settler colonial studies blog

Earthshattering settler colonialism: Anna Brickhouse, Earthquake and the Invention of America: The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe, Oxford University Press, 2024

16Sep25

Description: Earthquake and the Invention of America: The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe explores the role of earthquakes in shaping the deep timeframes and multi-hemispheric geographies of American literary history. Spanning the ancient world to the futuristic continents of speculative fiction, the earthquake stories assembled here together reveal the emergence of a broadly Western cultural syndrome that became an acute national fantasy: elsewhere catastrophe, an unspoken but widely prevalent sense that catastrophe is somehow “un-American.” Catastrophe must be elsewhere because it affirms the rightness of “here” where conquest, according to the syndrome’s logic, did not happen and is not occurring. The psychic investment in elsewhere catastrophe coalesced slowly, across centuries; varieties of it can be found in various European traditions of the modern. Yet in its most striking modes and resonances, elsewhere catastrophe proves fundamental to the invention of US-America—which is why earthquake, as the exemplary elsewhere catastrophe, is the disaster that must always happen far away or be forgotten. The book’s eight chapters and epilogue range from Plato to the Puritans, from El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Voltaire to Herman Melville and N.K. Jemisin, examining along the way the seismic imaginings of Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson, and Jose Martí, among other writers. At the core of the book’s inquiries are the earthquakes, historical and imagined, that act as both a recurrent eruptive force and a provocation for disparate modes of critical engagement with the long and catastrophic history of the Americas.

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Indigenous Shakespeare: Jamie Paris, ‘Becoming a Wolf: Indigenous Pedagogies and Settler Supervision in Sayet’s Where We Belong’, Literature Compass, 2025

16Sep25

Abstract: This article discusses Indigenous pedagogies and deep relationally Mohican playwright and educator Madeline Sayet’s Where We Belong. The play challenges the idea that Shakespeare is settler property, and it frames Sayet’s quitting her doctoral program and returning to her community as heroic. This paper argues that an Indigenous pedagogy should be based on love, kinship, and belonging.

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Besieged: Una McGahern, ‘The Practice of Siege Warfare: Reckoning with War, Genocide and Settler Colonialism in Palestine’, Journal of Genocide Research, 2025

16Sep25

Excerpt: When Major General Giora Eiland penned his now infamous op-ed in Haaretz, referenced above, he sought to justify what has become known as Israel’s “surrender or starve plan,” or the plan to “ethnically cleanse” northern Gaza of its Palestinian population by invoking US military logic and doctrine on the practice of modern siege warfare. Arguing that “there is no component in [the] proposal that is in violation of humanitarian international law,” this discursive framing served a further purpose: to obscure a much longer history of genocidal siege warfare and its practice since the early wars of the Palestinian Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), as the second quotation above highlights.

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Multicultural settler colonialism: Tyler Ritchie, From Migration to Manaakitanga: Rethinking Multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand, PhD dissertation, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, 2025

16Sep25

Abstract: Aotearoa New Zealand is an increasingly diverse country that relies on social cohesion between Indigenous, settler, and migrant groups. As a result, migrant groups have called for the adoption of multiculturalism by the government, but this concept has not been examined from Indigenous perspectives. This dissertation examines the perspectives of Māori, the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa, on the ways they experience and understand multiculturalism in their day-to-day lives. This work sought to fill a gap in the wider literature by conducting three qualitative studies that examine the relationship between indigeneity and migration. In Study 1 I conducted exploratory research that examined what whānau Māori thought about multiculturalism. Through focus groups across Aotearoa, twenty-nine participants shared that they experience positive relationships with migrant groups and value diversity in their communities. However, they also highlighted a lack of capacity to manaaki migrants due to colonisation and the undermining of their right to self-determination. Study 2 investigated whether migration influenced the perspectives of Māori on multiculturalism by interviewing Māori migrants to Australia. Six participants felt significant shifts in expressing their Māoritanga as migrants, and they reported that the presence of multicultural policy was undermined by racism toward both migrants and Indigenous Australians. Study 3 aimed to examine the multicultural policy context in Aotearoa, finding that at present policy was not perceived as particularly effective by those across the migration sector. Case studies developed from interviews with iwi, NGO, and local government representatives highlighted a need for more involvement of Māori and increased co-governance when developing multicultural policy. Following this, a Critical Tiriti Analysis illustrated gaps between the existing policy and articles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Together, these studies provide evidence that a conceptualisation of multiculturalism in Aotearoa must be reimagined. Importantly, this concept should reflect (and promote) a national identity that centres Māori as tangata whenua and makes clear the responsibilities settler and migrant groups have under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Considering the lack of policy that supports social cohesion, this research highlights the value of centring Indigenous perspectives and concepts such as manaakitanga in multicultural literature. Ultimately, only through decolonisation will multiculturalism be successful in Aotearoa New Zealand.

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But was it? Amanda Kingston, ‘”Oklahoma was empty”: Storying Land in Oklahoma Land Run Settler Memory’, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 40, 2, 2025, pp. 16-34

16Sep25

Excerpt: ‘You know’, the studendt responded, ‘where we dress up like pioneers and line up at a park to run and stake our claim. Just like the 89ers’. Prior to my teaching in Oklahoma, I was vaguely familiar with the history of the Oklahoma Land Runs in the late 1880s and 1890s. The federal government had brokered treaties of Oklahoma territory—or “Indian Territory”—at that time with Indigenous Nations such as the Cherokee Nation through the Treaty of Echota and the Choctaw Nation through the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. While I knew pieces of these histories, I did not yet know about the widespread reenactment practices in elementary school in which school children lined up along a playground, dressed in pioneer garb with cowboy hats and make-shift covered wagons, waiting for the signal to run and claim a piece of the land. Nor had I considered the exact work schooling did in the United States to uphold particular structures of a settler nation-state society.

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Contained, but still indigenous: Wafaa Rouissat, Dalila Senhadji, ‘The policy of cantonnement and the communal system in Oranie during nineteenth-century colonial Algeria’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

14Sep25

Abstract: In a settler colonial logic, where land constitutes a key resource for domination, the expropriation of tribes was often followed by their cantonnement. This strategy aimed to control them while freeing up space for French and European settlers. This article examines the implementation of this policy and its relationship with the establishment of the communal system in Algeria, focusing on the Oranie region in the nineteenth century. Through the study of two Indigenous villages, in Oran and Sidi Bel Abbès, this work highlights settlement patterns that challenge the commonly held view of the failure of this policy. Unpublished data from archives and field surveys provide a fresh perspective on this policy, placing it within the broader logic of assimilation. The article also highlights the resistance and/or adaptation of Indigenous populations to this policy and its impact on their social and urban life.

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The art of settler misrecognition: Allison Rowe, ‘Settler Colonial Misrecognition in Story Collection Socially Engaged Art’, Studies in Art Education : A Journal of Issues and Research, 66, 3, 2025, pp. 349-364

14Sep25

Abstract: Story collection—the practice of generating art or research by gathering participant narratives and combining them into a single product—is a popular method used by socially engaged artists and art education researchers. This ethnographic case study germinated with the examination of a story collection artwork executed at a gallery in a co-governed Indigenous–settler community in northern Canada. It expanded to consider how both my ethnographic methods and social practice art enact extractive, settler colonial approaches to knowledge. Working from Indigenous studies scholarship, particularly Sean Glen Coulthard (Yellowknife Dene), I show how repeated misrecognition of what Indigenous (and even settler) residents valued contributed to a local phenomenon of storytelling fatigue. This is a form of exhaustion brought on by excessive requests from outsiders to contribute to a project or artwork. These findings signal the need for artists, galleries, educators, and researchers to scrutinize how their undertakings are informed by the settler colonial politics of recognition.

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‘Indigenous’ vs ‘indigeneity’ (the revolutionary power of dialectics): Rafael Verbuyst, ‘Indigeneity, subversion, and the trauma of settler colonialism: A reply to Kurzwelly and Mullard’, Anthropological Theory, 2025

14Sep25

Abstract: In her response to my article, “Authenticity and Decolonization: On the Subversive Authenticity of Indigenous Resurgence,” Jordan Mullard invites me to regard subversive authenticity as a way of reckoning with the trauma of settler colonialism through a process of “becoming.” Conversely, Kurzwelly doubts the political and analytical efficacy of the concept, offering an anti-realist “alternative point of departure.” Engaging with Kurzwelly’s critique, I contend that anti-realism is in fact compatible with my argument that subversive authenticity can serve as a conduit for decolonization. To do so, I propose an analytical distinction between the terms “indigenous” and “indigeneity.” Whereas discussions about the concept indigenous tendentially pivot toward identitarian issues, “indigeneity” denotes a relative positioning within a settler-colonial structure of oppression. Building on this argument, I explore the potential of subversive authenticity as a political strategy and a form of “becoming.” I conclude with a brief reflection on how this exchange suggests contrasting interpretations of the function of theorizing in anthropological research.

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That settler colonial wall sits on Indigenous land: Margo Tamez, Cynthia Bejarano, Jeffrey P. Shepherd (eds), Gathering Together, We Decide: Archives of Dispossession, Resistance, and Memory in Ndé Homelands, University of Arizona Press, 2025

14Sep25

Description: In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security began condemnation proceedings on the property of Dr. Eloisa Tamez, a Lipan Apache (Ndé) professor, veteran, and title holder to land in South Texas deeded to her ancestors under the colonial occupation and rule of King Charles III of Spain in 1761, during a time when Indigenous lands were largely taken and exploited by Spanish colonizers. Crown grants of lands to Indigenous peoples afforded them the opportunity to reclaim Indigenous title and control. The federal government wanted Tamez’s land to build a portion of the “border wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border. She refused. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security sued her, but she countersued based on Aboriginal land rights, Indigenous inherent rights, the land grant from Spain, and human rights. This standoff continued for years, until the U.S. government forced Tamez to forfeit land for the wall. In response, Dr. Eloisa Tamez and her daughter, Dr. Margo Tamez, organized a gathering of Lipan tribal members, activists, lawyers, and allies to meet in El Calaboz, South Texas. This gathering was a response to the appropriation of the Tamez family land, but it also provided an international platform to dispute the militarization of Indigenous territory throughout the U.S.-Mexico bordered lands. The gathering and years of ensuing resistance and activism produced an archive of scholarly analyses, testimonios, artwork, legal briefs, poetry, and other cultural productions. This unique collection spotlights powerful voices and perspectives from Ndé leaders, Indigenous elders, settler-allies, Native youth, and others associated with the Tamez family, the Ndé defiance, and the larger Indigenous rights movement to document their resistance; expose, confront, and end racism and militarization; and to foreground Indigenous women–led struggles for justice.

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Settler colonial medicine: Obinna Esomchukwu, Lisa Bishop, Libby Dean, Kori A. La Donna, Sarah Burm, ‘Facing hard truths: Medical education’s reckoning with settler colonialism in an era of reconciliation’, Medical Education, 2025

13Sep25

Excerpt: Medical schools are responsible for embedding Indigenous health education across the training continuum. Central to this work is recognising settler colonialism as an ongoing structure …

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