settler colonial studies blog

Indigenising urban indigeneity looks like settler colonialism: Eun-Ji Amy Kim, Eric W. Layman, ‘Unsettling the urban–rural dichotomy for Indigenous education and education for reconciliation’, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 2021

28Dec21

Abstract: The urban/rural dichotomy used in framing Indigenous educational issues is becoming increasingly untenable and deserving of scrutiny. Indigenous urban education follows initiatives derived from rural areas with the assumption that rural Indigenous education programs are pure or authentic. Without a critical examination of power relations, the flow of people and knowledge in the Indigenous curriculum development process may lead to continued disrespect, appropriation, and tokenization of Indigenous knowledges. This article challenges the conventional conceptualizations surrounding the rural/urban Indigenous educational divide. In so doing, the authors explore two cases: The Saskatchewan (Canada) Ministry of Education’s official K-12 science curriculum attempts to integrate Indigenous perspectives, as do Taiwan’s Indigenous experimental schools. The finding suggests moving beyond pan-urban/rural paradigms that are stemming from settler colonialism. Acknowledging the important role partnerships play for Indigenous education policy and program development, the authors put forth Crit-Trans Partnership Framework to analyze these two cases.

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An Indigenous cover: Ryan Shuvera, ‘Tanya Tagaq Covers Nirvana: “Rape Me” and a History of Settler Colonial Violence’, IASPM: Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, 11, 2, 2021, pp. 55-68

28Dec21

Abstract: In 2016 Tanya Tagaq – an Inuk artist from Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuutiaq), Nunavut, known for her performances of a style of throat singing – released her fourth studio album, Retribution. Retribution’s final song is a cover of Nirvana’s “Rape Me.” Tagaq’s version speaks to certain realities faced by Indigenous women living in settler colonial North America. She urges that the song be heard in a new way. Yet, as Tagaq’s cover discloses another voice and world, it constantly calls back to Nirvana’s version. The songs come together in conversation despite the geographical, cultural, and temporal differences between the performances. This paper examines Tagaq’s performance of “Rape Me” as a world opening and unsettling force. I also analyze the exchange created through Tagaq’s performance and what it might mean to enter the exchange as a listener and potential participant in the new worlds.

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The lateral violence of settler colonialism: Theoni Whyman, Cammi Murrup-Stewart, Michael Young, Adrian Carter, Laura Jobson, ‘”Lateral violence stems from the colonial system”: settler-colonialism and lateral violence in Aboriginal Australians’, Postcolonial Studies, 2021

26Dec21

Abstract: The tendency of Indigenous people to direct their frustration and anger, due to oppression, toward members of their own group is known as lateral violence. While settler-colonization is often attributed as the main cause of lateral violence, research has not examined what specific aspects lead to lateral violence in Aboriginal communities. In a qualitative study, using yarning and thematic analysis, 17 Aboriginal Australians (53% male, 47% female) ranging in age from 18 to over 60, discussed what they believed to be the causes of lateral violence. Knowledge holders identified historical and contemporary causes and perpetuating factors of lateral violence, all of which were related to settler-colonialism. These causes included living in a colonial society, native title, access and competition for limited resources, the process of obtaining confirmation of Aboriginality certificate, identity issues and internalized racism, past traumas, and returning back to traditional lands. Settler-colonialism is a structure through which lateral violence was, and is, allowed to flourish. Challenges to the settler-colonial system need to be made to effectively combat lateral violence.

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The settler emigration state: Freddy Foks, ‘Emigration state: race, citizenship and settler imperialism in modern British history, c. 1850-1972’, Soc ArXiv Papers, 2021

26Dec21

Abstract: What role did migration play in the making of modern Britain? We now have a good sense of the way ethnicity, class, religion and gender structured immigrants’ experience and what impact they had on Britain’s culture, society and economy. But as Nancy Green pointed out almost two decades ago, scholars of migration must focus on exit as well as entry. Such a call to study ‘the politics of exit’ is especially apposite in the case of the UK. For in every decade between 1850 and 1980 (with the exception of the 1930s), the UK experienced net emigration year on year. This article analyses this outflow of migrants to give a new account of the UK as an ’emigration state’. With this concept in mind, this paper offers a new account of the formation of migration policy in the UK and seeks to transform our sense of the chronological and geographical boundaries of modern Britain.

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The settler state succeeds in failing: Alison Vivian, Michael J. Halloran, ‘Dynamics of the policy environment and trauma in relations between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the settler-colonial state’, Critical Social Policy, 2021

26Dec21

Abstract: This integrative review seeks to employ insights from critical social psychology and Indigenous nation building governance research to advance an explanation for why Australian state policy continually fails to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and reproduces trauma. The review suggests that settler-colonial law and policy embed a history of oppressive relations that suppress Indigenous voice, culture, and identity, inexorably leading to intergenerational traumatic social and wellbeing outcomes for Indigenous peoples. Given settler-colonial policy’s ongoing role in continuing the subordination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander law/lore, the ongoing policy failure to redress Indigenous inequality and improve their wellbeing is unsurprising. Nevertheless, our analysis contributes to understanding how just and viable relations between Australian Indigenous peoples and the settler-colonial state are possible through collaborative politics. Allowing space for agreement and disagreement in their worldviews, collaborative negotiations offer a way forward to redress policy failures and traumatic outcomes that are currently entrenched.

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Settlers are also responsible for decolonisation: Hemopereki Simon, ‘The Importance of Settler/Invader Responsibilities to Decolonisation and The Collective Future as Highlighted in Ngoi Pēwhairangi’s “Whakarongo”’, Journal of Global Indigeneity, 5, 3, 2021

26Dec21

Extract: “E kore e piri te uku ki te rino” (Clay Does Not Stick To Steel; Te Whiti o Rongomai). The above whakataukī is a proverb that has had deep meaning in my life, and it has touched me on many levels. It is a guide in my activism as an Indigenist kairangahau. [researcher] It tells me what is worth pursuing and what requires resistance. This particular whakataukī provides a great understanding of settler colonialism in just eight words. The steel it describes is the superimposed structure, culture, law, and language which does not belong on Indigenous lands, these being Te Waipounamu/Te Waka a Maui and Te Ika a Maui. Philosophically, the steel can be used to describe anything violent and foreign that does not belong on Indigenous land. In contrast, the clay denotes the natural element that does belong. It is the perfect understanding of settler colonialism. However, that which is Indigenous is natural and is said to be like clay.

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Settler colonial coexistence? Haxel Gedikli, ‘The Condition for Coexisting: Settler Colonialism and Tony Morrison’s Mercy’, Journal of Ethnic American Literature, 11, 2021, pp. 62-91

18Dec21

Excerpt: Toni Morrison’s 2008 novel A Mercy has been mostly noted in scholarly circles for creating a multicultural, multiethnic American origins narrative and its representation of American slavery prior to slavery’s conjunction with racism. Nonetheless, current readings of the novel fail to pay attention to the author’s concern with the settler colonial condition and its gendered logic of dispossession in this atypical Morrisonian narrative: While Morrison travels to late seventeenth-century America to entertain what it means to be a female slave without being racialized, she zeroes in on the condition of being dispossessed and the violence of being disconnected from one’s origins.

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Gentrification as settler colonialism: Margaret Ellis-Young, ‘Gentrification as (settler) colonialism? Moving beyond metaphorical linkages’, Geography Compass, 2021

18Dec21

Abstract: Emerging discussions on the “settler colonial city” present a new agenda for gentrification research in settler colonial contexts. Accordingly, this paper examines the extent to which the gentrification literature engages with settler colonial dynamics, identifying three overarching approaches. While a small but growing body of literature frames gentrification as a contemporary mechanism of Indigenous erasure, other approaches engage with concepts of settler colonialism in abstraction from contemporary Indigenous life and claims to urban space. The paper argues the persistence of these abstractions undermines the recognition of settler colonial gentrification as Indigenous erasure and limits the current potential for the gentrification literature to contribute to the disruption of settler colonial relations. In response, there is a need for further empirical and theoretical work that attends to the impulse for Indigenous elimination as a unique dimension of gentrification in settler colonial contexts. Insight from literature on the “settler colonial city” underlines the particular importance of extending conceptions of anti-gentrification resistance to emphasize Indigenous refusal of gentrified futures and examine how (settler-led) anti-gentrification responses disrupt or sustain settler colonial relations. These directions provide opportunities to (re)conceptualize gentrification and its responses in ways that address the reproduction of (dis)possessory settler colonial relations while recognizing “the flourishing of Indigenous life”

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Rape as a settler colonial weapon: Cristy A. Dougherty, Rape: A Settler-Colonial and Anti-Black Project, PhD dissertation, University of Denver, 2021

14Dec21

Abstract: White feminist theorizations of rape privilege patriarchy as the main source of gender violence, ultimately centering white cisgender women. In doing so, white women are treated as subject in anti-rape discourse while the violence inflicted on women of color is rendered as secondary and insignificant. Conversely, Indigenous and Black feminist analytics center Indigenous and Black women’s experiences with sexual violence, ultimately pointing to the ways in which rape has been used as a tool to perpetuate heteropatriarchy, settler-colonialism, and anti- Black racism. For instance, Deer (2015) explains that Indigenous women experience disproportionately high rates of sexual violence that spans generations. She reasons that the systematic imposition of patriarchy is largely a European project (p. 18). Additionally, Crenshaw (1991) argues that anti- rape law and judicial reforms are not built to address and attend to the unique needs of Black women (p. 1270) because they relegate women of color to “a location that resists telling” (p. 1242). Thus, there is clear connection between the historical European imposition of patriarchy and rape to anti-rape law and judicial reforms that work to silence, violate, and work against women of color. It is for this reason that I argue that rape is an integral tool of settler colonialism and white supremacy. Additionally, in this project, I ask the following questions: How do settler-colonial and anti-Black systems determine what is as is not the truth of rape and why? In other words, when have settler colonial and anti-Black systems justified and rationalized rape and why? Who is implicated by these truths? How can we disassemble these truths despite their existence and implications? In order to answer these questions, I turn to Indigenous and Black feminism to inform my analysis of chosen sites of study. Specifically, I employ a performance approach to personal narrative to analyze legal testimonials and media projects that center Black and Indigenous women. Furthermore, the overall purpose of this project is to theorize rape as a central tool of settler colonialism and anti-Blackness.

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It’s about settlers … Elliot Johnston, ‘Unsettling emotions: settler innocence in Australia Day debates’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 2021

14Dec21

Abstract: Contestation over the date of Australia Day is waged yearly as a passionate culture war between conservatives who wish to ‘save the date’ and progressives arguing to ‘change the date’. This article argues that despite clear ideological differences, settler engagements with both movements reflect a common emotional commitment to preserving a positive self-understanding as innocent and benevolent political actors. Both movements are therefore similarly invested in the maintenance and justification of settler authority, though by way of very different strategies. It follows that broader relations between settlers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are at least partially constituted by dynamics of collective settler emotion that are felt deeply in relation to disputed qualities of Australian nationhood, sovereignty and culture. This analysis further reveals the pressing need to move beyond the narrow boundaries of ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ settler identity in which discussions of Indigenous politics are all too often trapped.

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