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Natural settler colonialists? Salla Tuori, ‘Settler Colonial Mentality in Narratives of Finnish Migrants in Brazil: Exploring Gender and Race Identifications’, in Shirley Anne Tate, Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, Palgrave, 2022, pp. 467-484

12Mar22

Abstract: Until very recently settler colonialism was not a relevant consideration for Nordic trans-Atlantic migration. Drawing on archival data, this article explores migration from Finland to Brazil in the early to mid-twentieth century. A large proportion of the small number of Finnish migrants to Brazil were part of establishing, or living in, a utopian community in the small town of Penedo. In this chapter a decolonially informed approach is used to explore Finnish migrants’ understandings of race and gender in mid-twentieth century Brazil. The chapter shows how a white Finnish middle-class migrant in the 1950s already understands “equal gender relations” as a Finnish and European feature, and as a marker of modernity, illustrating “settler colonial mentalities”.


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Peace after settler colonialism? Polly O. Walke, ‘Restoring Balance and Harmony to Peace and Conflict Studies: Engaging Indigenous Paradigm Research in Collaborations of Integrity’, in Kelli Te Maihāroa, Michael Ligaliga, Heather Devere (eds), Decolonising Peace and Conflict Studies through Indigenous Research, Palgrave, 2022, pp. 41-65

12Mar22

Abstract: This chapter examines ways in which Peace and Conflict Studies scholars and practitioners collude in settler colonialism, including the marginalization of Indigenous peoples and their eco-relational worldviews. The text critiques the worldview blindness of many western scholars as a central aspect of epistemic violence toward Indigenous peoples. Drawing on her experience in Australia and Turtle Island (USA), the author explores two main themes: the integral role of eco-relationality in many Indigenous peoples’ approaches to peace, and examples of collaborations of integrity between Indigenous and settler peoples that center Indigenous worldviews and foster respectful and reciprocal relationships. The chapter concludes with some recommendations on decolonizing Peace and Conflict Studies, articulating processes that will address Indigenous people’s calls for justice and transformation.


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Settler identity and settler votes: Edana Beauvais, Dietlind Stolle, ‘The Politics of White Identity and Settlers’ Indigenous Resentment in Canada’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 2022

12Mar22

Abstract: This article introduces White identity as an understudied concept in Canadian politics and compares how White settlers’ ingroup attachments and their outgroup attitudes—specifically, White settlers’ anti-Indigenous attitudes—shape Canadian politics. We find that White identity is associated with greater support for government spending on policies that disproportionately benefit White Canadians, such as pensions, whereas Indigenous resentment is associated with greater opposition toward government spending on policies that are often perceived as disproportionately benefiting Indigenous peoples, such as welfare. In Canada outside Quebec, both White identity and anti-Indigenous attitudes are associated with voting Conservative. In Quebec, White identity mobilizes support for the Bloc Québécois, while White settlers’ negative attitudes toward Indigenous peoples are not associated with vote choice.


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Climate change is settler colonialism manifest: Kerstin Reibold, ‘Settler Colonialism, Decolonization, and Climate Change’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 2022

12Mar22

Abstract: The article proposes that climate change makes enduring colonial injustices and structures visible. It focuses on the imposition and dominance of colonial concepts of land and self-determination on Indigenous peoples in settler states. It argues that if the dominance of these colonial frameworks remains unaddressed, the progressing climate change will worsen other colonial injustices, too. Specifically, Indigenous self-determination capabilities will be increasingly undermined, and Indigenous peoples will experience the loss of what they understand as relevant land from within their own ontologies of land. The article holds that even if settler states strive to repair colonial injustices, these efforts will be unsuccessful if climate change occurs and decolonization is pursued within the framework of a settler colonial ontology of land. Therefore, the article suggests, decolonization of the ontologies of land and concepts of self-determination is a precondition for a just response to climate change.


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Organising settlers: Cameron Greensmith, Queer Professionals and Settler Colonialism: Engaging Decolonial Thought within Organizations, University of Toronto Press, 2022

12Mar22

Description: Queer Professionals and Settler Colonialism works to dismantle the perception of an inclusive queer community by considering the ways white lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) people participate in larger processes of white settler colonialism in Canada. Cameron Greensmith analyses Toronto-based queer service organizations, including health care, social service, and educational initiatives, whose missions and mandates attempt to serve and support all LGBTQ+ people. Considering the ways queer service organizations and their politics are tied to the nation state, Greensmith explores how, and under what conditions, non-Indigenous LGBTQ+ people participate in the sustainment of white settler colonial conditions that displace, erase, and inflict violence upon Indigenous people and people of colour. Critical of the ways queer organizations deal with race and Indigeneity, Queer Professionals and Settler Colonialism highlights the stories of non-Indigenous LGBTQ+ service providers, including volunteers, outreach workers, health care professionals, social workers, and administrators who are doing important work to help, care, and heal. Their stories offer a glimpse into how service providers imagine their work, their roles, and their responsibilities. In doing so, this book considers how queer organizations may better support Indigenous people and people of colour while also working to eliminate the legacy of racism and settler colonialism in Canada.


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Assimilate or else: Samantha M. Williams, Assimilation, Resilience, and Survival: A History of the Stewart Indian School, 1890–2020, University of Nebraska Press, 2022

12Mar22

Description: Assimilation, Resilience, and Survival illustrates how settler colonialism propelled U.S. government programs designed to assimilate generations of Native children at the Stewart Indian School (1890–1980). The school opened in Carson City, Nevada, in 1890 and embraced its mission to destroy the connections between Native children and their lands, isolate them from their families, and divorce them from their cultures and traditions. Newly enrolled students were separated from their families, had their appearances altered, and were forced to speak only English. However, as Samantha M. Williams uncovers, numerous Indigenous students and their families subverted school rules, and tensions arose between federal officials and the local authorities charged with implementing boarding school policies. The first book on the history of the Stewart Indian School, Assimilation, Resilience, and Survival reveals the experiences of generations of Stewart School alumni and their families, often in their own words. Williams demonstrates how Indigenous experiences at the school changed over time and connects these changes with Native American activism and variations in federal policy. Williams’s research uncovers numerous instances of abuse at Stewart, and Assimilation, Resilience, and Survival addresses both the trauma of the boarding school experience and the resilience of generations of students who persevered there under the most challenging of circumstances.


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Not just shared subjugation: Hannah Manshel, ‘“Never Allowed for Property”: Harriet Jacobs and Layli Long Soldier before the Law’, American Literature, 2002

08Mar22

Abstract: This article reads Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) alongside Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas (2017) to argue that both texts challenge the ideology of property ownership that has long been central to Black and Indigenous subjugation. By reading these texts through Cedric Robinson’s theorization of the Black Radical Tradition, which “never allowed for property,” this essay argues that both texts bring into being a world that precedes and exceeds the violence of legal regulation. Jacobs and Long Soldier both locate an alternative to law in the radical divinity of maternal care. Through Jacobs’s and Long Soldier’s discussions of holy maternal care, we can recognize the interrelation of Black and Indigenous freedom struggles in a way that’s not solely defined by shared subjugation.


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On the predicaments of migrant indigeneity: Morgan Godfery, ‘Sydney is no place to build a Māori meeting house – it is disrespectful to Aboriginal people’, The Guardian, 06/03/22

07Mar22

Excerpt: When most New Zealanders hear the term “marae” they think of the typical Māori meeting house. The angular facade, decorated in red and white carvings, and the open space for the “encounter” where guests arrive in the warmth of welcome, in the grief of a tangi (funeral), or in the uncertainty of a disagreement. Technically, the “marae” refers to that open space, but most people assume it means the meeting house. In most parts of the North Island, marae – taking the common meaning of the meeting house and the open space – dot small, rural communities. In Te Teko, where I trace my whakapapa (ancestry), there are four marae within a couple kilometres of each other. Each marae on that golden mile in Te Teko acts as a physical statement – this is Māori land. Marae embody deep connections to the land and to the ancestors who exercised rights and responsibilities in respect of it. They make perfect sense in New Zealand. But in Australia, where the Sydney Marae Alliance are preparing to construct that country’s first marae, they make no sense.


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Indigenous erasure prompts athazagoraphobia: Manar H. Makhoul, ‘Dispossession and Discontinuity: The Impact of the 1967 War on Palestinian Thought’, Critical Inquiry, 48, 3, 2022

06Mar22

Abstract: For some, the 1967 war meant a setback to grand Arab projects; but the Palestinians understood the war in physical and epistemic terms. This is because the war made it clear to them that Israel and Zionism are capable of physically erasing Palestine as well as its history. The Palestinian existential fear of epistemic erasure (athazagoraphobia), following the complete occupation of their land, has produced works that affirm epistemic presence through the assertion of history and ownership. Athazagoraphobia refers to an existential human fear of death both physically and memorially––namely, human continuity. As a result, Palestinian discourse, responding to athazagoraphobia, centers around questions of origins, genealogy, and beginnings. Moreover, Palestinian reaction to athazagoraphobia opens up a discussion about the impact of this reaction on larger intellectual projects that deal with universal themes. Consequently, this article offers additional insights into the relationship between the 1948 and 1967 wars.


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Immigrant incarceration and settler colonialism: Dan Horner, ‘Behind Strong Palings: Producing Knowledge in the Modern City at Montreal’s Emigrant Sheds, 1832–1852’, Urban History Review, 49, 2, 2022, pp. 172-193

06Mar22

Abstract: Established during the cholera epidemic of 1832, Montreal’s emigrant sheds sat on the city’s western fringe and played a vital role in urban governance in British North America for the next twenty years. The site served as a place where migrants could be segregated from the general public until they were deemed to be sufficiently healthy to continue with the process of settlement. Public officials employed at and around the sheds and observers who visited the facility thus used the emigrant sheds as a place to consider strategies of classification and containment. The production of knowledge was central to the work that went on there. This article uses government reports, emigrant handbooks, newspapers, and private correspondence to delve into the workings of the emigrant sheds and to place them in the broader context of the politics of public health and the establishment of carceral institutions. It situates these processes at the centre of the project of settler colonialism in British North America.


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