settler colonial studies blog

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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Contested land (under settler colonialism): Clifford Atleo, Jonathan Boron, ‘Land Is Life: Indigenous Relationships to Territory and Navigating Settler Colonial Property Regimes in Canada’, Land, 11, 2022, 609

26Apr22

Abstract: Respectful and reciprocal relationships with land are at the heart of many Indigenous
cultures and societies. Land is also at the core of settler colonialism. Indigenous peoples have not
only been dispossessed of land for settler occupation and resource extraction, but the transformation
of land into property has created myriad challenges to ongoing struggles of land repatriation and
renewal. We introduce several perspectives on land rooted in diverse Indigenous worldviews and
contrast them with settler colonial perspectives rooted in Eurocentric worldviews. We then examine
several examples in Canada where Indigenous nations attempt to reconnect with their homelands,
protect them, and/or engage with them for economic development. We look at land relationships
rooted in historical treaties, contemporary comprehensive claims/self-government agreements, the
Indian Act, and the defence of unceded territories. The Indigenous communities we look at include
the Six Nations of the Grand River, the Nisga’a Lisims Government, the Westbank First Nation, and
the Wet’suwet’en. We contend that a complex configuration of settler colonial institutions challenges
long-term efforts for Indigenous land reclamation, protection, and sustainable development, however,
Indigenous nations remain steadfast in asserting their self-determination in diverse relational ways
inside and outside of settler state systems.

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A settler sin of Commission: Trycia Bazinet, ‘Tracing understanding of sovereignty and settler-colonial violence in the Quebec’s Viens Commission (2016–2019)’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2022

25Apr22

Abstract: The Val d’Or crisis began in 2015 with local Indigenous women naming the violence they faced at the hands of police officers in a news report, which culminated in 37 documented cases yet no criminal charges. In response to the outcry, the provincial ‘Viens Commission: Listening, Reconciliation and Progress’ was launched in 2016. The mandate of the commission was to determine if Indigenous people faced discrimination in Quebec’s public services. This paper reviews the terms and limits of this commission when it is understood as a discursive production of modern liberal settler-colonial nations. My analysis proposes that the commission, unwittingly or not, is bound by the conditions of existence of ongoing settler-colonization, that is the imperative of land access. The issue of discrimination against Indigenous people can then be discussed and ‘resolved’ as disconnected from issues of land sovereignty. As per Goeman’s conception of scales of spatial injustices, it mostly leaves the alienation between the interconnected scales targeted by settler-colonial violence (such as body and land) unchanged. By paying attention to the way violence is presented and managed, I discuss how the commission may be oriented by larger conditions interested in re-settling the present and in veiling land sovereignty questions.

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Settler racist metaphors: Catherine Ann Martin, ‘The Chinese Invasion: Settler Colonialism and the Metaphoric Construction of Race’, Journal of Australian Studies, 45, 4, 2021, pp. 543-559

20Apr22

Abstract: The arrival of Chinese immigrants during the Australian goldrushes of the 1850s precipitated a vehement backlash, culminating in legislation to restrict their immigration. Contemporary Australian press discourse focused on Chinese racial difference, with immigrants metaphorically constructed as invaders, influxes and hordes of barbarians. This article argues that Chinese immigrants were racialised through pre-existing metaphoric language of deviance and threat, while the metaphors became simultaneously codified as signifiers of racial difference. It further argues that this characterisation resulted from settler-colonial anxieties about legitimacy, which intensified due to Chinese immigration. The consequent racialisation of Chinese immigrants functioned as a means to displace both the violence of settler-colonial invasion and lower-class white deviance, facilitating the construction of the egalitarian white Australian subject.

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On gendered settler borderlands: Karen R. Roybal, ‘Forgetting the Alamo and Male Privilege: Settler Colonialism and Gendered Resistance Along the Borderlands’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 43, 2, 2022, pp. 62-87

19Apr22

Abstract: Settler colonialism in the early- to mid-nineteenth century ushered in social, political, racial, and religious unrest across what we know today as the US/Mexico borderlands. This essay examines this significant period of settler colonialism in Texas through two novels, written 150 years apart: Augusta Evans’s 1855 novel, Inéz: A Tale of the Alamo, and Emma Pérez’s 2009 novel, Forgetting the Alamo, or, Blood Memory. Drawing on Richard Flores’s and Marita Sturken’s conceptions of cultural memory, the essay illustrates how the novels challenge colonialist ideologies by critiquing the Catholic Church, the settlement and claiming of the Texas/Mexico borderlands, and the conflicted gender and sexual relations and privileging of heteropatriarchy that reinforce the settler colonial structure. In so doing, Evans’s and Pérez’s novels produce distinct gendered cultural memories that challenge popular conceptions of 1830s, male-centric versions of Texas history. Though Evans and Pérez write from different subject positions, each author reveals how, in literature, cultural memory allows for an alternative narration of history that privileges voices often rendered silent in the historical record. The gendered cultural memories illuminated in these novels disrupt dominant normative assumptions about history and historical events by drawing attention to the active process of forgetting that erases ethnic Mexican women’s experiences.

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On settler panics: Steven Kohm, Katharina Maier, ‘“The darkest time in our history”: An analysis of news media constructions of liquor theft in Canada’s settler colonial context’, Crime Media Culture, 2022

19Apr22

Abstract: In September 2018, there was a surge of news stories about liquor store theft in Winnipeg,
Canada that resulted in public and political calls for action, and ultimately led to the
introduction of a range of new security and surveillance measures at government owned
liquor stores. This brief news cycle provided opportunities for various social actors, politicians,
and authorities to make claims about the nature of crime and society more broadly. This
article analyzes recent news media coverage of liquor store theft in Winnipeg, Canada and
the social construction of an ostensibly new crime trend in the city: “brazen” liquor store
thefts. We employ a qualitative content analysis of news articles about liquor store theft
published in local Winnipeg news media between 2018 and 2020 (n = 147). Drawing on the
social constructionist paradigm, and Fishman’s conceptualization of “crime waves,” we argue
that the framing of liquor theft via news media reflects longstanding cultural tropes and
myths about crime, as well as hinting at but never fully confronting, deeply engrained colonial
and racialized stereotypes. This paper contributes to our understanding of the ways putative
social problems are made intelligible in the media. We demonstrate how “crime waves” are
shaped by and shape dominant tropes about crime, safety, and citizenship. We argue that
something as mundane as liquor theft reveals much about the historical, colonial and social
roots of crime in local and national contexts.

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Educating the settler educators: Cornel Pewewardy, Anna Lees, Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn (eds), Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education: The Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model, Teachers College Press, 2022

19Apr22

Description: This book presents the Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model (TIPM), an innovative framework for promoting critical consciousness toward decolonization efforts among educators. The TIPM challenges readers to examine how even the most well-intentioned educators are complicit in reproducing ethnic stereotypes, racist actions, deficit-based ideology, and recolonization. Drawing from decades of collaboration with teachers and school leaders serving Indigenous children and communities, this volume will help educators better support the development of their students’ critical thinking skills. Representing a holistic balance, the text is organized in four sections: Birth–Grade 12 and Community Education, Teacher Education, Higher Education, and Educational Leadership. Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education centers the needs of teachers, children, families, and communities that are currently engaged in public education and who deserve an improved experience today, while also committing to more positive Indigenous futurities.

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Indigenous Sami against settler colonialism: Sanna Valkonen, Áile Aikio, Saara Alakorva, Sigga-Marja Magga (eds), The Sámi World, Routledge, 2022

17Apr22

Description: This book provides a comprehensive and multifaceted analysis of the Sámi society and its histories and people, offering valuable insights into how they live and see the world. The chapters examine a variety of social and cultural practices, and consideration is given to environment, legal and political conditions and power relations. The contributions by a range of experts of Sámi studies and Indigenous scholars are drawn from across the Sápmi region, which spans from central Norway and central Sweden across Finnish Lapland to the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Sámi perspectives, concepts and ways of knowing are foregrounded throughout the volume. The material connects with wider discussions within Indigenous studies and engages with current concerns relating to globalization, environmental and cultural change, Arctic politics, multiculturalism, postcolonialism and neoliberalism. The Sámi World will be of interest to scholars from a number of disciplines, including Indigenous studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, history and political science.

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The settler colonial family: Lorien S. Jordan, ‘Unsettling the family sciences: Introducing settler colonial theory through a theoretical analysis of the family and racialized injustice’, Journal of Family Theory & Review, 2022

17Apr22

Abstract: In this article, I advance settler colonial theory (SCT) as a critical framework for antiracist and anticolonial family scholarship. Rather than a historical event, SCT describes settlement as a persistent and violent structure. SCT uniquely connects racialization to Indigenous erasure, anti-Blackness, anti-immigrant exclusion, and the ascendancy of Whiteness through intersectional analyses of belonging and otherness. In my discussion, I position the family as a key mechanism of settler colonialism, moving between the historical and contemporary phenomena of family formation and family separation in the United States. Weaving together tenets of SCT and the family, I provide a critical case analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic and its colonial leanings. To conclude, I discuss the unique possibilities that emerge when family scientists utilize SCT to disrupt the structural power of the settler, contributing to the critical transformation of the family sciences.

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Mahmood Mamdani’s settler colonialisms: Mahmood Mamdani, ‘ Settler Colonialism’, in Les Back, John Solomos (eds), Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader, Routledge, 2022

17Apr22

Abstract: For students of settler colonialism in the modern era, Africa and America represent two polar opposites. Africa is the continent where settler colonialism has been defeated; America is where settler colonialism triumphed. My interest in this essay is the American discourse on the making of America. My ambition is to do this from an African vantage point.

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