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Resisting transfer is resisting against settler colonialism: Rachel C. Jackson, ‘Resisting Relocation: Placing Leadership on Decolonized Indigenous Landscapes’, College English, 79, 5, 2017, pp. 495-511

10May17

Abstract: This article foregrounds story as a rhetorical mode of Indigenous leadership to argue for the value of local scholars working in place. Utilizing recent scholarship in Native rhetorics, educational leadership, decolonial theory, I offer my own experience as a Cherokee citizen and Indigenous researcher to illustrate the value of local cultural knowledge to the field and the academy. I suggest the reconsideration of cosmopolitan values and institutional practices that alienate Indigenous scholars from their communities.


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The settler societies devour their indigenous peoples: Jessica Jacobson-Konefall, ‘”It’s some cannibal thing”: Canada and Brazil in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy’, Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 2017

10May17

Abstract: Brazilian modernist Oswald de Andrade’s artistic and philosophical manifesto of Brazilian cannibalism best enables readers to grasp Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s trilogy MaddAddam, in terms of its treatment of settler and Indigenous relationality in its satirical posthuman world. MaddAddam is a work of speculative fiction that satirically predicts possible outcomes of early 21st century neoliberalism. A survival tale, the trilogy articulates its angle of vision through motifs of literal and figurative cannibalism, highlighting settler and Indigenous relationality in the Americas. While situated in Canadian literary traditions, the work engages Brazilian anthropophagic (cannibalist) strategies to craft an ending that is ambivalent about settler futures.


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‘Attrition Through Enforcement’ is one of the strategies of settler colonial transfer: Geoffrey A. Boyce, Sarah Launius, Adam O. Aguirre, ‘Drawing the Line: Spatial Strategies of Community and Resistance in Post-SB1070 Arizona’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2017

10May17

Abstract: In North America, and globally, the topics of immigration and immigration policy have become among the most divisive fault lines of political struggle and debate. In this paper, we reflect upon the State of Arizona’s embrace of the “Attrition Through Enforcement” (ATE) doctrine as exemplary of contemporary U.S. anti-immigrant policies that target the social reproduction of non-citizens. Reflecting on ATE and movements against it, we argue for the inadequacy of scholarly and activist approaches that would normatively deploy frameworks of “citizenship” or demands for “no borders” to articulate the stakes and composition of contemporary immigration struggles. Borrowing from political scientist Joel Olson and his concept of “democratic Manichaeism,” we argue instead the imperative to radically confront and unsettle the normative divisions between citizen and non-citizen that anti-immigrant actors and policies would police. Through two case studies in Tucson, Arizona, we examine the possibilities and challenges related to mobilizing such a Manichaean framework through the quotidian spaces of everyday life. We conclude by proposing “community composition” as both a political agenda and a methodological framework through which to attend to everyday geographies of belonging and exclusion while confronting the normative political categories that structure the nation-state and justify its violence.


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Environmental degradation is an attack on indigeneity: Kari Marie Norgaard, Ron Reed, J. M. Bacon, ‘How Environmental Decline Restructures Indigenous Gender Practices: What Happens to Karuk Masculinity When There Are No Fish?’, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2017

07May17

Abstract: On the Klamath River in northern California, Karuk tribal fishermen traditionally provide salmon for food and ceremonies, yet the region has sustained serious environmental degradation in recent years. What happens to Karuk masculinity when there are no fish? Using interviews and public testimony, the authors examine how declining salmon runs affect the gender identities and practices of Karuk fishermen. Gendered practices associated with fishing serve ecological functions, perpetuate culture in the face of structural genocide, and unite families and communities. The authors find that the absence of fish resulting from ecological damage affects both food availability and the quality of social connections, which in turn affects individual gender practices and symbolizes genocide to the community. Karuk men’s individual struggles to construct themselves as men are thus interwoven with struggles against racism and ongoing colonialism. The authors coin the term colonial ecological violence to describe these circumstances. They also describe how some men restructure masculine identities by transferring “traditional” cultural responsibilities to fish, community, and “collective continuance” to new settings as activists and fishery scientists. The authors call for a decolonized sociology that uses more theorizing of the particular and very real ways ecological relationships structure gender in traditional Native communities to understand the operation of gendered and racialized colonial violence in the form of environmental degradation, today.


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The mathematics of blood quantum insult human dignity (and indigeneity too): Esther M. Pearson, ‘Native American Injustice and the Mathematics of Blood Quantum’, in Edward Sieh, Judy McGregor (eds), Human Dignity Establishing Worth and Seeking Solutions Editors, Palgrave, 2017, pp. 301-317

07May17

Abstract: No clearer attempt to break down human dignity exists than the use of a mathematical quantification of the degree of Indian blood. This fractional measurement objectifies Native American people, leaving them estranged from full development and matriculation in mainstream American society. As stated by T. R. Garth (1930) in “Race Psychology,” “Any disposition on our part to withhold from some race the right to a free and full development must be taken as an indication of rationalization on account of race prejudice, and such an attitude is inexcusable in an intelligent populace.” The philosophical framework of denial of free and full development of society and culture is apparent in the US government’s use of blood quantum to define Native Americans.


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Imperial and settler colonial histories are entangled: Daniel K. Richter, ‘His Own, Their Own: Settler Colonialism, Native Peoples, and the Balance of Power in Eastern North America, 1660-1715’, in Ignacio Gallup-Diaz (ed.), The World of Colonial America An Atlantic Handbook, Routledge, 2017

07May17

Access the chapter (but not its abstract or page numbers) here.


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If he says so … : Australia and US ‘rebellious children of the same parent’ (i.e., ‘siblings’ will never squabble if they BOTH occupy someone else’s estate).

06May17

From Melbourne’s The Age.


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The literacies of colonialism and settler colonialism: Emma Battell Lowman, ‘Mamook Kom’tax Chinuk Pipa / Learning to Write Chinook Jargon: Indigenous Peoples and Literacy Strategies in the South Central Interior of British Columbia in the Late 19th Century’, Historical Studies in Education, 2017

03May17

Abstract: During the mid-nineteenth century, the advent of multiple gold rushes swept foreign populations into what is now known as the British Columbia Interior, bringing a variety of European languages to the homeland of a multitude of Indigenous languages. In order to bridge communication gaps between these populations, Chinook Jargon, a composite trade pidgin, quickly spread. The Jargon or “Wawa” became so common that, in the last decade of the century, Catholic priest Father J. M. R. Le Jeune developed and standardized a shorthand writing system for the Jargon—Chinuk pipa—and used it to publish a popular local newspaper. At the same time, residential schools began operating in the region, and English was aggressively promoted; however, contrary to expectations at the time and perceptions since, English literacy developed slowly in the British Columbia Interior. By contrast, Chinook pipa spread quickly and literacy in the Chinook Jargon—for a time—outstripped English literacy. Drawing on extensive primary research in the archives of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate missionary order, interviews, and literature in linguistics, missionary history, Indigenous languages, and colonial exchange, this article considers the different learning and teaching strategies that were used to develop English and Chinook literacy, and their subsequent successes or failures. In so doing, it challenges understandings about the role of pidgins and literacy in more global settler colonial contexts and offers an intervention to the wider theme of the role of literacy in the missionary project.


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Settler anxiety and missionary pacification: Sean Carleton, ‘Settler Anxiety and State Support for Missionary Schooling in Colonial British Columbia, 1849 –1871’, Historical Studies in Education, 2017

02May17

Abstract: Indigenous peoples and settlers engaged in innumerable conflicts in the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia between 1849 and 1871. The constant threat of violent Indigenous resistance to settler colonization in the Pacific Northwest—both real and imagined—produced feelings of anxiety for settlers, especially state officials, that shaped colonial strategy and statecraft. To buttress colonial security, the nascent state partnered with Christian missionaries in the hope that missionaries could use education to cultivate the goodwill of Indigenous peoples and train them to accept colonization. The state’s support for early missionary schooling in colonial British Columbia is examined in the context of settler anxieties regarding three instances of Indigenous resistance: a Lekwungen convergence at Fort Victoria in 1851, the Puget Sound War of 1855–56, and the 1864 Tsilhqot’in War. In different ways, settler anxiety over these conflicts acted as a catalyst, prodding the state to support missionary schooling as a financially expeditious way of trying to contain Indigenous resistance and safeguard colonial security.


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South Australia as a laboratory of settler political traditions: Angela Woolacott, ‘Radical roots in Fiji: The impact of colonialism on Don Dunstan’, Griffith Review, 55, 2017, pp. 103-112

02May17

Abstract: South Australia’s reputation for progressive reform extends back to its origins in Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s scheme for imperial systematic colonisation. Wakefield’s grand plans, which inspired followers and shaped several colonies in Australasia, aimed to rid Australia of convict transportation and to assist respectable free settlers. While land policy would limit the expansion of the frontier and regulate class relationships, those who worked hard would be able to acquire land, and settlers would have a voice in the framing of their laws. Wakefield’s scheme was born in the milieu of early nineteenth-century British philosophical radicalism. Jeremy Bentham died before South Australia was settled, but he was a keen supporter of its planning, and suggested that it be named to reflect its radical promise: ‘Felicia’, ‘Felicitania’ or ‘Liberia’. Regardless of just how well the state has lived up to those early rosy hopes, its sense of reformist exceptionalism has been woven into its history. One of its most important political leaders, Don Dunstan, the democratic socialist and nationally influential premier from 1967-68 and 1970-79, self-consciously adopted this tradition by titling his 1981 political memoirs Felicia.


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