settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial Brazil: Desiree Poets, ‘Citizenship and settler colonialism in Brazil: The toré ritual as a decolonial indigenous practice in the Northeast Region’, Citizenship Studies, 2021

30Oct21

Abstract: This article argues that settler colonialism structures Indigenous rights in Brazil and shows how Indigenous peoples have also engaged Indigenous rights to interrupt settler colonialism. To this end, it turns to the 20^th century (re-)emergence of officially extinct Indigenous peoples in Brazil’s Northeast Region and the central role of the toré ritual in this process. While the toré reversed the settler colonial logic of Indigenous elimination and dispossession, the Indigenous (re-)emergences also operated within the possibilities of settler policy. Lingering in the tense gap between citizenship’s limits and possibilities under settler colonialism, the article argues that the toré, by mobilizing bodies, land, culture, and memory, underscores the performative aspect of citizenship and the role of embodied practices in decolonization. Stressing the imbrication of the performative, the material, and the political, the paper offers a Brazilian perspective on debates on Indigenous refusal and the politics of recognition, challenging their simplistic dichotomization.

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The new age of removal: Osamu Kumasaka, Robin Bronen, Elise Harrington, Janelle Knox-Hayes, Shirley Laska, Albert Naquin, Andy Patrick, Kristina Peterson, Stanislaus Tom, ‘Planning for resettlement: building partnerships for, by, and with Indigenous peoples’, GeoJournal, 2021

28Oct21

Abstract: Efforts in the United States to plan or implement relocation in response to climate risks have struggled to improve material conditions for participants, to incorporate local knowledge, and to keep communities intact. Mixed methodologies of community geography provide an opportunity for dialogue and knowledge-sharing to collaboratively diagnose the challenges of climate adaptation led by communities. In this article, we advance a participatory practice model for the co-creation of knowledge initiated during a two-day workshop with members from the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe from Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana, Yup’ik people from Newtok Village in Alaska, and researchers from the MIT Resilient Communities Lab. Building on prior scholarship of indigenizing climate change research, this article shares the experience of the workshop to support knowledge exchange and dialogue, with the goal of understanding how to build participatory and non-extractive community-academic partnerships. We reflect on the community values and principles used to guide this workshop to inform more inclusive and co-produced research partnerships, and pedagogies that can improve and assist the self-determination of groups impacted by climate change. Workshop presentations and discussions highlight interconnected themes of resources, systems & structures, regulatory imbalance, and resilience that underpin climate resettlement. We reflect on the narratives presented by members of both Indigenous tribes and NGO partners that illustrate the shortcomings of resettlement planning practices past and present as perpetuating existing inequality. In response to this structured knowledge exchange, we identify potential roles for community-academic partnerships that aim to improve the equity of existing resettlement models. We propose approaches for incorporating traditional knowledge into the pedagogy, discourse, and practice of academic planning programs.

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Crafting rights: Wybren Nooitgedagt, Ana Figueiredo, Borja Martinović, Karina Marambio, ‘Autochthony and investment beliefs as bases for territorial ownership and compensation in settler societies: The case of Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups in Chile’, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 85, 2021, pp. 236-253

28Oct21

Abstract: We examined how autochthony belief (entitlements from first arrival) and investment belief (entitlements from working the land) guide attitudes towards territorial compensation of Indigenous groups in settler societies. We expected autochthony and investment beliefs to be respectively related to more and less territorial compensation, via higher and lower perceptions of Indigenous ownership. We tested this in Chile among non-Indigenous Chileans and Indigenous Mapuche. In Study 1 among non-Indigenous Chilean students (N = 611) we found that autochthony belief was related to a greater support for territorial compensation of the first inhabitants, the Mapuche, whereas investment belief was related to a lesser support for territorial compensation. In Study 2 we contrasted self-identified non-Indigenous Chileans (N = 121) with self-identified Indigenous Mapuche (N = 226) and found that for both groups autochthony belief was related to greater support for territorial compensation via higher recognition of Indigenous territorial ownership. Interestingly, for non-Indigenous Chileans, investment belief was related to less willingness to compensate, whereas for Mapuche it was related to more claims for compensation via stronger perceptions of Indigenous ownership. Together, these findings show that endorsement of autochthony belief is an argument that validates Indigenous ownership among both groups, whereas different dimensions of the investment belief can be used by both groups to claim more positive outcomes for their own in-group.

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Universal rights? Jayes Dylan Page Sebastian, Challenging Rights-Based Redress: White Supremacy, Heteropatriarchy, Settler Colonialism and the Promise of the Universal, PhD dissertation, UC Riverside, 2021

28Oct21

Abstract: This dissertation engages how the framework of ‘universal rights’ is a modern concept inherently tied to colonialism. I show how rights-based redress is in fact a limited means for contemporary movements seeking to challenge structures of colonial state violence because the ongoing structures of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism remain intact within colonial-modernity. Using a methodological genealogy centered in Critical Ethnic Studies, legal history, and critical rights discourses, I engage this dynamic through the work of 16th century Spanish jurist Francisco de Vitoria as he configured a set of universal rights to justify Spanish colonialism. I trace this work to its 20th century re-uptake in the rise of International law as it bolstered the development of universal human rights regime by maintaining the colonial relationship of Mandate colonialism into neocolonialism through the United Nations. I argue that the formation of what we think of as modern and universal rights developed because of and through the colonial relation of modernity to produce and maintain power imbalances through hierarchies of race, class, gender, sexuality, among other disciplining vectors. In locating the relationality of rights as emergent and related to colonial power, and not as separate from it or even emancipatory from it, I contend we can understand both the promise and the ‘paradox’ of rights as in fact essential to the maintenance of the current global socio-political order.

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Identity work is needed: Laurel R. Davis-Delano, Sita Strother, Joseph P. Gone, ‘Native American identity work in settler colonial context’, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 85, 2021, pp. 226-235

27Oct21

Abstract: In U.S. society, Native Americans face invisibility, stereotypes, discrimination, and structural barriers. In this article, we employ a symbolic interactionist approach, embedded in critical analysis, to explore how this social context impacts the conveyance and interpretation of Native American identity among people who are not Native American. Participants, 213 White American and 104 Native American people, replied to open-ended questions about Native American identity conveyance and interpretation. We employed an inductive thematic approach to analyze their written replies. The majority of Native American participants discussed their identity in the context of limited public knowledge of, and/or oppression faced by, Native Americans. For most Native American participants, this context generated strain and struggle associated with conveyance and interpretation of their identities. Despite this, some Native American participants engaged in identity work to educate others and reduce oppression. Without prompting, some White participants expressed positive attitudes toward Native Americans and their identity revelation. These positive attitudes evidence both hope for social change and problematic fetishization based on romantic stereotypes of Native Americans. We argue that society-wide change is necessary to reduce strain in, and enhance the effectiveness of, identity work by Native American people.

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Settler schools: Ee-Seul Yoon, Victoria Grima, Corinne E. Barrett DeWiele, Lucas Skelton, ‘The impact of school choice on school (re)segregation: settler-colonialism, critical geography and Bourdieu’, Comparative Education, 2021

27Oct21

Abstract: This study assesses the extent to which public high schools become more or less socially mixed after families are allowed to choose schools outside their designated catchment areas in a mid-sized Canadian city. We draw on settler-colonial theory, critical human geography, and critical social theory while applying a critical mapping of school choice. We find that the city’s high schools are racially and socially segregated, with the most affluent families with European backgrounds concentrated on its west side, and the low-income families with Indigenous and racialised backgrounds clustered on its east side. The west side also has specialised choice programmes that facilitate the social reproduction of both the local residents and mobile students from the rest of the city who choose the programmes and are from advantaged backgrounds. Based on these findings, we argue that school choice practices reinforce school (re)segregation.

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Indigenettlers? Leyland Cecco, ‘”We know who we are”: Inuit row raises questions over identity and ancestry: Under Canada’s constitution, Indigenous groups have the right to self-govern – but there are fears that the recognition of NunatuKavut could weaken the authority of Inuit groups’, The Guardian, 24/10/21

25Oct21

Excerpt: But a new group, whose members trace their lineage to Inuit who lived in Labrador and intermarried with colonial settlers, have complicated that narrative.

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Settler colonial diasporas: Jenny Ingridsdotter, ‘A narrative of suffering and soil: Swedish migration and settler colonialism in northeast Argentina’, Cultural Studies, 2021

23Oct21

Abstract: This article examines the narrated memory of a Swedish settler colony in northeast Argentina. Recently, scholarly attention has turned to how migrants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries contributed to colonizing processes in the Americas as they established themselves on lands already inhabited by Indigenous Peoples. The settlement of Swedish migrants in Misiones is here regarded as part of a strategy of settler colonialism advocated by the Argentine state in order to extend the agrarian frontier further and thereby ‘civilise’ and secure the nation’s rural landscape through the presence of white settlers. From this perspective, the aim of the article is to understand how the historical macropolitical framework of settler colonialism in Argentina is interwoven in the collective and individual narratives of Swedish descendants in present-day Misiones. The article draws on ethnographic interviews and observations made in Misiones between 2017 and 2019. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 individuals along with walk-along observations at seven Swedish community sites. The article argues that a central narrative of memory among the descendants of Swedish settlers relies upon certain elements crucial to settler colonial societies. However, while this narrative structure is intrinsic to settler colonialism, it must also be analysed as part of a migration narrative. This article brings forth new empirical material from a site in Latin America where Swedish migration history has not previously been studied ethnographically. Further, it brings the study of migration, colonial settlement, and indigenous dispossession together through its analysis of a settler narrative in the particular context of settler colonial history of Misiones.

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Settler colonialism undoes throughcare: Hilde Tubex, John Rynne, Harry Blagg, ‘Throughcare for Indigenous peoples leaving prison: Practices in two settler colonial states’, European Journal of Probation, 2021

23Oct21

Abstract: The concept of throughcare as a means to prevent recidivism continues to attract considerable attention in Australia over the last couple of years. This is particularly the case for Indigenous peoples, as the transition to life after imprisonment proves to be particularly challenging for them, resulting in high rates of recidivism and ongoing overrepresentation in Australian prisons. In this contribution, we report on research we conducted in two Australian jurisdictions. After identifying the problems in developing effective throughcare strategies for Indigenous peoples leaving prison, we turn to Canada for examples of good practice. Canada was chosen for comparison as it is also a settler colonial state, experiencing similar problems of overrepresentation of their Indigenous population in the prison. After a critical analysis of these practices, we conclude that the reasons for a problematic re-integration of Indigenous peoples are related to a tendency to impose solutions and strategies developed in the white mainstream onto Indigenous communities without acknowledging traditional cultures and structures.

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Settler colonialism in Kashmir: Samreen Mushtaq, Mudasir Amin, ‘”We will memorise our home”: exploring settler colonialism as an interpretive framework for Kashmir’, Third World Quarterly, 2021

21Oct21

Abstract: In this article, we examine the practices of India’s military occupation of Kashmir in the framework of settler colonialism to map its entrenched nature in sustaining control and countering the struggle for Azaadi (freedom). Post 5 August 2019, when the Indian state proceeded with a reading down of the laws that enabled Kashmir’s permanent residents exclusive rights over land and jobs, scholars and activists noted it to be an advancement of India’s settler logic of elimination. In this essay, we complicate its trajectory and trace these recent practices as part of long drawn processes including spatial, demographic and ecological manifestations that are now further deepening and expanding a matrix of control characteristic of such a project. The paper argues that while settler colonialism could be used as a crucial interpretive framework for Kashmir and make it legible for an international audience, the reliance on a future Indian-citizen-settler runs the risk of invisibilising the Indian armed forces already permanently stationed in Kashmir and occupying vast tracts of land. The settler colonial framework can be a useful concept for Kashmir when its shrewd combination of assimilationist and eliminationist tactics is placed within the framework of military occupation, rather than as a distinct alternative.

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