohm, ‘Not, not citizen: art and the making of fugitive sociality in the settler colony’,Citizenship Studies, 2023

01Feb23

Abstract: This paper takes up the entwinement of citizenship and the political in the writings of Engin Isin in the context of the Palestinians in Israel. It opens with an invitation to think with an artwork by the Palestinian artist Durar Bacri as a staging of fugitivity through a refusing of that which has been refused. Out of this I pose the question of whether such an act of refusal is political or not. I start by thinking with this artwork to unpack the settler colonial nature of Palestinian citizenship in Israel and how the figure at the centre of the painting is refusing the citizenship that is being refused him. From this I posit that not only is there a refusal of citizenship, but more there is an ‘end’ or limit to the political itself, and with it the political subject. I conclude with a discussion of a fugitive sociality and its implications for understanding the struggle of Palestinians in Israel.


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Is settler recognition healthy? Lauren Buxbaum, Hollis Hubbard, Jessica L. Liddell, ‘”It Adds to The Stress of the Body”: Community health needs of a state recognized Native American tribe in the United States’, Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 10, 1, 2023, pp. 62-83

01Feb23

Abstract: While many of the health disparities, brought on by the cruelties of settler colonization, that affect Native American and
Alaskan Native communities and individuals at high rates have been documented, the health risks impacting non-federally recognized tribes are less explored. In this manuscript, we explore the challenges nonrecognized tribes face and how without Tribal sovereignty, autonomy, and resources, it is more difficult for non-recognized tribes to provide care and resources for the members of their communities. This study took place in the Gulf South regions of the United States, where there are environmental factors pertaining to industry, global warming, environmental racism, and rurality that further impact the quality of life and rates of cancer, respiratory illness, and reproductive health issues in the Native American communities that live there. In addition, tribes without federal recognition have increased challenges in addressing the lack of access to health equity and may not have the health resources or programming available to them that exist for federally recognized tribes. To explore these topics, a qualitative description methodology was used to conduct 31 semi-structured interviews with women from a state-recognized Native American tribe in the Gulf South to understand their healthcare experiences and concerns. Participants in this study described: high rates of cancer, vehicle accidents or collisions common, barriers to exercising, physical injuries common, chronic illnesses common in the community, loss of family members, and physical violence. These findings indicate that state-recognized tribal members may need increased, improved, and culturally contextualized healthcare programs within their communities, in addition to full recognition of their tribal sovereignty rights. This study begins to address important gaps in the research exploring the full scope of the health risks and challenges affecting non-federally recognized tribal members, while also highlighting their resilience in the face of settler colonialism.


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Russian settler colonialism: Aileen E. Friesen, ‘Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land: Orthodoxy and Community on the Siberian Steppe, University of Toronto Press, 2020

01Feb23

Description: The movement of millions of settlers to Siberia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries marked one of the most ambitious undertakings pursued by the tsarist state. Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land examines how Russian Orthodoxy acted as a basic building block for constructing Russian settler communities in current-day southern Siberia and northern Kazakhstan. Russian state officials aspired to lay claim to land that was politically under their authority, but remained culturally unfamiliar. By exploring the formation and evolution of Omsk diocese – a settlement mission – Colonizing Russia’s Promised Land reveals how the migration of settlers expanded the role of Orthodoxy as a cultural force in transforming Russia’s imperial periphery by “russifying” the land and marginalizing the Indigenous Kazakh population. In the first study exploring the role of Orthodoxy in settler colonialism, Aileen Friesen shows how settlers, clergymen, and state officials viewed the recreation of Orthodox parish life as practised in European Russia as fundamental to the establishment of settler communities, and to the success of colonization. Friesen uniquely gives peasant settlers a voice in this discussion, as they expressed their religious aspirations and fears to priests and tsarist officials. Despite this agreement, tensions existed not only among settlers, but also within the Orthodox Church as these groups struggled to define what constituted the Russian Orthodox faith and culture.


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