Abstract: Scientists working for oil companies in the Athabasca region are developing methods by which to reclaim muskeg (boreal peatlands) on land disturbed by oil sands extraction. The Alberta government requires companies to reclaim disturbed land by achieving equivalent capability of the landscape to support an end land use. Indigenous community members instead define reclamation as establishing not only quantifiable ecological functions, but also relationships to their traditional territories. Tensions emerge as Indigenous concerns are often subsumed within bureaucratic discourses that favour scientific classification and quantification of land uses in reclaimed areas. Divergent responses to muskeg in reclamation activities are informed in part by these competing emphases on quantifiable landscapes as opposed to those that are relational and growing. This article traces this multiplicity through the examination of government and scientific literature and ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous communities in northern Alberta. Muskeg is used as an analytical tool to explore competing conceptions of land reclamation. Mistranslation of polysemantic terms like muskeg occur on an ontological level, and settler colonial relations and power imbalances between competing languages and knowledge systems proliferate in reclamation activities.

Abstract: This article combines Indigenous mobility studies with recent work on seriality and periodical form to examine how the structural necessities of serialised periodical fiction reinforced representations of settler and Aboriginal mobilities for Australian readers across the nineteenth century. It considers the limits or gaps in the project of Australian settlement that these serial texts highlight through an exploration of how settler authors formulated ideologically acceptable and more ‘suspect’ manifestations of Aboriginal mobilities and persistence. Building upon Katherine Bode’s work in World of Fiction (2018) on Aboriginal presence in nineteenth-century Australian periodical fiction, this article considers how the structure of the serial itself worked to reinforce – and occasionally disrupt – perceptions of Aboriginal-settler frontier violence and white supremacy. It also explores moments of settler discomfort and unsettlement in these serial texts that operate as counterpoints to the larger imperatives of this periodical fiction to support and reinforce the colonial project. By aligning the disruptive potential of these serial narratives and their representations of Aboriginal and settler mobilities, I argue we can uncover moments when these texts appear to resist the rhetoric of forward momentum and advancement traditionally associated with narratives of colonial modernity.

Abstract: This manuscript reviews the urban growth process in the Temuco-Padre las Casas conurbation (Chile) on indigenous land, highlighting three topics of great interest. First, the ability of legislation to regulate the protection of indigenous land. Second, the role played by the real estate sector as the main protagonist of urban expansion on indigenous land. Finally, the subsidiary role of those who should be the main actors: indigenous communities. The consequence is a process of material and symbolic dispossession of the Mapuche population, which reinforces the dynamics of settler colonialism existing in the region and presents parallels and divergences with other international cases. For this, the methodology used combined quantitative data with qualitative information, spatializing the former and giving greater weight to the latter as an interpretive key. The results reflect a disagreement between a legislation incapable of regulating urban growth and responding to indigenous demands, and a reality marked by increasing pressure on the Mapuche population and lands. This shows a situation that is present in Chile but can be extrapolated to other countries in the region.

Excerpt: The true innovation of aprimso ideology, then, lies not in its relation to Western doctrinaire philosophy, but the telling precedent that a positive Latin American identity could only rise from indigenous thought and popular action. With its Quechua songs and cheers, and cells named after Inca emperors, APRA vindicated a shunned pre-colonial past and became the first popular movement to call for the wholesale liberation of Indians, who for over four centuries had been political non-participants. 

Abstract: The Westphalian concept of sovereignty frames international relations and law. Since the 2007 UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the notion of Indigenous sovereignty has also entered international political debate. In this article, we examine the underlying premise of Westphalian and Indigenous sovereignties. A scoping review of the literature reveals that Westphalian sovereignty is a Eurocentric concept implicated in the colonialisation of Indigenous peoples in settler societies. Conversely, Indigenous sovereignty is a broader idea that involves social and cultural aspects, recognises the interdependencies between political actors and relationships to the land, and acknowledges the contextualised nature of sovereignty. We suggest that the two conceptions of sovereignty cannot be reconciled with each other. However, in a shifting political terrain, Indigenous sovereignty poses a critical challenge to the Eurocentric definition of sovereignty.

Abstract: This article examines promotional material linked to Pocahontas, Child of the Forest (Edwin S. Porter, 1907) and Pocahontas (director unknown, 1910), placing them in the wider debates about colonialism, film exhibition, authenticity, and the role of film as an educational medium in the early 1900s. Since its emergence, cinema played a pivotal role in promulgating the ideas of assimilation into dominant, white Protestant values. As American society was becoming increasingly heterogeneous, Pocahontas, an Indigenous woman central to the national mythologies of the United States, offered a problematic model of cultural integration.

Abstract: This article contributes to the call for decolonial utopian work by examining one of the earliest utopian texts in the United States, Equality; or, A History of Lithconia. Using a close reading drawing on colonial context, the author argues that Equality criticizes management of the Euro-American settler state. The story’s historical and philosophical content overwrites Indigenous bloodshed and critiques instead both Jeffersonian agrarian democracy and urbanized commerce. The junction between reason and religion in this Deist text displays its ideological commitment to terra nullis and a settler autarky that rearranges space for the betterment of a settler populace. Advocating an equal share of land and income among settlers, Lithconia’s history praises an intelligent class that deploys reason and crafty social alliance to resolve Old World conflicts. Lithconia’s universal income ultimately diverts the spoils of centuries of war against indigenous peoples, suggesting utopia and indigeneity occupy an incongruent relationship.

Abstract: This body of cross-disciplinary scholarship illuminates the assertion that settler colonialism is not marked by a single historic moment of colonial conquest, but rather is structurally embedded. While settler colonialism is understood by many to centre on land specifically on territorial claims socio-legal analysis reveals that settler colonial power seeks to rework not only relationships to land but all areas of social life. In particular, settler colonialism establishes authority, and naturalizes that authority, by reconfiguring Indigenous life across a range of sites and scales. A central claim made by scholars of settler colonialism is the assertion that settler colonialism operates via an eliminative drive which seeks to kill or erase Indigenous peoples, their claims to land and ways of being in order to assert and naturalize state assertions of sovereignty. However, scholars of Indigenous studies have nuanced this claim by revealing ways in which settler colonialism depends on, and assumes the presence of, Indigenous peoples and their relationships to land.

Abstract: The growing interest in ‘During Conflict Justice’ (DCJ) in areas experiencing ongoing, sustained violent ‘conflict’ has further demonstrated the confluence between transitional justice and liberal peacebuilding approaches. Nowhere so is this more evident than in the case of Palestine-Israel where an ongoing process of Israeli settler-colonialism in historic Palestine continues, with the further spotlighting of ‘justice’ issues that are longstanding and unresolved. This article critiques the application of TJ/DCJ in Palestine-Israel and calls for a radicalisation of its application so as to ensure a platforming of conversation around decolonisation. It does so by critiquing the impact of discourse, specifically the framing of the ‘conflict’ and focuses on the nefarious role of a liberal peace building agenda in Palestine-Israel, a process that has embedded a deeply unjust and inequitable status quo. An insight into several ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ strategies of TJ/DCJ in Palestine-Israel is provided, with the conclusion reached that; any TJ/DCJ praxis that does not platform meaningful conversation around decolonisation in the region will ultimately amount to the individualisation of ‘justice’ whilst failing to address root causes.

Abstract: Thoughtful scholars have critiqued western yoga as a continuation of the process of colonization, upholding White supremacy and capitalism through a host of violent practices (Page). Yoga in the West has become synonymous with the predominantly White, cis-gendered, upper middle-class, able-bodied women who teach and practice asana in corporate studios in urban areas (Kaushik-Brown). However, although the settler-colonial project is a powerful one, we know that it is not complete; it is one that we can further and/or resist. As Black yoga teachers in the US, one way that we can impede the settler-colonial project is by engaging in resistance of state violence through yoga. One such practice is Yoga for Black Lives (YBL), a series of yoga classes in which the foci are Black people who experience diminished life chances because of the violence of the settler-colonial state (violence of the criminal legal system/police violence, poor infrastructure that furthers environmental harm, negligent/impoverished public education, etc.). The YBL classes are taught in schools, community centers, theaters and small, independent yoga studios. They are led by Black teachers and feature theming, meditation and discussion around state violence broadly, and Black people who have lost their lives at the hands of the state specifically. Classes have been donation-based: space is donated, the teaching labor is donated, and all monetary donations from students go to activist organizations resisting violence against Black people. While the classes are attended mostly by people of color, White people are not excluded. Over the course of the first year of the Yoga for Black Lives sessions, White studio owners have donated space, White teachers have asked if they could teach YBL classes, and White students have practiced in the space. But how should we understand yoga practices like this, ones that seek to further social justice broadly, and resist state violence specifically, in terms of settler colonialism and its afterlife? What are the various roles of White people, Black people and nBlack people of color in the yoga space? Are practices like these effective in securing resources for resistance? And resistance of what kind? Might a practice such as this one be furthering settler colonialism, even as it resists state violence (Nichols)? This chapter will address these questions through the lenses of critical race theory (Harris), decolonization (Tuck & Yang), and anti-Blackness (King). It will suggest ways forward for yoga practitioners of color considering the opportunities and challenges presented by inclusionary and exclusive yoga spaces, and for those who co-resist and co-struggle through the practice of yoga.