settler colonial studies blog

Queer settlers: Xander Lenc, ‘Queer placemaking, settler colonial time, and the desert imaginary in Palm Springs’ in Cara Courage, Tom Borrup, Maria Rosario Jackson, Kylie Legge, Anita McKeown, Louise Platt, Jason Schupbach (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking, Routledge 2021

05Jan21

Abstract: In recent decades the desert resort city of Palm Springs, CA, has become an important site of queer culture, and is now by some measures the ‘gayest’ city in the United States. At the same time, the Cahuilla tribe, whose reservation intersects with the city, has recently gained considerable autonomy over their land, bringing them into conflict with a rising architectural preservationist movement led predominantly by white gay men. This chapter draws on works in geography, Native American studies, and queer theory to question enduring conceptions about the role of time and indigeneity in urban placemaking, and to contribute to our understanding of the oblique spatiotemporal logics of American settler colonialism, or what Mark Rifkin has called ‘settler common sense.’ I argue that settler common sense in Palm Springs is structured by a colonial legacy of treating the desert as a racialized space of ruination, timelessness, and queer becoming.

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Settler museums are still settler colonial: Sheila Watson, ‘Settler societies, guilt and Indigenous inhabitants of the nation’, in Sheila Watson, National Museums and the Origins of Nations, Routledge 2020

05Jan21

Abstract: Museum methods have improved considerably in some countries, where there is more sensitivity towards the feelings of Indigenous peoples, along with genuine attempts to co-curate exhibitions. There has been a gradual recognition that the founding of the nation is the story of conquest, forced assimilation and humiliation. While this is often addressed with sympathy for the Indigenous, national museums struggle to deal with traditional notions of civilisation and progress in the context of Indigenous cultures and histories. The transition from anthropology museums, where many of these peoples were first consigned, into history museums, has proved problematic. Indeed, this chapter suggests that attempts at cultural relativity, adopted from anthropology (Kerr 2019), may be misinterpreted when placed within frameworks created by national histories. It argues that theories of social evolution, when linked to certain concepts of civilisation, widespread in popular narratives of history, inadvertently offer representations of Aboriginal societies as somehow backward, or less evolved, despite the best endeavours of museum curators to present all cultures as equal.

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The ‘homelands within’ against settler colonialism: Riel Dupuis-Rossi, ‘Resisting the “attachment disruption” of colonisation through decolonising therapeutic praxis: Finding our way back to the Homelands Within’, Psychotherapy and Counselling Journal Australia, 2021

02Jan21

Abstract: Through attempted annihilation and assimilation, colonisation’s main purpose is to force us into a state of forgetfulness about who we are and where we come from—if we survive to see another day, that is. Under colonisation, we have been knocked down, repeatedly. It is this repeated violence that mirrors the relationship imposed by the settler state on Indigenous Peoples. Under colonial rule, we have not been free to be our genuine and authentic Indigenous selves, let alone thrive as nations and confederacies of Peoples.

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Settler colonial tourism: Camille Petersen, The “Oldest City” Narrative: Colorblind Settler Racism and Historical Storytelling in St. Augustine, Florida, PhD dissertation, Northeastern University, 2020

29Dec20

Abstract: This dissertation examines place-based national origins stories told in the context of the City of St Augustine and Florida tourism. Using data from two commemorations and a national monument, I examine how discourses of race and settler colonialism structure the narratives at the city, state, and national levels. Historicizing the USA as a settler colony brings together research from native studies and indigenous scholars to help sociologists move beyond the Black/White binary and more fully understand the ideological work that historical storytelling does. The City of St Augustine and the state of Florida rely on heritage tourism and colonial charm to lure visitors and new residents by the millions each year. Using Critical Race Discourse Analysis (CRDA) for this extended case study, I find that colorblind racialized discourses and representations function not only to promote racist attitudes but to shore up the dominant settler colonial ideology which claims that the USA is a White nation and White settlers are rightful owners of the land. Furthermore, the narratives dismiss colonial racist violence and centralize only White characters in the present, contributing to the maintenance of a Eurocentric White worldview in which Indians and Afro-Americans exist only in the past or on the margins. Finally, tales of resistance to racialized domination are silenced in the tourism narratives, despite an accessible archive of Indian and Black resistance in Florida. In the first chapter I lay out the theoretical interventions made by scholars in various fields and position them as contributions to a historically specific sociological understanding of race and ethnicity as a global and local power structure, proposing a an analytic of historical storytelling rather than memory or heritage. The settler colonial (as opposed to postcolonial) context of the USA is the key intervention from native/Indigenous and Settler Colonial studies and serves as the theoretical framework to understand the contradictory ideology of colorblind racism throughout the dissertation. In the following three empirical chapters, I identify the key tropes of colorblind settler racism as an ideology which forms the basis of our national origins story and prevailing cultural norms of Eurocentric Whiteness. In the first chapter I am analyzing ethnographic and textual data from the city of St Augustine’s 450th celebration, commemorating 450 years since the “encounter” between Pedro Menendez and Indigenous inhabitants at what would be named St Augustine and settled by the Spanish. As a commemoration, the 450th serves to celebrate settler colonial heroes who teach us lessons about meritocracy and the American Dream through the lens of the ‘moment of encounter’ in St Augustine as the birth of multicultural America. In the next chapter I use data from the state-wide “Viva Florida 500!” marketing campaign and year-long commemoration, including a historical “courtroom drama” written and performed for the occasion and a promotional video from the “Florida Brand” advertising campaign. In this chapter I show how settler ideology functions through historical storytelling in a knowledge economy at the confluence of history, archaeology, and marketing. Settler tropes pervade the heritage landscape through these various industries and are presented to the public as official truth, explicitly and implicitly in the images and characters chosen to represent the state. In the final empirical chapter, I analyze the historical storytelling at the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, finding that the stories told in the museum and by the St Augustine visual landscape at large are descendent from explicit settler colonial plans to make this land “our own” through institutional and legal means. The preservations of the National Park Service and Antiquities Act do ideological work to promote the idea of a White nation that “rightfully” owns land stolen through the Discovery Doctrine. Throughout this research, the findings show that diversity and inclusion of non-White historical figures in the ‘stock story’ narrative of the USA promotes racism and White Supremacy just as well as exclusion does, and both moves continue to coexist.

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Counter-institutionalisation against settler colonialism: Anthony William Persaud, Counter-institutionalization and the economic futures of First Nations in British Columbia, PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2020

29Dec20

Abstract: The legacy of settler-colonialism is manifest most potently as a dominant narrative that rationalizes First Nations compliance with Western-liberal institutions of common law, property and market-based economic growth. These have become de facto requirements for socioeconomic improvements and well-being within First Nations communities. This dissertation challenges this assumption and narrative through an examination of the efforts of several First Nations in British Columbia as they pursue self-determination as central to their institutional and economic futures. I begin from the premise that the socio-economic and cultural-ecological condition of First Nations communities today is contingent upon the rules and governance structures imposed on First Nations as they interact with the settler-colonial state. Less recognized, however, are the multiple efforts of First Nations to redraw these structures and the logics that drive them through counter-institutionalizing processes. The dissertation comprises several studies of these processes, each of which are based on qualitative research conducted across four years working as a researcher and community development practitioner with First Nations in British Columbia, Canada. Chapter 2 highlights how First Nations are strategically positioning themselves – albeit in constrained ways – by leveraging the Crown’s duty to consult and accommodate in order to strengthen territorial selfgovernance and jurisdiction. Chapter 3 examines the conflicting institutional logics at play within First Nations forestry-based social enterprises. Chapter 4 demonstrates how a growing number of First Nations communities are seeking to resolve exigent local housing challenges through the creative reformulation of relations of production, allocation and redistribution. Chapter 5 focuses on the institution of property within the context of the Tŝilhqot’in Nation as they seek to re-establish an institutional framework upon which they can take control of their title lands and new jurisdictions, while maintaining their values and visions for the future. Combined these chapters aim to make real the diverse economic efforts of First Nations and open up new possibilities to establish counter-institutional frameworks which prevail alongside or independent of capitalist and colonial pressures.

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Settler colonial conservation: James Beattie, ‘Fashioning a future: Settlement, improvement and conservation in the European colonisation of Otago, 1840-60’, International Review of Environmental History, 6, 2, 2020, pp. 75-102

26Dec20

Abstract: This article, split into 2 parts that will be published over 2 journal issues, examines environmental attitudes and actions amongst the first generation of settlers in Otago, New Zealand, between 1840 and 1860. Based on extensive analysis of diaries, letters, artworks and official documents, it argues for the need to recognise the complexity of European environmental responses and actions, including highlighting extensive official attempts at forest conservation from the late 1840s. Part I of this article examines the complexity of settler views by demonstrating the importance of the concept of improvement as a means by which colonists sought to Europeanise Otago through introductions of familiar plants and animals, and the establishment of farms. Part II is in 2 sections: Section 1 considers the impact of Romanticism on settler interpretations of Otago’s environment, including the manner in which they framed and depicted its harbours and mountains in writing and art. Section 2 examines concerns over resource depletion and details official measures to protect forests, including through reservation, licensing of timber extraction and the appointment of forest guards.

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Apology is a start: Nicholas B. Murphy, Apology and Reconciliation in Settler States, PhD dissertation, University of Western Ontario, 2020

26Dec20

Abstract: This dissertation offers a normative account of how we should conceive of reconciliation between Indigenous people(s), states qua states, and their non-Indigenous citizens. It mines pre-theoretic understandings of reconciliation to determine appropriate governing norms for reconciled relationships, the normative expectations that attend these, and what processes or initiatives might be necessary to achieve them. In liberal democratic settler states like Canada, Australia, the United States and New Zealand the desirability of reconciliation is acknowledged by all parties. However, considerable ambiguity surrounds the concept ‘reconciliation.’ This is problematic because concepts influence social discourse, and the rhetoric of reconciliation not only guides public policy by prioritizing some goals over others, it also influences the process of building healthy relationships by demarcating the contours of this discourse. This makes the need for clarity with respect to the concept acute. Yet a priori judgements about the content of reconciliation are unwarranted in intercultural political contexts. Accordingly, this work takes as its first point of reference an intriguing instrument of reconciliation almost universally thought to be involved in the process: official apology for historical and enduring injustices perpetrated by settler states against Indigenous people(s). In the broadest terms, the project offers something akin to a transcendental argument: if apology of this kind is involved in reconciliatory projects, what does its use say about the process and aims of reconciliation? Chapter 1 explores how to make sense of official apology for historical and enduring injustice by grounding contemporary nonIndigenous citizens’ reparative responsibilities in the context of reconciliation. Chapter 2 delves into official apology, asking what it should look like, from whom it should come, and what it should aim to do. Chapter 3 sheds light on the process of reconciliation by examining the means by which the goals of apology can be promoted through substantive initiatives that simultaneously demonstrate apologetic sincerity. Finally, chapter 4 offers necessary conditions for reconciliation as an outcome. It argues that since apology seeks both to circumscribe the range of reasonable interpretation of history and to enact or engender reciprocal attitudes or respect and trust, so too should these elements feature in any defensible conception of reconciled relationships in the settler state context.

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Climate fiction can be settler colonial: Briggetta Pierrot, Nicole Seymour, ‘Contemporary Cli-Fi and Indigenous Futurisms’, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, 9, 4, 2020, pp. 92-113

26Dec20

Abstract: In this essay, we survey recent prominent works of climate fiction, or cli-fi, through the lens of Indigenous futurism, arguing that several of these works pointedly absent or even appropriate Indigenous perspectives and traditions. We conclude that this genre potentially works to justify settler colonialism.

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The sovereign should be dual: Bruce Sieffert, Respecting sovereignties: Indigenous/state agreements in British Columbia and their alignment with a dual sovereignty concept, MA dissertation, University of Victoria, 2020

26Dec20

Abstract: This thesis explores a conception of dual sovereignty, consisting of Indigenous and state sovereignties existing and operating within the same territorial space. A dual sovereignty construct, standing in distinct contrast with the common settler-held presumption of Canadian state sovereignty and hegemony, provides a superior frame for articulating just relations between Indigenous peoples, the Canadian state, and that state’s citizens. The thesis examines the role of agreement-making in defining relations between sovereign Indigenous peoples and the state, both in treaty and non-treaty form. Focused on non-treaty agreements that pertain to land and resources in the province of British Columbia, a case study approach reveals a congruence of several such agreements with elements of a dual sovereignty construct. Some of the agreements exhibit substantial compatibility with a dual sovereignty concept, with dialogical forms of recognition and a well-articulated Indigenous land-use vision and worldview built into the agreement-making process. Those agreements centered on land-use planning seem particularly well equipped to embrace a more dialogical process that creates space for an Indigenous vision, and allows Indigenous Nations to expand their institutional and structural power meaningfully in relation to the state. Agreements designed primarily to help manage the state-driven consultation processes that are required under Canadian state law seem inherently monological by contrast, providing only a restricted space for increased institutional or structural power of Indigenous peoples.

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The sovereign should be shared: Dominic O’Sullivan, Sharing the Sovereign: Indigenous Peoples, Recognition, Treaties and the State, Palgrave, 2020

26Dec20

Description: This book explains how recognition theory contributes to non-colonial and enduring political relationships between Indigenous nations and the state. It refers to Indigenous Australian arguments for a Voice to Parliament and treaties to show what recognition may mean for practical politics and policy-making. It considers critiques of recognition theory by Canadian First Nations’ scholars who make strong arguments for its assimilationist effect, but shows that ultimately, recognition is a theory and practice of transformative potential, requiring fundamentally different ways of thinking about citizenship and sovereignty. This book draws extensively on New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi and measures to support Maori political participation, to show what treaties and a Voice to Parliament could mean in practical terms. It responds to liberal democratic objections to show how institutionalised means of indigenous participation may, in fact, make democracy work better.

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