settler colonial studies blog

Terra nullius and the settler ‘desiring machines’: Anas Ibrahim, Marcelo Svirsky, ‘The Production of Terra Nullius and the Palestinian-Zionist Conflict by Marcelo Svirsky’, Tabayyun, 40, 2022

01May22

Abstract: This study presents an explanatory model that moves beyond the centrality of ideology in explaining the Palestinian-Zionist conflict and the driving forces of the Zionist movement as a settler-colonial movement since its emergence in Palestine. The study, which connects Deleuzian philosophy with post-colonial theory, presents a socio-political analysis to unearth the material facts and historical circumstances which represented the initial manifestations of the conflict, and which continue to fuel its protraction, through utilizing the concept of Terra Nullius, which is connected primarily with the Zionist “Desiring-Machines” that seek to hide the Arab Other. These can be explained as the mechanisms of social production for replacement-displacement within the frame of a specific form of settler-colonialism — the Zionist form.

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Ordering settlers: Kristopher Maulden, The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783-1840, University of Missouri Press, 2021

01May22

Description: The Federalist Frontier traces the development of Federalist policies and the Federalist Party in the first three states of the Northwest Territory—Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—from the nation’s first years until the rise of the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s. Relying on government records, private correspondence, and newspapers, Kristopher Maulden argues that Federalists originated many of the policies and institutions that helped the young United States government take a leading role in the American people’s expansion and settlement westward across the Appalachians. It was primarily they who placed the U.S. Army at the fore of the white westward movement, created and executed the institutions to survey and sell public lands, and advocated for transportation projects to aid commerce and further migration into the region. Ultimately, the relationship between government and settlers evolved as citizens raised their expectations of what the federal government should provide, and the region embraced transportation infrastructure and innovation in public education. Historians of early American politics will have a chance to read about Federalists in the Northwest, and they will see the early American state in action in fighting Indians, shaping settler understandings of space and social advancement, and influencing political ideals among the citizens. For historians of the early American West, Maulden’s work demonstrates that the origins of state-led expansion reach much further back in time than generally understood.

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Palestinian indigeneity against Zionist settler colonialism: Rohan Chopra, ‘Indigeneity, Resistance, and Imagination: Palestinian Liberation as Decolonial Praxis’, Columbia Journal of Asia, 1, 1, 2022, pp. 111-123

01May22

Abstract: Zionist settler colonialism is grounded in the interoperating oppressive structures of capitalism, heteropatriarchy and racism. These function alongside Zionist narratives to construct a regressive “native” whose dispossession is justified to realise a Zionist goal of an ethnic nation-state, fashioned after its Euro-American counterparts. This paper comprehends Palestinian resistance to its colonisation as embedded in the opposition to these global oppressive structures, relating them to anti-colonialism movements across the world. Not just this, but Palestinian resistance is also grounded in its dreams of emancipation from these structures. These liberating imaginations draw upon indigenous knowledge and ties to the land, community and body, and in the process, reconstitute the structures on which this world is built. Through this, the paper aims to bring together a vast corpus of literature on Palestine to argue that in combining resistance, liberation and indigeneity, these imaginations present a truly “decolonial” vision for the world.

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Cultural Studies against settler Cultural Studies? Rebecca Bennett, Bep Uink, Gregory Martin, ‘Cultural studies and critical allyship in the settler colonial academe’, Continuum, 2022

28Apr22

Abstract: Successive generations of First Nation scholars have critiqued the ongoing institutional and disciplinary complicity of Higher Education to support settler colonialism. These critiques extend to include Cultural Studies, despite the field’s inter (anti)disciplinary efforts to expose power and inequality in social relations, dominant institutions, popular culture, and everyday life. As part of the university-machine, Cultural Studies is disconnected from the inherently pedagogical experiences and knowledge of Culture and Country for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. With an emphasis on praxis, we critique three autoethnographic examples of interactions between Indigenous agents and the settler colonial academe as a call to mobilize Cultural Studies literacies as a pedagogy of critical allyship to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars. Cultural Studies as critical allyship pedagogy supports non-Indigenous agents to conduct rigorous critique of internalized and institutional settler colonial hegemony, identifying absences and erasures of Indigenous agency, autonomy, and self-determination. These gaps and silences are not for allies – or Cultural Studies – to fill; rather the project is to leverage Cultural Studies methodologies to cede epistemological space in the academe to Indigenous ways of knowing and being without intervention, assimilation, or academic critique.

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Indigenous mapping against settler cartographies: Henry Osborne Beimers, Decolonizing the Map: Indigenous Maps and GIS, MA dissertation, Minnesota State University, Mankato, 2022

28Apr22

Abstract: Indigenous mapping practices have yet to be widely considered by geographers outside of a historical context. In this paper I critique the geographic research paradigm through the lens of settler colonial and critical cartographic theory. I present evidence for the value of Indigenous mapping practices through a historical-critical GIS analysis of two Indigenous maps, and a creation of a story map to present those results. Finally, I suggest future routes to integrate digital mapping and Indigenous mapping practices, for pedagogy, and for preserving cultural resources, language, land, and traditional Indigenous knowledge.

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Nonterritorial decolonisation? European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network, ‘Can non-territorial autonomy enhance indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination?’, Entan Policy Paper, 5, 2022

26Apr22

Excerpt: Indigenous peoples are the third and most recent category to have a recognised right to self determination. Indigenous peoples are a separate legal category and thus should not be conflated with minorities to whom minority rights are granted. Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination is defined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP, 2007) as internal self-determination. Internal self-determination grants indigenous peoples the right to establish and control educational institutions in their mother tongue; territorial autonomy; control over natural resources; and the right to promote and maintain their institutional structures, customs, procedures and practices within internationally recognised human rights standards, etc. Within this set of rights, the most important aspect of self-determination (alongside non-discrimination, respect for cultural integrity, social justice, development and self-government) is the right of control over traditional lands and resources …

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Celebrations of settler futurity: Georgia Rose Twiss, ‘Hail to the Queen of the May!’: settler futurity, childhood, and the May Queens of New Westminster, 1858-1939, MA dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2022

26Apr22

Abstract: This thesis examines the intimate relationship forged between the traditional British festival May Day, the celebration’s main figure the May Queen, and white settler society in New Westminster between the event’s earliest beginnings in 1858 and the end of the interwar years in 1939. In doing so, this thesis argues that the advent and ongoing celebration of May Day in the city was part of a larger project of collective aspiration—what scholars term settler futurity—that fundamentally defined settler colonialism in British Columbia, and elsewhere, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. The May Queen, performed in these years through the body of a white settler girl between the ages of ten and sixteen, served as the ultimate symbol of this futurity and a powerful community figure around which gendered and racialized notions of collective identity, civic loyalty and belonging took shape. In this, the annual embodied performance of the May Queen – supported by her Maids of Honour and the Honour Guard.

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A very settler colonial pandemic: Nigel Mantou Lou, KimberlyNoels, Ying Shan, DorisZhang, Shachi Kurl, ‘Ethnic minority, immigrants, and Indigenous people’s well-being disparities in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediating role of threat perceptions’, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 2022

26Apr22

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic’s differential impact on ethnic minorities, immigrants, and Indigenous peoples (e.g., mortality and infection rate, as well as psychological well-being) may exacerbate existing disparities. This study examined some psychological mechanisms that might explain the apparently more negative emotional experiences of ethnic minority Canadians during the pandemic compared with non-immigrant European Canadians (i.e., the majority/mainstream ethno-cultural group). We investigated group differences in negative affect and three possible threat mechanisms (perceived health, material, and cultural threat) for these differences using an online survey completed by a self-selected Canadian sample (N = 1,918). The results suggest that compared to the European Canadians, ethnic minority members, immigrants, and Indigenous peoples have on average perceived higher levels of pandemic threat, which in turn is associated with negative affect. These findings support the hypothesis that the amount of perceived threat perceived by different groups during the pandemic may partially explain reported group differences in well-being.

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The gender of settler colonialism: Susan Bernardin (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Gender and the American West, Routledge, 2022

26Apr22

Description: This is the first major collection to remap the American West though the intersectional lens of gender and sexuality, especially in relation to race and Indigeneity. Organized through several interrelated key concepts, The Routledge Companion to Gender and the American West addresses gender and sexuality from and across diverse and divergent methodologies. Comprising 34 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion is divided into four parts: Genealogies, Bodies, Movements, Lands. The volume features leading and newer scholars whose essays connect interdisciplinary fields including Indigenous Studies, Latinx and Asian American Studies, Western American Studies, and Queer, Feminist, and Gender Studies. Through innovative methodologies and reclaimed archives of knowledge, contributors model fresh frameworks for thinking about relations of power and place, gender and genre, settler colonization and decolonial resistance. Even as they reckon with the ongoing gendered and racialized violence at the core of the American West, contributors forge new lexicons for imagining alternative Western futures. This pathbreaking collection will be invaluable to scholars and students studying the origins, myths, histories, and legacies of the American West. This is a foundational collection that will become invaluable to scholars and students studying modernism and queer theory across a range of disciplines including Gender and Sexuality Studies, Literary Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Latinx Studies.

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Disney is settler colonial: Rachel E Bonini, Imagineered Imperial Tourism: Disney & US Empire in Hawai’i, PhD dissertation, Purdue University, 2022

26Apr22

Abstract: Many viewers—especially those from the continental United States—have praised Disney for such recent actions as casting Pacific Islanders in the animated feature film Moana (2016) and assembling a group of cultural advisors (named the Oceanic Story Trust) to guide the filmmakers’ creative decisions. However, my project contends that Disney continues to play a significant role in the maintenance of settler colonialism in Hawai‘i, despite these seemingly progressive attempts at challenging Hollywood’s whitewashing. In this project, I argue that Disney creates and replicates the structures of settler colonialism in Hawai‘i through a mechanism that I term imagineered imperial tourism. In my formulation, imagineered imperial tourism involves commodifying historical narratives of colonization to serve the Disney brand by “innocently” repackaging them for the purpose of settler tourist consumption. To signal a Disney-specific branding and reproduction of settler colonial tropes and ideologies, I use the term “imagineered”—a play on Disney’s trademarked term Imagineering, which names the work of the creative team tasked with engineering the company’s most innovative devices, built environments, and technologies. Through a sustained study of Disney’s relevant productions—from the feature films Lilo & Stitch (2002) and Moana to its built environments at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, FL, and Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa in Ko Olina, Hawai‘i—I suggest that over time, Disney has normalized a version of Native Hawaiian people and history in US popular culture that reproduces common settler colonial discourses which have structured popular perceptions of Hawai‘i. The company’s almost century-long history of media production has cemented these discourses into a set of public pedagogies that have been reproduced across generations. Disney’s Pacific Island-themed productions and attractions are rife with tropes of native primitivism and imperialist nostalgia. They also reveal the primacy of the discursive framework of hegemonic multiculturalism vis-à-vis the commodified “spirit of aloha,” a sentiment which is superficially rooted in Native Hawaiian epistemologies and branded as a key selling point by the tourism industry. Furthermore, Disney has actively colonized Hawaiian lands since 2007, capitalizing on the Islands’ exploitative tourist industry while also obscuring longstanding battles over land ownership and denying Native Hawaiians sovereignty over their stolen lands. Ultimately, I suggest that Disney’s ostensibly “innocent” repackaging contributes to the violent erasure of Native Hawaiian history in popular culture.

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