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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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The settler myth of self-reflection: Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis, ‘Revelations of a White Settler Woman Scholar-Activist: The Fraught Promise of Self-Reflexivity’, Cultural Studies = Critical Methodologies, 2017

03Jan18

Abstract: Based on a metanarrative analysis of the self-reflexive process I undertook during my research into the “solidarity encounter” between Indigenous women and White women in a contemporary Canadian context, I argue that self-reflexivity is a fraught mechanism for grappling with and dismantling structural privilege. I recount how, despite my best self-reflexive efforts and expectations to the contrary, I could not completely forestall some of the ways in which my subjectivity and hence power would infuse the research—specifically, in how the specter of the liberal subject would haunt it. This haunting, I contend, is indicative of the limits of self-reflexivity when it is underpinned by modernist/liberal ideologies of subjectivity. In short, I convey the perils and promises of self-reflexivity as a mechanism for revealing researcher impact on and for leveling power relations in social justice research (and beyond). Specifically, I identify in my own practice elements of the “validated reflexive strategies” critiqued by Wanda S. Pillow. I conclude that self-reflexivity is most valuable when approached as a window into structural oppression and privilege and not only into the power of researchers as individuals. Building on Sara Ahmed’s reflexive “double turn,” I argue that radical reflexivity is a better model for avoiding the vortex of a self-reflexivity performed by modernist/liberal subjects. I propose that radical reflexivity can assist researchers to identify the ways in which our structural positions overdetermine (though never absolutely or seamlessly) the contours of our scholarly and political commitments.


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Soldiers and settlers: John McLellan, Soldiers and Colonists: Imperial Soldiers as Settlers in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand, MA Dissertation, Victoria University of Wellington, 2017

03Jan18

Abstract: The approximately 18,000 imperial troops who arrived in New Zealand with the British regiments between 1840 and 1870 as garrison and combat troops, did not do so by choice. However, for the more than 3,600 non-commissioned officers and rank and file soldiers who subsequently discharged from the army in New Zealand, and the unknown but significant number of officers who retired in the colony, it was their decision to stay and build civilian lives as soldier settlers in the colony. This thesis investigates three key themes in the histories of soldiers who became settlers: land, familial relationships, and livelihood. In doing so, the study develops an important area of settler colonialism in New Zealand history. Discussion covers the period from the first arrival of soldiers in the 1840s through to the early twentieth century – incorporating the span of the soldier settlers’ lifetimes. The study focuses on selected aspects of the history of nineteenth-century war and settlement.

Land is examined through analysis of government statutes and reports, reminiscences, letters, and newspapers, the thesis showing how and why soldier settlers were assisted on to confiscated and alienated Māori land under the Waste Lands and New Zealand Settlement Acts. Attention is also paid to documenting the soldier settlers’ experiences of this process and its problems. Further, it discusses some of the New Zealand settlements in which military land grants were concentrated. It also situates such military settlement practices in the context of the wider British Empire.

The place of women, children, and the regimental family in the soldier settlers’ New Zealand lives is also considered. This history is explored through journals, reminiscences, biography and newspapers, and contextualised via imperial and military histories. How and where men from the emphatically male sphere of the British Army met and married women during service in New Zealand is examined, as are the contexts in which they lived their married lives. Also discussed are the contrasting military and colonial policies towards women and marriage, and how these were experienced by soldier settlers and their families.

Lastly, the livelihood of soldier settlers is explored – the thesis investigating what sort of civilian lives soldier settlers experienced and how they made a living for themselves and their families. Utilising newspapers, reminiscences, biography, and government records the diversity of work army veterans undertook in the colony is uncovered. Notable trends include continued military-style roles and community leadership. The failed farming enterprise is also emphasised. Going further, it offers analysis of the later years of life and the different experiences of soldier settlers in their twilight years, particularly for those with and without family networks in the colony. The thesis challenges the separation between ‘war’ and ‘settlement’ by focusing on a group whose history spanned both sides of the nineteenth-century world of colony and empire.


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