settler colonial studies blog

Settler grievances? James Collie, Ritwik Bhattacharjee, ‘Problematizing Settler Grievances: Danielle Smith and Contested Colonialism’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 2023

28Jan23

Abstract:Premier of Alberta Danielle Smith’s comments comparing the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act with the Indian Act has sparked widespread outrage and condemnation. Premier Smith would later clarify these remarks to show they were intended to demonstrate that Alberta and First Nations have a “common problem” with Ottawa (Alberta, 2022b: 385). In this brief article, we argue that these comments, and the Act itself, can be analyzed using Jerald Sabin’s contested colonialism framework (2017). We then launch a brief critical discussion of what our analysis means for Canadian politics by addressing the possible intentions and harms of the comments.

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Indigenous federalism against settler incursions? Martin Papillon, ‘Indigenous peoples and federalism: in or out?’ In John Kincaid, Robert B., Helen S. Meyner (eds), Teaching Federalism: Multidimensional Approaches, Elgar, 2023

28Jan23

Excerpt: According to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, more than 470 million indigenous people live in 90 countries across the world (UNPFII 2010). Many of those countries are federations. While culturally diverse (they speak more than 4,000 languages), indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa and Asia share a struggle to maintain their distinctive identities, political systems, and unique relationship with their ancestral lands. Indigenous peoples also have in common an experience with colonialism in its diverse forms, from forced displacements due to pressures from extractive industries, such as mining or hydro-development, to overt discrimination and political violence perpetrated by states that have long sought to assimilate them.

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Duck, Diaspora, settler colonialism: Koby Song-Nichols, Katie Konstantopoulos, ‘Duck & diaspora: eating dialectically in a settler-colonial food system’, Food, Culture & Society, 2023

27Jan23

Abstract: What can Pekin duck tell us about diaspora and settler colonialism? In this paper we answer this question by introducing “eating dialectically,” inspired by community activist Grace Lee Bogg’s understandings of “thinking dialectically” and her challenge for us to “grow our souls” in the context of many crises we continually face. We focus on how Pekin duck is consumed and produced within the Greater Toronto Area. This piece offers three duck meals to ruminate on often ignored connections between diasporic foodways in multicultural cities and the rural areas that provide them ingredients. We present and troubleshoot a practice of “eating dialectically” which aims not only to raise critical food consciousness but also push us all to reimagine ourselves, our futures, and the foods that feed our souls anew. We conclude by briefly discussing the limitations of eating dialectically and our abilities to reimagine ourselves and our food futures.

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Settler legitimacy through flows of extractive capital: Lena Price, ‘The Role of the Canadian Settler-State in Facilitating Flows of Transnational Executive Capital’, On Politics, 15, 1, 2022

27Jan23

Abstract: What does the neoliberalization of extractive and border infrastructures by the Canadian settler-state illuminate about its relationship to transnational extractive capital? To answer this question, I first examine how neoliberalism has shaped border and extractive policies. In the second section, I look at how flows of transnational extractive capital are made flexible by Canadian settler-state policies, while simultaneously securitizing colonial borders against racialized migrants. In the third, I investigate how
material and epistemological challenges to extractive infrastructures from Indigenous land defenders and racialized migrants challenge the legitimation by accumulation processes the Canadian settler-state employs. Ultimately, I argue the settler-state selectively securitizes pipeline and border infrastructures to facilitate the flow and accumulation of transnational extractive capital as a means of self-legitimation that relies on normative imaginings of a white Canadian nationhood. Furthermore, these imaginings rely on upholding certain logics of racial capitalism that construct a white Canadian nationhood, such as white supremacy, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy.

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Destituency as resistance against settler colonialism? Philippe Blouin, ‘Self-Destituent Power in Iroquois Diplomacy: Interpreting the 2020 Talks on the Tyendinaga Tracks’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 122, 1, 2023, pp. 87-101

27Jan23

Abstract: Preserving the original agreement between the Rotinonhsión:ni (Iroquois) and the first settlers, the Two Row Wampum belt (Teiohá:te) displays two parallel lines, where the original peoples’ canoe and the settlers’ ship are said to sail side by side, suggesting that allied parties to move in the same direction they must respect their mutual autonomy. Drawing on the transcripts of negotiations between Canadian officials and Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) warriors in Tyendinaga, this article examines how the Two Row Wampum’s notion of alliance through separation played out in the 2020 rail blockade movement in support of the Wet’suwet’en people’s fight against the Coastal GasLink pipelines. Central to the text is Kanien’kehá:ka warriors’ suggestion that, beyond relations with settlers, the Two Row Wampum applies to relations between and among Indigenous nations, clans, genders, and even nonhumans. The intricate consensus-based decision-making protocols that compose the Rotinonhsión:ni Confederacy’s precolonial governance system likewise attest to the respect for separation that pervades all relations, as if the potential of Rotinonhsión:ni diplomacy to render sovereign power destitute had reached a constitutional stature.

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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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