settler colonial studies blog

Indigeneity as an ’embodied pathology’: Caleigh Estelle Inman, ‘Absence and epidemic: Autism and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in Indigenous populations in Canada’, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 8, 4, 2019, pp. 227-261

09Jul19

Abstract: This paper contemplates the absence of Indigenous perspectives within autism discourse in Canada, despite increasing concern and surveillance over a growing autism ‘epidemic.’ I posit that the simultaneous production of a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) ‘epidemic’ among Indigenous populations contributes to this absence. Taking a genealogical approach to the emergence of FASD as a diagnostic framework, I situate the FASD ‘epidemic’ and subsequent prevention campaigns within a lineage of biopolitical strategies aimed at limiting the reproductive agency of Indigenous women. I argue that this phenomenon has two main consequences: first, the erasure of Indigenous autistics and a homogenization of Indigenous neurodiversity; and second, I claim that the association of FASD with Indigeneity converts the violent outcomes of settler colonialism into an embodied pathology, working to justify ongoing dispossession of land and resources from Indigenous people.

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Tribal management defies settler colonialism: Brittany L. Palmer, ‘Fenced-in Place’: White Settler Colonialism as Opposition to Increased Tribal Management of the National Bison Range, MA Dissertation, University of Montana, 2019

06Jul19

Abstract: Since the Tribal Self Governance Act was passed in 1994, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) in western Montana have sought increased management responsibilities at the National Bison Range, which is fully encompassed by the Flathead Indian Reservation. Though the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has managed the Bison Range since it was established in 1908, the Tribes assert that they were the original stewards of bison in the area, and have requested both the reinstatement of the National Bison Range to Tribal trust ownership and increased management responsibilities through negotiated Annual Funding Agreements with the Department of Interior. In their negotiations, however, the CSKT and their advocates are met with ongoing local and national opposition that has been characterized by the Montana Human Rights Network as anti-Indian racist. Using literature on settler colonialism theory and concepts from critical whiteness studies like white fragility and colorblind racism, this research examines how and the degree to which present-day opposition to increased Tribal management perpetuates a settler colonialist project at the National Bison Range. Additionally, this work explores the nature of the claims opponents make and articulates how settler colonialism is a form of structural racism. Through a qualitative analysis of 68 public comments and the transcripts of 17 in-depth interviews, this study finds that opponents of increased Tribal management furthers a settler colonialist project at the National Bison Range through racialized settler discourse that exhibits white fragility and colorblind racism. That the CSKT continue to reject their own erasure, however, prevents the completion of the settler colonialist project. Finally, this work suggests that future research might continue to link settler colonialism with concepts like white fragility and colorblind racism to better describe settler colonialism as a project of white supremacy, particularly for natural resource management issues in the United States.

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On indigeneity and migrations: Josué López, ‘CRT and Immigration: Settler Colonialism, Foreign Indigeneity, and the Education of Racial Perception’, University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class, 19, 1, 2019

06Jul19

Excerpt: A wall will not end immigration, and neither will immigration laws and policies. Rather, these policies and practices serve to dehumanize immigrants and position them in precarious legal positions where their personhood is constantly called into question. Analyses of immigration from Latin America do not usually focus on Indigenous peoples. When Indigeneity is centered, an examination of immigration policies is made more complex due to the relationship between the State’s power over regulating the movement of people across its borders and a legacy of settler colonialism that recognizes the State exists on stolen lands. Immigration policies are a contemporary manifestation of the legacy of settler colonialism. In this article, I specifically examine the power of the United States to set the standard for what constitutes a legitimate asylum claim. I ask two principal questions: (1) What happens to the lived experience of Indigenous peoples when filtered through an asylum claim? (2) How does a settler colonial framework illuminate the relationship between facts and asylum claims for Indigenous peoples?

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The optimism of decolonisation (alongside, Gramsci-style, the pessimism of reason): Sheryl R. Lightfoot, ‘The Pessimism Traps of Indigenous Resurgence’, in T. Stevens, N. Michelsen (eds), Pessimism in International Relations, Palgrave, 2019, 155-172

06Jul19

Abstract: The main focus of Indigenous political theory is the assertion of Indigenous nationhood. Despite this seemingly positive orientation, a branch of Indigenous political theory, the resurgence school, is caught in three pessimism traps that limit its ability to create better Indigenous-state relationships. By characterising all Indigenous individuals who engage with states as ‘co-opted’, viewing all states as unified, deliberate and unchanging in their desire to dispossess Indigenous peoples, and viewing all engagement as futile, if not dangerous, the resurgence school forecloses any possibility of negotiated and peaceful co-existence with even the most progressive government. It also creates unnecessary negative feelings and divisions among Indigenous resistance movements who should be pooling limited resources and working together towards better futures for Indigenous peoples.

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Health under settler colonialism: Paul Sylvestre, Heather Castleden, Jeff Denis, Debbie Martin, AmyBombay, ‘The tools at their fingertips: How settler colonial geographies shape medical educators’ strategies for grappling with Anti-Indigenous racism’, Social Science & Medicine, 2019

06Jul19

Abstract: Settler colonialism implicates settler and Indigenous populations differently within ongoing projects of settlement and nation building. The uneven distribution of benefits and harms is a primary consequence of settler colonialism. Indeed, it is a central organizing feature of the settler state’s governance of Indigenous societies and is animated, in part, through pervasive settler ignorance and anti-Indigenous racism, which has manifested in persistent health disparities amongst Indigenous peoples. This broader socio-political context surrounding medical schools, which are seeking to develop teaching and learning about Indigenous health presents a significant challenge. Understanding the cognitive and affective tools that settler educators use when grappling with questions of race, racialization, and Indigenous difference is an important step in addressing anti-Indigenous racism in health care provision. This paper reports on findings from in-depth semi-structured interviews with educators at one Canadian medical school. Our intent was to elicit respondents’ understandings, experiences, and attitudes regarding Indigenous-settler relations, Indigenous health and healthcare, and the inclusion of Indigenous health in the curriculum as a means of identifying facilitators and barriers to improving Indigenous health and health care experiences. Respondents were generally sympathetic and evinced an earnest desire to include more Indigenous-related content in the curriculum. What became clear over the course of the data collection and analysis, however, was that most respondents lacked the tools to engage critically with questions of race and racialization and how these are manifested in the context of asymmetrical settler colonial power. We argue that this inability, at best, limits the effectiveness of much needed efforts to incorporate more content relating to Indigenous health, but worse yet, risks re-entrenching anti-Indigenous racism and settler dominance.

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Non-indigenous and indigenous decolonisations: Andy Fisher, ‘Ecopsychology as Decolonial Praxis’, Ecopsychology, 2019

06Jul19

Abstract: In this article, I advance the idea of ecopsychology as a form of decolonial praxis. If, as I suggest, ecopsychology is a project to overcome the fracturing of reality into the separate regions of Psyche, Nature, and Society, then we must ask how these regions became so disconnected in the first place. The answer I offer here is that these divisions are inherent in modern capitalist civilization, which survives to this day only through continuous processes of disconnection and colonization. It follows that decolonization is the deepest context for developing ecopsychology’s theory and practice aimed at reintegrating Psyche, Nature, and Society. In order not to conflate non-Indigenous or settler decolonization with Indigenous decolonization, I introduce the term “lifeworld decolonization” for the former. This distinction allows us to recognize the complex overlap between these two forms of decolonization, which makes room for solidarity, while granting a specific primacy to Indigenous decolonization and underscoring how non-Indigenous peoples have historically benefited from colonialism. Indeed, turning toward the topic of Indigenous decolonization forces an “unsettling” of ecopsychology, which may lead the field toward a more coherent, mature, reflexive, and historically relevant understanding of itself. In the course of my argument, I engage with the ontological and decolonial turns in social theory in order to demonstrate what the transformation of Psychology into ecopsychology might involve when the field both learns from and commits itself toward Indigenous decolonization.

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Tomonori Sugimoto, ‘Urban Settler Colonialism: Policing and Displacing Indigeneity in Taipei, Taiwan’, City & Society, 2019

06Jul19

Abstract: This article argues that colonialism needs to be explicitly foregrounded in analyses of urban processes in settler colonial cities. Urban settler colonialism is an ongoing process that affects urban indigenous subjects, a force that builds on the longue durée of settler colonialism that has dispossessed them for centuries. My article draws on ethnographic research conducted with a group of indigenous Pangcah/Amis people who have migrated to the Taipei region in Taiwan over the last forty years. While paying attention to the long history of settler colonialism on the island and specifically in the Taipei region—the erasure of indigenous Ketagalan heritage in northern Taiwan, indigenous land dispossession in rural villages, and a consequent post‐WWII influx of indigenous people into Taipei, and the displacement of urban indigenous squatter settlements since the 1990s—I will ethnographically focus on a group of indigenous public housing residents who have continued to face urban settler colonialism. I discuss how they have negotiated with surveillance and policing from their on‐site housing management team, charges of incivility from Han state agents and neighbors, and displacement from urban redevelopment.

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Settler-colonialism requires surveillance: Jenna Harb, Kathryn Henne, ‘Disinformation and Resistance in the Surveillance of Indigenous Protesters’, in Blayne Haggart, Kathryn Henne, Natasha Tusikov (eds), Information, Technology and Control in a Changing World: Understanding Power Structures in the 21st Century, Palgrave, 2019, pp. 187-211

28Jun19

Abstract: The U.S. and Canadian governments have long engaged in the surveillance of Indigenous peoples. Such practices have garnered public attention in light of recent events. This chapter reflects on two examples: protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline that crossed over the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the United States and the release of details regarding Project SITKA—a Canadian Royal Mounted Police “dataveillance” operation identifying and tracking Indigenous activists. It examines them to illuminate the strategic use of information, particularly disinformation and misinformation, by government actors, media, private security personnel, and protesters. In particular, the analysis highlights how settler colonialism informs the asymmetrical power dynamics at work, illustrating connections between Project SITKA and the Standing Rock protests.

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Settler-colonial science fiction: Phillip Smith, ‘The American Yeoman in Andy Weir’s The Martian’, Science Fiction Studies, 46, 2, 2019, pp. 322-341

28Jun19

Abstract: In this essay I seek to place Andy Weir’s The Martian (2011) in discourse with two imbricated genres: the political and cultural history of the American frontier, embodied, in this case, in the archetype of the yeoman, and the scientific and fictional history of Mars. The red planet has historically served as a site where, by way of the mythic American frontier, authors have sought imaginary solutions to contemporary anxieties. In the case of The Martian, Andy Wier draws upon the intellectual heritage of the American yeoman to present Mars as a habitable alternative to the Earth. His rhetoric is problematic not only because it lessens the apparent urgency of interventions into global climate change, but also because it reinforces the apparent verisimilitude of a certain version of American history. The Martian, I argue, represents the latest fold in the Martian fantasy of American frontierism in that it presents a version of the America’s mythic past centered upon the white male experience and free of human or ecological victims. It thus seeks to sustain and invigorate a literary tradition predicated upon cultural, environmental, and physical violence as well as the marginalization of people of color in narratives of American history.

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Settler commons over indigenous property: April Anson, ‘The President Stole Your Land: Public Lands and the Settler Commons’, Western American Literature, 54, 1, 2019, pp. 49-62

26Jun19

Excerpt: In the United States what constitutes “public lands” has never been stable. Notions of the public and their commons were a fickle matter of political contest and power relations before the beginning of what is currently called America. Today, who and what serve to underwrite, define, and profit from “public lands” is a debate often expressed in cataclysmic language. Militarized government officials and extrastate militias extend across our shared social, political, and physical landscapes, as our terrains seem to scar, wither, blister, and combust in ways even our most apocalyptic and dystopic imaginations struggle to comprehend. Can we protect a piece of this world for all of us? Can we fight for the land that we live in and love? How do we survive the end of the world that seems so fast approaching? Who are the “we” in these questions?

The issues that immediately arise in discussions of the commons—namely whose commons and for what purposes—often still assume a public that is, in fact, particular to white settler subjects. As a settler scholar raised by uninvited hippies, loggers, and mill workers on Kalapuyailihi (Kalapuya homelands), I frequently find myself implicit in the publics universalized in, and made invisible by, current debates over public lands. From my vantage point in the middle of this “we” supposedly anticipating or already suffering the beginning of the end of the world of public lands, it is difficult to decipher the apocalyptic language commoning settler colonial capitalism, making it, as it were, so ordinary as to be almost imperceptible. Almost.

This article takes two examples of contemporary debates over public lands as paradigmatic case studies for the ways apocalyptic appeals populate and naturalize the “settler commons” across the spectrum of US politics.

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