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A ‘settling’ force: Laura J. Smith, Unsettled Settlers: Irish Catholics, Irish Catholicism, and British loyalty in Upper Canada, 1819-1840, PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2017

16Jan18

Abstract: This dissertation examines the role of Roman Catholicism in the process by which Irish Catholics integrated into Upper Canadian society in the first half of the nineteenth-century. For Upper Canadian Irish Catholics, Roman Catholicism was a “settling” force. In addition to providing familiar spiritual succor to individual migrants, religion provided order, organization, and focus to individual settlement and was the point upon which community-building efforts were frequently centred. But the Roman Catholicism of the Irish in Upper Canada was also “unsettling.” It was perceived by the dominant Protestant society as a key element in the inappropriate cultural baggage with which Irish Catholic migrants travelled, it was a barrier to political power and social advancement, and was believed to be at the root of violence and anti-social behaviour attributed to the Irish in the period. Despite repeated demonstrations of loyalty and good intentions in perpetuating the British connection on the part of the province’s Irish Catholic population, persistent and preexisting prejudices about Ireland and the politics, motivations, and abilities of Roman Catholic Irish, meant that population persisted as an outlier in colonial society.

The local orientation and scope of Roman Catholicism amongst Irish settlers in Upper Canada challenges the transnational emphasis in the current historiography of Irish Roman Catholicism and offers an offers an additional model to the process by which the Irish came to dominate the English-speaking Roman Catholic Church. In Upper Canada, the extra-institutional migration of clergy and lay people, and the community-oriented religious practice at the mission and parish level was vital to the progress of Catholicism in the colony. Consequently the diocese of Kingston and the Upper Canadian context demonstrate the extent to which the influence of the Irish on the progress of Catholicism in the English-speaking settler world must include the local as well as transnational contexts.


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Indigenous ‘welfare’: Laura Landertinger, Child Welfare and the Imperial Management of Childhood in Settler Colonial Canada, 1880s-2000s, PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 2017

16Jan18

Abstract: The Canadian child welfare system perpetuates deeply colonial relations. Indigenous children are being removed en masse, die at exceptionally high rates in the system, and the child welfare personnel is primarily drawn from the white settler society. This dissertation seeks to find answers to the question of how this present-day reality came to be and how Indigenous child removal can continue so vigorously.

This dissertation is a genealogical inquiry into the beginnings and development of the Canadian child welfare system. Through extensive archival research, it traces how this institutional framework re-articulates relations of coloniality – relations through which Indigenous peoples are rendered subjects to be managed and white settlers are re-inscribed as dominant, superior, and – despite the enormous violence that underpins their subject positions – as ‘caring’.

This dissertation advances the argument that the management of childhood is of central concern to the colonial/racial state. Child welfare emerged as an imperial project, for the purpose of white settler colonial nation-building. Animated by a colonial concern that the white race be preserved, early child-rescue initiatives focused on ‘saving’/managing the damaged but salvageable white settler child. These children were to be prevented from ‘sinking’ to the level of the Indian or racial Other, and molded into useful citizens for the white settler colony.

At the turn of twentieth century, Indigenous children were rendered extraneous to the emerging field of child welfare. State interest in the Indigenous child was an annihilative and carceral interest, animated by the idea that Indigenous children had to be removed and contained in institutions (i.e. Indian Residential Schools). While Indian Residential Schools were eventually phased out, the colonizers’ focus on Indigenous child removal remained. Indigenous child removal emerged as a central modality of colonial power, the intent of which was to effect Indigenous erasure and dispossession for the proliferation of the settler colony. This modality of power continues through the child welfare system today, sustaining the settler society’s annihilative and accumulative impulse, continuing to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands and sovereignty.


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Are ‘treaties’ even treaties (a settler question)? Joshua Nichols, ‘Sui Generis Sovereignties: The Relationship between Treaty Interpretation and Canadian Sovereignty’, Canada in International Law at 150 and Beyond, 1, 2018

16Jan18

Excerpt: This paper views the Westphalian model as the basis for distinguishing the treaties with Aboriginal peoples from international legal instruments. The model sets a bright either/or line between domestic and international law that continues to distort the reality of the treaties. This same reasoning can be found in Canada’s official response to the Six Nations appeal to the League of Nations in 1923 and again in Canada’s arguments in response to the Mi’kmaw Nation’s complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1980. Canada’s 1923 response is a clear example of a blind commitment to the Westphalian model: “Naturally and obviously it was not the intention in this or preceding ‘treaties’ to recognize or infer the existence of any independent or sovereign status of the Indians concerned. Such a principle, if admitted, would apply as much, if not more, to these other groups of Indians as to the Six Nations, and the entire Dominion would be dotted with independent, or quasi-independent Indian States ‘allied with but not subject to the British Crown.’

It is submitted that such a condition would be untenable and inconceivable.” The unstated presumption of the Westphalian model strictly determines the bounds of what is natural and obvious and separates that from what is untenable and inconceivable. This same line remains fixed within the Canadian jurisprudence on treaty interpretation.


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Selling new books to settlers: Nicole Daylene Kestila, ‘Educational Textbooks and National Narratives: Myths and Distorted Interpretations of Canadian History and National Identity’, The Structure of the Book Publishing Industry in Canada, 2017

10Jan18

Abstract: Educational book publishing continues to be one of Canada’s leading sources of information and communication pertaining to our history and interpretation of national identity; therefore, those of us entering the Canadian Publishing Industry need to be aware of past wrongs and misconceptions in our national narrative, in order to write and publish educational textbooks that are current, relevant, and inclusive.


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Selling biculturalism to the biculturalists: David B. MacDonald, ‘Exporting Aotearoa New Zealand’s Biculturalism: Lessons for Indigenous-Settler Relations in Canada’, in Robert G. Patman,‎ Iati Iati,‎ Balazs Kiglics (eds), New Zealand and the World, World Scientific Publishing Company, 2018, pp. 67-82

10Jan18

Access the chapter here.


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The search for ethical ways of settler being: Robyn Heaslip, From Xwelítem ways towards practices of ethical being in Stó:lō Téméxw: a narrative approach to transforming intergenerational white settler subjectivities, PhD dissertation, University of Victoria, 2017

07Jan18

Abstract: What must we transform in ourselves as white settlers to become open to the possibility of ethical, respectful, authentic relationships with Indigenous peoples and Indigenous lands? Situating this research in Stó:lō Téméxw (Stó:lō lands/world) and in relationships with Stó:lō people, this question has become an effort to understand what it means to be xwelítem and how white settlers might transform xwelítem ways of being towards more ethical ways of being. Xwelítem is a Halq’eméylem concept used by Stó:lō people which translates as the hungry, starving ones, and is often used to refer to ways of being many Stó:lō associate with white settler colonial society, past and present. Drawing on insights and wisdom of Stó:lō and settler mentors I consider three aspects of xwelítem ways of being. First, to be xwelítem is to erase Stó:lō presence, culture and nationhood, colonial history and contemporary colonial realities of Indigenous oppression and dispossession, and settler privilege. Second, being xwelítem means attempting to dominate, control, and repress those who are painted as “inferior” in dominant cultural narratives, it means plugging into racist colonial narratives and stereotypes. Third, being xwelítem is to be hungry and greedy, driven by consumption and lacking respect, reverence and reciprocity for the land. Guided by Indigenous and decolonizing methodologies, critical place inquiry, narrative therapy, and autoethnography, I shape three narratives that speak to each aspect of being xwelítem, looking back towards its roots and forward towards pathways of transformation. I draw on interviews and experiences with Stó:lō and settler mentors, personal narratives, family history, and literature from critical Indigenous studies, anti-colonial theory, settler colonial studies, analytic psychology, and critical race theory. I aim to share what I have learned from rather than about Stó:lō culture, stories, teachings, and practices as these have been shared in relationships and as they have pushed me towards seeing anew myself and my family, communities, histories, and cultures. I have also walked this path as I have become a mom, and the co-alignment of these journeys has meant a focus on my role as a parent in recognizing and intervening with becoming/being xwelítem as it influences my daughter. I specifically center the space of intergenerational parent-child relationships and intimate family experiences as a deep influence on developing white settler subjectivities, and therefore also a relational space of profound transformative potential. I end with a call for settlers to offer our gifts towards the wellbeing of the land and Indigenous peoples through cycles of reciprocity as a basis for ethical relationships. Transforming white settler subjectivities is situated within the broader vision of participating in co-resistance, reparations and restitution, of bringing about justice and harmony, which inherently involves supporting the self-determination and resurgence of Indigenous peoples.


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A special issue on indigenous netways: Tad Lemieux (ed.), Indigenous Matters: Cultures, Technologies, Mediations, MediaTropes, 7, 1, 2017

07Jan18

Acess the articles here.


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Polish settlers in Paraguay: Gabriela Galecka, Cezary Obtacht-Prondzynski, ‘Polish Community in Paraguay: Maintaining National Identity in Everyday Life and Festivity’, Revista del CESLA, 20, 2017, pp. 123-150

07Jan18

Abstract: The article investigates everyday life and festivity of the Polish community living in Itapúa department in Paraguay. The research also addresses the sense of national identity of the descendants of Poles who came to Paraguay in the years 1936-1938. It firstly presents the socio-economic conditions of the districts of Itapúa, Carmen del Paraná and Fram, where fieldwork was carried out. Due to the agricultural nature of the Poles’ emigration to Paraguay, the research was conducted mainly in a rural environment where agriculture and small entrepreneurship are the primary occupations. The research was based on two types of sources: induced (open interviews) and existing ones. Eighteen in-depth interviews were conducted with representatives of the first and second generation born in Paraguay, giving a picture of the life of four generations. The elements of everyday life and festivity presented in the article are the most widely discussed aspects of the life of the Polish community in the context of maintaining the national identity of successive generations of Polish emigres. The key concept of the analysis is family. The research concludes that changes in family structure initiate alterations in the self-definition of members of the Polish community.


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Representing settler colonialism visually: Nicholas Dean Brodie, Kristyn Harman, ‘Other picture boards in Van Diemen’s Land: The recovery of lost illustrations of frontier violence and relationships’, Aboriginal History, 41, 2017, pp. 3-21

05Jan18

Abstract: Art history is replete with works whose prior existence is affirmed only by text, most commonly through titles and descriptions in catalogues, but also by passing mentions in other sources. A significant Australian colonial illustration of this phenomenon of textually surviving lost art concerns ‘Several Paintings on Panel’, described in detail by a colonial witness, which depict scenes intended to convey government messages to Indigenous Tasmanians during the Vandemonian War. These descriptions do not match the better known and frequently reproduced Tasmanian Picture Boards, typified in Figure 1, which survive in several archives around the world and have been the subject of considerable study and commentary. Their iconographical recovery is, we argue, an important correction to the imagery of frontier relations in 1820s and 1830s Van Diemen’s Land specifically and colonial Australia more generally.

 


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The settler myth of meritocracy: Sheellah McLean, ‘”We Built a Life from Nothing”: White Settler Colonialism and the Myth of Meritocracy’, Our Schools/Our Selves, 2018

03Jan18

Excerpt:

Positioning Myself: Teaching My Family History

White Settlers /Indigenous People

Voting rights / No vote until 1960

Public education / Residential schools

Title to land / Theft of land

Free Mobility rights / Pass system 1882-1936

Run for public office / No representation

Sell wheat freely / Limits on market

Support for famine / Mass starvation

Low cost loans / No personal loans


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