settler colonial studies blog

Settler hospitals are an indigenous-specific program: Ashley Goodman, Kim Fleming, Nicole Markwick, Tracey Morrison, Louise Lagimodiere, Thomas Kerr, ‘”They treated me like crap and I know it was because I was Native”: The healthcare experiences of Aboriginal peoples living in Vancouver’s inner city’, Social Science & Medicine, 2017

01Feb17

Abstract: There is growing evidence that Aboriginal peoples often experience healthcare inequalities due to racism. However, research exploring the healthcare experiences of Aboriginal peoples who use illicit substances is limited, and research rarely accounts for how multiple accounts of stigma intersect and contribute to the experiences of marginalized populations. Our research aimed to explore the healthcare experiences of Aboriginal peoples who use illicit drugs and or illicit alcohol (APWUID/A) living in Vancouver’s inner city. Using Indigenous methodologies, a community research team comprised of APWUID/A led the study design, data collection and analysis. Peer-facilitated talking circles explored community members’ experiences accessing healthcare services and patient-provider encounters. Using an intersectionality framework, our research demonstrated how healthcare inequalities among Aboriginal peoples are perpetuated by systemic racism and discrimination. Stigmatizing racial stereotypes were perceived to negatively influence individual attitudes and clinical practice. Participants’ experiences of medical dismissal often resulted in disengagement from care or delay in care. The findings suggest healthcare providers must understand the structural and historical forces that influence racial disparities in healthcare and personal attitudes in clinical practice. Adequate clinical protocols for pain management within the context of illicit substance use are urgently needed. The valuation of Aboriginal peoples and cultures within healthcare is paramount to addressing the health gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians.

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Settler prisons are an indigenous-specific program: Stephanie Wellman, Re(claiming) Indigenous Identity within Canada’s Prison System: Indigenous Identity and Indigenous-Specific Prison Programming, MA dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2017

01Feb17

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to explore how Indigenous men understand Indigenous identity, how they experience Indigenous-specific programming while in prison, and how these experiences intersect. Through a number of qualitative semi-structured interviews, Indigenous men described their experiences of participating in Indigenous-specific programming while incarcerated; the data is then understood within an historical context of colonialism and assimilation policy. The key findings of these interviews highlight the importance and necessity of Indigenous-specific prison programming to incarcerated Indigenous men, as well as the healing potential of Indigenous culture and spirituality. However, systemic barriers in provincial prison systems prevent Indigenous men from being able to access such programming. This thesis also finds that Canada’s history of colonialism has affected the Indigenous identities of many of the research participants. Some spoke about culture and language loss as a direct result of colonization (the residential school system, the sixties-scoop, and the child welfare system) while others spoke about the indirect outcomes of colonization, such as marginalization and fragmented identities. Based on these findings the main conclusion is that while Canada is attempting to appear postcolonial in light of talks of renewed relationships and reconciliation, colonization of Indigenous men continues within the Canadian prison system. As incarcerated Indigenous men are denied access to culture and spirituality the prison itself is serving to further disconnect Indigenous people from being Indigenous and fostering the erasure of Indigenous identity from the Canadian settler state as a means of continuing what can be termed as the ‘civilizing’ project.

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On the settler politics of memory: Kevin Bruyneel, ‘Happy Days (of the White Settler Imaginary) Are Here Again’, Theory & Event, 20, 1, 2017, pp. 44-54

01Feb17

Excerpt: There is a timelessness to this form of American evocation of a longed-for past from which the nation has fallen. It serves to both redeem the nation’s deeper purpose and critique those who deviate from it. In that dialectical relation of unifiers and deviants we see another timeless form of American narrative, which is the countersubversive one that evokes a mythical unity in order to draw out and demarcate deviance. While this is a narrative one can locate in the politics of nations around the world, in the contemporary moment this narrative particularly defined the terms of the 2016 US political context. Before speaking to the contemporary US context, we must pay homage to and make connections with the past, even if it is but a decades-old past in this case.

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Does it help decolonisation? Rachel Busbridge, ‘Israel-Palestine and the Settler Colonial “Turn”: From Interpretation to Decolonization’, History, Theory & Society, 2017

29Jan17

Abstract: In recent years there has been a powerful resurgence of settler colonialism as an interpretive framework through which to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Attached to the burgeoning field of settler colonial studies, this so-called ‘turn’ to settler colonialism has seen Israel-Palestine increasingly compared alongside New World white settler societies like Australia, Canada and the United States. In seeking to undercut the lens of exceptionalism through which the conflict has conventionally been viewed, the settler colonial paradigm has some important counter-hegemonic implications for reframing Israel-Palestine, not least of which is its prescription for decolonization. However, it is paradoxically in the context of decolonization that the limits of the settler colonial paradigm become most apparent. I argue that these limitations are connected to the dominance of Patrick Wolfe’s structural account of settler colonialism, which leaves very little room for transformation, and to the particular connotations settler colonial studies has acquired from the New World contexts in which it is most often articulated. This is particularly the case in Israel-Palestine, where these connotations preclude engagement with the national aspects of the conflict and leave under-examined the unique resonances of the settler/native distinction, which need reckoning with in any serious account of decolonization.

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Reliable allies: Dan Tout, ‘The Janus faces of indigenous politics’, Arena Journal, 45-46, 2016, pp. 211-243

26Jan17

Abstract: At the 2013 conference of the Australian Historical Association, Tim Rowse brandished a recent copy of Arena Journal in its book form as ‘Stolen Lands, Broken Cultures: The Settler-colonial Present’, and railed against what he characterized as a ‘festschrift’ to Patrick Wolfe’s self-fulfilling project of the homogenization of Indigenous histories and experiences. He accused Arena of projecting the overarching singular narrative provided by Wolfe’s ‘elimination paradigm’. The session was tense. Rowse was himself subsequently excoriated by Marcia Langton, a member of the same panel, for using the terms ‘half-caste’ and ‘quadroon’ without raising his bunny ears each time these terms were used. Rowse later elaborated his critique of settler colonial studies by quoting Wolfe directly.

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Everyone a settler? Christina Snyder, Great Crossings Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson, OUP, 2017

25Jan17

Description: In Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson, prize-winning historian Christina Snyder reinterprets the history of Jacksonian America. Most often, this drama focuses on whites who turned west to conquer a continent, extending “liberty” as they went. Great Crossings also includes Native Americans from across the continent seeking new ways to assert anciently-held rights and people of African descent who challenged the United States to live up to its ideals. These diverse groups met in an experimental community in central Kentucky called Great Crossings, home to the first federal Indian school and a famous interracial family.

Great Crossings embodied monumental changes then transforming North America. The United States, within the span of a few decades, grew from an East Coast nation to a continental empire. The territorial growth of the United States forged a multicultural, multiracial society, but that diversity also sparked fierce debates over race, citizenship, and America’s destiny. Great Crossings, a place of race-mixing and cultural exchange, emerged as a battleground. Its history provides an intimate view of the ambitions and struggles of Indians, settlers, and slaves who were trying to secure their place in a changing world. Through deep research and compelling prose, Snyder introduces us to a diverse range of historical actors: Richard Mentor Johnson, the politician who reportedly killed Tecumseh and then became schoolmaster to the sons of his former foes; Julia Chinn, Johnson’s enslaved concubine, who fought for her children’s freedom; and Peter Pitchlynn, a Choctaw intellectual who, even in the darkest days of Indian removal, argued for the future of Indian nations. Together, their stories demonstrate how this era transformed colonizers and the colonized alike, sowing the seeds of modern America.

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Settler colonialism is normalising: Ariel Handel, Marco Allegra, Erez Maggor (eds), Normalizing Occupation: The Politics of Everyday Life in the West Bank Settlements, Indiana University Press, 2017

25Jan17

Description: Controversy surrounds Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the radical national and religious agendas at play there have come to define the area in the minds of many. This study, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding the process of “normalization” in the life of Jewish residents. Considering a wider range of historical and structural factors in which the colonization of the West Bank developed it allows placing its origins and everyday reality into a wider perspective. The works collected consider the transformation of the landscape, the patterns of relationships shared by the region’s residents, Palestinian and Jewish alike, and the lasting effects of Israel’s settlement policy. Stressed in particular are such factors as urban planning, rising inequality and the retreat of the welfare state, and the changing political economy of industry and employment. In doing so, the authors collected here provide new insight into the integration and segregation processes that are an integral part of the broader historical trends shaping Israel/Palestine.

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With a chapter by Kyle Powys Whyte on ‘Indigeneity and US Settler Colonialism’: Naomi Zack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, OUP, 2017

25Jan17

Access the book here.

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Indigenous peoples must be legible: Joseph Paul Brewer II, Stephen L. Egbert, Paula I. Smith, Dory Tuininga, ‘Renaming the Indians: State-Sponsored Legibility through Permanent Family Surnames among the Sisseton and Wahpeton at Lake Traverse, 1903’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 40, 3, 2016, pp. 47-66

25Jan17

Access the article here.

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On triangular relations: Stefan Jovanovic, Ruptures in Canada’s Nationalist Narrative: Situating Toronto’s Former-Yugoslav Immigrants in the Indigenous-Settler Context, MA dissertation, University of Waterloo, 2017

25Jan17

Abstract: With the increasing prevalence of Indigenous discourses in the public consciousness, it becomes clear that the role of immigrants in the Indigenous-Settler dynamic has yet to be understood, and is particularly understudied in its Canadian context. However, given that nearly half of the population in the City of Toronto is composed of immigrants, it presents a rich research opportunity. As a Toronto-based immigrant from Former-Yugoslavia, I decided to conduct research with my own community. This thesis investigates the positionality of the Greater Toronto Area’s (GTA) Former-Yugoslav immigrants in the context of Indigenous-Settler relations. My research suggests that this community is situated within two ruptures of the Canadian nationalist narrative – paradoxical realms of multiple co-occurring imaginaries. As displaced peoples, they are privileged beneficiaries of the Canadian state while simultaneously being denied access to the Whiteness of the Canadian-Canadian ethnic identity. The ruptures are exposed by the relational positionality of Indigenous peoples to Former-Yugoslavs; in other words, Indigenous peoples play a central role in the identity of the GTA’s Former-Yugoslav immigrants. The very existence of Indigenous peoples in Canada shatters the illusion of inclusivity in the multiculturalist narrative by exposing (1) the rupture of injustices acted upon Indigenous peoples by the Canadian state, which maintains its marginalization of these communities via multiculturalism; and (2) the rupture of the relational nature of Whiteness by challenging it as a monolithic identifier of ethno-racial categorization in favour of pluralistic forms of identity. Thus, Former-Yugoslav immigrants are Settlers who have potential for solidarity with Indigenous peoples.

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