settler colonial studies blog

There was never an Indigenous Reconstruction: Stephen Kantrowitz, ‘White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and the Two Citizenships of the Fourteenth Amendment’, The Journal of the Civil War Era, 10, 1, 2020, pp. 29-53

11Mar20

Abstract: The Civil War era’s debates over citizenship are conventionally understood as having revolved around the status of emancipated African Americans. But they were also rooted in decades of US policy with regard to Native Americans. In Indian Country, citizenship’s intended purpose was to dissolve Native political sovereignty and to make Indian lands available for sale to white settlers. These two histories of citizenship existed in dynamic tension and were occasionally forced together, as in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Fourteenth Amendment. This essay traces Civil War–era policymakers’ parallel debates over African American and Native American citizenship. Exploring those debates in particular through the thinking of conservative Democrat Allen Thurman suggests that while white supremacy came under sustained attack during this era, settler-colonialism—the ideology and practice of replacing Native with settler populations—did not.

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Appreciating how settler colonialism affects our relations with animals: Kelly Struthers Montford, Chloë Taylor (eds), Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies, Routledge, 2020

11Mar20

Description: The fields of settler colonial, decolonial, and postcolonial studies, as well as Critical Animal Studies are growing rapidly, but how do the implications of these endeavours intersect? Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies explores some of the ways that the oppression of Indigenous persons and more-than-human animals are interconnected.

Composed of 12 chapters by an international team of specialists plus a Foreword by Dinesh Wadiwel, the book is divided into four themes:

This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, activists, as well as postdoctoral scholars, working in the areas of Critical Animal Studies, Native Studies, postcolonial and critical race studies, with particular chapters being of interest to scholars and students in other fields, such as Cultural Studies, Animal Law and Critical Criminology.

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The current crisis has been ‘current’ for some time (and it is also about settler colonialism): Candis Callison, ‘The Twelve-Year Warning’, Isis, 111, 1, 2020, pp. 129-137

11Mar20

Abstract: The frames that get put around “the climate crisis” (whether as imminent disaster or explanation for ongoing disasters) reflect how human relations and histories have been and are configured—and what (and who) is constituted as relevant, expert, and newsworthy in efforts to address such a crisis. The dominant ways of talking about and reporting on climate change rely on assumptions that don’t take into account colonial histories and varied frameworks for understanding ecological changes suggested by Indigenous scholars and communities that are grounded in interdependent, reciprocal relations between humans and nonhumans. This essay suggests that acknowledging settler colonialism and its structures, together with a consideration of diverse Indigenous knowledges, experiences, and histories, offers profound insight into the crises and disasters associated with climate change—along with a differentiated sense of how to consider what must, should, and can be done about it.

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If settler colonialism is a relationship, its supersession will be a relationship: Steven McLeod, The White of the Wampum: Possibilities for Indigenous-non-Indigenous Relationships in Canadian Settler Narratives (circa 2012) and Indigenous Storywork, PhD dissertation, Carleton University, 2020

11Mar20

Abstract: The Two Row Wampum is held up to inspire relationships between Indigenous and nonIndigenous peoples in Canada that are rooted in respect and responsibility. However, Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations have been characterized by the deracination of Indigenous relational self-determination.

In this dissertation, I juxtapose settler colonial representations (circa 2012) with Indigenous stories of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relationships. I offer Foucauldian discourse analyses of selected settler colonial representations to show how these representations displace and erase Indigenous relational self-determination. I also look beyond the constraints of settler discourse to readings of Indigenous narratives guided by storywork. Storywork is an Indigenous method of reading stories as pathways towards respectful relationships between all beings of creation. These pathways are grounded in what Vanessa Watts calls place-thought, Indigenous understandings of the relational knowledge embedded in the living network of relations that make up Indigenous traditional territories.

I focus on 2012 because of the intensity of settler discourse and Indigenous resistance during this year. In 2012, the Canadian government and the CBC produced commemorations of the War of 1812, the CBC’s 8th Fire documentary and website were featured on CBC.ca, and national media produced representations of Indigenous activism that emerged in 2012 under the banner of Idle No More. I show how these selected settler colonial representations legitimize liberal democratic forms of governance and advance the demands of the neoliberal capitalist resource economy. The problem is that these political and economic discourses often undermine and efface Indigenous relational self-determination. I juxtapose settler representations of the War of 1812 with Odawa scholar Cecil King’s historical account, Balancing Two Worlds (2013); national media representations of Indigenous activism with Lee Maracle’s novel, Sundogs (1992); and 8th Fire’s representation of reconciliation with The Eeyouch of Eeyou Itschee (2010-2015), a documentary series produced by the Cree peoples of Quebec about their relations with settler governments.

Through this engagement, I aim to unsettle settler colonial productions of state sovereignty, liberal democratic institutions, and global market capitalism and to gesture towards possibilities of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relationships rooted in traditional understandings of the white of the Wampum: relationships based in respect and responsibility between self-determining peoples.

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The religious-colonial-patriarchal trap of settler colonialism: Nahed Ashqar-Sharary, Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder, ‘The Colonial–Religious Institutional Contract: Muslim Women Activists in Israel’, Social Politics, 2020

08Mar20

Abstract: This study examines the growth of a progressive religious Muslim activism among Palestinian women in Israel and the challenges it poses to the religious patriarchy and colonial power structures. Based on semistructured interviews with a religious feminist organization’s activists, the study revealed that feminist Islamic activism addresses an alliance between state officials and patriarchal–religious establishment gatekeepers that interlock to block Muslim feminist reform. Unlike other Muslim activists in former settler colonial states where state and religion are separate and unlike progressive Muslim women in Muslim states who struggle to escape the religious–patriarchal trap, in Israel, these activists face a religious–colonial–patriarchal trap.

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Educative practice meets settler colonial studies: Brooke Charlebois, Megan Ewing, Adam Davies, Mithila Rajavel, Adam Wrestch, Heather Sykes, ‘Pedagogies of Re-Imagination and Unlearning: Decolonial Cracks Within/Against Settler Colonial Canada’, JCACS, 17, 2020

08Mar20

Abstract: This book review is a close reading of three book-length works by key, contemporary scholars in the field of settler colonial studies: Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh’s On Decoloniality; Adam Dahl’s The Empire of the People; and Emma Battell Lowman and Adam Barker’s Settler: Identity and Colonialism in 21st Century Canada. This review provides a critical account of the significance of navigating the complexities of modern settler colonial practices and frameworks within Western settler societies to better inform and navigate our own decolonizing processes. We identify settler logics, perspectives and foundational frameworks as key factors in our current educative practices. Through this, we debate the significance of unsettling our/selves to consider extensions of our identities through a decolonial lens and how we, as a society, contribute to ongoing colonial processes. The review also provides approaches to how these resources may be used to deepen our anti-colonial lens by considering these texts as an underlying basis to reflect upon current educative curricula.

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Indigenous design sovereignty against settler colonialism: David Fortin, ‘Unceded: Land and design sovereignty’, Architecture Australia, 109, 2, 2020, pp. 60-62

08Mar20

Abstract: Canada’s pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale brought together multiple contemporary Indigenous architects, who collaborated to emphasize the collective values of Indigenous peoples, demonstrate the artificial nature of colonial borders and remind visitors of the importance of Indigenous voices in shaping a future that respects and celebrates the land.

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Trust as decolonial practice: Sana Nakata, Sarah Maddison, ‘Working through the problems: Negotiating friendship, producing results’, Griffith Review, 67, 2020, pp. 125-134

06Mar20

Abstract: We work together as co-directors of the Indigenous Settler Relations Collaboration, a research unit at the University of Melbourne. In this context, our working relationship requires a high level of trust, but as an Indigenous person (Sana is a Torres Strait Islander) and a non-Indigenous person (Sarah is a white settler), we don’t take the trust between us for granted. We are conscious that relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers do not generally have a bank of trust for either side to draw upon in difficult times, which means Indigenous-settler relations are always contingent, always at risk. To further understanding of these challenges, we have staged a number of public conversations that explore the question of trust in our professional relationship. Prompted by a single question – ‘Do you trust me?’ – these conversations have changed over time to explore different aspects of the positionality and conditionality of trust between Indigenous peoples and settlers through the lens of our own working relationship. Here, we have edited one conversation about building trust in each other over time.

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The sexuality of settler colonialism: Deanne Linn Grant, Indigenous Women at the Heart: An Imagining of Indigenous Decolonial Sexualities, PhD dissertation, University of Colorado, 2020

06Mar20

Abstract: For Native American and Indigenous peoples, settler colonialism in the United States continues to disrupt many cultural understandings and practices. There is a particular disruption upon Indigenous sexualities, given the ways in which gender and sexuality are used to uphold white supremacy and settler colonial political objectives. Native American women’s sexuality is rarely discussed within academia or even within Native communities. The heavy silence on the topic of Native women’s sexuality must be disrupted. The high rates of gendered-based abuse against Native women represent a singular story. Instead, I research how Native women understand their own sexualities, sexual imaginations, and sexual knowledge. Native American women’s sexuality is an important topic for decolonization and represents a way to re-construct Indigenous realities. I center Native women’s views on sexuality and how Native women’s sexual experiences can be expanded. My theoretical contribution is Indigenous decolonial sexuality and it challenges the monolithic representation of Native women and argues for new Native sexualities free of violence. To decolonize sexuality, Native women must be given the opportunity to share their voices, exposing harsh experiences of sexual assault, but also their sexual imaginaries.

The first of my four body chapters centers Native women’s voices through one-on-one interviews with approximately forty Native American and Indigenous women in and around the Denver area. I propose that Native women’s sexuality is currently based on complex influences of settler colonialism, power structures, and a desire to re-construct Indigenous-based constructions on sexuality. My second chapter draws from Cheyenne Arapaho artist, Brent Learned’s, 2017 exhibition titled Native American Body of Art. This exhibit challenges the idea that Native women are only sexual assault victims within the realm of sexuality and serves as a material representation of the Indigenous erotic. My third chapter analyzes early anthropological ethnographies that document Pawnee mythologies as guidance for Pawnee people to include and value queer/Two-spirit Pawnee people as significant members of community. Chapter Four analyzes a progressive sex education curriculum, which I use as a template to theorize a sex education curriculum intended for Native Americans.

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Settlers and other catastrophes: Jackson R. Perry, ‘”Conquered by the Sparrows”: Avian Invasions in French North Africa, circa 1871–1920’, Environmental History, 2020

04Mar20

Abstract: Wheat and barley farmers in North Africa during the French colonial period often experienced plagues of migrating Spanish sparrows (Passer hispaniolensis) that significantly affected the rural economy. Each spring, breeding sparrows nested near fields to raise their young and to consume the winter crop as it matured. This article documents the extent of the avian nuisance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing especially on eastern Algeria. It argues that changes in rural infrastructure and land use, notably the establishment of large farms and the wide-scale planting of eucalyptus trees, made many European settlements more attractive to the migrating sparrows. A warmer climate following the Little Ice Age may also have contributed to an increase in the size and range of Spanish sparrow populations in North Africa. Demonstrating a deep understanding of the environmental challenge that they faced, settler communities enacted a range of collective responses to the bird plagues, which resembled local forms of an “environmental management state.” They also consistently demanded state action in response to these plagues, but metropolitan bird protection laws appear to have limited the colonial government’s options and appetite for action in French Algeria. The sparrow problem could be managed but not overcome.

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