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Decolonising the blue spaces occupied by settler colonialism: Meg Parsons, Karen Fisher, Roa Petra Crease, Decolonising Blue Spaces in the Anthropocene: Freshwater management in Aotearoa New Zealand, Palgrave, 2021

01Jun21

Description: This open access book crosses disciplinary boundaries to connect theories of environmental justice with Indigenous people’s experiences of freshwater management and governance. It traces the history of one freshwater crisis – the degradation of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Waipā River– to the settler-colonial acts of ecological dispossession resulting in intergenerational injustices for Indigenous Māori iwi (tribes). The authors draw on a rich empirical base to document the negative consequences of imposing Western knowledge, worldviews, laws, governance and management approaches onto Māori and their ancestral landscapes and waterscapes. Importantly, this book demonstrates how degraded freshwater systems can and are being addressed by Māori seeking to reassert their knowledge, authority, and practices of kaitiakitanga (environmental guardianship). Co-governance and co-management agreements between iwi and the New Zealand Government, over the Waipā River, highlight how Māori are envisioning and enacting more sustainable freshwater management and governance, thus seeking to achieve Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ). 
The book provides an accessible way for readers coming from a diversity of different backgrounds, be they academics, students, practitioners or decision-makers, to develop an understanding of IEJ and its applicability to freshwater management and governance in the context of changing socio-economic, political, and environmental conditions that characterise the Anthropocene.


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The settlers claims vs. the indigenous ones: Jacqueline Keeler, Standoff: Standing Rock, the Bundy Movement, and the American Story of Sacred Lands, Torrey House Press, 2021

29May21

Description: The Bundy takeover of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s standoff against an oil pipeline in North Dakota are two sides of the same story that created America and its deep-rooted cultural conflicts. Through a compelling comparison of conflicting beliefs and legal systems, Keeler explores whether the West has really been won—and for whom.


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Possibly, but lamenting settler colonialism without knowing them is like trying to overcome capitalism without referencing the bourgeoisie: Amy Fung, ‘Is Settler Colonialism Just Another Study of Whiteness?’ Canadian Ethnic Studies, 53, 2, 2021, pp. 115-131

28May21

Abstract: This paper is part one of a much larger class-based analysis of the “settler” identity. In order to better understand the settler’s legibility and illegibility within white settler colonial nations, this paper argues that existing settler colonial scholarship has overwhelmingly favored dialectic understandings of settler/Indigenous relations alongside Eurocentric narratives centering feelings of shame, guilt, and uncertainty. This Eurocentric bias in settler colonial studies not only reinforces white supremacy, but is in itself a form of white supremacy by perpetuating the same systemic erasures of anti-Blackness, minimizing racialized stories, and decentering Indigenous knowledge. By segregating minorities from their role and complicity in benefiting from and upholding the status quo of white settler colonialism, settler colonial studies inhibits our critical understanding of the settler identity by naturalizing settler supremacy as whiteness. Reading across white and diasporic settler colonial scholarship through a lens of racial melancholia, this paper ultimately leads to its conclusion that settler and settler colonial studies are class-based categories guarded by the social hierarchy of white supremacy that continues to disrupt peaceful co-existence with Indigenous laws.


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Settler ‘democracy’ and Indigenous constituencies: David A. Armstrong, Christopher Alcantara, John Kennedy, ‘Exploring the effects of electorate size on indigenous voter turnout’, Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2021

28May21

Abstract: A growing body of scholarship suggests that Indigenous peoples abstain from voting in national and subnational elections because of colonialism and so classic determinants of turnout do not apply. We investigate this argument by examining the relationship between electorate size and voter turnout in federal, provincial and regional elections in five Inuit communities in Canada, leveraging the fact that these communities are mostly similar across a range of factors. Given that these communities negotiated and established their own regional government in 2005 and given the colonial and settler nature of the federal and provincial governments, we expect classic determinants of turnout, such as electorate size, to apply only at the regional level. Surprisingly, however, we find that electorate size influences turnout at the federal and regional levels but not at the provincial level.


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South Africa’s settler colonialism: Thiven Reddy, ‘South Africa and the crisis of liberal democracy: Settler-colonial modernity and a dominant friend-enemy conception of politics’, in Jürgen Mackert, Hannah Wolf, Bryan S. Turner (eds), The Condition of Democracy, Routledge, 2021

28May21

Abstract: This chapter interprets liberal democracy in South Africa through the lens of settler-colonial society. Because generated from a violent history of a colonizer-colonized relationship, a Schmittian conception of politics dominates the pre-1994 struggle against Apartheid-racism where recognition and personal sacrifice were valued. This conception of the political splits in the post-1994 period. The political elite instrumentally draws upon a ‘friend-enemy’ discourse for electoral mobilizational politics, while the subaltern continues with the ‘pre-1994 struggle’ to obtain citizen recognition and access to material goods. This chapter draws on Fanon, Schmitt, and Arendt to explain the troubled state of the South African liberal democratic project.


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Civic rights under settler colonialism in Israel: Ilan Pappe, ‘The discourse of exceptionalism: Civil and human rights in Israel’, in Jürgen Mackert, Hannah Wolf, Bryan S. Turner (eds), The Condition of Democracy, Routledge, 2021

28May21

Abstract: The application of the settler-colonial paradigm to Israel is closely associated with reviewing Israel’s record of civil and human rights violation. The very nature of settler-colonial projects and their treatment of indigenous populations leads inevitably to massive violations of the natives’ basic rights, which explains the ethnic cleansing of Palestine of 1948 and Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians ever since. The chapter argues that the exceptionalism awarded to Israel, which exempts it from international scrutiny, stems from disregard for the settler-colonial nature of Israel. If the West considered it and opened a discussion of all the violations, it could play a constructive role in the struggle against them wherever they happen.


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Indigeneity’s deep time: Paulette F. C. Steeves, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, University of Nebraska Press, 2021

28May21

Description: The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years. Steeves discusses the political history of American anthropology to focus on why pre-Clovis sites have been dismissed by the field for nearly a century. She explores supporting evidence from genetics and linguistic anthropology regarding First Peoples and time frames of early migrations. Additionally, she highlights the work and struggles faced by a small yet vibrant group of American and European archaeologists who have excavated and reported on numerous pre-Clovis archaeology sites. In this first book on Paleolithic archaeology of the Americas written from an Indigenous perspective, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere includes Indigenous oral traditions, archaeological evidence, and a critical and decolonizing discussion of the development of archaeology in the Americas.


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Playing Indian, playing settler: Sarah Viren, ‘The Native Scholar Who Wasn’t’, New York Times, 25/05/21

26May21

Excerpt: In Native Studies there’s a concept called “settler colonialism” that Smith has written about. It includes the conviction felt by non-Natives that the land, but also the knowledge, cultural heritage and identities of American Indians belong to the rest of us. In “Playing Indian,” the book by Deloria, he argues that white people in this country have been co-opting Native identities since the Boston Tea Party. “Playing Indian is a persistent tradition in American culture,” he writes, “stretching from the very instant of the national big bang into an ever-expanding present and future.”


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Settler colonialism’s back lanes: Dania Igdoura, ‘An Examination of Settler Colonialism in Canada’s Legal Institutions: 1492 Land Back Lane’, Aletheia, 1, 2, 2021

25May21

Abstract: In this paper, I will investigate how Canadian legal institutions function to serve the interests of the settler colonial state in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. This investigation will be facilitated through an examination of the court proceedings of 1492 Land Back Lane, a contemporary example whereby land defenders are being criminalized by Canadian courts for re-occupying their unceded land in Caledonia to protect it from a proposed housing development. Here we see an example of oppression, and therefore, it may be useful to utilize Sensoy & DiAngelo’s (2017) definition of oppression: namely, the prejudice and discrimination of one social group, in this case, settlers, against another, here Indigenous peoples, backed by legal authority and historical, social and institutional power (p. 84). Focusing on legal authority in this case, I seek to demonstrate ultimately how anti-Indigeneity is embedded within the Canadian legal system. In order to do this, I will begin by examining key historical legal documents, namely the Constitution of Canada and the Indian Act, with an eye to the settler colonial ideology of paternalism underlying them. Then, I will turn to the court proceedings of 1492 Land Back Lane, establishing their problematic and paternalistic nature, and grounding them within existing case law on Indigenous land rights, to demonstrate how Canadian courts can serve to perpetuate settler colonialism and land dispossession, often through the legal mechanism of injunction. Ultimately, I seek to demonstrate how the very concept of land back is incompatible with Canadian law.


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Environmental settler colonialism: Thomas R. Eimer, Maliene Kip, ‘Nature conservation, indigenous rights, and settler colonialism: The politics of payments for ecosystem services in Mato Grosso do Sul (Brazil)’, 2021

25May21

Abstract: Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are strongly criticized by political ecology scholars. Predominantly, their critique is rooted in notions of distributive justice, as they focus on the negative impact (e.g. land rights distribution) of PES for indigenous and other local communities. Many liberal supporters of PES do not deny that these problems are real. However, they put more emphasis on procedural justice and claim that PES may trigger an institutionalization of more inclusive dialogic procedures. As of yet, both strands of literature underestimate the impact of the postcolonial conditions in which many PES projects are situated. This is where our article steps in. We investigate initial PES politics in Mato Grosso do Sul, a Brazilian province that is dominated by ongoing settler colonialism. Our research results indicate that the implementation of inclusive procedures in PES projects may partially mitigate the consequences of ongoing settler colonialism but that this more frequently fails because of its being embedded into the structures of a colonially shaped political economy. Although PES occasionally empower indigenous actors to confront local elites more effectively and strengthen the rights of indigenous women, the resulting transformations within the communities themselves are likely to weaken their political self-organization.


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