settler colonial studies blog

Digital settler colonialism: Harriett Jernigan, ‘Watching the Well Run Dry: Digital Settler Colonialism*’, in Crystal Chokshi, Robin Mansell (eds), The Need to Rename Tech, Cham, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026, pp. 115-133

26Feb26

Abstract: While the companies behind generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, DALL-E, and Midjourney (Big Data) have amassed a flood of enthusiastic users and advocates, they have also prompted a tidal wave of criticism and legal action. Most critics and litigants focus their arguments on the theft, misappropriation, and blurring of individuals’ content, emphasising potential economic threats and the erasure of creativity. Additionally, critics underscore the implicit bias in such tools, due to the homogenous composition of the companies that build them, and how those biases contribute to the perpetuation of systemic oppression. These critiques, however, often neglect exploring the fundamental drive behind the theft, erasure, and implicit bias that characterises generative AI: digital settler colonialism. Settler colonialism still persists to the present day, one of the most significant manifestations being bottled water (Big Water), and harming minoritised folk around the globe. This chapter draws parallels between Big Water and Big Data to illustrate the digital settler-colonialist framework within which Big Data operates and how that framework, if regulatory measures do not keep pace, will place natural resources and human rights in peril.

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Indigenous peoples and settlers against landlords: BJ Lillis, ‘To the Heart of Empire: Contesting Capitalism in the Hudson Valley and Pressing Indigenous Land Claims in London, 1766’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 83, 1, 2026, pp. 3-36

25Feb26

Abstract: In the summer of 1766, a group of Wappinger and Mohican diplomats sailed to London. There, they petitioned the crown to support their land claims against some of New York’s wealthiest landlords, who had amassed vast estates on the basis of fraudulent Native titles. These Native diplomats crafted a powerful narrative about their place in the British Empire and had a real impact on British imperial policymakers. The Wappingers’ and Mohicans’ trip was financed by settlers, who had enlisted Indigenous support in their own contests with New York landlords. In the 1760s, some landlords intensified their approach to market-oriented agriculture, replacing customary lease terms with shorter leases and money rents in an effort to consolidate, rationalize, and “improve” their estates. Tenant farmers responded first with nonviolent resistance, and then with armed insurgency. Only by looking at the tactics and motivations of tenants and Native people side by side can we see the full stakes of this moment for both groups. Just as settlers deployed Native land claims to advance their interests, Native people used settlers’ grievances as a potent political tool. At the same time, a shared vision of empire, as well as their own interests, united settlers and Native nations against New York landlords.

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The settler colonies are alike: Zeina Houneini, Settler Colonialism and Justice: From Turtle Island to Palestine, MA dissertation, American University of Beirut, 2026

25Feb26

Abstract: This thesis investigates the inherent limitations of state-led justice within the structure of settler colonialism through a relational analysis of the Indigenous peoples of Canada and the Palestinian people. Central to this inquiry is erasure—an ongoing “logic of elimination”, as articulated by Patrick Wolfe, which seeks to dissolve native societies to facilitate settler replacement and territorial acquisition. By evaluating Canadian mechanisms of reconciliation, such as official apologies, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and land acknowledgments, this study argues that these symbolic gestures often function as “settler moves to innocence”, a framework developed by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. These mechanisms frequently historicize colonial violence as a “sad chapter” of the past, thereby neutralizing ongoing dispossession and securing settler futurity through what is identified as the “erasure of erasure” or “double denial”, drawing on the work of Saree Makdisi. The research further critiques the application of transitional justice frameworks to non-transitional colonial contexts, contending that such models create a “post-colonial” façade while leaving oppressive structures intact. In response to these liberal narratives, the thesis centers Indigenous and Palestinian modes of resistance, including Audra Simpson’s politics of refusal, resentment as moral protest, and Sumud (steadfastness) as a grounded rejection of state-led “gifts” and normalization. The final analysis reflects on Palestinian futures, contrasting the “liberal trap” of the two-state solution with the material necessity of the Right of Return. Ultimately, this work contends that “true” justice and settler colonialism are mutually exclusive, asserting that decolonization requires the dismantling of settler structures and the physical restoration of the relationship between the people and the land.

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The measure of settler guilt: Ben Drew, Chris Moore, ‘Reconciliation in Canada: Does settler guilt predict reconciliatory attitudes towards Canadian Indigenous populations?’ Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 2026

25Feb26

Abstract: Despite initial cooperative relations between Indigenous populations and European settlers in Canada, the relationship would deteriorate causing a prolonged period of discrimination and consequent suffering for the Indigenous peoples. Recently broad efforts aimed at reconciliation have been initiated. Research around the world has identified the presence of collective guilt among populations whose governments and ancestors have committed similar injustices. This collective guilt has been demonstrated to motivate affirmative action and reparation efforts for the damaged relationships; however, settler guilt remains an underresearched construct in the Canadian context. To address this issue, we developed and validated the Canadian Settler Guilt Scale through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to identify the presence of settler guilt in Canada. The Canadian Settler Guilt Scale was administered to a sample of Canadian residents to identify demographic differences in the experience of settler guilt. Additionally, the Canadian Settler Guilt Scale was compared with a reconciliatory attitudes scale to determine whether settler guilt predicts positive attitudes towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. Our study confirmed the presence of settler guilt in a Canadian population and its direct relationship with positive attitudes towards Indigenous reconciliation, laying the groundwork for future research on the topic in Canada.

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Seeing Indigenous Siberia like a Populist: Anna Smelova, Imagining Indigenous Siberia: Populist Ethnography of Northeast Asia Under Late Imperial Russian and Early Soviet Regimes, Georgetown University, 2025

25Feb26

Abstract: This dissertation examines the role of political exiles in gathering ethnographic knowledge about Siberia’s Indigenous peoples and influencing nationalities policies in Russia before and after 1917. Specifically, this work explores how 13 former members of the Populist (Narodnik) political movement—agrarian socialists exiled to Sakha (Yakutia) in Eastern Siberia and Russia’s Far East in the late 19th century—developed a distinct ethnographic approach. Seeking to propagate revolutionary ideas and collect folklore among the local population, the outcast intellectuals applied their emancipatory platform to Indigenous communities, paradoxically contributing to Russia’s enduring efforts to integrate the borderlands into the imperial core. I argue that these Populists-turned-ethnographers were among the first Russian revolutionaries to extend their class-based rhetoric to Indigenous peoples of Northeast Asia. Moreover, my analysis demonstrates that former Populists, in many ways, anticipated the Bolshevik Indigenization policies of the 1920s, which aimed to promote Native languages and cultures under socialism. Their long-term banishment to Siberia and interactions with local communities determined the Populist anthropological methodology: long-term fieldwork as a form of voluntary exile, proficiency in Native languages, and collaboration with Indigenous intelligentsia and informants. These principles were further institutionalized within the late imperial and early Soviet academia. To trace the continuities and ruptures in Populist ethnographic practices across 1917, I examine two key expeditions—the 1894–1896 Sibiriakov expedition and the 1925–1930. Complex expedition to Sakha (Yakutia). Ethnographic programs of both projects relied on the participation of former exiles and their collaborations with the regional administration on the one hand and the Native intelligentsia on the other. Although by the late 1920s Populist ethnography primarily declined, disrupted by Stalin’s Bolshevization of ethnography and political dynamics in Eastern Siberia, many of its disciplinary foundations persisted within the Soviet ethnology of the North as a part of the Leningrad school of ethnography.

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Aunties against settler colonialisms: Jay Stanley, Leilani Sabzalian, ‘”Be the Auntie Rez Kids in Palestine Need Right Now”: Diné Civics and Solidarity for Palestine’, Critical Education, 17, 1, 2026, pp. 179-210

25Feb26

Abstract: Indigenous peoples throughout the world have long been subject to settler colonial violence and elimination. This ongoing legacy of settler colonialism and struggle for Indigenous selfdetermination provides a felt experience that connects many Indigenous people to Palestinians fighting settler colonial oppression and occupation in their homelands. In this article, we highlight examples of Indigenous solidarity with/for Palestinians and look closely at the advocacy of one Diné educator and artist who transformed her business’ social media site into a powerful platform to educate people about the violence against Palestinians. After examining the rhetorical strategies that underlie this example of Diné civics and solidarity, we discuss how the legacy of Indigenous civics and solidarity with/for Palestine can contribute to teaching solidarities and activism for a free Palestine.

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Care in the urban frontier of settler colonialism: Amy Cran, Patrick C. Wilson, Mark Brave Rock, ‘Walking With SAGE Clan Patrol: Practicing Empathy in the Indigenous Urban Landscape’, City & Society , 2026

25Feb26

Abstract: This article examines the work of a Blackfoot-led, volunteer-based outreach organization that patrols the urban core of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, providing support and connection to vulnerable community members. While settler colonialism maintains exclusionary racialized geographies which locate cities as spaces of “Whiteness” and reserves as places of “Indianness,” SAGE Clan challenges these divisions by patrolling the urban core and providing supports and aid to people experiencing homelessness and addiction. In so doing, it marks its presence on the landscape, asserting an enduring Indigenous connection to ancestral Blackfoot territory. Further, through their concept of Niitsitapiikimmapiiyipitssinni, which understands being Niitsitapi (the Real People) as not tied to blood or ancestry, but embracing a responsibility for mutual care, patrollers challenge neoliberal values of individualism and self-reliance—values echoed in Western medicalized addiction treatment programs—and suggest that being or becoming Niitsitapi is open to all who choose to walk with SAGE Clan and embrace a way of life premised on care and empathy. We suggest that by asserting that all citizens have a role to play in assisting vulnerable community members, and framing Niitsitapi values as open to all, SAGE Clan challenges racial divisions which uphold settler colonialism, articulating a pathway to reconciliation [Urban Indigeneity; Settler colonialism; Addiction; Racialized Geographies; Reconciliation].

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Icelandic settlers everywhere: Sveinn M. Jóhannesson, ‘The Icelander in the Angloworld: Race and rethinking world order in the fin de siècle North’, Journal of Global History, 2026

23Feb26

Abstract: This article recovers the international thought of Jón Ólafsson—an Icelandic journalist, transatlantic migrant, and settler colonialist—to illuminate how visions of world order were articulated from the Northern European periphery at the fin de siècle. While scholars have emphasized the rise of AngloSaxonist ideas—particularly the notion of a racial-imperial union between the United States and Britain— as central to late nineteenth-century reimaginings of global politics, little attention has been paid to how such ideas were adapted beyond the English-speaking world itself. Tracing how Ólafsson reworked this paradigm for a transnational audience, the article argues that he expanded the imagined boundaries of the Angloworld through appeals to what he saw as Teutonic whiteness. The result was what might be termed a ‘Teutonisphere’: a vision of racial solidarity illustrating how great-power narratives were refracted, appropriated, and creatively reconfigured by intellectuals in peripheral regions. Cast as pristine exemplars of the Teutonic race, Icelanders were imagined as ideal agents to rejuvenate Anglo-Saxon colonization from the US frontier and Canadian prairies to the South African veldt.

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Settlers outdoors: Julie Bremner, Leigh Potvin, ‘Decolonizing Outdoor Education: Toward Fostering an Embodied, Relational Learning Practice’, Journal of Experiential Education, 2026

23Feb26

Abstract: Background: Outdoor education in North America remains complicit in perpetuating settler-colonialism. Purpose: This paper uses a relational literature review methodology to explore how settler outdoor educators come to understand and (un)learn about colonialism. Method: Using relational literature review and Root’s model of settler learning stages: priming, unconscious and conscious, we explore examples of each learning stage. Findings: Finally, we suggest that a fourth stage is warranted to describe ways in which settler practitioners are embodying learnings from Root’s three stages. Implications: Practicing collective embodiment in cross-cultural settings presents an opportunity to shift outdoor education culture towards land mediated, transformative and emergent learning outcomes.

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Dwelling as a settler: Natalie Osborne, ‘Dwelling: Domesticity, Decay and Inhabiting Otherwise’, in Stories of Place: Geographies of Meaning, Memory and Connection, Palgrave, 2026, pp. 125-142

23Feb26

Abstract: This chapter considers how modes of dwelling and inhabitation on stolen land are shaped by settler-colonialism, and how suburban dwelling is both troubled and constituted by non-human others and environmental change. Through a poem about a dilapidated and beloved timber house, where the white settler author dwells in collaborative and contested community with plants, critters, fungi and floodwater, this piece confronts the myths of the bordered and bounded self, and settler-colonial-patriarchal notions of mastery and control over the domestic space. Storying these intimate, everyday encounters demonstrates how self, place and Others are blurred, in a form that suggests ambivalence, uncertainty, contingency and open-endedness. Through practices of care and through lively decay, some forms of being are undone; in the undoing, other modes of living and dwelling become possible.

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