settler colonial studies blog

Transitioning away from settler colonialism: Rosemary Nagy, ‘Transformative justice in a settler colonial transition: implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 2021

27Apr21

Abstract: The transformative justice agenda within the field of transitional justice has yet to take up settler colonialism and Indigenous peoples. This paper develops the idea of an indigenised, decolonial transformative justice that encompasses relational change at the grassroots level through acts of Indigenous resurgence, settler decolonisation and allyship, as well as structural transformations at the state and global levels through the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada currently is in a transitional moment and there has been a perceptible shift in its position toward the Declaration. It originally voted against the Declaration but is now committed to implementation as per the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendation. A key issue is the extent to which the Declaration will be subsumed under Section 35 of the Constitution, which recognises existing Aboriginal Rights. The paper argues that Section 35 can only become a ‘full box of rights’ if the lid is fully opened to embrace the transformative, decolonising provisions of the Declaration, particularly those around free, prior and informed consent. Given the apparent reluctance of the state to disrupt the colonial status quo, grassroots and transnational mobilizations and strategies that enact the performative element of Indigenous rights will remain key.

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Settler colonialism as a homosocial pursuit: Jeanne Ellis, ‘Manly Pursuits: Rhodes, queer Victorian manliness and the homosocial politics of settler colonialism’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2021

27Apr21

Abstract: Ann Harries’ surfacing of Cecil John Rhodes’s homosexuality in Manly Pursuits (1999), a neo-Victorian biofictional rendering of his decline after the failed Jameson Raid (1895), is integral to her portrayal of nineteenth-century British settler colonialism as an essentially male homosocial endeavour. In this paper, I argue that Harries’ ironic, self-reflexive use of the entangled discourses of literature and history instantiates multiple, shifting intertextual significations that draw past and present into a perpetual, mutually constitutive dialogue, which is, as Linda Hutcheon points out, definitive of historiographic metafiction’s ‘critical reworking’ of the past. Historical fictions such as these register and engage current concerns pertinent to settler colonial studies and I view them as an essential body of work for consideration within this field. The foregrounding of gender and sexuality in Manly Pursuits is a salient example of what I propose as their strategic presentism and its articulation with settler colonial studies.

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Settler amnesia is countered with remembrance: Alexandra Peck, ‘”We Didn’t Go Anywhere”: Restoring Jamestown S’Klallam Presence, Combating Settler Colonial Amnesia, and Engaging with Non-Natives in Western Washington’, Journal of Northwest Anthropology, 55, 1, 2021, pp. 105-134

27Apr21

Abstract: On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) is implementing cultural heritage approaches to reclaim tribal histories threatened by nineteenth century settler colonial narratives of ethnic erasure. Exiled from their capital village of Qatáy in Port Townsend during the 1870s as a result of government-mandated arson and displacement, JST homelands also include Olympic National Park, popularly lauded as a pristine wilderness area. Emanating from the Tribe’s previously unrecognized federal status, accusations of assimilation and extinction have simultaneously contributed to the non-Indigenous public’s denial of JST existence. By restoring archaeological sites with modern significance and erecting counter-monuments to commemorate tribal leaders and events, the JST have embarked upon a journey of challenging their veiled history. Perhaps surprisingly, this resistance against historical amnesia has produced reconciliatory outcomes between the Tribe and non-Natives. Through a lens of resiliency and regeneration, this article documents one tribal nation’s opposition to being consigned to the past, and their dedication to continued relevancy for future generations.

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Settler allies? Tricia McGuire-Adams, ‘Settler allies are made, not self-proclaimed: Unsettling conversations for non-Indigenous researchers and educators involved in Indigenous health’, Health Education Journal, 2021

27Apr21

Abstract: Background: While many settler allies are eager to help towards the goal of disrupting racism, a clearer understanding of how best to harness this eagerness is required within the field of Indigenous health, a field currently comprised mainly non-Indigenous scholars, researchers and educators. Purpose: Responding to this challenge, this article aims to identify ways of working towards disrupting settler colonialism and addressing racism in all of its manifestations by building settler allyship and adopting an anti-racist lens within the field of Indigenous health. The article describes how to approach building settler allyship by implementing anti-racist acts. Method: By using anti-racist scholarship and showcasing recent public examples of anti-Indigenous racism, the author describes how settler allies can approach developing unsettled, critical and anti-racist conversations with one another and in respectful ways with Indigenous peoples. As many Indigenous peoples continue to identify ongoing racism, there is a need for informed, unsettled, anti-racist allies willing to challenge their own complicity to then take action when anti-Indigenous racism occurs. Actions include critical self-reflection, confronting white supremacy and implementing demonstrably anti-racist acts. Conclusion: Findings provide the basis for amplifying unsettling conversations between engaged settler allies to develop anti-racist ways of fostering and extending relationships with Indigenous people and scholars.

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Indigenous leaders managing settler colonialism: Candace Brunette-Debassige, The Trickiness of Settler Colonialism: Indigenous Women Administrators’ Experiences of Policy in Canadian Universities, PhD dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, 2021

27Apr21

Abstract: Since the release in 2015 of the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, a plethora of new administrative policies has emerged in universities. A variety of interconnecting Indigenous administrative roles has also arisen, many of which have been taken up by Indigenous women who find themselves working in challenging and complex contexts steeped in settler colonialism. Studies of the challenges these women face—indeed of Indigenous educational leadership and policies in higher education in general—are, however, sorely lacking. The present study is a qualitative exploration of the embodied experiences of twelve Indigenous women administrators (including the primary researcher) working in Canadian universities. The purpose of the study is to address gaps in the research literature and end the “deafening silence” (Fitzgerald, 2003) of Indigenous women’s voices in educational leadership and policy research. Drawing on an Indigenous storying methodology combined with an arts-informed approach to Indigenous storytelling using Cree Weesakechahk dramatic trickster form, the study tells the stories of Indigenous women leaders who are expected to implement the promises of Indigenizing policies. The research questions center on understanding (a) how Indigenous women experience their leadership work amidst increasing pressures and debates; (b) how they experience policy enactment processes; and (c) how they resist the limits of the settler colonial academy in their leadership work. Situated within an Indigenous feminist decolonial theoretical framework and drawing on Indigenous story as theory, the findings suggest that Indigenous women who are working in settler colonial academic structures, leading in male dominated leadership contexts, and working on the borderland between Euro-Western institutions and Indigenous communities often feel trapped in a “triple bind” (Fitzgerald 2006). While findings suggest that Indigenous women face triple binds and struggle at the intersections of tricky policy enactment processes, I argue that, because settler colonialism is pervasive in university structures and power dynamics, Indigenous women enact “Indigenous refusals” (Grande, 2019) as part of their leadership and policy work. Through these Indigenous refusals, they resist settler colonial attempts to erase and assimilate Indigenous peoples and knowledges, and contribute to deeper levels of change in universities.

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Educating settler colonialism: Pauline Tennent, ‘We Live in Different Worlds’: The perspectives of Manitoba educators on settler colonialism, Indigenous-settler relations, and reconciliation, PhD dissertation, University of Manitoba, 2021

27Apr21

Abstract: The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission positions education as the “key to reconciliation.” Combining insights from settler colonialism and critical theory, this study embraces an ethnographic research design that seeks to explore how educators in Manitoba understand and experience Indigenous and settler relationships in Canada. Through in-depth interviews with settler and Indigenous educators working in the public school system in Manitoba, this study documents how educators understand settler colonialism and reconciliation, as well as some of the challenges they face in working towards education as
reconciliation. Participants in this project describe their work within the education system to enact and embody education as reconciliation. Findings from this study demonstrate that for many educators, reconciliation is about addressing the inequities between Indigenous and settler students; creating/pushing/making space for Indigenous education in the education system; and centring Indigenous knowledges, cultures, and identities. However, multiple challenges exist. Findings from this study demonstrate that structural barriers such as neoliberalism, poverty, and anti-Indigenous racism, serve to exacerbate the gross inequities that exist between Indigenous and settler students. Within the education system, teacher education programs, curricula, and patterns of staffing and employment all serve as barriers to education. Perhaps the most challenging, however, is the everyday perceptions, actions, and practices of settlers that work to maintain the settler status quo. This includes a reluctance and/or refusal by settler educators to engage with Indigenous content, histories, cultures, and identity. The perpetuation of colonial knowledge relegates colonization to something of the past and fails to make the connections between historic and present-day harm and oppression. Patterns of settler ignorance, denial, and apathy are pervasive and work to sustain the conditions of settler colonial dominance. The education system must make a concerted effort to challenge this colonial knowledge, while working to address the inequities facing Indigenous children and
youth in education, if it is to work towards reconciliation. This dissertation occurs in the context of the ongoing dispossession and oppression of Indigenous peoples in Canada, alongside the more than 400 years of resistance by Indigenous peoples to that dispossession.

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Immigrant and settlers: Ben Silverstein, ‘”Throwing Mud” on Questions of Sovereignty: Race and Northern Arguments over White, Chinese, and Aboriginal Labour, 1905–12’, Australian Historical Studies, 2021

27Apr21

Abstract: This article addresses two arguments about Chinese settlers in the Northern Territory. The first, in 1905, was sparked by criticisms of Chinese mining practices and accusations that Chinese people contaminated those Aboriginal people with whom they came into contact. The second was prompted by the imposition, in 1910–11, of restrictions on Chinese rights to work and employ in the Territory. Both were opposed by the Chinese, who represented themselves as deserving and indispensable settlers who had made their home in the Northern Territory. The article argues that these arguments demonstrate the centrality of Aboriginal people to settler practices of being and belonging. Placing Indigeneity and migration in uneasy relation, it examines the emergence of racialised modes of representation as ways of both producing and obscuring sovereignties.

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The settler as an oilman: Mark Boxell, ‘From Native Sovereignty to an Oilman’s State: Land, Race, and Petroleum in Indian Territory and Oklahoma’, The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2021

27Apr21

Abstract: During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Indian Territory and the State of Oklahoma experienced one of the world’s largest petroleum booms, with much of the oil extracted from the territory and state produced on land owned by Indigenous, Black, and mixed-race peoples. White settlers, backed by governing institutions and cultures rooted in settler colonialism, anti-Black racism, and anti-monopolism, struggled to seize control of oil-rich land amid the allotment of Native-owned property. These latter elements insisted that non-whites could not grasp the value of petroleum nor be trusted with the control of such a vital resource, especially in the shadow of ever-looming oil monopolies. Settlers and wildcat prospectors built a white-supremacist oil-field politics that elevated the rights of small-scale, proprietary “independent” oilmen and worked to ensure that the latter controlled flows of crude vis-à-vis non-white property holders and “outside” corporations. For white settlers in Indian Territory and Oklahoma, oil rose to the top of collective imaginaries about race, property, and wealth, encouraging the creation of both legal and often violent extralegal strategies for dispossessing unworthy landowners of their hydrocarbon inheritance.

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How to unsee settler colonial violence: Rebecca L. Stein, Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine, Stanford University Press, 2021

20Apr21

Description: In the last two decades, amid the global spread of smartphones, state killings of civilians have increasingly been captured on the cameras of both bystanders and police. Screen Shots studies this phenomenon from the vantage point of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Here, cameras have proliferated as political tools in the hands of a broad range of actors and institutions, including Palestinian activists, Israeli soldiers, Jewish settlers, and human rights workers. All trained their lens on Israeli state violence, propelled by a shared dream: that advances in digital photography—closer, sharper, faster—would advance their respective political agendas. Most would be let down. Drawing on ethnographic work, Rebecca L. Stein chronicles Palestinian video-activists seeking justice, Israeli soldiers laboring to perfect the military’s image, and Zionist conspiracy theorists accusing Palestinians of “playing dead.” Writing against techno-optimism, Stein investigates what camera dreams and disillusionment across these political divides reveal about the Israeli and Palestinian colonial present, and the shifting terms of power and struggle in the smartphone age.

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Acknowledging indigeneity while foreclosing settler colonialism: Theresa Stewart-Ambo, K. Wayne Yang, ‘Beyond Land Acknowledgment in Settler Institutions’, Social Text, 39, 1, 2021, pp. 21–46

20Apr21

Abstract: What does land acknowledgment do? Where does it come from? Where is it pointing? Existing literature, especially critiques by Indigenous scholars, unequivocally assert that settler land acknowledgments are problematic in their favoring of rhetoric over action. However, formal written statements may challenge institutions to recognize their complicity in settler colonialism and their institutional responsibilities to tribal sovereignty. Building on these critiques, particularly the writings of Métis cultural producer Chelsea Vowel, this article offers beyond as a framework for how institutional land acknowledgments can or cannot support Indigenous relationality, land pedagogy, and accountability to place and peoples. The authors describe the critical differences between Indigenous protocols of mutual recognition and settler practices of land acknowledgment. These Indigenous/settler differences illuminate an Indigenous perspective on what acknowledgments ought to accomplish. For example, Acjachemen/Tongva scholar Charles Sepulveda forwards the Tongva concept of Kuuyam, or guest, as “a reimagining of human relationships to place outside of the structures of settler colonialism.” What would it mean for a settler speaker of a land acknowledgment to say, “I am a visitor, and I hope to become a proper guest”? Two empirical examples are presented: the University of California, Los Angeles, where an acknowledgment was crafted in 2018; and the University of California, San Diego, where an acknowledgment is under way in 2020. The article concludes with beyond as a potential decolonial framework for land acknowledgment that recognizes Indigenous futures.

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