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The settler colonialism of pandemics: Tai S. Edwards, Paul Kelton, ‘Germs, Genocides, and America’s Indigenous Peoples’, Journal of American History, 107, 1, 2020, pp. 52–76

30Jun20

Excerpt: “Junipero Serra was a nazi not a saint!” “GENOCIDE EQUALS SAINTHOOD?” “NATIVE LIVES MATTER.” These were just a few of the slogans emblazoned on posters and banners during protests opposing the eighteenth-century priest Junípero Serra’s canonization in 2015. Accusations that Serra committed genocide also reverberated in the press. Vincent Medina—a Catholic Ohlone Costanoan Esselen Indian and the assistant to the curator at one of California’s surviving missions—told the New York Times that canonizing “the leader of the disastrous, genocidal California mission system is a way that the church further legitimized the pain and suffering of Ohlone and countless other California Indians.”


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Arrivants as weapons of settler colonialism: Kundai Manamere, ‘Remembering Tom the boss boy: the place of black immigrants in the establishment of the southeastern lowveld sugar estates, Zimbabwe, 1906–1972’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2020

28Jun20

Abstract: This article explores the role of black immigrants in the history of settler colonialism by demonstrating the interstitial positioning of boss boys on white owned farms in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Most of these individuals came as part of earlier settlers and they occupied a strategic position in the entrenchment of settler colonialism as they acted as intermediaries between the coloniser and the colonised. This article is about a black immigrant named Tom Dunuza, personal servant, driver and boss boy to Thomas Murray MacDougall, the pioneer of Triangle Sugar Estates in southeastern Zimbabwe. It makes use of archives and oral narratives of his two descendants, former and current estate workers and residents to capture memories of Tom Dunuza’s role in the establishment of the lowveld sugar estates and illuminates our understanding of the complex and ambiguous position that boss boys occupied on early colonial farms. Those whom he supervised remember him as a colonial collaborator. The article demonstrates that through a racialised system of violence and paternalism, the boss boy enforced the oppression and subjugation of workers on early colonial farms. It also shows how changes in farm ownership and management from individual and direct control to corporate and indirect administration influenced the development of a positive image of Dunuza among current workers and residents as new forms of paternalism emerged.


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A settler colonial pandemic: Kelsey Leonard, ‘Medicine lines and COVID-19: Indigenous geographies of imagined bordering’, Dialogues in Human Geography, 2020

28Jun20

Abstract: In response to COVID-19, this commentary explores the disproportionate impacts that the pandemic is having on Indigenous nations of Turtle Island (North America) and the rendering of Indigenous borders as sites of compassionate community care. I argue that settler colonialism during COVID-19 is enacted through travel and second-home escapism of urban elites.


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Manufacturing settler knowledge: Liam Midzain-Gobin, Making Sense: Indigenous Peoples, Knowledge Production, and Settler Colonialism, PhD dissertation McMaster University, 2020

28Jun20

Abstract: Though it is often taken for granted with an assumed naturalness, settler colonial sovereignty relies on the settler state’s realization of Indigenous territorial dispossession, and the erasure of indigeneity. More than singular or historical events, dispossession and erasure are ongoing, and are best understood as contemporary, and structural, features of settler governance because of the continued existence of Indigenous nations. As a result, seemingly stable settler states (such as Canada) are in a constant state of insecurity, due to Indigenous nations’ competing claims of authority. As such, settler states are continually working to (re)produce their own sovereign authority, and legitimacy. This text argues that knowledge is central to the (re)production of settler sovereignty, and hence, settler colonialism. Understood this way, knowledge is both produced and also productive. What we ‘know’ is not only framed by the cosmologies and ontologies through which we make meaning of the world, but it also serves as an organizing tool, structuring what interventions we imagine to be possible. Focusing on government policymaking, this text documents the erasure of Indigenous knowledges, cosmologies, and imaginaries from settler colonial governance practices. It does so through an analysis of the Aboriginal Peoples’ Survey, the settlement of, and territorial allotment in, British Columbia and provincial land management policies such as the Forest and Range Evaluation Program. Using this empirical work, it argues that this erasure enables the reification of settler imaginaries over Indigenous territory, which in turn creates the conditions within which settler colonial authority is legitimized and sovereignty continually remade through policy interventions. While the text largely centres on territory in what is today Canada, it also offers a view into the way in which (settler) coloniality more broadly is continually upheld and remade. Indeed, when viewed through the lens of a global colonial order, the continual remaking of settler sovereignty enables the constitution of international and global politics.


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The Western looks like what happens after settler colonialism: Kerry Fine, Michael K. Johnson, Rebecca M. Lush, Sara L. Spurgeon (eds), Weird Westerns Race, Gender, Genre, University of Nebraska Press, 2020

26Jun20

Description: Weird Westerns is an exploration of the hybrid western genre—an increasingly popular and visible form that mixes western themes, iconography, settings, and conventions with elements drawn from other genres, such as science fiction, horror, and fantasy. Despite frequent declarations of the western’s death, the genre is now defined in part by its zombie-like ability to survive in American popular culture in weird, reanimated, and reassembled forms.

The essays in Weird Westerns analyze a wide range of texts, including those by Native American authors Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet) and William Sanders (Cherokee); the cult television series Firefly and The Walking Dead; the mainstream feature films Suicide Squad and Django Unchained; the avant-garde and bizarre fiction of Joe R. Lansdale; the tabletop roleplaying game Deadlands: The Weird West; and the comic book series Wynonna Earp.

The essays explore how these weird westerns challenge conventional representations by destabilizing or subverting the centrality of the heterosexual, white, male hero but also often surprisingly reinforce existing paradigms in their inability to imagine an existence outside of colonial frameworks.


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Reconciliation looks like what happens after settler colonialism: Aimée Craft, Paulette Regan (eds), Pathways of Reconciliation Indigenous and Settler Approaches to Implementing the TRC’s Calls to Action, University of Manitoba Press, 2020

26Jun20

Description: Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its Calls to Action in June 2015, governments, churches, non-profit, professional and community organizations, corporations, schools and universities, clubs and individuals have asked: “How can I/we participate in reconciliation?”

Recognizing that reconciliation is not only an ultimate goal, but a decolonizing process of journeying in ways that embody everyday acts of resistance, resurgence, and solidarity, coupled with renewed commitments to justice, dialogue, and relationship-building, Pathways of Reconciliation helps readers find their way forward.

The essays in Pathways of Reconciliation address the themes of reframing, learning and healing, researching, and living. They engage with different approaches to reconciliation (within a variety of reconciliation frameworks, either explicit or implicit) and illustrate the complexities of the reconciliation process itself. They canvass multiple and varied pathways of reconciliation, from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives, reflecting a diversity of approaches to the mandate given to all Canadians by the TRC with its Calls to Action.

Together the authors — academics, practitioners, students and ordinary citizens — demonstrate the importance of trying and learning from new and creative approaches to thinking about and practicing reconciliation and reflect on what they have learned from their attempts (both successful and less successful) in the process.


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Problem pioneers: Marc James Carpenter, ‘Pioneer Problems: “Wanton Murder”, Indian War Veterans, and Oregon’s Violent History’, Oregon Historical Quarterly, 121, 2, 2020, pp. 156-185

24Jun20

Abstract: In this research article, Marc James Carpenter examines the Indian War Veterans of the North Pacific Coast (IWV-NPC), an organization founded by former volunteer soldiers in Oregon and Washington, and how their efforts to reshape historical memory fit within the larger pioneer narrative of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — a narrative that often skewed Euro-American violence against Native people. Pioneer societies and historians during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries distorted these historical narratives through omission, ignoring settlers’ violence toward Native people and condemning their retribution. As Carpenter suggests, “a true history of the Pacific Northwest must reckon with the legions of Euro-American pioneers who, during the 1840s, the 1850s, and beyond, pursued pogroms and inflicted acts of workaday racial violence in pursuit of a White ethno-state.”


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Recognition and reconciliation as decolonial work? Michael McCrossan, ‘Reconsiderations of Reconciliation and Recognition’, Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region, 49, 1, 2020

24Jun20

Excerpt: INDIGENOUS AND NON-INDIGENOUS SCHOLARS HAVE LONG RECOGNIZED the steadfast existence of structural and ideological barriers undermining the recognition of Indigenous rights – especially pre-existing rights to land and governance. Indigenous legal scholars, for instance, have regularly drawn attention to the intricate connection between Canadian law and colonialism, particularly the manner in which violence continues to be deployed through the Canadian legal system in relation to Indigenous women and alternate relationships to land.1 More recently, in this current era of rights “recognition” and “reconciliation” with Indigenous populations, scholars in such disparate fields as anthropology and political theory have offered incisive accounts of how liberal discourses of recognition and reconciliation have served to undercut Indigenous claims and sustain structures of domination by reconfiguring and reproducing settler-colonial assemblages of power – ultimately drawing Indigenous peoples further into the ambit of the state.2 Given the presumed efficacy and prominence of discourses of reconciliation in Canada today, such concerns continue to resonate.


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Protectivism as decolonial work: Abigail Laden, Allies of the Movement to Protect Mauna Kea: Non-Indigenous Solidarity in Kanaka Maoli Protectivism, MA dissertation, University of Hawai’i, 2020

24Jun20

Abstract: As Indigenous-led movements across the globe work to protect sacred land, environmental resources, culture, and rights; non-Indigenous allies and accomplices take on supportive roles in these efforts towards protection. The coined term “protectivism” speaks to this Indigenous-led activism that is rooted in the right of original peoples to protect their sacred places and ancestral lands that are now being exploited through development by settler colonial capitalism. While this term is being used for the first time in this particular way within this thesis, I did not create the concept by any means. This word is drawn from people within the movement who define themselves over and over as “protectors, not protestors” (Goodyear-Kaʻōpua 2017:188). This MA thesis explores the roles and experiences of the allies of the Movement to Protect Mauna Kea on Hawaiʻi Island, as kiaʻi mauna (guardians and protectors of the mountain) protect their sacred mountain from the desecration that would be caused by the building of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). This thesis explores the benefits and complications within solidarity, analyzes current literature in this field, and highlights the interviews of seven allies who stand in solidarity with Kanaka Maoli protectors. Under the guidance of my community mentor, Aunty Pua Case, and in a two-fold collaborative process, beginning with Kanaka Maoli mentors and then expanding to collaborate with the ally community, I explore what solidarity entails on Mauna a Wākea. As a non-Indigenous ally myself and a collaborative researcher, I utilize my own experience to be consistently reflexive throughout the research and writing process. The allies I interviewed reveal themselves to be respectful of Kanaka Maoli leadership, aware of histories like settler colonialism, are critically self-reflective of their positionality, and focus on maintaining support roles within the movement.


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Re-enactment as decolonial work: Jeff Wahl, Tazim Jamal, ‘Resisting Domination and “Cultural Imperialism” Through Direct Indigenous Participation in Historical Reenactments’, Travel and Tourism Research Association: Advancing Tourism Research Globally, 28, 2020

24Jun20

Excerpt: Indigenous Tourism is a worldwide phenomenon that faces unique opportunities and challenges (Whitford & Ruhanen, 2016). Within the United States, Indigenous peoples (Native Americans) have endured different forms of discrimination through a complex settler-colonial history, and tourism’s role is not exempt. Development has willingly and unwillingly drawn Native Americans into cultural tourism activity (Markowitz, 2001), with numerous attendant issues including superficial guest-host interactions, the perpetuation of stereotypes like the “noble savage” (Laxson, 1991), omission from interpretive narratives (Pretes, 2003), and the destruction of sacred lands (Markowitz, 2001). While efforts towards more “sustainable” Indigenous tourism outcomes have included participatory forms tribally-involved tourism management (Browne & Nolan, 1989; Fletcher, Proff, & Brueckner, 2016; Piner & Paradis, 2004; Spencer, 2010), Native Americans remain a marginalized group whose cultural heritage has generally been misrepresented by dominant groups and other, more powerful, heritage stakeholders (Loewen, 2010). Despite decades of research, tourism studies have done little to address, “the socio-economic disadvantage faced by indigenous people who are still hindered by (among other things) the legacies of colonial history, ineffective and misguided government policies, and a lack of access to education, health services and employment” (Whitford and Ruhanen, 2016, p. 1083). Further, normative research examining the outcomes of Native American tourism are lacking (Whitford & Ruhanen, 2016). Case studies proliferate but as with many case studies in tourism, they rarely address more fundamental questions that can help inform just outcomes for Indigenous heritage tourism. Important questions lie unanswered, like how and why diverse ethical values arise in tourism development, and whose ethical values should/should not be taken into account (Smith, 2009). This study explores some of these issues in the context of heritage tourism, specifically, Indigenous-managed historical reenactments.


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