settler colonial studies blog

The settler border is in the way: James M. Hundley, We are Coast Salish: Politics and Society across a Settler Colonial Border in the Post-9/11 World, PhD Dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton, 2017

29Sep17

Abstract: This dissertation contributes to debates on processes of nation building and their relationship to indigenous politics across the Canada/US border in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Specifically, I chronicle the various political, cultural, and environmental strategies taken by the Coast Salish Tribes and First Nations to overcome the obstacles presented by the Canada/US border in the post-9/11 era of increased securitization. Their tactics and strategies rely on the reprisal of oral history and tradition to reunite as an ethnic nation that was slowly transformed during state and nation building processes throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, the Coast Salish are engaged in processes of decolonization by attempting to symbolically erase the international border that separates them.

An annual Canoe Journey celebrates the revitalization of a centuries old tradition of canoe travel that connected communities up and down the coast thus using geography to make the case for a unified group. A new political organization aims to bring back traditional Coast Salish governance practices to protect and restore the Salish Sea by placing indigenous knowledge front and center and inviting the states to participate. Environmental protests surrounding the permitting process for oil pipelines crossing indigenous lands in Canada have enabled the American-based Coast Salish to intervene in the government process by appealing to cross-border kinship ties. Taken collectively, through the data presented in this dissertation, I argue that the Coast Salish are appropriating the term applied to them over a century ago to erase the political border that separates them by foregrounding their transnational, collective identity. This emergent national identity challenges existing theories of nationalism and its relationship to the state and illustrates how the border itself is implicated in the process. I argue that the ways in which the Coast Salish respond to a security-sensitive border mirrors that of how they have long handled interactions with the settler colonial state.

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Taiwan’s settler colonialism: Funie Hsu, Brian Hioe, Wen Liu, ‘Collective Statement on Taiwan Independence: Building Global Solidarity and Rejecting US Military Empire’, American Quarterly, 69, 3, 2017, pp. 465-468

27Sep17

Taiwan exists in the between. In historical terms, Taiwan has existed, and continues to exist, in and between various iterations of colonial occupation: from seventeenth-century Dutch rule and the resulting Han settler colonialism to twentieth-century Japanese occupation and the current colonial occupation of the lingering Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist government. Politically, Taiwan resides in between the competing imperialist discourses of the People’s Republic of China, which has long articulated a goal of “retaking” or “reunifying” the island it claims as a renegade province, and the United States, a nation that has demonstrated an ambivalent stance toward Taiwan and expressions of its independence. As such, it has been appropriated as a space on which to bargain the terms of US–China foreign policy—and negotiate away the island’s right to self-determination—since the 1970s.

Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) culminated in the Shanghai Communiqué, which expressed what would become the United States’ guiding foreign policy principle of One China, with Taiwan subsumed as part of China. Taiwan was thus used as a negotiating tool to solidify a new partnership between the United States and the PRC. The United States expressed its acknowledgment for the idea “that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China,” and declared, “The United States Government does not challenge that position.” By 1979 the United States had pulled military personnel out of Taiwan and severed governmental recognition of the Republic of China. In the space that is in and between occupation, and in between US–China foreign policy, Taiwan has been constituted by colonial and imperial imaginations of its utility and futurity.

The following collective statement represents an intention to articulate and organize a new possibility for Taiwan and its independence. It was crafted as a response to the controversial December 2, 2016, phone call between Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-Wen, and Donald Trump, which presented a new dynamic of [End Page 465] in-betweenness, one that catapulted the question of Taiwan independence from the margins to center stage. Much of the reaction to the call revolved around two general sentiments of panic and potential. US foreign policy experts were anxious to preserve the One China status quo, while many in Taiwan and the Taiwanese diaspora of the United States were cautiously hopeful that it signaled the possibility for renewed American support, especially in regard to independence. Taiwan independence, it is often understood, cannot be practically achieved without the backing of American militarized security. In this statement, a growing contingent of Taiwanese and Taiwanese American scholars, activists, artists, and people in solidarity argue for a reimagination of the possibilities of the in-between to move beyond tactics of dollar diplomacy and hopeful anticipation of American approval, toward more sustainable projects of global solidarity with decolonial justice movements around the world. We offer this perspective as an alternative to the hegemonic logic under which Taiwan independence must be practically aligned with American Empire and bolstered by American militarized peace. Instead, this collective statement attempts to highlight the entrapment such thinking produces and the violent present moment that so-called US security has generated, especially under Trump’s increasingly fascist America. Within this context, we intend for this statement to further transpacific conversations, collaborations, and new configurations for imagining Taiwan and the possibility of independence during these times.

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Irish settlers: Matthew Aaron Schownir, Eire in the Empire: Irish Settlement, Violence, and Identity Formation in New South Wales and Upper Canada, 1823-1868, PhD Dissertation, Purdue University, 2017

27Sep17

Abstract: This dissertation examines Irish Catholic diasporic communities in the early- to mid-nineteenth century British settler colonies of Upper Canada and New South Wales. As one of the “founding peoples” of settler Canada and Australia, Irish Catholic immigrants formed a sizeable minority group burdened by historical stereotypes on account of their religion, class, and ethnicity. Yet historians agree that the Irish successfully integrated into mainstream settler society by the end of the nineteenth century, occupying top political and social positions while regarded as part of the white British colonial project. ^ This study examines Irish settler integration through the lens of immigrant agency and the appropriation of violence to achieve footholds in primarily British and Protestant settler spaces. It examines various modes and moments of violence to examine the processes informing identity and groupness on the imperial periphery that ultimately brought the Irish into closer association with the British imperial state and settler society. By recasting violence in its many forms—from bar fights and boxing matches to political assassinations and colonial revolts—as vital moments of immigrant agency and cultural renegotiation, this dissertation sheds light on the processes that shaped the meanings of Irishness and whiteness in the nascent colonial spaces of the British Empire.

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Settler colonialism and its ends: Elspeth Martini, ‘Borderlands, Indigenous Homelands, and North American Settler Colonialism’, Reviews in American History, 45, 3, 2017, pp. 416-422

27Sep17

Excerpt: Both of these books tell histories of peoples whose nineteenth-century homelands fell within the “northern borderlands” surrounding the U.S–Canadian border. And each, in different ways, evokes the struggles of indigenous peoples who attempted to retain their homelands, as settlers and government agents sought to dispossess and expel them. John Bowes’ wonderful study of Northern Indian removal encompasses the borderlands of the Great Lakes, but it ultimately tells a (mostly) U.S.–focused history that challenges the customary narrative of Indian removal. Generally such narratives are dominated by the Indian Removal Act and the experiences of the Cherokees. Michel Hogue, in contrast, focuses more directly on the politics of the U.S.–Canadian border, masterfully recreating the world of the early nineteenth-century Northern Plains where the Plains Metis emerged and thrived, only to be excluded during the later nineteenth century by U.S. and Canadian settler regimes. As well as making substantive contributions to North American historiography, these works also contribute to the movement among North American scholars to incorporate theories of “settler colonialism.” So while they tell the histories of different peoples, they both frame their narratives with an eye to the more widespread, longer-term dynamics through which North American indigenous homelands became the territories of the United States and Canada.

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Settlers travel with their sovereignty (as sanctioned by their founding documents): Stephen Winter, Chris Jones (eds), Magna Carta and New Zealand History, Politics and Law in Aotearoa, Palgrave, 2017

27Sep17

Description: This volume is the first to explore the vibrant history of Magna Carta in Aotearoa New Zealand’s legal, political and popular culture. Readers will benefit from in-depth analyses of the Charter’s reception along with explorations of its roles in regard to larger constitutional themes.

The common thread that binds the collection together is its exploration of what the adoption of a medieval charter as part of New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements has meant – and might mean – for a Pacific nation whose identity remains in flux. The contributions to this volume are grouped around three topics: remembrance and memorialization of Magna Carta; the reception of the Charter by both Māori and non-Māori between 1840 and 2015; and reflection on the roles that the Charter may yet play in future constitutional debate. This collection provides evidence of the enduring attraction of Magna Carta, and its importance as a platform of constitutional aspiration.

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Settler excuses: Anna Stilz, ‘Settlement, expulsion, and return’, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2017

27Sep17

Abstract: This article discusses two normative questions raised by cases of colonial settlement. First, is it sometimes wrong to migrate and settle in a previously inhabited land? If so, under what conditions? Second, should settler countries ever take steps to undo wrongful settlement, by enforcing repatriation and return? The article argues that it is wrong to settle in another country in cases where (1) one comes with intent to colonize the population against their will, or (2) one possesses an adequate territorial base somewhere else, lacks an urgent interest in moving, and seeks to settle in a new place under conditions where settlement would severely harm the practices of prior occupants. It also argues for a presumption of repatriation and return in the first generation of wrongful settlement and holds that these remedies may be extended to second and higher generations in some – but not all – cases.

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How thinking indigenous alterity was a result of the political transformations of 1989: Will Kymlica, ‘Liberalism, Community and Culture Twenty-Fife Years On: Philosophical Inquiries and Political Claims’, Dve Domovini / Two Homelands, 44, 2016, pp. 67-76

27Sep17

Excerpt: Due to the explosion of state-minority conflicts after 1989 around the world, it became clear to me that what we required was not further refining of the old liberal-communitarian debate about atomism, but rather a more direct exploration of the normative structure of majority-minority relations in multiethnic, multinational and postcolonial settler states. And this suggests a quite different starting point for the analysis. For example, if we want to explore the normative structure of state-minority relations, an obvious first question is to ask, how did this minority come to be a minority in the first place? How did a particular state come to have (or to assert) a right to rule this particular minority and its territory? The fact that a particular state rules a particular minority is clearly not a God-given fact, but rather has emerged out of a particular historical process, and these processes matter normatively.

For example, in the case of settler states ruling over indigenous peoples, the state’s claim to rule indigenous peoples and territories is rooted in the process of colonization.

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Is settler colonialism internal colonialism? Barbara Arneil, Domestic Colonies: The Turn Inward to Colony, Oxford University Press, 2017

22Sep17

Description: Modern colonization is generally defined as a process by which a state settles and dominates a foreign land and people. This book argues that through the nineteenth and into the first half of the twentieth centuries, thousands of domestic colonies were proposed and/or created by governments and civil society organizations for fellow citizens as opposed to foreigners and within their own borders rather than overseas. Such colonies sought to solve every social problem arising within industrializing and urbanizing states.

Domestic Colonies argues that colonization ought to be seen during this period as a domestic policy designed to solve social problems at home as well as foreign policy designed to expend imperial power. Three kind of domestic colonies are analysed in this book: labour colonies for the idle poor, farm colonies for the mentally ill and disabled, and utopian colonies for racial, religious, and political minorities. All of them were justified by an ideology of colonialism that argued if people were segregated in colonies located on empty land and engaged in agrarian labour, this would improve both the people and the land. Key domestic colonialists analysed in this book include Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Peter Kropotkin, Robert Owen, and Booker T. Washington. The turn inward to colony thus requires us to rethink the meaning and scope of colonization and colonialism in modern political theory and practice.

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Responsibility as a reservation: Emily Katherine Grafton, Reserved Responsibilities: A comparative analysis of settler colonial narratives of Canadian federalism and sub-national jurisdictional responsibility for Status First Nations peoples living on-reserve in Manitoba, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories, PhD Dissertation, University of Manitoba, 2017

22Sep17

Abstract: This study analyzes the role settler colonialism has had on Canadian federalism. It argues that a governance relationship between provincial and territorial governments, as sub-nationals of the Canadian federal government, does exist with status First Nations peoples living on-reserve. This can be evidenced in the Constitution (British North America Act, 1867 (BNA Act) and later the Canadian Constitution Act, 1982), legislation, case law, and political and public administration practices of Canada. Yet this relationship is most often overlooked in Canada’s prevailing narrative of federalism in favour of the more straightforward relationship between the federal government and status First Nations peoples living on-reserve. This narrative of federal jurisdictional responsibility ignores traditional Indigenous governments and Indigenous sovereignty, which has allowed the subnationals to increase their presence on-reserve in ways that go unmonitored or evade responsibility.

This dissertation principally relies on two main bodies of primary sources: interviews and budgetary and annual government reports. To a lesser degree, archival sources were used in this study. There are four levels of comparative analysis: between the settler colonial state and Indigenous nations, between Canadian notions of federalism and Indigenous-related policies, between the Canadian federal government and the provinces and territories, and between 2 provincial sub-nationals (Manitoba and British Columbia) and one territorial sub-national (Northwest Territories). The study draws on three overlapping bodies of theoretical literature: colonial studies (including, imperial, settler, and de-colonial studies), Indigenous-centred scholarship, and Canadian public administration.

This thesis concludes that Canada, as a settler colonial society, has a narrative of federalism that evokes neo-colonial tendencies. Federalism has been used as an enabling structure for the federal government to marginalize Indigenous peoples’ land ownership and sovereignty and create jurisdiction for the sub-nationals to control Indigenous peoples’ lands and circumvent Indigenous sovereignty. This is not a convenient accident: the framework of federalism and jurisdictional responsibility for Indigenous-related matters was set during an era of shifting from imperial to settler colonialism, and this framework continues to support settler colonialism which, in many ways, operates as neo-colonial. By looking closely at the evidence of neo-colonialism in Canadian federalism, opportunities for de-colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty become evident.

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Representing settler colonialism visually: Julie-Ann Mercer, Views of Hudson’s Bay (1825) and Peter Rindisbacher: Constructions of Indigenous and non- Indigenous Culture in the Red River Settlement, MA Dissertation, University of Alberta, 2017

22Sep17

Abstract: Within the Views in Hudson’s Bay (1825) print series are six hand-tinted lithographs depicting indigenous and non-indigenous culture in the Red River Settlement. The images engage with visual language from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century print series and travel books that construct North American national identity in connection to indigeneity. The lithographs are similar to watercolours by Peter Rindisbacher, a nineteenth-century settler-colonial artist who lived in the Red River Settlement from 1821 to 1826. Both the lithographs and the watercolours are social and cultural products of colonialism; the images convey narratives about colonialist and settler-colonialist perceptions of race and land ownership. The Views in Hudson’s Bay are simplified variations of Rindisbacher’s imagery; they construct narratives about British control in the Red River Settlement, whereas Rindisbacher’s watercolours interpret distinct individuals from the Red River Settlement and their attributes. Through a comparative analysis of the Views in Hudson’s Bay with Rindibacher’s watercolours, I study how the imagery complexly negotiates colonialist ideology.

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