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Normalising settler colonalism begins early: Brian Rouleau, ‘How the West Was Fun: Children’s Literature and Frontier Mythmaking toward the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Western Historical Quarterly, 2019

11Dec19

Abstract: This article discusses the important role that juvenile literature played in creating America’s frontier mythos. It argues that children were a crucial audience for adult authors seeking to justify and normalize settler colonial policies. But, more importantly, young people themselves were active participants in the perpetuation of a popular culture that glorified westward expansion and the eradication of Indigenous peoples. In acknowledging as much, we arrive at a richer understanding of the important intersections between western history and the history of childhood in the United States.


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Refusal as strategy: Erez Tzfadia, Avinoam Meir, Batya Roded, EliAtzmon, ‘Gray local governance and Israeli Indigenous Bedouin: Credibility, functionality and the politics of refusal’, Cities, 97, 2020

11Dec19

Abstract: Our research explores the Bedouin town of Kseife in Israel’s southern district as a case study of a local authority willing to sacrifice the credibility earnable from local population in order to maintain Indigenous symbolic presence against state attempts to eliminate it through assimilation into ‘modern’ and ‘formal’ order. Elimination of Indigenous spatiality, typical to settler-colonialism, resulted in dividing the traditional space and society into ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ spaces. Kseife and its surroundings are socially and geographically sub-divided into three social groups with contrasting interests: (a) landlords (by customary law) who live in squatter (‘informal’) localities (‘informalities’) within and (b) outside the town’s jurisdiction, and (c) landless Bedouin who live in the formally planned neighborhoods in town. However, our study on the spatiality and temporally defined function of the local authority explores that as part of the ‘politics of refusal’ to the elimination of Indigenous spatiality, the local authority functions in-between the two sets of law – state law and tradition, and in-between the dynamic interaction between these three groups. Our findings show that the municipality maneuvers between these contradictions and socio-spatial order, thus failing to achieve credibility, yet maintaining Indigenous symbolic presence. We call this functionality gray governance.


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Settler genocide in the form of a pageant: Andrea Lynn Smith, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Revolutionary War” New York’s 1929 “Pageant of Decision”‘, The Public Historian, 41, 4, 2019, pp. 7-35

11Dec19

Abstract: The centerpiece of New York State’s 150th anniversary of the Sullivan Expedition of 1779 was a pageant, the “Pageant of Decision.” Major General John Sullivan’s Revolutionary War expedition was designed to eliminate the threat posed by Iroquois allied with the British. It was a genocidal operation that involved the destruction of over forty Indian villages. This article explores the motivations and tactics of state officials as they endeavored to engage the public in this past in pageant form. The pageant was widely popular, and served the state in fixing the expedition as the end point in settler-Indian relations in New York, removing from view decades of expropriations of Indian land that occurred well after Sullivan’s troops left.


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Violence and identity: Alexander Rotard, ‘Settler Identity and Colonial Violence in French Algeria 1945-1962: An Exploration of the Relationship between Settler Identity Formation and the Justification of Violence in Settler Colonies’, Hitotsubashi Bulletin of Social Sciences, 11, 2019

11Dec19

Excerpt: Amalgamating a Fanonesque psychological approach to the broader question of colonial violence in Algeria with a modern examination of colonial and metropolitan responses to specific violent events, this paper investigates the role of settler identity formation in the legitimisation and unleashing of colonial violence in Algeria between 1945 and 1962. 


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Mormon settler colonialism: Elise Boxer, ‘The Book of Mormon as Mormon Settler Colonialism’, in P. Jane Hafen, Brenden W. Rensink (eds), Essays on American Indian and Mormon History, University of Utah Press, 2019, pp. 3-22

08Dec19

Excerpt: The Book of Mormon is not just a reflection of Mormon settler colonialism, but has been used to create a discourse that silences Indigenous voices and perspectives regarding their own history as a people on this continent. According to P. Jane Hafen, this is a“disruptive and colonizing act.” The Book of Mormon is utilized to construct a Lamanite identity and history in which Indigenous Peoples exist only to legitimize the presence of Mormon settlers on this continent and the religious narrative found in the Book of Mormon as accurate and true. By depicting Indigenous Peoples as Lamanites, or the first immigrants to this continent, the Book of Mormon provides the necessary justification for Indigenous removal and dispossession by Mormon settlers along the Mormon Corridor (Idaho, Utah, Arizona) in what is now the United States. The Book of Mormon reflects the nuanced ways in which Mormon settler colonialism is utilized to physically remove Indigenous people from their homelands while also demarcating Indigenous worldviews, identities, and histories as the racialized “other.” The Book of Mormon reflects the nuanced ways in which Mormon settler colonialism functions by creating very distinct notions of Indigeneity. Indigeneity, as defined by the Book of Mormon, is exhibited through the construction and application of “Lamanites” to American Indian Peoples. Lamanite identity is fluid, changing over time, but always in relation to Mormon Euro-​American notions of Indigeneity. The use of the Book of Mormon as a historical and religious text of Lamanite identity and history on this continent erases the way Indigenous Peoples view their own creation as a people, their connection to the land, and their identity as a people. Instead, Indigenous Peoples are made to fit into Mormon creation stories and religious belief system. The erasure of Indigenous Peoples and history by Mormon settlers is an extension of the larger American colonial project of removal and genocide of Indigenous Peoples.


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Camus as primarily a settler colonist: Gina Marie Breen, ‘Neither Algerian, nor French: Albert Camus’s Pied-Noir Identity’, Mediterranean Studies, 27, 2, 2019, pp. 210-233

08Dec19

Abstract: Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria, in 1913 to white European settlers of French and Spanish origin. Hence, Camus and his parents belonged to the pied-noircommunity, a term commonly used to refer to Europeans who settled in Algeria during the French colonial occupation. While Camus chose Algeria as the setting for four of his literary texts, this article focuses on Camus’s first novel, L’Étranger, written during World War II and published in 1942, and his unfinished, posthumous, semiautobiographical novel Le Premier Homme, written during Algeria’s War of Independence and published in 1994, because they both discuss the French Algerian pied-noir community. I argue that this distinction allows them to best convey the evolution of Camus’s pied-noir identity. Through an analysis of these novels, I examine the ambivalence of Camus’s representations of French Algeria. Though his writing has left an ambivalent legacy, I contend that Camus mythologizes the past and present primarily through his piednoir origins. His poverty and loss are consolidated in his negative prognosis for Algeria’s future, a prognosis that is often mistrustful of Algerian independence. Often his pied-noir upbringing and experiences with poverty and marginality put in question the very possibility of an all-inclusive nation, rendering him incapable of imagining a hybrid community of French and Algerians living together. These works convey the complexity of Camus’s identities, and foreground his attempt and ultimate failure to navigate his past and access memories. In the end, these novels offer us a nuanced exploration of pied-noir marginality.


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Indigenising theology: Allen G. Jorgenson, ‘Decolonizing and Indigenizing Liberation Theology’, in Hussam S. Timani, Loye Sekihata Ashton (eds), Post-Christian Interreligious Liberation Theology, Palgave, 2019, pp. 159-183

07Dec19

Abstract: This chapter engages comparative theology in imaging how liberation theology might be informed by spiritualities and worldviews from the First Peoples of North America, referencing teachings, treaties, and ceremonies from the Six Nations of the Grand River Nation. The liberation hermeneutic of “see, judge, act” is informed, in turn, by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum, the Two Row Wampum, and the Condolence Ceremony. Liberation theology thus contextualized will involve seeing with “all my relations” in service of earth-justice, judging in a way that pairs thought and feeling/intuition attentive to the whole, and acting in a fashion whereby peace refuses to demonize oppressors, using power that is balanced with harmony for the sake of a righteousness that knows that there is no justice without language of justice and justice for language. This instance of comparative theology takes its cues from a land-based religion, and so its hermeneutic is shaped in situ such that it cannot be exported without further ado. As such, it invites other liberation projects to engage local land-based religions which will school those who desire to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk in a good way with the Creator in a way appropriate to their territory.


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Environmental protection and the logic of elimination: Erin Willahan, ‘Narratives of the North: Contested geographic imaginaries and the case of Izembek National Wildlife Refuge’, Arctic Yearbook, 2019

07Dec19

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Promoting settler ‘ready made’ farms: Shona Gourlay, ‘CPR’s Ready Made Farms’, Alberta History, 2019

07Dec19

Excerpt: As early as the late 1880s, CPR mounted various campaigns to entice settlers to the West. This included railway cars, such as Baggage Car 303 that visited communities in Canada and the United States with a special agricultural exhibition showing the prospects in western Canada. A similar program ran in England, with a Travelling Exhibition Van touring rural areas to spark interest in Canadian products, and to inspire emigration. In one year (1893?), the “van visited 513 communities, travelled more than 1,800 miles (2,896 kilometres), and was inspected by more than 1.7 million people. Similar campaigns were conducted throughout Europe.” […]

In addition to print advertisements, the CPR used motion pictures as part of its publicity campaign: “the development of motion pictures coincided with the development of active publicity campaigns by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company… In order to encourage immigration and settlement to western Canada, the company developed an extensive system of promotion which included the use of films. Railway filmmaking fell broadly into two categories, those which were designed with a specific intent to educate, inform, and persuade and those which were primarily intended as entertainment.”

The CPR undertook a special advertising campaign for ready made farms. Magazines such as Popular Mechanics contained ads telling people to ‘Get your Canadian home from the Canadian Pacific’ and the “Canadian Pacific offers you the finest land on earth for grain growing, cattle, hog, sheep and horse raising, dairying, poultry, vegetables, and general mixed farming…” The February 26, 1913 issue of Country Life contained an ad directed to British residents, stating that “Canadian Pacific ‘Ready Made’ farms offer to residents of Great Britain a means of settling in Western Canada with a minimum of discomfort, and insure the production of revenue from the investment in the shortest possible time.” The CPR also made presentations overseas.


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A settler’s dream (i.e., deporting indigenous people): Helen Davidson, ‘Citizenship test: court to decide whether Indigenous people can be deported from Australia’, Guardian, 04/12/19

05Dec19

Excerpt: The high court of Australia will this week examine a complicated question: can Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders be deported as aliens if they don’t hold Australian citizenship?

The federal government says yes.

 


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