settler colonial studies blog

Becoming? What if one already is? Cameo Dalley, ‘Becoming a Settler Descendant: Critical Engagements with Inherited Family Narratives of Indigeneity, Agriculture and Land in a (Post)Colonial Context’, Life Writing, 18, 3, 2021, pp. 355-370

11Sep21

Abstract: Using personal reflections from my experiences as a descendant of settlers, I undertake an autoethnographic interpretation of how my inherited family history of agriculture and memory structures my
relationship to land. Agricultural identities have been foundational to the formation of the Australian nation and in the metamorphosis of settlers into settler descendants. Memories formed by settlers and inherited by their descendants as family stories become a consubstantive force in the determination of relationships to land. At the same time, I recognise how the dispossessory overtures of these sentiments continue the erasure of autochthonous Indigenous belonging by the colonial settler state. Thus, my work critically engages with how an
autoethnographic approach to issues of settler colonial identity in the historical past might stifle or conversely open up critical engagement with ethical responsibility to Indigenous peoples in the political present. This analysis reflects on the broader society’s proclivity toward agricultural identities, borne out in the recent debates surrounding Indigenous author Bruce Pascoe’s book. Dark Emu [Pascoe, Bruce. 2014. Dark Emu. Broome: Magabala Books monograph], which positions Indigenous people as Australia’s first agriculturalists. These trends follow scholarship that seeks to expose normative and racist beliefs about Indigenous others through attentiveness to troubled colonial history.

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Black Indigeneity: Bennett Brazelton, ‘On the erasure of Black Indigeneity’, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 2021

11Sep21

Excerpt: Black Indigeneity complicates the native/settler/slave triad that many scholars rely upon in order to make sense of the relationship between Black and Native peoples.

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Reclaiming signs and symbols: Heidi Nicholls, ‘Colonial and Decolonial Resignification: US Empire-state Sovereignty in Hawai‘i’, Global Historical Sociology of Race and Racism, 2021

11Sep21

Abstract: This chapter analyzes the semiotic construction of US claims to sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Building on semiotic theories in sociology and theories within critical Indigenous and settler colonial studies, it presents an interpretive analysis of state, military, and academic discursive strategies. The US empire-state attempts to construct colonial narratives of race and sovereignty that rehistoricize the history of Hawaiians and other Indigenous peoples. In order to make claims to sovereignty, settler-colonists construct narratives that build upon false claims to superiority, advancement, and discovery. Colonial resignification is a process by which signs and symbols of Indigenous communities are conscripted into the myths of empire that maintain such sovereign claims. Yet, for this reason, colonial resignification can be undone through reclaiming such signs and symbols from their use within colonial metanarratives. In this case, efforts toward decolonial resignification enacted alternative metanarratives of peoples’ relationships to place. This “flip side” of the synecdoche is a process that unravels the ties that bind layered myths by providing new answers to questions that underpin settler colonial sovereignty.

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Analize this: Martin Kemp, ‘The psychoanalytic encounter with settler colonialism in Palestine/Israel’, International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 17, 2, 2020, pp. 93-125

09Sep21

Abstract: The paper explores the relationship between the legacy of Western imperialism and the complicity of the “international community” in the settler colonial project taking place in Palestine/Israel. It analyzes some key aspects of Western discourse that inhibit an appreciation of non-Zionist perspectives, and which obstruct action to challenge the systemic human rights abuses to which Palestinians are subject. It argues that psychoanalysis, as a discipline and a profession, participates in a wider societal failure, adapting itself to priorities that conflict with its ostensible ethical foundations. Recent years have seen a strengthening of the worldwide movement in support of Palestinian rights in general, and the growth of activism within the mental health community in particular. The exchanges between activists and mainstream professional organizations are here interrogated to identify key points of contention. The paper considers the impact of the settler colonial enterprise on Israeli society as a whole, and on the politics of Israeli psychoanalysis, to support the argument that neutrality is not an option for the international mental health community. It concludes that principled engagement initiatives are necessary to meet mental health workers’ professional responsibilities to do no harm, and to contribute to the future health of the relationship between Palestinian and Jewish Israeli societies.

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Settler colonial fathers: Matan Boord, ‘Fatherhood in Labour Zionist Children’s Literature: Space, Masculinity and Hegemony in Mandate Palestine’, Gender & History, 2021

09Sep21

Abstract: This article analyses the connection between gender and fatherhood in Labour Zionist children’s literature during the formative years of the Zionist project which preceded the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Contrary to most similar social movements in the interwar period, Labour Zionism was leading a settler-colonial project with the imperative to expand the Jewish presence throughout the country, making the category of space particularly relevant to the success of its hegemonic project. This article contributes to the understanding of the role of gender in the process of Zionist settlement and colonisation, and at the same time calls for more attention to the entanglement of gender and masculinity with space in the study of colonial history.

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Anticolonial settlers restoring Indigenous sovereignties? Arturo Chang, ‘Restoring Anáhuac: Indigenous Genealogies and Hemispheric Republicanism in Postcolonial Mexico’, American Journal of Political Science, 2021

09Sep21

Abstract: This article turns to postcolonial Mexico to analyze the importance of Indigenous political thought for the transformation of radical republicanism during the Age of Revolutions. I argue that Mexican insurgents deployed Indigenous genealogies to instantiate what I call “restorative revolution,” a form of revolutionary thinking that prioritized memorialization over absolute foundation. Mexico’s restorative project began with calls for the return of the Anáhuac Empire, an Indigenous genealogy that memorialized histories of popular self-rule to legitimize postcolonial demands. I suggest that the Anáhuac movement transformed the principles of radical republican thought by mobilizing around religious, plebeian, and hemispheric identities. Each of these characteristics problematizes dominant interpretations of republicanism as a secular, elite, and national enterprise. This article uses popular objects and archival ephemera to illustrate the importance of engaging with the political contributions of marginalized groups from the spaces, practice, and languages they used to envision postcolonial emancipation in collective terms.

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Cultural genocide, mapped: Antonio Voce, Leyland Cecco, Chris Michael, ‘”Cultural genocide”: the shameful history of Canada’s residential schools – mapped’, The Guardia, 06/09/21

08Sep21

Excerpt: In May, Canadians were shocked at the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the site of a former school in British Columbia. The bodies belonged to Indigenous children, some believed to be as young as three years old, who went through Canada’s state-sponsored “residential school” system. The schools, scattered across the country, were aimed at eradicating the culture and languages of the country’s Indigenous populations. The findings have brought the world’s renewed attention to this shameful chapter of Canadian history, left deep wounds in hundreds of communities and sparked fresh demands for justice aimed at the Canadian government and the churches that ran the schools for decades.

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Is Black Indigeneity a form of settler colonialism? Kyle Mays, ‘A Provocation of The Modes of Black Indigeneity: Culture, Language, Possibilities’, Ethnic Studies Review, 44, 2, 2021, pp. 41–50

07Sep21

Abstract; This essay explores the meaning of the term Black Indigeneity (BI). Afro-Indigenous Studies scholar Kyle T. Mays asks, what is Black Indigeneity? How do scholars talk about it? What are its possibilities? Relying on a survey of recent scholarship, Mays argues that BI is largely understood as a form of Black Americans participating in settler colonial processes meant to erase and displace Indigenous peoples. He argues that we should look at BI as an analytic that African Americans have used to create belonging and continue to express cultures practiced throughout the African diaspora, adapted and transformed into a modern iteration of cultural expression. In this way, we should rethink how we view blackness and indigeneity as two separate entities, and explore how people of African descent create belonging on dispossessed Indigenous land.

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The neglected settler colonial front of the history wars: Jeffrey Ostler, Karl Jacoby, ‘After 1776: Native Nations, Settler Colonialism, and the Meaning of America’, Journal of Genocide Research, 2021

07Sep21

Excerpt: As the history wars continue, as they certainly will, scholars, journalists, and educators committed to exposing the deep roots of systemic racism will need to combat right-wing celebrations of American exceptionalism. We may applaud the fact Trump’s 1776 Commission did not survive his presidency, but its agenda, alas, lives on. As of mid 2021, at least five states had signed into law bills banning the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” and the 1619 Project; another fifteen states are contemplating similar measures. It is not sufficient, however, only to combat these conservative efforts at censorship. A more difficult, but also necessary, challenge will be to critically examine liberal narratives, which, although capable of offering a more nuanced account of US history, nonetheless frequently produce their own versions of American exceptionalism. The 1619 Project’s emphasis on the centrality of slavery in US history has risen to this challenge on one front. An even more difficult front, however, will be to gain widespread acceptance of settler colonialism as equally constitutive.

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Observing settler colonialism: Katherine G Sammler, Casey R Lynch, ‘Apparatuses of observation and occupation: Settler colonialism and space science in Hawai’i’, EPD: Society and Space, 2021

07Sep21

Abstract: This paper examines two space science infrastructures in Hawai’i, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS). It considers how scientific observation and colonial occupation are co-constituted through the production of apparatuses – extensive material practices and arrangements that iteratively produce subject–object relations. By analyzing TMT and HI-SEAS as apparatuses, we show how both involve the active ordering of space, time, and matter in ways that are dependent upon existing settler colonial relations while enacting specific subject positions key to the projection of settler colonialism across space and time. TMT materializes the Archimedean point, or view-from-nowhere, on which Western scientific “objectivity” depends, while HI-SEAS works to produce ideal colonizer-subjectivities and orient their bodies to the spatialities of the colony. Engaging Native Hawai’ian, Indigenous, and allied anti-colonial critiques, we argue that social science of outer space research must critically address the colony, as its basic logics are foundational to the practices of contemporary space science and imaginaries of space exploration.

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