settler colonial studies blog

Astrotopia: Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race, Chicago University Press, 2022

25Jul25

Description: A revealing look at the parallel mythologies behind the colonization of Earth and space—and a bold vision for a more equitable, responsible future both on and beyond our planet. As environmental, political, and public health crises multiply on Earth, we are also at the dawn of a new space race in which governments team up with celebrity billionaires to exploit the cosmos for human gain. The best-known of these pioneers are selling different visions of the future: while Elon Musk and SpaceX seek to establish a human presence on Mars, Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin work toward moving millions of earthlings into rotating near-Earth habitats. Despite these distinctions, these two billionaires share a core utopian project: the salvation of humanity through the exploitation of space. In Astrotopia, philosopher of science and religion Mary-Jane Rubenstein pulls back the curtain on the not-so-new myths these space barons are peddling, like growth without limit, energy without guilt, and salvation in a brand-new world. As Rubenstein reveals, we have already seen the destructive effects of this frontier zealotry in the centuries-long history of European colonialism. Much like the imperial project on Earth, this renewed effort to conquer space is presented as a religious calling: in the face of a coming apocalypse, some very wealthy messiahs are offering an other-worldly escape to a chosen few. But Rubenstein does more than expose the values of capitalist technoscience as the product of bad mythologies. She offers a vision of exploring space without reproducing the atrocities of earthly colonialism, encouraging us to find and even make stories that put cosmic caretaking over profiteering.

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Recognitopia: Caleb J. Basnett, ‘Recognition, Decolonization, and the Limitations of James Tully’s Public Philosophy’, The Review of Politics, 2025

25Jul25

Abstract: This article offers a four-part argument in favor of settlers adopting an ethics of recognition in negotiations with Indigenous peoples to support decolonization in North America. Part 1 examines theories of decolonization offered by Indigenous scholars, who show that ethical practices within Indigenous communities are necessary for decolonization. Part 2 focuses on James Tully’s revision of the liberal politics of recognition (LPR), arguing that Tully brings the LPR closer to the aims of decolonization. Part 3 argues that his innovations do not sufficiently acknowledge how inequality undermines the freedom he champions. Part 4 draws on Judith Butler’s interpretation of Hegelian recognition and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s idea of recognition to sketch an ethics that minimizes the inequalities of participants in the political negotiations Tully theorizes. Minimizing inequality will promote the greater freedom needed for the legitimacy of negotiations, making them a possible vehicle for decolonization.

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Ethnocidal fantasies, Indigenous resistance: Viviane de Melo Resende, Yara Martinelli, Bruno Marangoni Martinelli, ‘Against ethnoecocide: from far-right political violence to the collective resistance of Indigenous peoples in Brazil’, Language Discourse & Society, 13, 1, 2025

25Jul25

Abstract: The starting point of this paper is mapping extreme right-wing discourses about Indigenous
peoples and their territories and examining how they are reclaimed and subverted through Indigenous resistance movements in Brazil. We highlight how the discursive production resulting from the largest Brazilian Indigenous conference – the Free Land Camp (Acampamento Terra Livre – ATL), in the editions from 2019 to 2022, responded to the attacks in speeches by the federal executive administration. For this, we revisit a few relevant concepts of the decolonial turn, outline contexts of attack and resistance to the rights of Indigenous peoples in the period, summarise results of our previous analysis on discourses by the executive branch, and present analyses of ATL letters. Our analyses point to increased Indigenous mobilisation in response to political attacks by the far-right government in power between 2019 and 2022. Indigenous peoples organised in their movements assumed a leading role in social resistance against fascism in Brazil.

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The weight of settler colonialism: Bronwyn Carlson, ‘Indigenous fat rebellion: Rejecting settler fatphobia and reclaiming body sovereignty’, Fat Studies, 2025

25Jul25

Abstract: This article confronts the urgent need for Indigenous Fat Studies by asking: What does it mean to embody fatness as an Indigenous person under the weight of settler-colonial oppression? Fatness, for Indigenous Peoples, is a radical site of resistance against a colonial legacy that enforces Eurocentric ideals of health, beauty, and body size. Indigenous body sovereignty stands as a powerful act of defiance, rejecting settler narratives that demonize and pathologise fat bodies. This article explores how Indigenous fat liberation reclaims fatness as a vital expression of cultural strength, selfdetermination, and community resilience. By reclaiming body narratives embedded in Indigenous knowledge systems and lifeworlds, Indigenous communities challenge harmful colonial frameworks and reject colonial ownership over Indigenous bodies and lives. This article calls for a dismantling of settler-colonial health, body and beauty regimes and champions a future where Indigenous body autonomy reigns, asserting that Indigenous fat studies is essential for radical body liberation and sovereignty.

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A view over settler colonialism: Malcolm Traill, ‘A grand colonial vista – with a few twists: Dale’s Panorama and its accompanying pamphlet’, Australian Garden History, 37, 1, 2025, pp. 14-19

24Jul25

Excerpt: Early colonial artwork in Australia can tell us a lot about landscape, botany and colonial attitudes. This is very much the case with this painting of King George’s Sound (now Albany) in Western Australia, informally known as the Dale Panorama. So, what is the background to this huge work, almost 3 m in length, and why was it painted? Who was Robert Dale and what became of him?

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Toxic, toxic settler colonialism: Federico Andrade-Rivas, Reza Afshari, Annalee Yassi, ‘“Low-Dose, Long-Term” Toxic Exposures Among “Indigenous Peoples in Canada”: Impacts of Inequality, Environmental Health Challenges, and the Need for a Comprehensive Approach’, Asia Pacific Journal of Medical Toxicology, 2025

24Jul25

Abstract: Indigenous Peoples in Canada face significant environmental health challenges, including long-term, low-dose toxic exposures that contribute to pronounced health disparities compared to the general population. The unequal distribution of industrial contamination and historical practices such as mercury dumping primarily drive these disproportionate toxic exposures. The authors have conducted extensive research in this area including a community-based case study using a mixed-methods approach integrating community narratives and biomonitoring data. They aim to summarize their findings and potential countermeasure strategies that toxicologists working in public health can apply to define and improve health outcomes among minority groups in middle- and low-income countries.Many efforts have been made in recent decades to reduce exposure rates and restore traditional health practices; however, these communities still face heightened risks from contaminated food sources, ongoing socio-economic inequalities, and the degradation of their ecosystems. Additionally, structural racism within healthcare systems and limited access to culturally appropriate care exacerbate these challenges. This commentary highlights the urgent need for a comprehensive, culturally sensitive environmental health approach incorporating Indigenous knowledge systems and community-driven solutions. We emphasize the importance of participatory, Indigenous-led research to address cumulative health impacts, promote resilience, and reduce health inequities. In conclusion, health authorities can develop sustainable strategies to reduce toxic exposures at the population level and support the health and well-being of Indigenous communities. This can be achieved through collaborative approaches that honour Indigenous sovereignty and embrace the principles of relevance, respect, and reciprocity. These findings have important implications for reducing toxic exposures among minority groups in middle- and low-income countries. Addressing long-term low-dose toxic exposures among Indigenous Peoples in Canada requires culturally respectful and community-led environmental health approaches. Researchers and policymakers must engage in sustained, collaborative efforts recognizing Indigenous sovereignty and tailoring strategies beyond those used for the general population.

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Responsible settlers: John David Greenwood, The Flesh Rendered Responsible: Race, Freedom, and the Myth of Self-Making in America, PhD dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 2025

24Jul25

Abstract: This dissertation examines the genealogy, racialization, and political consequences of responsibilization—how people are rendered responsible—as a moral technology of governance. It argues that the ideal of self-making—the notion that individuals are wholly responsible for their successes or failures—functions as a racialized and racializing myth sustaining liberal freedom, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism in America. Tracing responsibilization from early Christian pastoral practices and through liberal political thought to neoliberal governance, this project shows how responsibility has been weaponized to secure inequality and justify abandonment. Chapter One follows Michel Foucault’s lectures on abnormality, sexuality, and pastoral power to uncover how responsibilization emerged as a mode of subject formation—especially through the confessional Christian flesh, the family, and the racialization of vulnerability. Chapter Two charts the racialization of responsibility in the American context, opening with the infrastructure of moral rule and moving into John Locke’s Poor Law reforms, colonial pedagogy, and the responsibilization of formerly enslaved Black Americans during Reconstruction. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman’s concept of burdened individuality in conversation with Carol Pateman and Charles Mills, the chapter theorizes responsibilization as a racial contract—one that converges settler, sexual, and racial logics into a moral economy of conditional freedom. Chapter Three blends autoethnography with critical theory to explore how responsibilization operates through everyday life, familial mythologies, and white moral psychology. It interrogates how whiteness is rendered invisible as the normative horizon of responsible freedom while extracting moral and material costs from Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized communities. The dissertation concludes by asking what political and ethical possibilities might exist beyond the responsibilized subject—beyond the moral architecture that renders inequality as failure and domination as deserved. Engaging Iris Marion Young’s social connection model, Judith Butler’s ethics of cohabitation, and Cedric Robinson’s critique of racial capitalism, the Coda assembles a speculative dialogue with Black, Indigenous, and queer traditions of refusal. Drawing also on thinkers like Hartman, Joel Olson, Frank Wilderson, and Glen Coulthard, it explores the limits of racial liberalism and the settler order, staging a confrontation with the moral infrastructure of modern governance. In its place, the Coda gestures toward a politics of insurgent responsibility: a non-sovereign, unredemptive form of accountability grounded not in innocence or recognition, but in entanglement, implication, and collective refusal. It concludes not with resolution, but with an opening—a trembling movement toward otherwise.

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Settler colonial Taiwan: Shu-Mei Huang, ‘Here we are together: unpacking Indigenous Historical Justice and heritage as essentially embedded in colonial institutions in Taiwan’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 31, 2025, pp. 611-631

22Jul25

Abstract: In Taiwan, arguably a settler colonial state, “colonial heritage” is a loaded concept that requires unpacking. While the Han-oriented mainstream society generally assumes “colonial heritage” to be culture heritage associated with the Japanese colonial period or earlier, the Dutch period in the 17th century, the Indigenous People of Taiwan has experienced multiple colonializations that go beyond the two, not to mention that even the notion “heritage” itself is constituent of and resulting from the colonializing process. Among others, war memorials built by the Japanese regime and the heritagization of them in the postcolonial years, are particularly difficult subject matters and a key to the greater entangled memory of Taiwan. This research examines the recent interrogation into the particular war memorials in the context of the state-led effort of Indigenous Historic Justice and Transitional Justice in Taiwan from 2016 onwards. It explores how the contested colonial heritage of war has simultaneously enabled multiculturalism for national rebranding and, regrettably, prevents a critical reflection on settler colonialism in Taiwan. Working with Indigenous communities, however, the researcher also observed the ways in which the communities themselves actively engage with heritage making in their own agenda to search for opportunities for collective actions over and beyond memory politics, including but not limited to trans-ethnic, transnational dialogues over history rewriting and territory remapping.

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Reconciliation in heterotopias, as elsewhere seems impossible: Lia Kenta, Geoffrey Langford, ‘Possibilities for reconciliation in heterotopic spaces of Australian frontier massacre’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 31, 5, 2025, pp. 632-650

22Jul25

Abstract: There is an emerging narrative of Australian frontier massacre places as sites where truth-telling about past injustices might foster reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Yet this narrative obscures a more complex story of the ongoing violence of settler-colonialism. This article focuses on the Minnamurra River massacre place in New South Wales, where ongoing sand mining by the Boral construction company is actively destroying Indigenous lands. We ask: where do possibilities for healing and reconciliation lie in this place? We draw on Foucault’s concept of heterotopia to explore Minnamurra as a complex landscape of multiple, dynamic social spaces, examining the different forms of power that infuse and circulate in these spaces and searching for the seeds of reconciliation in the emergent relationships between Aboriginal survivor-descendants and environmentalists. This case study invites more complex and less western-centric understandings of what reconciliation might mean in the context of Australian frontier violence.

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Do settlers always stay? Sheyda Aisha Khaymaz, ‘On permanency: rethinking settler colonialism in Algiers or Fanon’s lieu en ébullition’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

22Jul25

Abstract: This paper explores the potential offered by deploying a settler colonial critique in Algeria. Issues around sovereignty constitute its central topic, as I consider the following questions: What did sovereignty mean for Algerian Arab and Kabyle communities subsequent to independence? How has colonial urban design historically shaped – and continued to shape – power relations? Under the theoretical umbrella of Frantz Fanon’s lieu en ébullition (boiling place), this paper analyses the mechanisms by which Algiers had become bifurcated by the 1950s and how urban architecture served not only as a tool that reified antagonistic colonial power relations, but also as a site where demands of sovereignty took tangible form. I consider the notion of permanency, both that of colonialism and urban architecture, to elucidate the role of the built environment in instituting an antithetical order of coloniser versus colonised. Following the scholarship on the built environment of colonial Algeria that has grown in recent decades, this work demonstrates that the seeds of alterity sown by the French architectural and urban practices persisted beyond independence, embedding spatial hierarchies that continue to shape lopsided power relations well into the twenty-first century.

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