settler colonial studies blog

Decarceration against settler colonialism (I): Lisa Guenther, ‘Settler colonialism, incarceration, and the abolitionist imperative: Lessons from an Australian youth detention center’, in Kelly Struthers Montford, Chloë Taylor (eds), Building Abolition: Decarceration and Social Justice, Routledge, 2021

25Jun21

Abstract: In August 2014, six boys in isolation at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Australia’s Northern Territory were tear-gassed and dragged out of their cells after one boy managed to enter the corridor of the Behavioural Management Unit. The incident led to a television news exposé of abusive conditions in the prison and several official inquiries, generating hundreds of recommendations including increased participation of Aboriginal people and Torres Straight Islanders in correctional policy and practice. Of the young people incarcerated in Northern Territory youth detention centers, 96% are Indigenous. And yet, official reports stop short of outlining a program of decolonization, preferring to recommend the integration of Indigenous people into existing criminal legal frameworks. A decolonial abolitionist critique of settler colonialism helps to address the silence at the heart of official reports and to affirm alternative pathways of Indigenous resurgence, beyond the settler state’s rhetoric of protection and intervention.

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Settler statues and their movements: Susan Slyomovics, ‘On the Wings of the Gallic Cockerel: Ahmed Benyahia and the Provenance of an Algerian Public Sculpture’, in David D. Kim (ed.), Reframing Postcolonial Studies: Concepts – Methodologies – Scholarly Activisms, Palgrave MacMillan, 2021, pp. 69-92

23Jun21

Abstract: The term “statuomania” was coined to reflect the vast number of statues, war memorials, and monuments erected in the newly colonized spaces of French Algeria beginning in 1830. After Algerian independence in 1962, the postcolonial afterlives of monuments inscribe a historical, geopolitical, and affective provenance between Algeria and France. This essay follows the history of the 1972 statue to the Algerian war hero and martyr Youcef Zighoud (1921–1956). Sculpted by artist Ahmed Benyahia for Algeria’s third largest city of Constantine, the statue’s creation, emplacement, disappearance, and reappearance recount post-independent Algeria’s efforts to decolonize public space.

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Neoliberal settler logics of elimination in 1900s Peru: Lucía Isabel Stavig, ‘Unwittingly agreed: Fujimori, neoliberal governmentality, and the inclusive exclusion of Indigenous women’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 2021

23Jun21

Abstract: In 1996, Alberto Fujimori introduced the National Program for Reproductive Health and Family Planning 1996–2000, the first publicly funded family planning program in Peru’s history, under which at least 10,000 Indigenous women were forcibly sterilized. This program was aided by what I came to identify as the Reproductive and Sexual Rights (RSR) assemblage – a group of feminists working in reproductive and sexual rights in Peru. This was made possible by Fujimori’s co-optation of the reproductive rights discourse and the rise of neoliberal governmentality, which enlisted the expertise of non-state actors in projects of governance. Moreover, in their heartfelt desire to bring reproductive rights to Peru, the RSR did not appreciate Indigenous women’s inclusive exclusion from citizenship – their inclusion in the settler colonial nation as marginal members whose bodies could be instrumentalized for national projects. Through the National Program, Fujimori instrumentalized Indigenous women’s bodies to create statistics showing a reduction in poverty for international lenders. A similar reading of the RSR’s actions is possible. By downplaying the magnitude of the forced sterilizations in the late 1990s, the RSR unwittingly contributed to the violation of Indigenous women’s rights in the name of extending reproductive rights to ‘all Peruvian women.

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Queer settler colonialism? Savannah J. Kilner, Pride and Property: Queer Settler Colonialism, Blackness, and the Landed Politics of Accountability, PhD dissertation, UCLA, 2021

23Jun21

Abstract: This dissertation plumbs the often-eclipsed connections between antiblackness, Indigenous dispossession, sexuality, and urban space. It contributes to an understanding of the racial and gendered sexual economy of settler neoliberalism by examining a variety of (queer) narrations, practices, and imaginaries of space, place, property, and land in San Francisco and Oakland, CA (Ramaytush Ohlone and Lisjan territories), from the late 1970s to the present. “Pride and Property” is not a history; rather, it constellates a series of moments that elucidate how the twin projects of Black surplus and Indigenous disappearance in the settler city create the conditions of possibility—and the grounds for—what has long been narrated as a “gay homeland” or “queer mecca.” While many queer spatial imaginaries constituting the Bay Area are entrenched in antiblackness and settler colonialism, still others practice, imagine, and bring forth anti-colonial, abolitionist futures. Mobilizing theoretical frameworks from critical ethnic studies and queer of color critique, Black feminist theories of slavery’s afterlife and the carceral state, and critical Indigenous studies, this project joins a growing literature that disrupts the ways scholarly formations are too often thought to be discrete. In utilizing archival methods and textual and visual analysis, it centers the role of narrative and representation both in naturalizing racialized dispossession and in providing alternate visions of futurity, belonging, and collectivity. The narrative of the “Great Gay Migration” of the late 1970s and early 1980s relied on the disavowal of settler colonialism and slavery amid the deepening polarizations of neoliberalism and growing carceral state. In the decades that follow, narratives of queer loss during the “dot-com booms” mobilize nostalgia for San Francisco’s progressivism in ways that disavow past and present modes of violence and dispossession. With a focus on property relations and attunement to the ways incorporative logics animate but also precede neoliberalism, this project culminates in a theorization of the distinct, yet relational “dispossession by inclusion” of Black and Indigenous peoples in Oakland, CA, and the distinct yet relational refusals—that precisely through reckoning with dispossessive histories of property—invoke other temporalities to craft a politics of accountability.

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Settler education on indigenous land: Rosalie Z. Fanshel, ‘The Morrill Act as Racial Contract: Settler Colonialism and U.S. Higher Education’, Center for Research on Native American Issues, 2021

23Jun21

Abstract: The Morrill Act of 1862 established agricultural and mechanical arts colleges by granting public lands to states to promote the liberal and practical education of (white, male, Christian) U.S. citizens of average means. In this paper, I use Charles Mills’ (1997) Racial Contract framework and Patrick Wolfe’s (2007) concept of corpus nullius to situate the Morrill Act in a white supremacist political system that intimately entwined settler-colonial expansion, agricultural knowledge production, and the founding of U.S. public higher education through creation of the land-grant universities.

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Migrant western vs. settler western: Elisa Boldrin, ‘On Westerns and Settler Migration: A Reading of Meek’s Cutoff by Kelly Reichardt’, Iperstoria, 17, 2021, pp. 9-28

23Jun21

Abstract: This essay examines Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010) as an example of ‘slow’ and feminist western film. In particular, it shows how, by applying an “austere” aesthetics (Gorfinkel 2015) and by giving prominence to the act of migrating rather than the act of settling, the movie rewrites pioneer history, offering an example of what Catherine Russel defines “migrant cinema” (2017). Because of the visual centrality given to the act of migration, with its feeling of geographical displacement and psychological apprehension, the movie situates itself alongside other contemporary films representing present-day migration, and questions the traditional western movement as a travel of self-confident expansion and colonization. In this sense, Meek’s Cutoff can be rather read as a “decolonizing” (Trimble Young and Veracini 2017) rendition of white migration in the West, mostly achieved by including two destabilizing characters within the group of white settlers, Emily Tetherow and a Cayuse Indian, who trigger reflections on matters of knowledge and alliances.

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Dispossessing Metis: David Parent, Governing Metis Indigeneity: The Settler-Colonial Dispossession and Regulation of the Metis in Mid-Twentieth Century Manitoba, PhD dissertation, University of Alberta, 2021

20Jun21

Abstract: Bringing together the fields of Critical Indigenous Studies, settler-colonial studies, and governmentality studies, this dissertation seeks to methodologically trace the dispossession of Metis from lands in Manitoba throughout the mid-twentieth century by placing these dispossessions into the multijurisdictional and socio-historical context. In the first half I engage dominant Canadian historiography in order to trace out a broader governing apparatus that possessed technologies of education, employment, immigration, and health aided in normalizing the dispossession of predominantly racialized populations by settler-colonial populations and their municipal apparatuses. The second half of the dissertation focusses on original archival research. I engage nineteenth century Metis historians to genealogize the formation of Manitoba’s provincial apparatus which formed the basis for the establishment and proliferation of municipal apparatuses in Manitoba throughout the former half of the twentieth century. I trace the maneuvering between federal, provincial, and municipal apparatuses in governing Metis in Manitoba through various agricultural programs meant to increase the overall health and security of the settler-colonial population, as well as through social welfare reports that sought to identify and recommend how to ‘improve’ Manitoba Metis. In the final chapter, using my own historic Metis community of Minnewaken as a case study I demonstrate how the Rural Municipality of Coldwell dispossessed Metis residents who went from owning 4000 acres of land in 1915, to 10 acres of land in 1970. I trace this land dispossession through an engagement with local histories and municipal tax-rolls, by-laws, and council minutes. Taxes and by-laws, I argue, were key technologies of municipal apparatuses that rationalized and realized the dispossession of Metis from Minnewaken. A key emphasis of this dissertation focusses on illustrating the ways in which municipal governments, in particular, came to represent significant vectors of Metis land dispossession during this era.

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Augmented reality as an antisettler act: Amanda Almond, We Are All Related: (Re)Storying With Augmented Reality to Build Indigenous-Settler Relations, MA dissertation, University of Alberta, 2021

20Jun21

Abstract: Engaging settlers in inviting yet unsettling ways to understand settler colonialism and introduce Indigenous epistemologies may help build and sustain Indigenous-settler relationships. Augmented reality (AR) offers an opportunity to co-create and share Indigenous digital stories connected to territory to create sites of (re)storying that challenge colonial narratives that treaties involved land surrender. This thesis describes and reflects on my experiences participating in a series of projects involving Treaty 6 marker sculptures and digital media, including developing and prototyping learn-by-design resources for students and teachers to respectfully co-create AR stories with Indigenous Knowledge Keepers, Elders, and storytellers. Building on that work, I share my experience co-creating and sharing a trail of AR stories situated at Treaty 6 marker sculptures located in or near amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (also known as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) through a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach grounded in relationships and ongoing consent. Co-creating the story trail and selecting an AR storytelling platform was guided by the 4Rs of respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility, OCAP®, data sovereignty, and a commitment to respect and adhere to Indigenous approaches to traditional cultural expression and protocol. Visitors to the Treaty 6 marker sculptures can experience AR stories from a respected Knowledge Keeper on what it means to be in relationship on Treaty 6 territory. Hearing these stories may prompt reflection on past, current, and future relationships and initiate further learning to build relationships and understanding.

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Bentham’s anticolonial settler colonialism: Barbara Arneil, ‘Jeremy Bentham: Pauperism, Colonialism, and Imperialism ‘, American Political Science Review, 2021

17Jun21

Abstract: Using two recently published folios by Jeremy Bentham, I draw out a fundamental but little-analyzed connection between pauperism and both domestic and settler colonialism in opposition to imperialism in his thought. The core theoretical contribution of this article is to draw a distinction between a colonial, internal, and productive form of power that claims to improve people and land from within, which Bentham defends, and an imperial, external, and repressive form of power that dominates or rules over people from above and afar, that he rejects. Inherent in colonialism and the power unleashed by it are specific and profoundly negative implications in practice for the poor and disabled of Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries subject to domestic colonialism and indigenous peoples subject to settler colonialism from first contact until today. I conclude Bentham is best understood as a pro-colonialist and anti-imperialist thinker.

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Settler colonialism in Nicaragua: J. L. Mayer, ‘Conceptualizing Settler Colonialism in Nicaragua’, Urban Anthropology and Studies of Cultural Systems and World Economic Development, 49, 3-4, 2021, pp. 195-245

17Jun21

Abstract: A growing body of literature has argued for the reconceptualization of Latin America as a settler colony. Contrary to the self-proclaimed decolonization of Latin American states upon their independence two centuries ago, the settlers who came to Latin America stayed and preserved the structure of settler colonialism to the present day. This article analyzes the case of Nicaragua through the conceptual frame of settler colonialism and examines an apt case study: the Indigenous and Afrodescendant communities of the Rama-Kriol Territory in southeastern Nicaragua, where I have conducted activist ethnographic research since 2014. The ongoing colonization of the Rama-Kriol Territory exhibits not only failures of the state to enforce legal protections of multicultural rights, but also the extension of a colonial logic of dispossession and elimination. The case of the Rama-Kriol Territory demonstrates the entanglements of Nicaraguan settler colonialism with international institutions, development banks, multinational corporations, and settler colonial projects around the world. I conclude that social science researchers should attend to continuing and emergent forms of Indigenous sovereignty in Nicaragua. Amid the fading backdrop of liberal multiculturalism in Latin America, these assertions of sovereignty pose a political horizon of decolonization and an end to settler violence, dispossession, and domination.

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