settler colonial studies blog

Whose remembrances? Freya Higgins-Desbiolles, Rob Hales, Sydney Sparrow, ‘Remembering and Forgetting First Nations in Australia: Unsettling the Silence on the Founding and Building of a New Nation’, in Pauline Collins, Victor Igreja, Patrick Alan Danaher (eds), The Nexus among Place, Conflict and Communication in a Globalising World, Palgrave, 2019, pp 207-231

03Apr19

Abstract: Settler colonial societies such as Australia revere their monuments. In such ‘young’ countries, monuments to conquerors, settlers and soldiers place the settler populations’ indelible stamp on the landscape. However, these monuments are as much about forgetting as about remembering. Despite this, Indigenous Australians are asserting their place, insisting that they never ceded sovereignty and refusing erasure. Recent events sparked conversations in Australia about such practices. Debates considered whether colonial monuments should come down or additional monuments narrating Indigenous Australian stories should be erected. This is an un-settled space ripe for exploration and analysis. These social, cultural and political contestations are examined. ‘Remembering and forgetting in Australia’ reflects on the dissonant heritages of Australia, the place and the ways that these heritages might be better reconciled.

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Decolonising pedagogies: Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang (eds), Indigenous and Decolonising Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View, Routledge, 2019

31Mar19

Description: Indigenous and decolonizing perspectives on education have long persisted alongside colonial models of education, yet too often have been subsumed within the fields of multiculturalism, critical race theory, and progressive education. Timely and compelling, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education features research, theory, and dynamic foundational readings for educators and educational researchers who are looking for possibilities beyond the limits of liberal democratic schooling. Featuring original chapters by authors at the forefront of theorizing, practice, research, and activism, this volume helps define and imagine the exciting interstices between Indigenous and decolonizing studies and education. Each chapter forwards Indigenous principles – such as Land as literacy and water as life – that are grounded in place-specific efforts of creating Indigenous universities and schools, community organizing and social movements, trans and Two Spirit practices, refusals of state policies, and land-based and water-based pedagogies.

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Settling land, controlling water: Nicole J. Wilson, Leila M. Harris, Angie Joseph-Rear, Jody Beaumont, Terre Satterfield, ‘Water is Medicine: Reimagining Water Security through Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Relationships to Treated and Traditional Water Sources in Yukon, Canada’, Water, 11, 3, 2019

31Mar19

Abstract: There is growing acknowledgement that the material dimensions of water security alone are inadequate; we also need to engage with a broader set of hydrosocial relationships. Indeed, more holistic approaches are needed to explain Indigenous peoples’ relationships to water including the use of traditional water sources such as mountain creeks and springs. In this paper, we seek to reimagine water security through a case study of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in’s relationships to both treated and traditional water sources throughout the First Nation’s traditional territory in Yukon, Canada. Through community-based research including interviews with Elders and other community members, we examine the importance of traditional water sources for meeting important health requirements including physical, spiritual and cultural wellbeing. This intervention contributes to ongoing debates about what it means to secure safe and affordable water in three key ways: First, we argue that Indigenous water relations invite a shift towards more a holistic understanding of water security; second, we contend that settler colonial politics should be understood as a root cause of water insecurity; finally, we explore how Two-Eyed Seeing can be applied as an alternative to the ‘integration’ of Western scientific and Indigenous approaches to drinking water.

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The settler has no jurisdiction over community determination: Damien Lee, ‘Adoption Constitutionalism: Anishinaabe Citizenship Law at Fort William First Nation’, Alberta Law Review, 56, 3, 2019, pp. 785-816

31Mar19

Abstract: This article explores familial jurisdiction over citizenship, using the study of Anishinaabe citizenship practices in the Fort William First Nation, through the lens of adoption stories. The author highlights how families are able to use adoption to regulate citizenship, bringing new citizens into the nation, while also selecting those who do not belong. The familial system of affirmation is different than a Certificate of Indian Registration and requires collective action, rather than individual self-determination. Belonging at Fort William is further argued to not depend solely on blood quantum, Indian status, or band membership but, rather, depends on active community determination and accountability to the community on an on-going basis. Seen this way, adoption narratives reveal a citizenship order that challenges Canada’s claimed jurisdiction to discern who belongs with First Nations.

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On the settler-colonial annexation of Palestine: Alice M. Panepinto, ‘From Extraterritorial Jurisdiction to Sovereignty: The Annexation of Palestine’, in Daniel S. Margolies, Umut Özsu, Maïa Pal, Ntina Tzouvala (eds), The Extraterritoriality of Law: History, Theory, Politics, Routledge, 2019

29Mar19

Access the chapter here.

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Exhuming settler colonialism: Cailín E. Murray, ‘Bodies, Artifacts and Ghosts: NAGPRA, Ceremonies of Repossession and the Unsettling of Settler Colonialism’, in Charles Stewart, Stephan Palmie (eds), The Varieties of Historical Experience, Routledge, 2019

29Mar19

Access the chapter here.

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Settler colonialism in Mexico: Blake Gentry, Geoffrey Alan Boyce, Jose M. Garcia, Samuel N. Chambers, ‘Indigenous Survival and Settler Colonial Dispossession on the Mexican Frontier: The Case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham Indigenous Communities’, Journal of Latin American Geography, 18, 1, 2019, pp. 65-93

29Mar19

Abstract: This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land struggle involving the Tohono O’odham communities of Wo’oson and Cedagĭ Wahia in Sonora, Mexico. It traces how post-Revolutionary land and water reforms allowed for the consolidation of an extractive ranching economy that relied upon the dispossession of customary land and water sources accessed seasonally by Tohono O’odham (“desert peoples”). In the contemporary period, ranching has been supplemented by organized smuggling and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, generating new pressures and threats to the survival of Tohono O’odham in Sonora. Reflecting on these developments, we contribute to settler colonial theory by arguing that for arid lands peoples like the Tohono O’odham, the dispossession of territory is also a dispossession of mobility–in this case, those customary forms of mobility that for the Tohono O’odham have defined their relationships with one another for millenia within their desert homeland. We conclude by examining how the Tohono O’odham in Sonora are resisting this logic of dispossession and working to renew their autonomy and way of life for present and future generations.

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The dilemmas of neoliberal inclusion: Joanna Kidman, ‘Whither decolonisation? Indigenous scholars and the problem of inclusion in the neoliberal university’, Journal of Sociology, 2019

27Mar19

Abstract: What is the role of the indigenous critic and conscience of society in the neoliberal university? Much has been written about neoliberalism in higher education but less attention is given to how it is enacted in settler-colonial societies where intellectual labour is shaped by histories of imperialism, invasion and violence. These historical forces are reflected in a political economy of knowledge forged in the interplay of power relations between coloniality and free-market capitalism. Indigenous academics who mobilise a form of public/tribal scholarship alongside native publics and counter-publics often have an uneasy relationship with the neoliberal academy which celebrates their inclusion as diversity ‘partners’ at the same time as consigning them to the institutional margins. This article traces a cohort of Māori senior academics in New Zealand whose intellectual labour is structured around public/tribal scholarship and examines how this unsettles and challenges the problem of neoliberal inclusivity in settler-colonial institutions.

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A cotter is a cotter wherever he is: Sarah Sharp, ‘Exporting “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”: Robert Burns, Scottish Romantic Nationalism and Colonial Settler Identity’, Romanticism, 25, 1, 2019

27Mar19

Abstract: A Scottish literary icon of the nineteenth century, Burns’s ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ was a key component of the cultural baggage carried by emigrant Scots seeking a new life abroad. The myth of the thrifty, humble and pious Scottish cottager is a recurrent figure in Scottish colonial writing whether that cottage is situated in the South African veld or the Otago bush. This article examines the way in which Burns’s cotter informed the myth of the self-sufficient Scottish peasant in the poetry of John Barr and Thomas Pringle. It will argue that, just as ‘The Cotter’ could be used to reinforce a particular set of ideas about Scottish identity at home, Scottish settlers used Burns’s poem to respond to and cement new identities abroad.

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Gentrification is settler colonialism: Erin McElroy, Alex Werth, ‘Deracinated Dispossessions: On the Foreclosures of “Gentrification” in Oakland, CA’, Antipode, 2019

27Mar19

Abstract: This paper challenges dominant geographies of urban theory by conceptualising the dynamics of displacement in Oakland through place‐specific histories of racial/spatial politics. It argues that the repeated transposition of a San Francisco‐based model of “tech gentrification” results in deracinated dispossessions, or accounts of displacement uprooted from grounded histories of racial violence and resistance. It also argues that, while urban scholars acknowledge the role of historical difference in contouring dispossessions in metropolitan versus postcolonial cities, this consideration should be broadened to account for the racial/colonial dimensions of urbanism in the US as well. Treating Oakland as a “crossroads of theory”, this paper joins calls for a deeper engagement between postcolonial urban studies and critical race and ethnic studies from North America. Drawing upon the authors’ activist and empirical work, it contends that “thinking from Oakland” demands a foregrounding of racial capitalism, policing, and refusal.

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