settler colonial studies blog

Decolonising settler-colonial landscape design: Bruno Marques, Greg Grabasch, Jacqueline McIntosh, ‘Fostering Landscape Identity Through Participatory Design With Indigenous Cultures of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand’, Space and Culture, 2018

04Jul18

Abstract: To recognize the significance of indigenous cultures and their landscapes as well as to appraise these places, identification and evaluation have to focus on indigenous worldviews rather than on the deeply embedded Western civilization ideals and values of the design. Australian Aboriginal and New Zealand’s Maori cultures are genuinely rooted in experiential interrelationships with land with a particular orientation toward relationship and time entrenched in cosmology, narrative, and place. This article explores a participatory design strategy that facilitates and benefits indigenous cultures in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Using a design-led research approach, this study endeavors to nurture capacity building within “traditional custodians” in order to contribute to the sustainability of rural communities as well as caring for landscape. The article also introduces a framework better suited to nurturing and managing cultural landscapes. This framework demonstrates the potential to simultaneously empower indigenous cultures to protect things that matter but also to enhance their economic, political, and social freedom as they understand it through the lens of their own cultural values.

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Decolonising settler-colonial geography: Sarah de Leeuw, Sarah Hunt, ‘Unsettling decolonizing geographies’, Geography Compass, 2018

04Jul18

Abstract: Geographers have long reflected on our discipline’s colonial history. Both Indigenous and non‐Indigenous geographers have discussed ways of engaging Indigenous geographies and sought new ways of opening and expanding spaces for Indigenous peoples and Indigenous ways of knowing and being in our discipline. Like many social scientists, geographers name and frame this work in different ways; of late, decolonizing concepts and practices are increasingly deployed. As documented by especially Indigenous scholars, however, the discipline has yet to achieve much semblance of decolonization. This paper takes as a starting point that, despite good intentions, efforts at decolonizing geography are inherently limited because colonization continues to structure the field of geography and the academy more broadly. We begin by placing ourselves in conversations about Indigenous geographies and colonial violence, using this placement as a jumping off point for discussing ways geographers past and present approach decolonization. We pay particular attention to ways theories and articulations about decolonization may be falling short. Second, we offer a critical analysis of decolonization in relation to settler colonial power, including theories and praxes of engaging Indigeneity and Indigenous peoples and places. We discuss Indigenous geographies, what they mean, and to whom they have those meanings. We then turn to Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous ways of being and living in the world, problematizing how within more purely conceptual realms and often by non‐Indigenous peoples and geographers these can be uncoupled or disconnected from ways decolonization is circulated and lived. We conclude with cautions and suggestions, based especially on provocations of Indigenous scholars, about ways geographers might unsettle our work in ongoing efforts toward decolonizing our discipline.

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The settler’s identity: Sal Englert, ‘The State, Zionism and the Nazi Genocide: Jewish Identity-Formation in the West between Assimilation and Rejection’, Historical Materialism, 2018

27Jun18

Abstract: This paper explores contemporary Jewish identity-formation and the centrality of official Holocaust memory and Zionism – understood as the ongoing settler-colonial project aiming at the formation and maintenance of a Jewish-exclusivist state in Palestine – to this process. It argues that identity politics within the Jewish community are based on an understanding of identity, which assumes it to be static and individual. In doing so, this political approach reproduces the essentialisation of Jewish communities under the banner of Zionism and official state history. The paper aims to show how this process of identification between Judaism, official Holocaust memory and Zionism has been a state-led process, rooted in the historical development of antisemitism and European colonialism. In order to do so, it builds on a critique of classical Marxist analyses of the Jewish question. It finally proposes a more fluid approach to identity, which understands it as socially constructed, contested, and subject to political contestation.

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Settler colonisation is not necessarily Europeanisation: Laura A. Ogden, ‘The Beaver Diaspora: A Thought Experiment’, Environmental Humanities, 10, 1, 2018, pp. 63-85

27Jun18

Abstract: For decades the role of invasive species has been central to discussions of anthropogenic loss and change. Conceptual debates over whether “native” and “invasive” species are useful to our understanding of dynamic processes of world making have significantly challenged traditional approaches to conservation biology and conservation practices. Yet decommissioning the “invasive species paradigm” requires us to grapple with new ethical and political frameworks for stewarding the Earth in a time of loss. In response, this essay offers a thought experiment. Instead of referring to invasive species, I reframe the migration and settlement of nonhuman beings as diasporas. Doing so illuminates the political complexities of loss and change in Chilean Tierra del Fuego, where I have been conducting fieldwork for the past five years. Integrating approaches from political ecology, multispecies ethnography, and postcolonial theory, this essay focuses on the introduction in 1947 of Canadian beavers into the Fuegian archipelago (now considered the region’s most significant environmental problem). The introduction of plant and animal life is bound up in the apparatus of settler colonialism, as what Alfred Crosby so famously called “ecological imperialism.” Yet, as I explore in this essay, ecological imperialism is not just the remaking of landscapes to look like Europe but also a process of remaking nonhuman life through the constitution of new multispecies assemblages. Finally, this reframing allows me to destabilize the species concept as a stagnant and apolitical category of difference.

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The asylum-migration-settler colonialism nexus: Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, ‘The Coloniality of Migration and the “Refugee Crisis”: On the Asylum-Migration Nexus, the Transatlantic White European Settler Colonialism-Migration and Racial Capitalism’, Refuge, 34, 1, 2018, pp. 16-28

25Jun18

Abstract: This article departs from the discussion by Stephen Castles on the migration-asylum nexus by focusing on the political and cultural effects of the summer of immigration in 2015. It argues for a conceptualization of the asylum-migration nexus within the framework of Anibal Quijano’s “coloniality of power” by developing the analytical framework of the “coloniality of migration.” Through the analytical framework of the “coloniality of migration” the connection between racial capitalism and the asylum-migration nexus is explored. It does so by first focusing on the economic and political links between asylum and migration, and how both constitute each other. On these grounds, it discusses how asylum and migration policies produce hierarchical categories of migrants and refugees, producing a nomenclature drawing on an imaginary reminiscent of the orientalist and racialized practices of European colonialism and imperialism. In a second step, it focuses on migration and asylum policies as inherent to a logic of racialization of the workforce. It does so by first exploring the racial coding of immigration policies within the context of settler colonialism and transatlantic White European migration to the Américas and Oceania in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and second, by discussing migration policies in post-1945 Western Europe.

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If the struggle is over the same geography, the struggle over geography is topical: Heather Dorries, Sue Ruddick, ‘Between concept and context: reading Gilles Deleuze and Leanne Simpson in their in/commensurabilities’, Cultural Geographies, 2018

22Jun18

Abstract: After centuries of ignoring and discounting Indigenous epistemologies, geographers and other scholars rooted in Western intellectual traditions have recently displayed a new curiosity about the insights offered by Indigenous intellectual traditions. In this article, we reflect on the ethical challenges that accompany reading Indigenous philosophy as scholars trained primarily in the Western tradition. Reading a set of texts by Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, we argue that reading practices can serve as either enactments or refusals of colonial relationships, and provide an account of the development of reading practices that seek to find meaning in the in/commensurablity of these texts, rather than by seeking only similarities or differences. Thus, we advocate for a political approach to reading Indigenous philosophy that respects the sovereignty of the text.

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Settler colonial environmentalism: Ellen van Holstein, Lesley Head,’Shifting settler-colonial discourses of environmentalism: Representations of indigeneity and migration in Australian conservation’, Geoforum, 94, 2018, pp. 41–52

22Jun18

Abstract: Western environmentalism and conservation are deeply entangled with histories of colonialism. This entanglement has marginalised Indigenous and migrant perspectives on the environment to protect settler norms and interests. This paper approaches those two types of othering together in the context of environmental debate, using the lens of a mainstream conservation magazine. We analyse representations of indigeneity and migration in a shifting settler-colonial discourse on the environment, throughout the 45 volumes of the Australian Conservation Foundation’s magazine Habitat (1973–2016). The Australian Conservation Foundation was Australia’s first nation-wide conservation organization. Its magazine exemplifies a settler-colonial discourse that initially aimed to conserve pristine nature but that over time has responded to increasing awareness that environmental crises have transnational causes and consequences, and require intercultural and international cooperation. We found that, while contributors to the magazine increasingly represent Australian conservation issues as connected to international processes and closely collaborate with remote Indigenous communities, they continue to assume the settler as norm and prioritise the protection of wealth and lifestyles. These goals are achieved through the conditional inclusion of others and through the treatment of environments as having zero-sum limits. The colonial imaginaries of ‘wilderness’ and carrying capacity are repurposed to frame migration as being at odds with Australian people’s wealth and wellbeing. The reiteration of settler-colonial environmentalism as a dominant way of protecting the environment stands in the way of the greater pluralism of environmental relationships that will be needed for coping with environmental change.

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Integrated healing in settler contexts: Ilse Blignault, Jennifer Hunter, Janett Mumford, ‘Integration of Indigenous healing practices with western biomedicine in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America: a scoping review protocol’, JBI: Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports, 16, 6, 2018, pp. 1354–1360

17Jun18

Abstract: What types of Indigenous healing practices have been integrated with western biomedicine in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA, and for what conditions or purpose have they been used? How has this integration been achieved, i.e. what are the key features of the service models implemented?

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Sexuality is not discrete from settler colonialism: Walaa Alqaisiya, ‘Decolonial Queering: The Politics of Being Queer in Palestine’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 47, 3, 2018, pp. 29-44

17Jun18

Abstract: This article analyzes the work of Palestine’s most established queer rights organization, alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, to reveal the political power of being queer in Palestine. It argues that an open, feminist, queer space such as alQaws is a productive site to think and practice decolonization. Relying on the author’s direct involvement with the group, the article traces the development of queer Palestinian thought to provide a critique of queer politics in Palestine: it recounts how since the establishment of the organization in 2001, alQaws activists have increasingly transcended exclusivist gay identifications and rejected singling out sexuality as a discrete site of oppression disconnected from Zionist settler colonialism. The discussion covers Israeli pinkwashing and its counter, Palestinian pinkwatching; it deconstructs pinkwashing narratives, rejects the myth of the colonial savior, and reveals how discourses of sexual progress reproduce Zionist colonialism. It also documents alQaws’s challenge to normalizing development discourse.

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The toxic geographies of settler colonialism: Neil Nunn, ‘Toxic Encounters, Settler Logics of Elimination, and the Future of a Continent’, Antipode, 2018

17Jun18

Abstract: This paper engages the relationship between toxic geographies and settler colonialism. By bringing to light larger structures and histories that underpin the settler colonial project, I examine a series of toxic encounters and consider the racialised hegemonic narratives that enable the production toxicity. Among these is a methylmercury contamination in Northern Ontario, just upstream from Grassy Narrows First Nation, and a cluster of toxic conversations that bled through social media in the wake of the murder of Colten Boushie, a 22‐year‐old Cree man in Saskatchewan, Canada. I argue that examining the normative ideologies, settler narratives, and socio‐political structures that are involved in the production of toxicity provides valuable insight into the diffuse and relational colonial logics that define the lives that are privileged as the standard, and those that fall outside the regulatory category of the Human, and as a result, are subject to elimination.

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