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Broken treaties? Fix them! Xavier Scott, ‘Repairing Broken Relations by Repairing Broken Treaties: Theorizing Post-Colonial States in Settler Colonies’, Studies in Social Justice, 12, 2, 2018, pp. 388-405

06Jan19

Abstract: This article examines the British colonial theft of Indigenous sovereignty and the particular obstacles that it presents to establishing just social relations between the colonizer and the colonized in settler states. In the first half, I argue that the particular nature of the crime of sovereign theft makes apologies and reparations unsuitable policy tools for reconciliation because Settler societies owe their very existence to the abrogation of Indigenous sovereignties. Instead, Settler states ought to return sovereignty to the land’s Indigenous peoples. In the second half of this paper, I take up some of the practical questions of how this might be done and anticipate a number of objections. Giving up sovereignty would not mean dispossessing the millions of colonists who currently reside in these countries of their homes and property – but it does mean rethinking the constitutional makeup of a country and how that serves to benefit the different peoples who make their homes there.


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On the settler coloniality of yoga: Tria Blu Wakpa, ‘Decolonizing Yoga? and (Un)settling Social Justice’, Race & Yoga, 3, 1, 2018

06Jan19

Excerpt: What are our responsibilities not only to the Indigenous peoples whose lands we occupy, but also to the Indigenous peoples and people of color whose practices we benefit from? This special cluster of Race and Yoga recognizes the need to (re)center Indigenous lands, practices, and peoples locally and globally in discussions of decolonization and yoga. Settler colonial and/or dominant yoga discourses exclude peoples who are Indigenous to the partition of Turtle Island often referred to as the U.S. as well as the Indigenous South Asian, South Asian, South Asian American, and/or South Asian diasporic peoples from whose ancestors and lands yoga broadly originated. Whereas Native American/Indigenous, South Asian, and South Asian American studies have frequently overlooked embodied practices and the ways that movement means, academic fields that center the body, embodiment, and performance studies have often omitted Indigenous peoples and their contributions. With the primary exception of Native American/Indigenous studies, fields often do not account for settler colonialism or Indigenous futurities. In the U.S., discourses around “decolonizing yoga” frequently focus on globalization and likewise do not acknowledge settler colonialism or Native American sovereignties.


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The settler’s ‘human’? Alison Howell, Melanie Richter-Montpetit, ‘Racism in Foucauldian Security Studies: Biopolitics, Liberal War, and the Whitewashing of Colonial and Racial Violence’, International Political Sociology, 2018

04Jan19

Abstract: This article argues that while Foucauldian security studies (FSS) scholarship on the biopolitics of security and liberal war has not ignored racism, these works largely replicate Foucault’s whitewashing of the raciality and coloniality of modern power and violence. Drawing on Black, indigenous, postcolonial and decolonial studies, we show how Foucault’s genealogy of biopower rests on an unspecified concept of the “human,” failing to account for how notions of “human” were constituted through the savage and slave other, how enslaved people were rendered into things, and how punitive, sovereign violence persists as a (settler) colonial technique of gratuitous, not merely instrumental, violence. FSS exacerbates these problems. This article challenges two core FSS propositions on liberal war: 1. that “human life cannot ever be secured,” which replicates Foucault’s Eurocentric reliance on an unspecified “human” as the object of biopolitics; 2. that “everyone is (potentially) dangerous” and thus open to the punitive/lethal dimensions of liberal power, which reduces racism to a sorting process after the establishment of biopolitics and liberal war, rather than a precondition of it.


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The settler’s apology: Hannah Chong, ‘Reconciliation in Settler-Colonial States: A Study of the Political Apology’, The Yale Review of International Studies, 2018

04Jan19

Excerpt: In a 2016 speech in Hiroshima, former United States President Obama brought a message of peace and a call for a “moral awakening” for humanity. However, for a trip laden with symbolic gestures, such as the laying of a wreath memorializing Japanese nuclear bomb victims, a political apology was conspicuously missing; prior to the trip, it was made clear that Obama would not be apologising for his country dropping an atomic bomb on the city. non-apologetic stance despite demands from Japanese nuclear survivors hints at the significance attached to this symbolic gesture.

Despite a well-deserved reputation for being stingy with apologies, the U.S. congress did issue one in 2009. Buried in a 67-page defence appropriation spending bill was an “apology” towards particular American indigenous communities “for the many instances of violence, maltreatment, and neglect inflicted” on them. Understandably, members of the Navajo Nation were unimpressed with the “apology,” citing its lack of publicity and open acknowledgement. This episode further illustrates the importance of not only an apology, but also a proper apology to indigenous victims of settler-colonial violence. The Obama administration eventually ended in January 2017 without any significant mention of this “apology.”

Cynics decry the political apology as “mere ritual,” citing its impracticality in mending intergroup relations, since it often lacks a material dimension. Stories like this remind us otherwise: in politics, symbolic gestures matter. Hence, rather than accept the principle that political apologies are ineffective, this piece questions the role that political apologies play in the reconciliation process in settler-colonial states. With this as my primary research question, I demonstrate the symbolic contributions of the political apology towards achieving holistic reconciliation.


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The settler’s fear: Jamie Hawkins Elder, Unsettling the Colony: Gender, fear and settler colonialism during the evacuation of ‘refugee’ settler women from Land Wars conflicts at Taranaki (1860-1861) and Poverty Bay (1865, 1868), MA Dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 2018

04Jan19

Abstract: Anxiety and fear were central to the condition of settler colonialism in 1860s New Zealand. The Land Wars of the 1860s in New Zealand provoked potent anxiety about the enemy, about loved ones’ lives and about survival. The anxiety could transform into full-blown fear and panic with the onset of violence, or even the prospect or threat of violence. This thesis examines and compares evacuations of ‘refugee’ settler women and children from the sites of Land Wars conflicts in Taranaki (1860-61), and at Waerenga-a-hika (1865) and Matawhero (1868) in Poverty Bay. It explores the character and response to danger of what might be described as ‘settler anxiety’. Settlers of the 1860s used the specific term ‘refugee’ to describe the displaced settler women and children. Māori also faced displacement during the wars, though their situation is not within the scope of this thesis. The story of the Land Wars thus far has focused mainly on the narrative of the military conflict and examines events primarily as a male-centric, racial conflict. However, the time has come to examine experiences off the battlefield – of non-combatants. Women and children in particular are far more central to the history of the wars than is currently acknowledged. The first part of the thesis explores how the Land Wars ‘refugees’ coped with separation from homes and family. The second part examines how settler society, both on a formal governmental basis and on a more informal community level, reacted to the presence of ‘refugees’ emotively and with practical assistance. The research examines the language settlers used and the points they emphasised in their writing or speeches to reveal the frameworks of settler colonialism. Personal diaries, letters and memoirs are used to understand the settlers’ situations. To understand the broader reaction of settler society the thesis draws on newspapers, provincial council correspondence and records, and general government debate and legislation. This thesis argues that the existence of women and children settler ‘refugees’ during the Land Wars represented the settler colonial system in turmoil, providing evidence that the wars involved a conflict off the battlefield as well as on it. Colonists dreamed of creating a safe and secure colony where settlers could acquire land and make a livelihood to support a family. Consequently, attacks on family went to the heart of settler colonialism. The ‘refugees’ symbolised the ‘unsettling’ of settler colonialism, both literally by their locational displacement and figuratively by igniting fear about the stability of the settler colony. In response to the ‘refugee’ crisis settlers vehemently asserted their attachment to ‘home’, to prove their right to live in the colony, and promoted their solidarity with the ‘refugees’ and against enemy Māori, who they saw as threatening the settler dream. The evacuation of Land Wars ‘refugees’ is also considered for its similarities and differences to other ‘refugee’ situations internationally during the colonial era.


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Neoliberal settler colonialism: Alaa Tartir, Timothy Seidel, Palestine and Rule of Power Local Dissent vs. International Governance, Palgrave, 2018

28Dec18

Abstract: This book explores how the rule of power relates to the case of occupied Palestine, examining features of local dissent and international governance. The project considers expressions of the rule of power in two particular ways: settler colonialism and neoliberalism. As power is always accompanied by resistance, the authors engage with and explores forms of everyday resistance to the logics and regimes of neoliberal governance and settler colonialism. They investigate wide-ranging issues and dynamics related to international governance, liberal peacebuilding, statebuilding, and development, the claim to politics, and the notion and practice of resistance. This work will be of interest for academics focusing on modern Middle Eastern politics, international relations, as well as for courses on contemporary conflicts, peacebuilding, and development.


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The racial consequences of settler colonialism: Louise Seamster, Victor Ray, ‘Against Teleology in the Study of Race: Toward the Abolition of the Progress Paradigm’, Sociological theory, 2018

26Dec18

Anstract: We argue that claims of racial progress rest upon untenable teleological assumptions founded in Enlightenment discourse. We examine the theoretical and methodological focus on progress and its historical roots. We argue research should examine the concrete mechanisms that produce racial stability and change, and we offer three alternative frameworks for interpreting longitudinal racial data and phenomena. The first sees racism as a “fundamental cause,” arguing that race remains a “master category” of social differentiation. The second builds on Glenn’s “settler colonialism as structure” framework to describe race relations as a mutually constituted and place-based system of resource allocation. The third framework draws attention to racialized agency.


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A settler is not a guest: Ruth Koleszar-Green, ‘What is a Guest? What is a Settler?’, Cultural and Pedagogical Inquiry, 2018, 10, 2, pp. 166-177

26Dec18

Abstract: This article gathers together some Traditional Knowledge keepers’ understandings concerning the roles and responsibilities of Guests and Hosts. The responsibilities are mapped upon Wampum Belts and in this article include my understanding, as a Haudenosaunee woman. Through discussions with some Knowledge Keepers, examination of the relevant literature, and my own understandings of the issues, I look carefully, at the work of Tuck and Yang (2010) and Lawrence and Dua (2005). I continue with a synthesis of contemporary debates concerning, the underlying complexities of Guests/Settlers roles and responsibilities. I offer differentiations between the descriptive labels in conventional use. My intent is to engage and push non-Onkwehonweh people to challenge their ‘taken-for-granted’ understandings of their ‘rights’, and to encourage them to look with fresh eyes at their understandings of their attendant responsibilities.


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Italian settler colonialisms: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Italian Colonialism through a Settler Colonial Studies Lens’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 19, 3, 2018

23Dec18

Abstract: When it comes to appraising Italy’s colonial experience one characteristic stands out: the Italian colonial traditions are defined probably more than any other by concerns about emigration. From the Risorgimento to the early Republican period, Italian colonialisms are primarily informed by concerns over an excess of labour. The colonial situation, however, is typically defined by a demand for labour—no wonder that Italian colonial traditions were and saw themselves as an outlier. In its imagination, this colonialism required no Indigenous labour (in practice, however, to make the colonial enterprise viable, it often did). The primary demand was for an outlet for Italian labour. In a sense, all Italian colonialisms are settler colonialisms.


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An anti-settler call for justice: Angela P. Harris, ‘Anti-Colonial Pedagogies: “[X] Justice” Movements in the United States’, Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 30, 3, 2018, pp. 567-594

23Dec18

Abstract: In the last few decades, the United States has seen the proliferation of social movements that incorporate the word “justice.” [X] justice movements share several commitments. First, they both make use of, and are critical of, legal rights. Second, [X] justice movements embrace the concept of interacting subordinations. Third, they begin with land, water, food, health, and reproduction, engaging with dynamics usually ruled outside the scope of democratic politics. I argue that these combined commitments disrupt two central projects of white settler societies: (1) the production of the (proper) national citizen as white and male and (2) the understanding that the “economic” sphere is not, and should not be, subject to democratic norms. In disrupting these foundations of white settler societies, I argue that [X] justice movements are striving to change what it means to be “human.”


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