settler colonial studies blog

Anticolonial commons? Mimi Sheller, ‘Mobile Commoning: Reclaiming Indigenous, Caribbean, Maroon, and Migrant Commons’, praktyka teoretyczna, 4, 46, 2022, pp. 29-52

23Jan23

Excerpt: ‘Crucially, these more relational theories of commoning as a practice have leveraged the concept as a critique of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, which both have their bases in private property, enclosure, and extraction‘.

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Settler questioning? Leah Decter, Carla Taunton, ‘An Ethic of Decolonial Questioning: Exercising the Quadruple Turn in the Arts and Culture Sector’, in Heather Igloliorte, Carla Taunton (eds), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada, Routledge, 2023

23Jan23

Abstract: Part of an ongoing series of writings began in 2012, this chapter proposes Decolonial Questioning as a methodology that aims to mobilize intergenerational white settler responsibility in the cultural sector. Committed to furthering decolonizing methodologies that contribute to unsettling contemporary settler colonial systems, structures and attitudes, Carla Taunton and Leah Decter specifically expand on a framework of questioning that will guide and support white settler artists, curators, writers and other cultural workers. They situate these methodologies as complementary practices or Critical White Settler Projects that work in conversation with Indigenous methodologies towards the goals of Indigenous-led movements.

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Accomodating Indigenous sovereignty via natural law: Samuel Piccolo, ‘Indigenous Sovereignty, Common Law, and Natural Law’, American Journal of Political Science, 2023

20Jan23

Abstract: Renewed calls for Indigenous sovereignty in North America have led some scholars to search Western philosophy for thinking that affirms these claims. Many suggest that the common law tradition offers resources to do so. In this article, I argue that common law is limited in its capacity to endorse Indigenous political legitimacy. Instead, I suggest that supportive elements in common law are trace remnants of natural law thinking. Further, natural law as a concept resonates with contemporary Indigenous philosophy that maintains that nonhuman nature is suffused with morality and normativity, making the natural law tradition worth considering for defenses of Indigenous sovereignty. I propose beginning with the work of Bartolomé de las Casas. While my aim is not to defend either Lascasian nor Indigenous natural law, I conclude that they should be part of efforts to understand the ongoing conflicts between Indigenous nations and colonial states.

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Accomodating Indigenous wildfire sovereignty: Lachlan Beggs, Cameo Dalley, ‘Wildfire bureaucracy: The affective dimensions of state engagement with Indigenous peoples in southeast Australia’, Geoforum, 138, 2023, 103675

20Jan23

Abstract: In recent years settler governments have begun to seriously engage with Indigenous peoples’ fire and other ecological knowledges in the context of managing natural hazards and resources. In Australia, Aoteroa New Zealand, Canada and the United States, Indigenous peoples and their ecological knowledge have become increasingly involved in combating such naturally—and socially constructed—threats as wildfires, floods, and storms. Nevertheless, while there has been significant research into the sociocultural dimensions of Indigenous peoples’ ecological knowledges, until recently little analytic effort has been directed to understanding the other side of this intercultural interaction: what can be conceptualised as settler natural hazard management bureaucracies. Taking the emergence of government engagement with Indigenous peoples’ fire knowledge in the southeast Australian state of Victoria as a case study, this paper contributes to the nascent body of ethnographically informed research focusing on the interaction between state natural hazard bureaucracies and Indigenous peoples. We do so by asking what motivated this change in government interest in Indigenous peoples and their fire knowledge. Informed by engagement with experienced fire sector staff, our findings reveal the presence and importance of affect and other more-than-representational qualities that animate state engagements with Indigenous peoples and their cultural burning knowledge.

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With a chapter by David MacDonald on ‘Indigenous Peoples and Self-Determination in Settler States’:

20Jan23

Access the chapter here.

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The Middle Ground’s antithesis: Leila K. Blackbird, ‘A Gendered Frontier: Métissage and Indigenous Enslavement in Eighteenth-Century Basse-Louisiane’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 56, 2, 2023, pp. 205-212

17Jan23

Abstract: French colonialism in North America has often been typified by the histories of New France and the Great Lakes region, characterized as a middle ground that, while violent, still provided opportunity for alliance and left Indigenous cultural practices largely intact. Yet, in contrast, the founding of Lower Louisiana was explicitly settler colonial, and the Gulf Coast region was uniquely shaped by both the Trans-Atlantic and Indian slave trades. While the enslavement of Indigenous women and girls was an important component of diplomacy and trade across French North America, varying slaveries played a more crucial role in the successful colonization of the Lower Mississippi Valley through gendered and racialized forms of genocidal violence. Therefore, it is only at the intersection of Black and Native studies—and through centering the perspectives of descendant communities and tribal nations—that the history of the U.S. South can be properly recontextualized in interpretive and relational frameworks.

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Indigeneity, domesticated unders settler colonialism: Joshua David Bellin, ‘Occom’s Arrow’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 56, 2, 2023, pp. 167-173

17Jan23

Abstract: “Occom’s Arrow” explores the nature of Indigenous personhood in eighteenth century America. Focusing on Jonathan Spilsbury’s 1768 mezzotint portrait of Mohegan minister Samson Occom, the essay examines how cultural intermediaries such as Occom challenged widespread assumptions concerning the opposition of “Christian” and “Indian.” In Occom’s portrait, as well as in his life, we witness the emergence of a strategic enterprise dedicated to producing a colonial identity at once Indigenous and “civilized.” The essay thus proposes a model for reading the complex and contested quality of Indigenous lives and writings under conditions of settler colonialism.

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Settler colonial hyperincarceration: Patrick Horton, Hyperincarceration and Aboriginal Life on the Victoria River, PhD dissertation, University of Sydney, 2022

17Jan23

Abstract: Indigenous people in northern Australia are among the most incarcerated on the planet. I examine the impacts of this regime on the everyday lives of Aboriginal people in the Northern territory Victoria River’s region. Based on a Long-term participant observation informed by the question, ‘what happens in families and communities when people are locked up all the time?’, this thesis contributes empirically grounded material to the growing bodies of global scholarship on settler colonialism and hyperincarceration as projects concerned with the management and elimination of surplus populations. My ethnography elucidates local convictions that carcerality has little to do with justice and often perpetuates those social harms it purports to correct. A historical analysis grounded in the material and affective conditions of Aboriginal life demonstrates how hyperincarceration is only the latest iteration of strategies of containment and dehumanisation which have always characterised local settler-native relations. I attend to the role of the carceral settler state in structuring the experience of Aboriginal childhood, ways of relating amongst close kin, masculinities and father-son relations, and the impacts of this regime across and between generations, which further compound existing radical inequalities. These outcomes of hyperincarceration advance the state’s facilitation of extractive capital by erasing Aboriginal people from, and Aboriginal relations to, ancestral Country. I demonstrate that the carceral saturation of contemporary Aboriginal life renders the carceral state both pervasive and yet often seemingly not there at all, demonstrative of the haunting implications and the unfinished business of settler colonial occupation. I propose a theory of carceral genocide, identifying the central role of the carceral settler state in the destruction of a way of life.

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Can you decolonise without undoing capitalism? Danielle Webb, Marxism, Rangatiratanga, and Māori Economies: Can the rangatiratanga sphere be built within settler capitalism? MA dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 2022

16Jan23

Abstract: The dynamics of settler colonialism, of which capitalism is a dominant feature, continue to constrain the ability of Māori to assert tino rangatiratanga. Before the arrival of Europeans, rangatiratanga over every aspect of life, including the economy, lay with the rangatira of hapū and iwi. Now there are other sites of power to contend with. The state and those who control capital have significant influence over the lives of Māori, including the capacity for self-determination. Māori have long asserted rangatiratanga against the state through various campaigns to change New Zealand’s constitution to reflect the agreements between rangatira and the Crown in te Tiriti o Waitangi. The most recent effort is spearheaded by Matike Mai Aotearoa, the independent working group on constitutional transformation. Matike Mai focuses on the legal and political dimensions of constitutional transformation, including the construction of a new governance system in which a ‘rangatiratanga sphere’ (under Māori leadership) would govern in partnership with a kāwanatanga sphere (under the Crown). Little attention is paid, however, to the economic implications of constitutional transformation or to the role of capitalism in constraining rangatiratanga. I argue that for rangatiratanga to be fully realised, radical economic transformation is required to the same degree as constitutional transformation. Indigenous Marxist conceptions of the political economy highlight the relationship between the state and capitalists in the construction and perpetuation of settler capitalism. In posing the question, ‘can the rangatiratanga sphere be built within settler capitalism?’ this thesis aims both to draw attention to how settler capitalism has shaped Māori economies and to explore the role of Māori economies in restoring rangatiratanga. I develop a theoretical framework by drawing on Marxist scholarship, alongside contemporary literature on Māori economies, to help interpret the interview data from my research. A thematic analysis of the interviews suggests that the assertion or restoration of rangatiratanga is a central concern to participants in Māori economies. Far from being straightforward, however, rangatiratanga must be negotiated with the state and in the capitalist market, the very forces that have historically constrained it. I refer to this as the rangatiratanga paradox. Building the rangatiratanga sphere may be possible within settler capitalism, but it will always have to contend for power with the state and owners of capital.

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Again on the limits of settler colonialism: Martin Mühlheim, ‘”Black But Comely”: Settler-Colonial Identity, African Whiteness, and Intertextuality in James L. Sims’s Travel Narrative “Scenes in the Interior of Liberia” (1858)’, UZH, 2022

16Jan23

Abstract: Constructing a coherent sense of communal identity was far from easy for early Americo-Liberian settlers. They felt the need (a) to distinguish themselves from a racist ‘white civilisation’ while nevertheless claiming to be among the ‘civilised’; (b) to set themselves apart from black Americans in the U.S. while remaining equally committed to anti-slavery and abolition; and (c) to emphasise their superiority over indigenous ‘heathens’ while at the same time staking their own claim to ‘true Africanness.’ From previous studies, we know a great deal about the material challenges of life on the shores of West Africa. But how did Americo-Liberians grapple with the ideological and psychological complexities of their contradictory position as black anti-slavery settler-colonists? This essay argues that mid-nineteenth-century narratives of exploration into the black republic’s hinterland are a particularly promising source for scholars interested in examining how Americo-Liberians sought to contain the conflicting push and pulls that threatened to unravel their attempts at self-definition. More specifically, the essay demonstrates that in one such travel narrative – J. L. Sims’s “Scenes in the Interior of Liberia” (1858) – intertextual references are not merely ornamental, but instead deployed strategically, in an attempt to stabilise the disconcerting volatility of Americo-Liberian settler identity.

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