settler colonial studies blog

Solidarity and default white space: Joe Curnow, Anjali Helferty, ‘Contradictions of Solidarity Whiteness, Settler Coloniality, and the Mainstream Environmental Movement’, Environment and Society, 9, 2018, pp. 145-164

16Sep18

Abstract: In this article, we trace the racialized history of the environmental movement in the United States and Canada that has defined the mainstream movement as a default white space. We then interrogate the turn to solidarity as a way to escape/intervene in the racialized and colonial underpinnings of mainstream environmentalism, demonstrating that the practice of solidarity itself depends on these same racial and colonial systems. Given the lack of theorization on solidarity within environmentalism, we draw on examples of solidarity work that bridge place and power and are predicated on disparate social locations, such as in accompaniment or the fair trade movement. We conclude that the contradictions of racialized and colonial solidarity should not preclude settler attempts to engage in solidarity work, but rather become inscribed into environmentalist practices as an ethic of accountability.

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‘Settler colonialism is [all] ecological domination’: Kyle Whyte, ‘Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice’, Environment and Society, 9, 2018, pp. 125-144

16Sep18

Abstract: Settler colonialism is a form of domination that violently disrupts human relationships with the environment. Settler colonialism is ecological domination, committing environmental injustice against Indigenous peoples and other groups. Focusing on the context of Indigenous peoples’ facing US domination, this article investigates philosophically one dimension of how settler colonialism commits environmental injustice. When examined ecologically, settler colonialism works strategically to undermine Indigenous peoples’ social resilience as self determining collectives. To understand the relationships connecting settler colonialism, environmental injustice, and violence, the article first engages Anishinaabe intellectual traditions to describe an Indigenous conception of social resilience called collective continuance. One way in which settler colonial violence commits environmental injustice is through strategically undermining Indigenous collective continuance. At least two kinds of environmental injustices demonstrate such violence: vicious sedimentation and insidious loops. The article seeks to contribute to knowledge of how anti-Indigenous settler colonialism and environmental injustice are connected.

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The struggle about the meaning of land: Paul Berne Burow, Samara Brock, Michael R. Dove, ‘Unsettling the Land: Indigeneity, Ontology, and Hybridity in Settler Colonialism’,Environment and Society, 9, 2018, pp. 57-74

16Sep18

Abstract: This article examines different ontologies of land in settler colonialism and Indigenous movements for decolonization and environmental justice. Settler ontologies of land operate by occluding other modes of perceiving, representing, and experiencing land. Indigenous ontologies of land are commonly oriented around relationality and reciprocal obligations among humans and the other-than-human. Drawing together scholarship from literatures in political economy, political ecology, Indigenous studies, and post-humanism, we synthesize an approach to thinking with land to understand structures of dispossession and the possibilities for Indigenous revitalization through ontological hybridity. Using two different case studies—plantation development in Indonesia and land revitalization in the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Nation—we further develop how settler and Indigenous ontologies operate on the ground, illuminating the coexistence of multiple ontologies of land. Given the centrality of land in settler colonialism, hybrid ontologies are important to Indigenous movements seeking to simultaneously strengthen sovereignty over territory and revitalize land-based practices.

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Settlers in Africa: Nicola Ginsburgh, Will Jackson, ‘Settler Societies’, in William H. Worger, Charles Ambler, Nwando Achebe (eds), A Companion to African History, Wiley, 2018, pp. 77-91

16Sep18

Access the chapter here.

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On settler adaptations: Rowan Jackson, Jette Arneborg, Andrew Dugmore, Christian Madsen, Tom McGovern, Konrad Smiarowski, Richard Streeter, ‘Disequilibrium, Adaptation, and the Norse Settlement of Greenland’, Human Ecology, 2018

16Sep18

Abstract: There is increasing evidence to suggest that arctic cultures and ecosystems have followed non-linear responses to climate change. Norse Scandinavian farmers introduced agriculture to sub-arctic Greenland in the late tenth century, creating synanthropic landscapes and utilising seasonally abundant marine and terrestrial resources. Using a niche-construction framework and data from recent survey work, studies of diet, and regional-scale climate proxies we examine the potential mismatch between this imported agricultural niche and the constraints of the environment from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. We argue that landscape modification conformed the Norse to a Scandinavian style of agriculture throughout settlement, structuring and limiting the efficacy of seasonal hunting strategies. Recent climate data provide evidence of sustained cooling from the mid thirteenth century and climate variation from the early fifteenth century. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Norse made incremental adjustments to the changing sub-arctic environment, but were limited by cultural adaptations made in past environments.

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Settler liberty: Ann Curthoys, Jessie Mitchell, Taking Liberty Indigenous Rights and Settler Self-Government in Colonial Australia, 1830–1890, Cambridge University Press, 2018

16Sep18

Description: At last a history that explains how indigenous dispossession and survival underlay and shaped the birth of Australian democracy. The legacy of seizing a continent and alternately destroying and governing its original people shaped how white Australians came to see themselves as independent citizens. It also shows how shifting wider imperial and colonial politics influenced the treatment of indigenous Australians, and how indigenous people began to engage in their own ways with these new political institutions. It is, essentially, a bringing together of two histories that have hitherto been told separately: one concerns the arrival of early democracy in the Australian colonies, as white settlers moved from the shame and restrictions of the penal era to a new and freer society with their own institutions of government; the other is the tragedy of indigenous dispossession and displacement, with its frontier violence, poverty, disease and enforced regimes of mission life.

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The ecology of settler-indigenous reconciliation: Esme G. Murdock, ‘Unsettling Reconciliation: Decolonial Methods for Transforming Social-Ecological Systems’, Environmental Values, 27, 5, 2018, pp. 513-533

12Sep18

Abstract: ‘Political reconciliation’ refers to processes for establishing right relations between groups that are emerging from a history coloured by violent relations. However, dominant Western, euro-descendent philosophies of political reconciliation rarely focus on ecological forms of harm or consider practices of ecological violence as constitutive of the violent relations that reconciliation hopes to repair. This article argues that the exclusion of ecological dimensions of harm from dominant Western models of political reconciliation is one way of understanding Indigenous claims of dissatisfaction with such reconciliation projects. This article analyses and contextualises these claims of dissatisfaction by focusing on how dominant Western, euro-descendent models of reconciliation in the North American context import settler-colonial commitments that obscure the primacy of ecological violence in settler-Indigenous land-based conflicts. Furthermore, this article posits that settler-colonial commitments in reconciliation models pose an obstacle to deeper forms of reconciliation, partly because these models uphold dominant euro-descendent cosmologies and conceptions of land over and above Indigenous ones. Finally, this article suggests that that the possibility of deep reconciliation exists, and requires engaging with Indigenous philosophies that place land and relations to land at the centre of right relations, thus working toward decolonising settler-colonial-infused forms of reconciliation.

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The scientist as settler: Simone Popperl, ‘Geologies of Erasure: Sinkholes, Science, and Settler Colonialism at the Dead Sea’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 50, 3, 2018, pp. 427-448

12Sep18

Abstract: Scientists who study Dead Sea sinkholes come to know them in particular ways (as generalized hydrogeoloic phenomena, symptoms of a regional environmental crisis, or divine retribution) and at particular scales (from the distant orbit of Earth observation satellites, from digitally altered aerial photographs, and occasionally from the inside). Using ethnographic data gathered between 2012 and 2015 in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), Israel, and Jordan, I compare how groups and individuals study, think, and learn about Dead Sea sinkholes. The way hydrogeologic knowledge about these sinkholes is gathered and circulated helps define land around the Dead Sea as territory to be colonized. These scientific processes can nullify Palestinian claims to the Dead Sea, eliminate Palestinian people from Dead Sea landscapes, and marginalize Bedouin opposition to Jordanian government policies. I suggest that attention to “geologies of erasure” helps scholars to understand the scientific and political impacts of settler colonialisms on the collection of knowledge about changing natural environments in the Middle East and beyond.

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Settler-colonial environmental monitoring: Zackery Thill, Rights Holders, Stakeholders, and Scientists: A Political Ecology of Ambient Environmental Monitoring in Alberta, Canada, PhD Dissertation, University of Oregon, 2018

12Sep18

Abstract: States increasingly rely on ambient environmental monitoring systems to provide information on environmental conditions in order to make science-based decisions on resource management. This kind of monitoring relies on a network of state and intergovernmental agencies to generate indexes, thresholds, and indicators to assess the status of air, water, and biodiversity. As a result, these thresholds and indexes generate representations of environmental change, and they establish acceptable limits on pollution. However, in settler states like Canada, there are often major gaps in how First Nations experience environmental change compared to the agencies that produce the science. In recent years, monitoring has taken on a new importance because the findings from these agencies contribute to understanding how industrial development impacts First Nations’ treaty rights. Many First Nation communities have called for greater say in government agencies and have advocated for indicators that represent both their basic environmental concerns and their treaty rights. Using oil sands monitoring agencies as a lens, this dissertation examines the politics of environmental knowledge production between Indigenous groups and the state. I employ the “logic of elimination” concept from settler colonialism studies to explore the extent to which Indigenous groups have been incorporated in research design, decision-making, and the establishment of environmental thresholds. I use interviews, participant observation, and a Q-method survey to develop an understanding how settler colonialism functions not only through policies and legislation, but also scientists’ positionalities. The findings from this research demonstrate that monitoring agencies have no uniform policies to guide how they work with First Nations. Because of this, agencies have continually engaged with First Nations as stakeholders—not rights holders. This designation places First Nations on the same level as other interest groups and limits their abilities to shape what is monitored and how thresholds are set. As a result, the stakeholder position offers few avenues for First Nations to ensure treaty rights are considered in monitoring activities.

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Settler colonialism as ‘eco-social structure’: J. Bacon, Producing, Maintaining and Resisting Colonial Ecological Violence: Three Considerations of Settler Colonialism as Eco-Social Structure, PhD Dissertation, University of Oregon, 2018

12Sep18

Abstract: Although rarely included in environmental sociology, settler colonialism significantly structures eco-social relations within the United States. This work considers the range of environmental practices and epistemologies influenced by settler colonial impositions in law, culture and discourse. In this dissertation I also introduce the term colonial ecological violence as a framework for considering the outcomes of this structuring in terms of the disproportionate impacts on Indigenous peoples and communities.

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