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Settlers would rather not talk: Marc Carpenter, ‘Rake Up No Old Stories of Evil’: Memory, Celebration, and Erasure of Settler Violence in the American Pacific Northwest, PhD dissertation, University of Oregon, 2021

28Nov21

Abstract: This dissertation is both a new historical synthesis of pioneer violence within and beyond the wars on Native people in the mid-nineteenth-century American Pacific Northwest, and a new history of how these wars—and broader tides of colonial violence—were remembered, commemorated, and forgotten. Violence against Native people was even more frequent and more accepted across pioneer spaces than has typically been argued—indeed, I contend that most of the wars and associated violence were part of a single broad-based war on Native people across the Northwest. Early generations of regional history writers deliberately distorted the historical record to paint pioneer volunteer soldiers as heroes. But disagreements about which acts were heroic accidentally preserved archives of atrocity, from the mouths and pens of pioneers themselves.I draw on numerous virtually unused archival sources from pioneer perpetrators to make a number of interventions into the history of the pioneer Northwest: reframing wars, uncovering acts of genocide, relating unrecognized instances of lynching and sexual violence, and unmasking murderers along with the people and politicians who supported and joined them, at the time and since. Proving the untruths deliberately propagated by pioneers and their historians weighs on the balance of historical narratives about key events. Stripped of the veneer of deceit added for posterity, pioneer memories often mirror Indigenous histories of the same events—with the differences crafted through the efforts of generations of history writers, who preferred gauzy tales to hard truths. By delving into the work and specific mechanics of erasure and nostalgia, I demonstrate both deliberate intent behind the cover-ups and the failures of those who attempted them. This should not only reshape the history of colonialism and genocide in the Pacific Northwest, but suggest useful methodological and theoretical interventions in the history of American colonialism specifically and settler colonialism broadly. This dissertation affirms the existence of the structures of oppression that support colonial projects, but recognizes the fissures and cracks in those structures that Indigenous activists and their allies were able to use—sometimes in acts of difficult compromise—in their ongoing struggles for life, rights, and sovereignty.


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Starving, force feeding, and settler colonialism: M. T. Samuel, ‘The jurisprudence of elimination: starvation and force-feeding of Palestinians in Israel’s highest court’, International Journal of Law in Context, 2021

28Nov21

Abstract: This paper assesses the functioning of law and legal institutions in Palestine/Israel through the lens of settler colonialism by analysing two thematically interconnected decisions issued by the Supreme Court of Israel, the first involving the starvation of besieged Palestinian civilians and the second involving the force-feeding of Palestinian prisoners. Following a discussion regarding the role of law in settler colonialism, it proceeds to argue that the Court enabled, legitimised and legalised state-sanctioned violence that targeted the native Palestinian population by and through a jurisprudence of elimination in order to facilitate the attainment of Israeli settler-colonial objectives. By so doing, the paper provides further evidence in support of the appropriateness of settler colonialism as a theoretical framework for the case of Israel, including in legal matters.


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Layers of settler colonialism: Jesse Robertson, ‘The Closed West: Rajneeshpuram and the Failure of Utopia in Antelope, Oregon’, Utopian Studies, 32, 3, 2021, pp. 652-667

28Nov21

Abstract: Settler colonialism lay at the heart of the dispute between Oregonians and the followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who built a utopian community called Rajneeshpuram in central Oregon between 1981 and 1985. Rajneeshpuram’s inhabitants believed their environmentalist ambitions would align them with settler-spirited and eco-minded Oregonians. However, Oregon’s land use laws were rooted in the dispossession of Native land, a foundational theft that was reinstantiated in present-day hierarchies of land use and ownership. Many Oregonians simultaneously saw the residents of Rajneeshpuram as invaders and invoked frontier narratives in their defense, blending them with prevalent political and cultural concerns of contamination. Rajneesh and his followers’ disregard for zoning laws and inflammatory tactics brought about their community’s undoing. Rajneeshpuram thus challenged an arrangement that was the historical product of settler colonialism while replicating it. The conflict was mired in the idealistic—and incompatible—self-interest of opposing settler groups.


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A French wild west: Timothy Roberts, ‘”Almost as it is Formulated in the So-Called ‘Homestead Act'”: Images of the American West in French Settlement of French Algeria’, Journal of World History, 32, 4, 2021, pp. 601-629

28Nov21

Abstract: Nineteenth-century American expansion has been shown as a type of Anglo-American “settler revolution,” but the United States was also connected with France in France’s ideas for the imperial development of Algeria. The two countries alike were ambitious empires, their leaders committed to expansion as a means of political and economic regeneration. More than this, the French empire “borrowed” images from its republican cousin to help incorporate Algeria. Writers during the July Monarchy saw American Indians’ decline as a forerunner to white settlement’s consequences in North Africa, although they rationalized how Algerians might be treated more benevolently. Napoléon III vowed to prevent an American analogue by setting aside Arab tribal land. Liberal reformers during the early Third Republic, however, called for assimilation of Algerians through land privatization, hailing the U.S. Homestead Act for how it could facilitate egalitarian, private land ownership, and thus help establish what Michel Chevalier had earlier imagined as the French “West.”


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An artistic life in repressive authenticity: Oliver Basciano, ‘Jimmie Durham obituary’, 27/11/21

28Nov21

Excerpt: ‘Controversial artist whose work explored Native American imagery and themes ‘.


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Undoing erasure: Eva Corlett, ‘Long fight for justice ends as New Zealand treaty recognises Moriori people’, The Guardian, 27/11/21

28Nov21

Excerpt: Indigenous settlers of the Chatham Islands celebrate ‘significant milestone’ as treaty enshrined in law apologises for wrongs and returns land.


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Undermining Australian settler schooling: Amy Thomas, Beth Marsden, ‘Surviving School and “Survival Schools”: Resistance, Compulsion and Negotiation in Aboriginal Engagements with Schooling’, Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History, 121, 2021, pp. 33-55

26Nov21

Abstract: In Australia, Aboriginal peoples have sought to exploit and challenge settler colonial schooling to meet their own goals and needs, engaging in strategic, diverse and creative ways closely tied to labour markets and the labour movement. Here, we bring together two case studies to illustrate the interplay of negotiation, resistance and compulsion that we argue has characterised Aboriginal engagements with school as a structure within settler colonial capitalism. Our first case study explains how Aboriginal families in Victoria and New South Wales deliberately exploited gaps in school record collecting to maintain mobility during the mid-twentieth century and engaged with labour markets that enabled visits to country. Our second case study explores the Strelley mob’s establishment of independent, Aboriginal-controlled bilingual schools in the 1970s to maintain control of their labour and their futures. Techniques of survival developed in and around schooling have been neglected by historians, yet they demonstrate how schooling has been a strategic political project, both for Aboriginal peoples and the Australian settler colonial state.


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Australian capitalism is settler capitalism: Hannah Forsyth, Sophie Loy-Wilson, ‘Introduction: Political Implications for the New History of Capitalism’, Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History, 121, 2021, pp. 1-7

26Nov21

Excerpt: Labour history, long a particular strength of historical studies in Australia, has always sustained a critical stance towards capitalism as a historical phenomenon. In recent years, such histories of capitalism have expanded and interacted with other sub-fields, such as cultural history, environmental history and settler colonial studies.


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Settler colonial child ‘welfare’ must be decolonised: Jeanette Schmid, ‘A reinterrogation of South African child welfare discourse: A case for decolonisation?’, The British Journal of Social Work, 2021

26Nov21

Abstract: Relying on discourse analysis and critical social work, this article explores the relevance of a decolonisation discourse to South African child welfare. A child welfare discourse of coloniality emerges from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. This emphasises the role that colonisation has played in eradicating indigenous persons or alternately assimilating subjugated populations to Western norms and sensibilities and maintains that coloniality persists in contemporary child welfare. South African child welfare has not been explicitly problematised as furthering coloniality. There have been transformation efforts post-apartheid relating to the legislative/policy environment and increasing racial representation and community-based access. However, the colonial and apartheid roots of South African child welfare persist in impacting child welfare, particularly by overriding local ways of being. A decolonisation discourse is needed to identify the various ways in which the child welfare system replicates colonising processes and how these can be interrupted. To do so, the individualised, intrusive, punitive, statutory Child Protection discourse must be replaced, structural issues prioritised, intergenerational and contemporary trauma centred, liberatory indigenous child-rearing practices privileged and local knowledges curated and used to inform the child welfare process.


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Settler colonist a bit ahead of themselves: Margaret Boone Rappaport, Konrad Szocik (eds), The Human Factor in the Settlement of the Moon: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Springer, 2021

26Nov21

Description: Approaching the settlement of our Moon from a practical perspective, this book is well suited for space program planners. It addresses a variety of human factor topics involved in colonizing Earth’s Moon, including: history, philosophy, science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, politics & policy, sociology, and anthropology. Each chapter identifies the complex, interdisciplinary issues of the human factor that arise in the early phases of  settlement on the Moon. Besides practical issues, there is some emphasis placed on preserving, protecting, and experiencing the lunar environment across a broad range of occupations, from scientists to soldiers and engineers to construction workers. The book identifies utilitarian and visionary factors that shape human lives on the Moon. It offers recommendations for program planners in the government and commercial sectors and serves as a helpful resource for academic researchers. Together, the coauthors ask and attempt to answer: “How will lunar society be different?”


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