settler colonial studies blog

Climate change is an attack against Indigenous worlds: Elizabeth J. Jackson, Changing Seasons of Resistance: Impacts of Settler Colonialism and Climate Change in Indigenous Worlds, MA dissertation, Humboldt State University, 2020

17Jun20

Abstract: This paper looks at the relationship between neoliberal capitalism, genocide, the biopolitics of settler colonialism and the impacts of climate change on the cultures and traditional lifeways of Indigenous communities. It also explores Indigenous modes and methods of adaptation and resilience. Climate Change is almost certainly the most urgent social problem in the history of human life on planet Earth. Many Indigenous people are more vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to marginalization and their commitment to land-based practices. Using in depth interviews with Indigenous Peoples, primarily from the Pacific Northwest, and the analysis of existing literature, this paper will attempt to find answers to the question of how capitalism, the practice of genocide, settler colonialism and displacement of Indigenous peoples are connected. It will also seek answers to how these processes have contributed to the climate crisis and bring to the forefront how Indigenous people are resisting corporate and governmental attempts to continue capitalistic projects that emit greenhouse gases and deplete natural resources.

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Indigenous sovereignty as cultural competence: Michael Johnston, ‘Cultural Competence and the Higher Education Sector’, in Jack Frawley, Gabrielle Russell, Juanita Sherwood (eds), Locating Human Rights in the Cultural Competence Context, Springer, 2020, pp. 43-57

14Jun20

Abstract: In settler-colonial countries, where European powers have forcibly established themselves on top of pre-existing Indigenous societies, formally recognising Indigenous sovereignty and supporting Indigenous self-determination should be central to the philosophy and praxis of cultural competence.

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Emigrant settlers facing indigenous peoples: Shino Konishi, ‘J. C. Byrne, Entrepreneurial Imperialism and the Question of Indigenous Rights’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2020

14Jun20

Abstract: This is a study of Joseph C. Byrne, an Irish entrepreneur who embarked on a number of colonial schemes and fashioned himself as an emigration expert. In 1848 he published Twelve Years’ Wanderings in the British Colonies. From 1835 to 1847, followed by a number of emigrant guides to the individual Australian colonies, the Cape of Good Hope and Port Natal. Descriptions of indigenous peoples proliferate throughout Byrne’s guides. While his texts were informed by his own travels, he also quoted liberally from official correspondence, newspapers, and other contemporary works. His accounts reflect both his own opinions, and also a broad spectrum of imperial attitudes and approaches towards Indigenous peoples. This article explores Byrne’s ideas of how Indigenous peoples might best serve the interest of British emigrants: that is how they might or might not be made ‘useful’ to British subjects, and also, in some cases, how their inevitable demise would provide ‘peculiar advantages to emigrants’. His accounts of Indigenous people illustrate the problems posed by the ‘native question’ in imperial thinking, and the way in which Britain grappled to envisage the future place of indigenous people within its colonies in the face of growing settler demands for land.

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Relations (under settler colonialism): Tavleen Purewal, ‘Holding It Together: Indigeneity, (Settler-) Postcolonialism, and M. NourbeSe Philip’, ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 51, 2-3, 2020

12Jun20

Abstract: This article considers the conditions for relations between Indigenous and Black diasporic subjects, while also addressing Indigenous and South Asian relations. Concerned with the place of these subject relations within postcolonial and settler colonial paradigms and with their potential for decolonial practice, the article explores Jodi Byrd’s and Marie Battiste’s critiques of postcolonial and settler-colonial theories and M. NourbeSe Philip’s verse-novella Looking for Mr. Livingstone. It also offers a personal anecdote about South Asian settler relations with caretakers of Stl’atl’imx land in British Columbia, Canada. It examines these texts and experiences through the concept of “the hold.” “The hold,” a spatial and epistemological condition for relations between Indigenous and diasporic subjects, allows one to imagine a sovereign Indigenous space as a practice of cross-racial kinship.

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Indigenous bodies, settler colonised and biomedicalised: Joanna Ziarkowska, Indigenous Bodies, Cells, and Genes: Biomedicalization and Embodied Resistance in Native American Literature, Routledge, 2020

12Jun20

Description: This book explores Native American literary responses to biomedical discourses and biomedicalization processes as they circulate in social and cultural contexts.

Native American communities resist reductivism of biomedicine that excludes indigenous (and non-Western) epistemologies and instead draw attention to how illness, healing, treatment, and genetic research are socially constructed and dependent on inherently racialist thinking. This volume highlights how interventions into the hegemony of biomedicine are vigorously addressed in Native American literature. The chapters cover tuberculosis and diabetes epidemics, the emergence of Native American DNA, discoveries in biotechnology and the problematics of a biomedical model of psychiatry. They analyze work by writers including Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie and LeAnne Howe, Kim TallBear, Linda Hogan, Heid Erdrich, Elissa Washuta, and Frances Washburn.

The book will appeal to scholars of Native American and Indigenous Studies, as well as to others with an interest in literature and medicine.

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Indigenous peoples’ relationship to Indigenous places is healthy: Angela R. Fernandez, Tessa Evans-Campbell, Michelle Johnson-Jennings, Ramona E. Beltran, Katie Schultz, Sandra Stroud, Karina L. Walters, ‘”Being on the walk put it somewhere in my body”: The meaning of place in health for Indigenous women’, Journal Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 2020

10Jun20

Abstract: Relationship to place is integral to Indigenous health. A qualitative, secondary phenomenological analysis of in-depth interviews with four non-Choctaw Indigenous women participating in an outdoor, experiential tribally specific Choctaw health leadership study uncovered culturally grounded narratives using thematic analysis as an analytic approach. Results revealed that physically being in historical trauma sites of other Indigenous groups involved a multi-faceted process that facilitated embodied stress by connecting participants with their own historical and contemporary traumas. Participants also experienced embodied resilience through connectedness to place and collective resistance. Implications point to the role of place in developing collective resistance and resilience through culturally and methodologically innovative approaches.

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Settler education is not indigenous (I know, right?): Christopher Lamb, Anne Godlewska, ‘On the peripheries of education: (not)learning about Indigenous peoples in the 1995-2010 British Columbia curriculum’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2020

10Jun20

Abstract: This paper analyses the coverage of Indigenous topics in K-12 education in British Columbia (BC) using curriculum documents and course enrolment. It focuses on curriculum documents published between 1995 and 2010 and mandated in public education from 1995 to 2019, and argues that Indigenous topics were marginalized in the curriculum overall. Motivated by decades of work by Indigenous leaders and educators to grapple with non-Indigenous people’s prejudices, ignorance, and lack of understanding, the British Columbia Ministry of Education has increasingly recognized the importance of integrating Indigenous topics into core curricula and has offered all students Indigenous Studies course options. However, coverage remained marginalized in the core curriculum and recent curricular revisions have relied increasingly on teachers’ voluntary integration of Indigenous topics and meaningful consultation with local Indigenous educators and communities, for which insufficient support and resources are provided by the Education Ministry. The paper explores challenges to the curriculum’s ability to combat prejudice, eliminate discrimination and promote tolerance, understanding and good relations among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the province.

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Settlers settle on Indigenous witnessing: Rosemary Nagy, ‘Settler Witnessing at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’, Human Rights Review, 2020

10Jun20

Abstract: This article offers an account of settler witnessing of residential school survivor testimony that avoids the politics of recognition and the pitfalls of colonial empathy. It knits together the concepts of bearing witness, Indigenous storytelling, and affective reckoning. Following the work of Kelly Oliver, it argues that witnessing involves a reaching beyond ourselves and responsiveness to the agency and self-determination of the other. Given the cultural genocide of residential schools, responsiveness to the other require openness to and nurturing of Indigenous ways of knowing and being. In order to illustrate the complexities and challenges of settler witnessing, the author reflects on her experiences in attending six of the TRC’s national events and, in particular, what she has learned from Frederick “Fredda” Paul, Passamaquoddy Elder, healer, storyteller, and residential school survivor. The article analyzes (1) aesthetics and emotions in the staging of TRC events and (2) making meaning over time and the temporality of transitional justice.

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Capitalism settles on Indigenous environments: Damien Short, ‘The Genocidal Pressures on Indigenous Peoples: Capitalism’s Cultural and Environmental Violence’, in Fiona Greenland, Fatma Müge Göçek (eds), Cultural Violence and the Destruction of Human Communities: New Theoretical Perspectives, Routledge, 2020

10Jun20

Access the chapter here.

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COVID settles (with particular viciousness) on Indigenous communities: Kaitlin Curtice, Esther Choo, ‘Indigenous populations: left behind in the COVID-19 response’, The Lancet, 2020

10Jun20

Excerpt: Globally, across countries and populations, Indigenous peoples face a greater burden of disease than non-Indigenous peoples, including cardiovascular disease and HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, and have higher infant and maternal mortality and lower life expectancy. Their health is impacted by epigenetic stressors of generational oppression and violence, including disproportionate numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women, lower educational attainment, and persistent poverty. Further, health services for Indigenous populations are typically under-resourced with language and culture appropriate care a rarity. Structural forces limit access to health care and systemic racism and discrimination towards Indigenous peoples can make it difficult to develop trusting relationships with non-Indigenous providers. The health of Indigenous populations also has a greater vulnerability to the decline of the planet’s natural resources, as their way of life is so intimately connected to waters, lands, and forests.

This is the situation into which the COVID-19 pandemic has arrived.

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