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‘Untangling settler identities from settler colonialism’: Laura Hurwitz, Shawn D. Bourque, ‘Killing the settler to save the human: The untidy work of unsettling Klamath river’, Fourth World Journal, 17, 1, 2018, pp. 28-40.

25Jul18

Abstract: The specter of settler colonialism fills every sliver of the United States. This article studies the current moment of settler colonialism in the Karuk homeland on the Klamath River in Northwest California. Part of this moment has been the emergence of Unsettling Klamath River, a group of settlers engaging in the work of “unsettling.” Analysis and critique of this group’s political actions and internal dynamics are traced by the authors, who are also co-founding members. Specifically discussed is controversy raised by Unsettling Klamath River sending an open letter to a local commune, Black Bear Ranch, asking them to “close the portal” due to problematic consequences on Indigenous communities and suggest repatriating the land as a small contribution to decolonization and settler responsibility. The way white settler fragility manifests on the ground is analyzed. It is argued that only by separating our affinity and untangling settler identities from settler colonialism – in short, a death of the settler – might we end our complicity with the settler colonial system and potentially gain back our humanity.


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With a chapter on settler colonialism as banishment: Lisa Bhungalia, ‘Governing Banishment: Settler Colonialism, Territory, and Life in an Economy of Death’, in Mat Coleman, John Agnew (eds), Handbook on the Geographies of Power Research, Elgar, 2018, pp. 313-331

25Jul18

Access the Handbook here.


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‘Alien. Invasive. Nuisance. Foreign. Noxious. Non-native. Exotic. Native.’: Sophie Duncan, ‘The Words We Use and The Worlds We Build’, Ethnobiology Letters, 9, 1, 2018, pp. 9–12

22Jul18

Excerpt: Biologists shaped European colonization and European colonization shaped the future of biology. Colonization created racialized concepts of who is “native” to America and who is not, an “us versus them” mentality predicated on white supremacy. Identifying plants pre-1492 as “native” and post-1492 as “non-native” establishes a false narrative that American natural history began with the European invasion.


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The decolonisation of settler colonialism will be a comprehensive deal: Kristie Dotson, ‘On the way to decolonization in a settler colony: Re-introducing Black feminist identity politics’, AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2018

22Jul18

Abstract: In this paper, I explain Black feminist identity politics as a practice that is ‘on the way’ to settler decolonization in a US context for the fact that it makes demands that we attend to our “originating” stories and, in doing so, 1) generate potential for difficult coalitions for decolonization in settler colonial USA and 2) promoting a range of refusals (Simpson 2014) that aid in resisting the completion of settler colonialism in North America, which is still an uncompleted project. Ultimately, I claim Black feminist identity politics, properly understood, is a practice that aids in retaining the possibility of decolonization in a settler colonial state by resisting the historical unknowing that facilitates settler futurity. It is not itself settler decolonization, but rather it is “on the way” to such decolonization as it keeps open the need for decolonial futurity.


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Acknowledging settlers: Richard Pickard, ‘Acknowledgement, Disruption, and Settler-Colonial Ecocriticism’, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2018

19Jul18

Excerpt: At the University of Victoria, where I teach, as at many other Canadian universities, we use a range of territorial acknowledgements. Many academic departments, faculties and individuals have developed their own acknowledgements, and you’ll hear some variants at official university events. The university’s 2017–22 Indigenous Academic Plan, for example, includes the following:

We acknowledge and respect the Lkwungen-speaking peoples on whose traditional territory the university stands and the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

The deep tension that underlies these sorts of phrases, deriving from rifts between emptiness and meaning,…


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The persistence of settler governance and racial capitalism: Jodi A. Byrd, ‘Beast of America: Sovereignty and the Wildness of Objects’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 117, 3, 2018, pp. 599-615

19Jul18

Abstract: Close reading Irrational Games’s 2013 BioShock Infinite to consider how notions of the wild circulate at the site of the both absent and present Indian, this essay argues that the ontological turn in technology studies is predicated on the juridical, racial, gendered, and colonial violences enacted in the spaces between the civil and the savage, the beast and the human. The recent ascendancy of object-oriented theory within videogame studies along with the object-oriented coding languages used to construct those games raises questions about structures, systems, and sovereignty at the site of interpretation and methodology. By placing videogame studies into critical conversation with critiques of ongoing settler colonialism, this essay suggests that settler colonial governance and racial capitalism persist in the spaces between representation and play. By drawing upon recent conversations in queer theory and critical indigenous studies, this essay offers some preliminary insights into the nature of sovereignty and the discourses of colonialism that continue to be informed by the presence of indigenous peoples within the philosophical precepts and ontological givens of code and software.


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On settler belonging: Travis Franks, ‘”We Are Considered Undesirable Foreigners” in “This Our Texas”: Mexican American Settler Nativism in Caballero’, MELUS, 2018

16Jul18

Abstract: Narratives of settler belonging rely, in part, on the appropriation of indigeneity. Today in the United States, non-Natives regularly coopt perceived markers of Indianness, such as dream catchers or a mystical connection to nature. Some claim distant indigenous ancestry, most often through the mythic Cherokee-princess-grandmother trope.1 They also supplant indigenous identity through place-making: destroying or taking over significant indigenous sites and conflating a sense of “belonging to the land” with property ownership.


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The Treaty of Waitangi is an international document: Mark Hickford, Carwyn Jones (eds), Indigenous Peoples and the State: International Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi, Routledge, 2018

16Jul18

Description: Across the globe, there are numerous examples of treaties, compacts, or other negotiated agreements that mediate relationships between Indigenous peoples and states or settler communities. Perhaps the best known of these, New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi is a living, and historically rich, illustration of this types of negotiated agreement, and both the symmetries and asymmetries of Indigenous-State relations. This collection refreshes the scholarly and public discourse relating to the Treaty of Waitangi and makes a significant contribution to the international discussion of Indigenous-State relations and reconciliation. The essays in this collection explore the diversity of meanings that have been ascribed to Indigenous-State compacts, such as the Treaty, by different interpretive communities. As such, they enable and illuminate a more dynamic conversation about their meanings and applications, as well as their critical role in processes of reconciliation and transitional justice today. 


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Settler colonialism, engineered: John Hennessey, ‘Engineering Japanese Settler Colonialism in Hokkaido: A Postcolonial Reevaluation of William Wheeler’s Work for the Kaitakushi, Asia in Focus: A Nordic journal on Asia by early career researchers, 6, 2018, pp. 2-13

16Jul18

Abstract: In 1876, the Kaitakushi, the Japanese government agency responsible for the settlement of the northern island of Hokkaido, hired three Americans from Massachusetts Agricultural College: William Smith Clark, William Wheeler and David Pearce Penhallow. Their task was to establish a comparable institution in Hokkaido, Sapporo Agricultural College, that would spread American-style scientific agriculture among new settlers. Although recent historical research has highlighted the colonial nature of the modern settlement of Hokkaido and other American advisors’ role in transmitting modern technologies of settler colonialism, the tenure of these three professors has never been examined from a postcolonial perspective. This article will investigate the writings of engineer William Wheeler, who served as president of the new college for several years and advised the Kaitakushi on numerous infrastructure projects, to look for clues about his attitudes towards and role in Japanese settler colonialism in Hokkaido. Textual evidence reveals Wheeler’s awareness of and complicity in this undertaking.


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Settler colonialism requires a portable domesticity: Grace Moore, ‘Raising high its thousand forked tongues’: Campfires, Bushfires, and Portable Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century Australia’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 2018

16Jul18

Abstract: This article explores the significance of the campfire to Australian settler culture in the nineteenth century. Considering the paradox that campfires could be both comforting and evoke terror, the piece considers how they provided a link between the northern and southern hemispheres. Drawing on a range of primary materials — many of which have been forgotten — the article addresses the thin boundary between warmth and tragedy that came to be associated with campfires. Furthermore, it examines connections between fire and the emergence of an Australian settler identity, along with the bush dweller’s role in changing the face of the wilderness and its fire ecology.


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