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Settlers are made: Marcelo Svirsky, ‘The Reproduction of Settler Colonialism in Palestine’, Journal of Perpetrator Research, 4, 1, 2021, pp. 1–36

13Apr21

Abstract: Critical scholarship on Palestine/Israel tends to focus on conceptualising the settler colonial practices that characterise this conflict but have failed to account for how these practices are reproduced and sustained over time. To address this gap, rather than focusing on Israel’s quantifiable strengths such as military might, the use of law, the economy, and diplomacy, this article investigates the reciprocal relations between the formation of Israeli modes of being or subjectivities, on the one hand, and the generation and distribution of settler colonial surplus, on the other. The examination of the processes of subjectivity formation in their settler colonial register on the side of the coloniser allows understating how the circuits of settler colonial power endure.


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Diderot the settler: Janice Feng, ‘Articulating women’s bodies: Montesquieu, Diderot, and the imperial and settler-colonial politics of gender and sexuality’, History of European Ideas, 2021

13Apr21

Abstract: In this essay I develop a feminist anti-colonial critique by reading two eighteenth-century literary texts that discuss Middle Eastern and Indigenous gender and sexual practices at length: Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes (1721) and Diderot’s Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville (1772). While Montesquieu and Diderot are often heralded as anti-imperial European Enlightenment thinkers, the specific ways in which Montesquieu and Diderot use gender and non-European women’s bodies to construct their political-theoretical arguments show us two distinct colonial logics, one imperial and the other settler-colonial. I show that whereas Montesquieu uses Persian and Muslim sexual and gender practices to put forward an imperial vision premised on the superiority of French political order over a despotic ‘oriental’ order, Diderot uses Indigenous sexual practices to denote a settler-colonial logic premised on the erasure of conquest and pacification of Indigenous women’s bodies. In doing so I build on existing feminist and post/anti-colonial scholarship to develop gender and sexuality as central analytics of imperial and settler-colonial politics.


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Indigenous regionalism against settler colonialism: Roberta Rice, ‘Indigenous regionalism in the Andes’, Globalizations, 2021

12Apr21

Abstract: Top-down processes of regional integration among the Andean countries of South America are occurring alongside bottom-up processes of Indigenous regionalism in Bolivia and Ecuador that weave together Indigenous peoples’ territories across local administrative units and even national borders. In light of this dynamic, the study asks: What explains the new Indigenous regionalism in the Andes? And, what are its implications for formal processes of regional integration? The study examines the cases of the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin (COICA) and the National Council of Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyo (CONAMAQ) as examples of Indigenous regionalism in relation to the institutional innovations of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) to incorporate Indigenous organizations into its structure and agenda. The article argues that the intersections of regional integration, the enactment of the plurinational state, and Indigenous autonomies have provided the necessary institutional space for expressions of Indigenous regionalism to flourish.


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Land education against settler colonialism: Anna Lees, Tasha Tropp Laman, Dolores Calderón, ‘“Why didn’t I know this?”: Land Education as an Antidote to Settler Colonialism in Early Childhood Teacher Education’, Theory into Practice, 2021

12Apr21

Abstract: Settler Colonialism is marked by the permanent move of mostly European settlers into other territories that requires the ongoing displacement and/or elimination of Indigenous peoples (Wolfe, 2006), the enslavement and dispossession of Indigenous peoples from Africa (Kelley, 2017), and the individual ownership of land for capital gain (Wolfe, 2006). This displacement and elimination take place in curriculum with an impact on what is learned and not learned in schools (Calderón, 2014; Nxumalo, 2018; Sabzalian, 2019). To counteract this, we use land education (Simpson, 2002), an educational approach where curriculum starts with Indigenous peoples and Indigenous knowledges, confronting and dismantling anti-Indigenous colonial processes (Tupper, 2011). Land education is a project of imagining just and sustainable futures, but much work must be done to get there. This article shares insights on what aspects of “getting there” looks like in early childhood teacher education.


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Not a level playing field (but it could be): Mariana Essa Alexandra Arellano, Stephen Stuart, Stephen Sheps, ‘Sport for Indigenous resurgence: Toward a critical settler-colonial reflection’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2021

12Apr21

Abstract: This article examines the field of sport for development (SFD) while considering Indigenous resurgence amidst Canada’s neoliberal settler-colonial landscape. While sharing challenges encountered within their practice, program staff from the Promoting Life-skills in Aboriginal Youth program revealed high levels of constructive self-criticism and reflexivity. There are three emergent themes, the adoption of which appeared essential for transforming the sector in recognition of Indigenous resurgence: growth and pace; Indigenous agency and knowledge; and political engagement. Grounded in settler colonialism and resurgence, this paper also reflects on the field of SFD and what it would mean to decolonize the practice. The article concludes by asking if non-Indigenous scholars can study SFD by subverting the colonial status quo that is also reproduced in this research field.


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The objects of settler colonialism: Emily Robinson, ‘Objects, Documentation, and Identification: Materiality and Memory of American Indian Boarding Schools at the Heard Museum’, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 51, 2, 2021, pp. 94-108

12Apr21

Abstract: This essay analyzes the Heard Museum’s exhibition Remembering Our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience, a site that documents student experiences at off-reservation boarding schools in the United States. The essay pursues questions of materiality and memory in the creation and disruption of public memory narratives. More specifically, this essay attends to the meaning-making of objects and analyzes their contributions to the exhibit’s documentation and identification work. I argue the successful use of objects in this site holds two key implications for the rhetoric of public memory scholarship: (1) that objects are a resource for the rhetorical invention of public memory, and (2) that additional possibilities for documentation and identification may rest in objects. In making this argument, I thus theorize the relationship among public memory, objects, and settler colonialism, and call for increased attention to objects in our rhetorical histories and theories.


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The gender of anti-settler colonialism: Matthias André Voigt, ‘Between powerlessness and protest: Indigenous men and masculinities in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the emergence of the American Indian Movement’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2021

12Apr21

Abstract: The Red Power era (1969-1978), the most pivotal time for Indigenous people in the twentieth century, is commonly associated with a fundamental restructuring of Indigenous-settler colonial relations and a major cultural renewal of self and society across Indian Country. This article examines the social formation of those Indigenous men and masculinities who instigated that profound change and became politically active, questioning domestic colonialism and challenging their subaltern status vis-à-vis dominant U.S. society. More specifically, this article explores the shared experiences of Indigenous male activists within the American Indian Movement (AIM) during its early beginnings between 1968 through mid-1972. AIM (1968–1978) originated in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St-Paul and rose to become the most significant player in Indigenous protest politics at its time. Indigenous men in AIM shared key experiences with settler colonial institutions and the forces of modernity (boarding schools, military service, prisons, the urban experience) that affected their male identities in multiple, complex, and contradictory ways. Western-centric concepts of race, gender, and nation have consistently worked towards the marginalization and oppression of the Indigenous ‘other’ -commonly through the imposition of colonial standards as a ‘civilizing force.’ This article argues that the inculcation of Indigenous men with hegemonic ideals, together with experiences of emasculation, have led to an unintended outcome, namely the emergence of a ‘protest masculinity.’ This ‘protest masculinity’ arose as a result of and in reaction to assimilationist policies. Paradoxically, Indigenous male activists contested dominant concepts of masculinity, yet at the same time conformed to the very cultural ideals they struggled against. This article offers an understanding of how gender and race bias intersect to disadvantage Indigenous men and how this in turn constitutes a powerful catalyst for change.


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Deforestation as (settler colonial) ideology: Danilo Urzedo, Pratichi Chatterjee, ‘The Colonial Reproduction of Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon: Violence Against Indigenous Peoples for Land Development’, Journal of Genocide Research, 2021

12Apr21

Abstract: This article argues that land clearing of the Amazon rainforest has been historically determined by colonial plans that lead to high rates of tropical deforestation and social injustice. We explore how deforestation has been organized by different imaginaries of modernization and progress, which equate land development with varying economic, social, and environmental agendas. We identify distinct historical phases of land use change in the Brazilian Amazon, where resource extraction, agricultural and infrastructure development, and commodity production are shaped by colonial logics that work to eliminate or exploit Indigenous peoples. In the most recent phase, Bolsonaro’s far-right authoritarianism is reproducing the land development goals of the former military dictatorship with a concerted effort to displace Indigenous groups for agricultural and infrastructure expansion. The Amazon destruction has resulted in ecocide through large-scale environmental degradation accompanied by historical genocide and the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples. This article demonstrates that tropical deforestation is a continuing ideological process underpinned by narratives of progress, which in the case of the Brazilian Amazon takes the form of settler imaginaries of prosperous regional development. We emphasize the necessity of recognizing these commonly overlooked colonial dynamics as an essential starting point for returning political power to Indigenous communities.


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Rhetorical sovereignty: Ian Khara Ellasante, ‘Radical sovereignty, rhetorical borders, and the everyday decolonial praxis of Indigenous peoplehood and Two-Spirit reclamation’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021

12Apr21

Abstract: As settler colonialism has forcibly constricted vast expanses of Indigenous lands, criss-crossing them with superimposed borders, it has sought to redraw the boundaries of Indigenous identity by imposing definitions and categories that invariably lead to Indigenous diminishment. Strategic and eliminatory categorization is essential to the settler-colonial imperative. This essay explores settler-colonial exercises of rhetorical imperialism that deploy language, connotation, and categorization to dismantle Indigenous cultural systems. The author discusses the political stake in who is designated Indigenous, the drive to remake Indigenous nations in the image of the settler-state, the enforcement of cis-heteropatriarchal capitalist norms, and assimilationist strategies aiming to disrupt Indigenous formations of gender and kinship. The author argues that Indigenous assertions of peoplehood as a definitional and unifying framework and Two-Spirit as a self-identifier are acts of resistance that they term “oppositional identification” and “contrast mechanisms.” They are exercises of rhetorical and radical sovereignty, tantamount to everyday decolonization.


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Indigenous cosmovision against settlervision: Ranjeeva Ranjan, Alexis Castillo, Karla Morales, ‘Mapuche cosmovision and territorial rights: An interdisciplinary approach to understand the conflict of Wallmapu, Chile’, Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021

08Apr21

Abstract: The indigenous population of Latin America has been suffering from a sense of alienation since the arrival of Columbus in 1492 who referred to this land as “Nuevo Mundo”. There is a long history of environmental exploitation in Chile which has severely strained the relationship amongst the Mapuche community, the State and private entities (hydroelectric and timber industry). Although this conflict seems to be economic-productive associated with land, wherein land attains a “tangible material good”, in the Mapuche cosmovision, land (Mapu means land in Mapudungun, the language of Mapuche) acquires a connotation of “intangible material and immaterial good”. There is a profound imperceptible connection between nature and Mapuche and their traditions and culture are strongly rooted in the land. The industrial expansion has promoted a series of negative externalities like habitat fragmentation, loss of native forest, biodiversity reduction, water availability, etc. These affect the “idiosyncrasy” of this community (Mapuche-Nature relationship) and loss of their land could represent an identity loss. The Chilean indigenous policy appears to be inadequate and fail to recognize the socio-cultural and territorial rights for all indigenous peoples, including Mapuche, given the multidimensionality of the land under the indigenous cosmovision. The socio-political measures imposed by the Chilean government until now to make their life “modern” boomeranged alienating them further from society. This paper proposes to look at the territorial rights of the Mapuche with an interdisciplinary approach and focuses on developing the conceptual framework of Mapuche cosmovision of land and territory. The study follows a brief analysis of the historical context of the territorial conflict between the Chilean State and the Mapuche people and how the implementation of national and international normative framework on indigenous rights has not been effective in resolving this territorial conflict. The study tries to synthesize and talks about integrating the Mapuche land cosmovision in the socio-political discourse and be considered while formulating any land policy involving Mapuche and other indigenous peoples inhabiting in Chile in future. The discussions and analysis have been carried out through a comprehensive literature review and integrate an interdisciplinary approach to look at this issue, both from the philosophical perspective and from the socio-political policy framework of government.


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