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Media policy under settler colonialism: Gretchen King, ‘Disrupting Settler Colonialism and Oppression in Media and Policy-Making: A View from the Community Media Advocacy Centre’, in Sandra Jeppesen, Paola Sartoretto (eds), Media Activist Research Ethics, Palgrave, 2020, pp. 109-129

09Sep20

Abstract: The regulatory regimes that dictate media and telecommunications practices in Canada uphold the colonial settler state and do little to combat systemic racism in the media. This is in part due to communication policy-making processes that marginalize and disempower diverse communities. Too often policy makers and researchers neglect prioritizing the specific needs and rights of people who are racialized, Indigenous, or living with disAbilities to access and representation in media. Within this context, the Community Media Advocacy Centre (www.CMACentre.ca) was founded in 2015 to disrupt settler colonialism and oppression in the media. CMAC was co-founded by experienced media activists who worked for decades in the vibrant community and Indigenous broadcasting sectors within Canada. Today, CMAC is a registered nonprofit organization uniquely comprised of academics, lawyers, policy consultants, and media practitioners who prioritize the perspectives, voices, and lived experiences of Indigenous Peoples, racialized people, and people living with disAbilities. CMAC prioritizes these voices because they are underrepresented in the media landscape generally and noticeably absent from media policy processes. Through research, relationship-building, advocacy, and learning, CMAC works to foreground the experience and knowledge of people who are racialized, Indigenous, or living with disAbilities in media research and communication policy processes.


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Gender at the center of settler colonialism: Rauna Kuokkanen, Restructuring Relations: Indigenous Self-Determination, Governance, and Gender, Oxford University Press, 2019

06Sep20

Description: This book interrogates normative conceptions of Indigenous self-determination and the structures of Indigenous self-government institutions, arguing that Indigenous self-determination is not achievable without restructuring all relations of domination beyond that with the state; nor can it be secured in the absence of gender justice. It demonstrates that the current rights discourse and focus on Indigenous–state relations is limited in scope and fails to convey the full meaning of self-determination for Indigenous peoples. Besides settler colonialism and neoliberal capitalism, relations of domination include racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, and gender violence, including violence against women, queer, trans and gender-nonconforming persons, and structural violence. Drawing on extensive participant interviews in Canada, Greenland, and Scandinavia, this book theorizes Indigenous self-determination as a foundational value, informed by the norm of integrity. This norm has two interrelated dimensions: bodily integrity and integrity of the land, both of which are a sine qua non for Indigenous gender justice. Conceptualizing self-determination as a foundational value seeks to restructure all relations of domination, including the hierarchical relation between self-determination and gender created and maintained by international law, Indigenous political discourse, and Indigenous institutions. The book argues that the persistent separation of issues between self-determination/self-government and gender/social is a major obstacle in implementing, realizing, and exercising Indigenous self-determination. Restructuring relations of domination further entails examining the gender regimes present in existing Indigenous self-government institutions, interrogating the relationship between Indigenous self-determination and gender violence, and considering future visions of Indigenous self-determination, including rematriation of Indigenous governance and an independent statehood.


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Dealing with settler archeologists: Laura Kelvin, Lisa Hodgetts, ‘Unsettling Archaeology’, Canadian Journal of Archaeology, 44, 2020, pp. 1-19

06Sep20

Abstract: In this introduction to the special issue, we examine some of the ways that settler colonialism permeates archaeology in Canada and argue for unsettling approaches to archaeology. Archaeology is a product of and remains a tool for settler colonialism, often oppressing both people of the past and people in the present, especially Indigenous People, Black People, People of Colour, and LGBTQ2S+ community members. We call for unsettling research paradigms, which aim to disrupt the settler colonial foundations that continue to permeate archaeological work and ensure that it benefits only a select few. Unsettling approaches target not only the work we do as archaeologists, but also the structures our work operates through, including universities, museums, different levels of government, and heritage policy and legislation governing private sector archaeology. They require us to acknowledge and confront our relationships to settler colonialism and the ways we participate in it, in all aspects of our lives. Unsettling paradigms play out differently within each project and for each participant, depending on individuals’ unique relationships to settler colonialism, their own experiences, and the context. As illustrated in the papers in this special issue, they encompass themes of truth, listening, learning, feeling, relinquishing control, and building strong futures. To move towards an archaeology that is anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-mysogynist, we must address the deeply embedded colonialism, racism, and misogyny in Canadian settler colonial structures and society. We must start by addressing them within ourselves and the institutions that govern and support our work. Because the unequal power relations within archaeology are so entrenched and pervasive, change may come slowly. It will involve long-term commitment to an ongoing cycle of learning, feeling (particularly when we feel uncomfortable), questioning, and most importantly, acting.


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Citizenship education for settlers: Sophie Rudolph, Melitta Hogarth, ‘Contested Citizenship Education in Settler Colonies on First Nations Land’, in Andrew Peterson, Garth Stahl, Hannah Soong (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Citizenship and Education, Palgrave, 2020, pp. 537-548

06Sep20

Abstract: Citizenship education in British settler colonies is no straightforward issue. The history of colonization, imbued with racism, and the ongoing presence of settler peoples and their institutions and government on unceded First Nations land, creates deep citizenship dilemmas. For many years British settler states, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and America, have sought to silence and subdue First Nations peoples through policies and practices that marginalize Indigenous languages, knowledges, and histories. The institution of education has played a key role in these acts of marginalization. This chapter explores the ethical and political dilemmas of citizenship and education in these contexts. It examines the citizenship tensions produced by settler colonies occupying First Nations land, the making of the settler citizen through education systems dominated by whiteness, and the limit points for citizenship education under these conditions. It is argued that justice and citizenship education may be incompatible and that a stance of “anti-citizenship” may be the only possibility for a pathway toward justice in these settler colonial contexts.


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Substantive reservations about the reservations: Justin Gage, We Do Not Want the Gates Closed between UsNative Networks and the Spread of the Ghost Dance, University of Oklahoma Press, 2020

04Sep20

Description: In the 1860s and 1870s, the United States government forced most western Native Americans to settle on reservations. These ever-shrinking pieces of land were meant to relocate, contain, and separate these Native peoples, isolating them from one another and from the white populations coursing through the plains. We Do Not Want the Gates Closed Between Us tells the story of how Native Americans resisted this effort by building vast intertribal networks of communication, threaded together by letter writing and off-reservation visiting.

Faced with the consequences of U.S. colonialism—the constraints, population loss, and destitution—Native Americans, far from passively accepting their fate, mobilized to control their own sources of information, spread and reinforce ideas, and collectively discuss and mount resistance against onerous government policies. Justin Gage traces these efforts, drawing on extensive new evidence, including more than one hundred letters written by nineteenth-century Native Americans. His work shows how Lakotas, Cheyennes, Utes, Shoshones, Kiowas, and dozens of other western tribal nations shrewdly used the U.S. government’s repressive education system and mechanisms of American settler colonialism, notably the railroads and the Postal Service, to achieve their own ends. Thus Natives used literacy, a primary tool of assimilation for U.S. policymakers, to decolonize their lives much earlier than historians have noted.

Whereas previous histories have assumed that the Ghost Dance itself was responsible for the creation of brand-new networks among western tribes, this book suggests that the intertribal networks formed in the 1870s and 1880s actually facilitated the rapid dissemination of the Ghost Dance in 1889 and 1890. Documenting the evolution and operation of intertribal networking, Gage demonstrates its effectiveness—and recognizes for the first time how, through Native activism, long-distance, intercultural communication persisted in the colonized American West.


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A close look at the settlers: Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler, Cas Mudde, The Israeli Settler Movement: Assessing and Explaining Social Movement Success, Cambridge University Press, 2020

04Sep20

Description: The Israeli settler movement plays a key role in Israeli politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict, yet very few empirical studies of the movement exist. This is the first in-depth examination of the contemporary Israeli settler movement from a structural (rather than purely historical or political) perspective, and one of the few studies to focus on a longstanding, radical right-wing social movement in a non-western political context. A trailblazing systematic assessment of the role of the settler movement in Israeli politics writ large, as well as in relation to Israel’s policy towards the West Bank, this book analyzes the movement both as a whole and as a combination of its parts (i.e. branches) – institutions, networks, and individuals. Whether you are a student, researcher, or policymaker, this book offers a comprehensive and original theoretical framework alongside a rich empirical analysis which illuminates social movements in general, and the Israeli settler movement in particular.


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Digital media as decolonial practice: Ashley Cordes, ‘Revisiting Stories and Voices of the Rogue River War (1853–1856): A Digital Constellatory Autoethnographic Mode of Indigenous Archaeology’, Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 2020

04Sep20

Abstract: The Rogue River War (RRW) between Indigenous peoples and settlers is historically overlooked and storied through settler-colonial lenses. This essay narrates participation in a digital restorying and archaeological investigation into the war in light of digital advancements in archaeology and communication. The author coins a reflexive approach referred to as a digital constellatory autoethnographic mode of Indigenous archaeology (DCAM) and details how Snapchats, iPhone images, digital memory cards, and artifacts/belongings have sets of logic, mood, and vocalic character. DCAM demonstrates how digital media not counted as “official” data enables Indigenous and ally researchers to have more honest engagements with histories.


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Nonsettler immigrants: Ana Schwartz, ‘Were There Any Immigrants in New England? The New England Quarterly, 93, 3, 2020, pp. 400-413

02Sep20

Access the article here.


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Settler colonialism today: Aweke Amare Kenaw, ‘One country – two citizenships: the status of settlers in Benishangul-Gumuz Regional Sates (BGRS) of Ethiopia’, African Identities, 2020

02Sep20

Abstract: Migration of people from a certain area to a new destination is as old as human history. It is often made as a result of factors necessitating the movement either in the form of pull and push factors. In Ethiopia too, there has been various peoples’ movements since whenever in history from their home areas to new destinations across the country. Some have resulted for permanent settlements and full-fledged citizenship in the areas they settled but it has also produced very complicated relations in some. Besides individual oriented movements in search of better opportunities, there were also state operated movements based on the severity of circumstances. This paper, therefore, is dedicated to comment on the political and citizenship status of state operated settlers in Ethiopia in light of the experiences of Settlers in Asossa woreda, Benishangul-Gumuz Regional State (BGRS) of Ethiopia.


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Can the settler listen? Ryan Ben Shuvera, Sounding Unsettlement: Rethinking Settler States of Mind and Re(-)cognition through Scenes of Cross-Cultural Listening, PhD dissertation, University of Western Ontario, 2020

02Sep20

Abstract: In this dissertation I consider how listening to music produced by Indigenous peoples might convince settler listeners to surrender settler states of mind. I focus on the elements of settler colonialism that are exemplified in and challenged by the experiences of listening to music produced by Indigenous peoples. I focus on these aesthetic encounters as a way of exposing the everyday presence and power of settler states of mind and, more importantly, exploring how settlers might go about rebuilding states of mind through these moments of aesthetic surrender that are spurred by embodied experiences of sound. My project builds on the work of writers, theorists, and musicians such as African American writer James Baldwin, Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist Leanne Simpson, and Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson. I think about what it means to listen cross-culturally in the context of ongoing settler colonialism in North America (Turtle Island) and increased rhetoric around “reconciliation” in response to the conclusion of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) in 2015. I speak to the intimate level of listening to music from across cultures in this dissertation so that settlers might begin to engage in a critical self-reflection necessary for the rebuilding of settler states of mind—a reflection that involves a sense of surrender that requires settlers to learn how to participate in new worlds opened and led by various Indigenous peoples and nations.


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