settler colonial studies blog

The art of settler misrecognition: Allison Rowe, ‘Settler Colonial Misrecognition in Story Collection Socially Engaged Art’, Studies in Art Education : A Journal of Issues and Research, 66, 3, 2025, pp. 349-364

14Sep25

Abstract: Story collection—the practice of generating art or research by gathering participant narratives and combining them into a single product—is a popular method used by socially engaged artists and art education researchers. This ethnographic case study germinated with the examination of a story collection artwork executed at a gallery in a co-governed Indigenous–settler community in northern Canada. It expanded to consider how both my ethnographic methods and social practice art enact extractive, settler colonial approaches to knowledge. Working from Indigenous studies scholarship, particularly Sean Glen Coulthard (Yellowknife Dene), I show how repeated misrecognition of what Indigenous (and even settler) residents valued contributed to a local phenomenon of storytelling fatigue. This is a form of exhaustion brought on by excessive requests from outsiders to contribute to a project or artwork. These findings signal the need for artists, galleries, educators, and researchers to scrutinize how their undertakings are informed by the settler colonial politics of recognition.

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‘Indigenous’ vs ‘indigeneity’ (the revolutionary power of dialectics): Rafael Verbuyst, ‘Indigeneity, subversion, and the trauma of settler colonialism: A reply to Kurzwelly and Mullard’, Anthropological Theory, 2025

14Sep25

Abstract: In her response to my article, “Authenticity and Decolonization: On the Subversive Authenticity of Indigenous Resurgence,” Jordan Mullard invites me to regard subversive authenticity as a way of reckoning with the trauma of settler colonialism through a process of “becoming.” Conversely, Kurzwelly doubts the political and analytical efficacy of the concept, offering an anti-realist “alternative point of departure.” Engaging with Kurzwelly’s critique, I contend that anti-realism is in fact compatible with my argument that subversive authenticity can serve as a conduit for decolonization. To do so, I propose an analytical distinction between the terms “indigenous” and “indigeneity.” Whereas discussions about the concept indigenous tendentially pivot toward identitarian issues, “indigeneity” denotes a relative positioning within a settler-colonial structure of oppression. Building on this argument, I explore the potential of subversive authenticity as a political strategy and a form of “becoming.” I conclude with a brief reflection on how this exchange suggests contrasting interpretations of the function of theorizing in anthropological research.

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That settler colonial wall sits on Indigenous land: Margo Tamez, Cynthia Bejarano, Jeffrey P. Shepherd (eds), Gathering Together, We Decide: Archives of Dispossession, Resistance, and Memory in Ndé Homelands, University of Arizona Press, 2025

14Sep25

Description: In 2007, the Department of Homeland Security began condemnation proceedings on the property of Dr. Eloisa Tamez, a Lipan Apache (Ndé) professor, veteran, and title holder to land in South Texas deeded to her ancestors under the colonial occupation and rule of King Charles III of Spain in 1761, during a time when Indigenous lands were largely taken and exploited by Spanish colonizers. Crown grants of lands to Indigenous peoples afforded them the opportunity to reclaim Indigenous title and control. The federal government wanted Tamez’s land to build a portion of the “border wall” on the U.S.-Mexico border. She refused. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security sued her, but she countersued based on Aboriginal land rights, Indigenous inherent rights, the land grant from Spain, and human rights. This standoff continued for years, until the U.S. government forced Tamez to forfeit land for the wall. In response, Dr. Eloisa Tamez and her daughter, Dr. Margo Tamez, organized a gathering of Lipan tribal members, activists, lawyers, and allies to meet in El Calaboz, South Texas. This gathering was a response to the appropriation of the Tamez family land, but it also provided an international platform to dispute the militarization of Indigenous territory throughout the U.S.-Mexico bordered lands. The gathering and years of ensuing resistance and activism produced an archive of scholarly analyses, testimonios, artwork, legal briefs, poetry, and other cultural productions. This unique collection spotlights powerful voices and perspectives from Ndé leaders, Indigenous elders, settler-allies, Native youth, and others associated with the Tamez family, the Ndé defiance, and the larger Indigenous rights movement to document their resistance; expose, confront, and end racism and militarization; and to foreground Indigenous women–led struggles for justice.

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Settler colonial medicine: Obinna Esomchukwu, Lisa Bishop, Libby Dean, Kori A. La Donna, Sarah Burm, ‘Facing hard truths: Medical education’s reckoning with settler colonialism in an era of reconciliation’, Medical Education, 2025

13Sep25

Excerpt: Medical schools are responsible for embedding Indigenous health education across the training continuum. Central to this work is recognising settler colonialism as an ongoing structure …

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Sovereign displays: Debbie Bargallie, Bronwyn Carlson, ‘Performing Equity, Preserving Power: The Double Bind for Aboriginal Australian Women in Public Sector Workplaces’, Journal of Sociology, 2025

13Sep25

Abstract: In Australian public institutions, Aboriginal women’s visibility is often mobilised as an instrument of containment rather than a marker of structural change. Focusing on the Victorian Public Sector, this article examines how equity regimes incorporate Indigenous presence while preserving settler-colonial authority. Drawing on Make Us Count and interviews with 25 Aboriginal women, we show how they are hypervisible as symbols of diversity and reconciliation, yet excluded from leadership, safety and decision-making. This double bind is produced through the intersecting operations of race, gender, settler sovereignty and bureaucratic whiteness, in which Aboriginal women perform cultural and emotional labour under conditions of conditional belonging, while their critique is marginalised or penalised. Using Ali Meghji’s notion of theoretical synergy, we bring Critical Race Theory and Critical Indigenous Studies into the conversation, drawing particularly on Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s theorisation of the white possessive logic. We argue that equity, as currently enacted, operates as symbolic inclusion, a technology of governance that sustains institutional power, contributing to critical debates on race, settler colonialism, whiteness and Indigenous refusal.

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The Indigenous city before and within the settler one: Sasha Maria Suarez, ‘The Indigenous Turn in Urban History’, Journal of Urban History, 2025

13Sep25

Excerpt: In recent years, scholarship on urban Indigenous history has embraced the interdisciplinary intersection of history and Indigenous studies, generating exciting new trends in the field. Early scholarship set a strong foundation but largely examined the contexts of United States postWorld War II era policy and Indigenous activism as represented by the Red Power movement. The works of scholars such as Paul Chaat Smith, Robert Warrior, Troy Johnson, Donald Fixico, and Susan Lobo, balanced the prescriptive assimilationist agendas of the 1950s and 1960s with American Indian resistance staged by intertribal organizations such as Indians of All Tribes and the American Indian Movement.1 In the last decade, emerging scholarship on urban Indigenous history has continued to build upon these early foundations by expanding its scope chronologically, geographically, and theoretically, providing flourishing new literature on the long durée of Indigenous presence in what scholars have articulated as the “settler city.”2 Even more so, we have seen a shift to the examination of Indigenous urbanity prior to the arrival of European settlers in places such as the United States, Canada, and Australia.

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The superannuation of settler colonialism: Levon Ellen Blue, Peter Anderson, Mark Brimble, ‘Superannuation Reimagined: Moving Beyond the Origins to an Indigenous Focus’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 2025

13Sep25

Abstract: Retirement income systems, such as superannuation, are meant to be non-discriminatory and consider disadvantage faced by members of society. There are significant differences between the life expectancies of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The gap in life expectancies is not considered when determining when Indigenous peoples can retire. In this paper, we revisit what has been written about Indigenous peoples having early access to superannuation. To understand the financial implications of early access to superannuation we use existing data to model what early access to superannuation would look like at age 45, 50, 55 and 60. Based on our modelling we reveal the projected shortfalls and in some cases surpluses in projected superannuation balances. Last, we propose ways to close the superannuation gap and create intergenerational wealth for Indigenous peoples by adding a fourth pillar to the current three pillar retirement income system.

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Against the religion of settler colonialism: Ulrich Duchrow, Mark Braverman (eds), Interreligious Solidarity for Justice in Palestine-Israel: Ecumenical Response to International Law Violations, Palgrave, 2025

11Sep25

Description: This volume provides a historical context for the present escalation of hostilities between Palestinians and the State of Israel. It brings together interdisciplinary chapters written by international specialists in the field of interreligious engagement. It presents Jewish and Palestinian perspectives as well as the South African perspective regarding apartheid, international law, antisemitism, and the suppression of the Palestinian voice in Germany and the USA. It further delves into the historic and ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian experience, and discusses the ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel and supported by the Western powers, particularly the U.S. The volume ultimately offers theological and hermeneutic alternatives to prevailing understandings of the Bible as supporting modern Jewish hegemony in historic Palestine. It’s an important read for scholars working in the intersection of religion, politics and power.

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The discovery of hot water* (explaining the diverse geographies of colonialism and settler colonialism): Christian Welzel, Stefan Kruse, Lennart Brunkert, Steven A. Brieger, ‘The CW-Condition and Colonialism’, in Christian Welzel, Stefan Kruse, Lennart Brunkert, Steven A. Brieger, The Cool Water Effect, Palgrave, 2025, pp. 341-370

10Sep25

* An Italianism: meaning the reinvention of the wheel

Abstract: This chapter demonstrates that the CW-Condition shaped the dominant form of colonialism, namely “extraction colonialism” under a weak CW-Condition and “settlement colonialism” under a strong CW-Condition. A key conclusion is that the causal arrow in the association between the CW-Condition and colonialism runs from the former to the latter, instead of the other way around.

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The settlers CHANGE THE LAND: Zach Wallis, Metabolic Explosion, Settler Colonialism, and the Ambivalence of Ecology in Pākehā New Zealand, 1868-1899, PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2025

10Sep25

Abstract: In the late nineteenth century, following the conclusion of the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s, settler society in Aotearoa undertook a political economic project aimed at intensifying and consolidating the local settler colonial project. In doing so, the 1870s were marked by metabolic explosion: the systematic, temporally compressed, and politically driven transformation of environment, ecology, energy, landscape, political economy, and society in the archipelago. In their attempt to consolidate settler colonialism, Pākehā society thus became inheritors of the British fossil economy, and the varying political economic and environmental practices they adopted combined to form a metabolic feedback loop of dizzying complexity and simultaneity. This thesis examines how Pākehā society understood ecology, defined broadly as a set of discourses concerning collective human relations to nature and ideas about the relationship between species. Adopting a cultural materialist approach centered upon the relationship between metabolic explosion, settler colonialism, and discourse, this thesis delivers a critical assessment of the structure and politics of Pākehā ecological discourse in late nineteenth-century New Zealand. Using actors’ categories provided by William Pember Reeves’ 1898 history, The Long White Cloud, it finds that these discourses assumed a dialectical structure. The “thesis” valourized colonization by understanding the archipelago as “void space,” meant to be filled by foreign flora, fauna, and people. The “antithesis” bemoaned the ruinous and ecocidal character of Pākehā settlement, with the effect of influencing early and often unsuccessful attempts at forest preservation. The “synthesis,” emerging out of Darwinian natural history, was an ambivalent utilitarianism, overdetermined by metabolic explosion and the cultural logic of settler colonialism and which precluded any truly radical critique of Pākehā environmental and ecological transformation. Despite the supersession of this thinking by the early twentieth century, a similar utilitarian ambivalence has marked popular discourse about the environment and ecology in the Occident and beyond throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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