settler colonial studies blog

Introducing a Special Issue on Settler-Colonialism and Jerusalem: Shukri Abed, Maha Samman, ‘Introduction to Special Issue on Settler-Colonialism and Indigenous Rights in Al-Quds/Jerusalem’, Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, 15, 1, 2018

01May18

Excerpt: From the dawn of history Al-Quds (Jerusalem) has been shaped by withstanding various conquests and regimes, all of whom exerted their influence on the city and society of Jerusalem. Yet, throughout its tumultuous lifespan, Jerusalem has maintained its ability to captivate — and perhaps even hold captive — those who have tried to harness its spiritual appeal under their power. In contrast, the Palestinian deep and, indeed spiritual, connection with Jerusalem has been cultivated through a continuous and rich historical experience. The collective identity of the Palestinians has been shaped through living in and cultivating their land, building their cities and towns, constructing their educational system.

Since the 1967 War until today, Israel has occupied East Jerusalem, whereas West Jerusalem has been occupied since 1948. From that time on, Palestinians have been struggling to break free from this occupation, considered by many scholars as an advanced form of settler colonialism. The Palestinian willingness to defend the city of Jerusalem and to preserve its Palestinian identity was manifested in many forms and on many occasions, the most significant being the first two intifadas (uprisings) in 1987 and 2000, respectively, where thousands of Palestinians sacrificed their lives and many more were wounded, imprisoned, and detained. It should be mentioned in this respect that the second intifada was triggered by the provocative visit of Ariel Sharon — a former general who served as Defense Minister as well as Prime Minister of the Israeli government – to the holy Muslim site of the Haram al-Sharif, sparking clashes and violence between Palestinians and Israeli armed forces.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Settler colonialism is indefinite detention: Natsu Taylor Saito, ‘Indefinite Detention, Colonialism, and Settler Prerogative in the United States’, Social & Legal Studies, 2018

01May18

Abstract: The primacy accorded individual civil and political rights is often touted as one of the United States’ greatest achievements. However, mass incarcerations of indefinite duration have occurred consistently throughout US history and have primarily targeted people of color. The dominant narrative insists that the United States is a political democracy and portrays each instance of indefinite detention in exceptionalist terms. This essay argues that the historical patterns of indefinite detention are better explained by recognizing the United States as a settler colonial state whose claimed prerogative to expand its territorial reach and contain/control populations over which it exercises jurisdiction has inevitably resulted in the involuntary inclusion and concomitant exclusion of peoples of color.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Does the US support a settler-colonial state? Virginia Tilley, ‘Does the U.S. Support an Apartheid State?’ Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 2018

01May18

Excerpt: This is called settler colonialism. Shift the model from a colonial to a settler colonial model, and that means that you do not end it by a partition—you can’t end settler colonialism and its power by partition. You have to end it by eliminating settler domination.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Introducing a Transmotion special issue on native responses: Scott Andrews, ‘Red Readings: Decolonization through Native-centric Responses to Non-Native Film and Literature’, Transmotion, 4, 1, 2018, pp. i-vii

01May18

Excerpt: The idea for this issue of Transmotion came from the bottom of the sea. While watching the 2014 film Godzilla, I was struck by ways in which the famous lizard’s battle with a flying, radiation-eating monster resembled the dynamic relationship between the Anishinaabe creatures of Mishebeshu (water monster) and Animiki (thunder beings). I wrote up my thoughts then about those similarities in a blog posting titled “Godzilla is Red: An American Indian Reading of the King of Monsters”.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

A settler representing indigenous peoples: Kerry Driscoll, Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples, University of California Press, 2018

01May18

Description: Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples is the first book-length study of the writer’s evolving views regarding the aboriginal inhabitants of North America and the Southern Hemisphere, and his deeply conflicted representations of them in fiction, newspaper sketches, and speeches. Using a wide range of archival materials—including previously unexamined marginalia in books from Clemens’s personal library—Driscoll charts the development of the writer’s ethnocentric attitudes about Indians and savagery in relation to the various geographic and social milieus of communities he inhabited at key periods in his life, from antebellum Hannibal, Missouri, and the Sierra Nevada mining camps of the 1860s to the progressive urban enclave of Hartford’s Nook Farm. The book also examines the impact of Clemens’s 1895–96 world lecture tour, when he traveled to Australia and New Zealand and learned firsthand about the dispossession and mistreatment of native peoples under British colonial rule. This groundbreaking work of cultural studies offers fresh readings of canonical texts such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It, and Following the Equator, as well as a number of Twain’s shorter works.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

The Mounties’ contribution to settler colonialism: Colleen Bell, Kendra Schreiner, ‘The International Relations of Police Power in Settler Colonialism: The “civilizing” mission of Canada’s Mounties’, International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis, 73, 1, 2018, pp. 111-128

29Apr18

Abstract: In contrast to narratives by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the United Nations, and some scholars that international police assistance is a relatively recent phenomenon, we argue that Canada’s Mounties have always been international. To develop this argument, we examine three dimensions of police power in international relations historically and with respect to the role of the Mounties specifically. First, we discuss the concept of police power and its central role in giving rise to another concept: civilization. The concept of civilization gained considerable traction as a rationale for police power in Britain’s colonies, including Canada. Second, we turn to a discussion of imperial policing in the colonial settlement of Canada involving an elaborate array of “civilizing” techniques, some of which are still in operation today. Since Confederation, the Mounties have been involved in wide-ranging state-building missions with the purpose of securing Canadian sovereignty, in part through land and resource acquisition, and the denial of Indigenous sovereignties. Third, we show that the Mounties’ contributions to settler colonialism played a role in shaping international relations from the twentieth century. In particular, the Mounties were central in constituting Canada as a member of the globally dominant Anglo-Saxon community of states. In conclusion, we suggest that current international policing practices in the global periphery are not novel phenomena, but are rooted in international police powers that made possible the colonial settlement of Canada.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Bankrupt settlers must be rescripted: Declan Cullen, ‘Race, debt and empire: Racialising the Newfoundland financial crisis of 1933’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2018

27Apr18

Abstract: The recent global financial crisis and related sovereign debt crises in Ireland, Greece, Iceland, Puerto Rico and beyond have highlighted the pressing task of understanding how such crises reshape the spaces we live in. Geographers, most notably David Harvey, have traced the historical roots of the current crisis to the transformation of global financial capitalism since the 1970s. There has, however, been less work on understanding the nature and management of financial crises embedded in different historical geographies. This paper seeks to contribute to that task by investigating Newfoundland’s sovereign debt crisis during the Great Depression and its management by the British Empire. Newfoundland, then an independent British Dominion, uniquely relinquished self‐government in return for financial aid. Managing the crisis required difficult ideological work. I argue that to reinforce an imperial geography underpinned by racial distinctions, and to preclude the possibility of default, Newfoundland was scripted as a racially degenerate place in need of metropolitan intervention. The financial crisis produced new racialised geographies that had significant effects on Newfoundland’s future.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Indigenous intellectual traditions defy settler colonialism: Thomas Peace, ‘Indigenous intellectual traditions and biography in the northeast: A historiographical reflection’, History Compass, 2018

27Apr18

Abstract: Over the past two decades, a substantial literature has developed probing Robert Warrior’s idea that we can trace a written Indigenous intellectual tradition back to the mid‐eighteenth century. Focused on Indigenous peoples who wrote fairly extensively, much of this literature has tended to treat the same individuals: Samson Occom, Joseph Brant, Peter Jones, William Apess, and George Copway (among others). Over the past 5 years, a series of biographies have been published on other individuals who fit within this community of intellectuals. Drawing together these two streams within the historiography, this essay probes the concept of Indigenous intellectual traditions, suggesting that scholars need to look beyond print culture. Doing so will better account for Indigenous concepts of sovereignty and territory, the involvement of women, the role of class, as well as the relationship between these traditions, historiographical practices, and settler colonial systems of power.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Intersecting approaches (including settler colonial studies): James R. Allison, ‘Beyond it all: Surveying the intersections of modern American Indian, environmental, and western histories’, History Compass, 2018

27Apr18

Abstract: At the close of the twentieth century, the related fields of American Indian, environmental, and western history produced the discipline’s most dynamic historiographies. For all their collective insights, however, these works rarely crossed into the twentieth century to examine modern Indians in the American West. This is no longer the case. This essay, thus, first explores the social and political conditions that produced the “New Indian History” and the “New Western History” by the 1990s, and then examines recent work that incorporates “post‐colonial” and “settler colonialism” approaches to reveal a more nuanced picture of the recent Indian past and the meanings indigenous people attach to it. Finally, the analysis turns to calls for a new historiography—labeled variously as the “indigenous paradigm” or the “writing back” approach—and details the benefits and challenges it poses to the study of history. Throughout, the essay demonstrates the fundamental connection between the ever‐changing present and our evolving understandings of the past.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Settler title is a time machine: Sarah Keenan, ‘From historical chains to derivative futures: Title registries as time machines’, Social & Cultural Geography, 2018

25Apr18

Abstract: For centuries, transferring ownership of land under common law was a slow, complex process requiring the construction of a chain of paper deeds evidencing multiple decades of prior possession. In 1858, colonist Robert Torrens developed a new system for the transfer of land in South Australia, where the land was understood by colonial powers as ‘new’ and without history. With the intention of making land a liquid asset, Torrens’ system of title registration shifted the legal basis of title from a history of prior possession to a singular act of registration. Analysing the structure and effects of title registration, engaging with interdisciplinary work on time, and taking H.G Wells’ iconic time travel novella as a point of departure, I argue that title registries can usefully be understood as time machines. Like the machine H.G Wells imagined, title registries use fiction to facilitate fantastical journeys in which the subject is radically temporally dislocated from the material constraints of history. As with time machines, it tends to be a transcendental white male subject who is most likely to survive this dislocation. While based on fiction, the impacts of title registries are very much real, facilitating humanity’s arrival at racist, dystopic landscapes in the here and now.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

what’s new

contribute