settler colonial studies blog

Two ways of resistance (defending water from settler-colonial encroachment): Andrew Curley, ‘”Our Winters’ Rights”: Challenging Colonial Water Laws’, Global Environmental Politics, 2019

18Aug19

Abstract: Much of the scholarship on Indigenous water rights in the United States focuses on legal and political rights awarded or denied in water settlements. This article highlights the voice of settlement opponents within Diné communities over the proposed Little Colorado River Settlement in 2012 between the Navajo Nation and Arizona. Using interviews with key actors, observations of water hearings, and a mini focus group with settlement opponents, my research finds that the proposed water settlement produced contradictory logics, practices, and frameworks that combined two “traditions of Indigenous resistance,” one rooted in the language of self-determination and sovereignty and the other in emerging notions of decolonization. This hybridity of seeking increased water recognition within colonial law, while advocating for decolonial waterscapes, speaks to the complicated and fundamentally entangled political landscapes of Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, in opposing the water settlement, Diné opponents and community members demonstrate that they seek to rectify the injustice of ongoing settler colonialism and realize their collective capabilities as nations, not “Indians,” “tribes,” or “minorities” within and against the authorities of the colonial state.

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The urban ecology of contemporary settler colonialism: Jessica Parish, ‘Re-wilding Parkdale? Environmental gentrification, settler colonialism, and the reconfiguration of nature in 21st century Toronto’, Environmant and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2019

18Aug19

Abstract: In 21st century Toronto, the labour of caring for urban trees is entangled with both gentrification processes and the social reproduction of settler colonial space. This paper contributes to the study of environmental gentrification through a study of the social reproduction of settler colonial relations to land in the Parkdale–High Park area of Toronto. Specifically, I take up the hyper-visibility of some forms of social reproduction, in order to shed light on how the mundane, quotidian ‘non-work’ of living in/with/for capitalism becomes a site of privilege and a luxury pursuit for more affluent residents. The paper highlights the processes and practices whereby settler colonial urban subjects seek out ‘nature’ as a temporary outside where they can escape from widely accepted downsides of capitalist urbanism, including a diverse array of social and physical ills, from stress, to obesity, to ecological degradation. The paper asks: whose social reproduction does the presence of urban trees serve? In the context of 21st century financialized gentrification, cities are increasingly normalized as spaces of wealth and luxury. It is therefore crucial to pay attention to the raced, gendered, and colonial micro-politics through which urban ecologies are transformed in the service of an anti-democratic vision of the city as a space of leisure and luxury.

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The travels of US settler colonialism: Tyler Norris Taylor, Italy’s American West: Brava Gente, American Indians, and the Circulation of Settler Colonialism, PhD Dissertation, William & Mary, 2019

16Aug19

Abstract: The racialized logics that uphold and perpetuate U.S. settler colonialism are not confined within U.S. borders. Instead, the legacies of white settler colonization and American Indian resistance are woven into processes of Americanization, globalization, transnational migrations, and cultural exchange. The role of white settler cultural production in the ongoing process of U.S. settler colonialism is well-established, as well as the advent of mass culture in facilitating cultural exchange between the U.S. and Europe. Regarding the specific relationship between the United States and Italy, many studies have noted the immense influence of the mythology of the American West in Italian cultural production and, conversely, the impact Italian emigrants to the United States left on American culture and society. The ways in which U.S. settler colonialism intersects with and connects these histories brings to light how U.S. settler colonialism has evolved into an international, rather than solely American, project. “Italy’s American West: Brava Gente, American Indians, and the Circulation of Settler Colonialism” positions the Italian state and Italians as settlers-from-afar of the American West in this evolution. The simultaneity of circulations of American mass culture in Italy, Italian colonialism in Africa, and mass Italian emigration to the United States imbued the development of Italian national identity with U.S. settler colonial logics and expanded the global influence of U.S. settler colonialism. Buffalo Bill’s two tours of Italy in 1890 and 1906, the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and Western-themed Italian comic books published from 1948 to today intertwined U.S. white settler cultural production with Italian cultural production. Viewing this cultural production under the umbrella of “transnational settler colonialism”—the circulation of U.S. settler logics and Native resistance in the movements of people and ideas between Italy and the United States—frames them as evidence that U.S. settler colonialism helped construct Italian national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and continues to inform Italian expressions of colonial desires.

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Settler-colonial violence is capitalist violence: David Maile, Gifts of Sovereignty: Settler Colonial Capitalism and the Kanaka ʻŌiwi Politics of Ea, PhD Dissertation, University of New Mexico, 2019

16Aug19

Abstract: This dissertation examines Hawaiian sovereignty in history, law, and activism. The project tracks Indigenous claims, negotiations, and articulations of sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Using a critically Indigenous approach to Hawaiian studies, I advance two main theses. First, Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) are discussed as a community divided on Hawaiian sovereignty. However, I contend that Kānaka Maoli exercise a diversity of strategies and tactics for Hawaiian sovereignty. I show how Kānaka Maoli practice multiple modalities of sovereignty that cumulatively produce the Kanaka ‘Ōiwi (Indigenous Hawaiian) politics of ea (life and sovereignty). Second, the historical development of settler colonial capitalism operationalized the US settler-state in Hawai‘i and fuels its management of Kānaka Maoli in contemporary struggles with federal recognition, nation-building, and astronomy industry development. Yet, Kanaka ‘Ōiwi artists and activists engage in geontologies of aloha ‘āina—a geographic way of being in the ‘āina (land and that which feeds)—that seek to overturn settler colonial capitalism and its champion the US settler-state. I argue that these practices issue gifts that disidentify with dominant ideologies of sovereignty as a way of reimagining ea for a decolonized then and deoccupied there. Therefore, my project explains the nefarious ways that the settler-state attempts to cohere territorial control to juridical authority and how Kānaka Maoli antagonize and disrupt the precariousness of settler sovereignty in Hawai‘i. Intervening into Indigenous Studies, Hawaiian Studies, and critical theories, the study offers new insights on the complex relationship between settler colonial capitalism and Hawaiian sovereignty.

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Settler-colonial violence is gendered: Luhui Whitebear, ‘VAWA Reauthorization of 2013 and the Continued Legacy of Violence Against Indigenous Women: A Critical Outsider Jurisprudence Perspective’, University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review, 9, 1, 2019, pp. 75-89

16Aug19

Excerpt: Indigenous women. Often termed as the backbone of our nations, that solid foundation that keeps our people moving forward through the multiple waves of colonization. Indigenous women. Often labeled as the sustainers of life, birthing new generations. Indigenous women. They will help sing the songs of remembering, dry the tears, heal the wounds, and forgive without second thought. Indigenous women. Enduring vicious forms of violence to both body and spirit. Indigenous women. Expected to withstand this settler colonial violence as our lands are continued to be subjected to the same forms of violence. Indigenous women. Expected to do so even beyond the grave as they become yet another statistic in the long list of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Indigenous women. Can the laws protect us? Indigenous women. What will it take for them to hear our cries?

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Settler colonialism (i.e., taking possession of the population economy)! Mirza Waheed, ‘India’s illegal power grab is turning Kashmir into a colony’, The Guardia, 15/08/19

15Aug19

Excerpt: India has […] abrogated article 35A, introduced in 1954. It empower[ed] the state legislature in Srinagar, the capital [of Kashmir], to define who is a permanent resident with the right to buy property and apply for jobs. It’s the dissolution of this article that perhaps presents a graver threat to Kashmiris, as it potentially clears a way for Indians to acquire land. […] I asked a Kashmiri journalist who had returned to Delhi after spending two days in the state if he knew where it was all headed. He responded with one word, Falasteen, the Urdu for Palestine – a clear reference to the settler-colonialist occupation there [emphases added].

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The non-indigeneity of settler colonial studies: Shino Konishi, ‘First Nations Scholars, Settler Colonial Studies, and Indigenous History’, Australian Historical Studies, 50, 3, 2019, pp. 285-304

14Aug19

Abstract: Over the last decade or so settler colonial studies has become a key prism through which to interpret the colonial cultures and histories of former British colonies where Indigenous people have since become a marginalised minority in their own homelands, ‘replaced’ by European settlers who sought to ‘eliminate’ them and their connections to the land. Yet, in recent years this approach has been subject to more critical evaluations, key amongst them, by some First Nations scholars. In this article I explore how Indigenous scholars advocate, interrogate, critique or challenge settler colonial studies as an emerging field of enquiry. I conclude by discussing Indigenous-authored extra-colonial histories, which bypass colonial expropriation and exploitation to focus on Indigenous worlds.

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Settler tourists do not ‘come to stay’: Bryan S. R. Grimwood, Michela J. Stinson, Lauren J.King, ‘A decolonizing settler story’, Annals of Tourism Research, 79, 2019

14Aug19

Abstract: In this paper, we intervene in tourism’s entanglement with colonialism by presenting a decolonizing settler story in tourism. This story is constructed from narrative research with the Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation concerning their connections to the Thelon River watershed in sub-Arctic Canada, a landscape with high appeal among wilderness tourists. We use the story to open up possibilities for decolonization, particularly in terms of Settler’s taking responsibility for colonial resistance, learning from Indigenous peoples, and shedding desires and entitlements to know. Informed by a range of settler colonial, Indigenous, and tourism literatures, we argue that this and other stories are needed to productively disrupt settler colonialism and construct decolonizing space in tourism and tourism research.

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Ancient Greek settler colonialism: Aaron Sterngass, It’s Complicated: Relations Between Greek Settlers and Indigenous Sicilians at Megara Hyblaea, Syracuse, and Leontinoi in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE, Undergraduate Dissertation, Haverford College, 2019

14Aug19

Abstract: Greek interactions with indigenous Sicilians in the Archaic Period have traditionally been examined through the lens of violent colonization by historians from Ancient Greece all the way through the mid-20th century. Recently, postcolonial studies and a new emphasis on material evidence have led scholars to change this narrative, highlighting the possibility of more peaceful and synergetic exchanges between Greeks and natives. This paper examines the relations between Greeks and native Sicilians in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE at Megara Hyblaea, Syracuse, and Leontinoi, three sites at which Thucydides recorded early interactions between Greek settlers and native communities/authorities. To supplement the evidence found at these sites, native communities and other Greek settlements associated with these sites were also analyzed. Through the analysis of ancient sources, material evidence, and modern interpretations which combined both, this paper argues that the earliest Greek settlers at Syracuse, Leontinoi, and Megara Hyblaea had far more complex relations with indigenous Sicilians than is described in the ancient texts and the all-but-recent scholarship. However, it also concludes that while the modern model of more peaceful and cooperative encounters is useful in studying Greco-native relations, it does not fully account for localized differences in these interactions, which often varied widely over short distances and periods of time. The paper advocates for an historical portrayal of indigenous Sicilians as dynamic and innovative whose influences on the Greeks are often overlooked in textbooks, but also encourages the depiction of both Greeks and indigenous peoples as active participants in systems of exchange instead of maintaining static, onedimensional relationships such as “cordial” or “hostile.”

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The renewal of settler colonialism: Chad Walker et al, ‘Are the pens working for justice? News media coverage of renewable energy involving Indigenous Peoples in Canada’, Energy Research & Social Science, 57, 2019

14Aug19

Abstract: Some are suggesting that renewable energy by, for, and in Indigenous communities can provide a vehicle for both Indigenous-settler reconciliation, and climate change mitigation in Canada. Yet very little empirical research aimed at understanding this kind of energy transition has been published to date. In this paper, we present findings from an analysis of five large, mainstream (CBC, Globe and Mail, National Post, Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star) and Indigenous (APTN) Canadian media outlets from 2008 to 2017 (n = 153). Using Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing) and energy justice frameworks, we are interested in the ways Indigenous Peoples are being written about and perceived among the Canadian public. We use content analysis to understand more about the types of issues being brought forth into the public eye, and critical discourse analysis to assess each outlet’s telling and framing of these stories. Findings indicate that stories of Indigenous opposition to large scale hydro development dominate our sample – articles of protest, lawsuits, and threats to nation-to-nation-building that are more commonly seen in extractive industries. Stories covering other technologies (e.g. solar, wind) showcase excitement, positive socio-economic benefit, and opportunities for reconciliation. Second, and against the backdrop of historical misrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples, we find what some may deem exemplars of fair coverage of Indigenous Peoples and renewable energy. Despite the absence of overt racist phrases — as seen in the recent past — authors rarely attend to the colonial history that has created structural issues prevalent in communities today. In the face of long-standing (energy) injustices, we question how far the coverage goes towards raising alternative and Indigenous perspectives. We close the paper with what we see as potential for future research trajectories to critically consider the role of the news media in addressing nation-to-nation relationships in Canada and other colonized territories.

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