settler colonial studies blog

Making settler places (I): Magdalena Ewa Naum, ‘Displacement and emplacement in New Sweden and colonial Middle Atlantic (1638–1750)’, in Ingrid Gustin, Martin Hansson (ed.), Mellan Slott Och Slagg. Vänbok Till Anders Ödman, Lund University Press, 2016, pp. 177-182

03Jan17

Abstract: In the first half of the seventeenth century several hundred Swedish and Finnish settlers arrived in the Delaware River valley in America’s Middle Colonies. Regardless of the circumstances of their move, migration to America had a significant impact on their lives. Using the example of Anders Svensson Bonde and his family, this essay scrutinizes the processes of place-making in the colony and pays attention to the ambiguities in the settlers’ lives: the degree to which old traditions and cultural sensitivities shaped their everyday practice as well as the increased disconnection of the Swedish communities in America from their old homeland.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

A settler road, indigenous decolonising stewardship: Erin L. S. Gibson, ‘Remembering Tomorrow: Wagon Roads, Identity and the Decolonization of a First Nations Landscape’, Public History Review, 23, 2016

03Jan17

Abstract: Roads embody the experiences of those who construct, use and maintain them through time. Using a biographical approach I explore how memory and identity are entangled in the material remains of a wagon road in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. First constructed by the Royal Engineers in 1859 to enable miners to reach the Fraser River goldfields, the importance of this road transcends its colonial origins. Entwined in different webs of meaning, the material remains of the wagon road continue to play a role in the lives of people today. In this article I investigate the significance of this wagon road to the indigenous Stl’atl’imx (pronounced Stat-lee-um) people of the lower Lillooet River Valley who aim to preserve it as a part of decolonizing and reclaiming their traditional territory and identity. I also look at the road’s importance to a group of Grade 10 students who experience it as part of a high school excursion that teaches outdoor survival skills alongside lessons about British Columbia’s historic past. While these two groups have different experiences of the colonial encounter, for each their understanding of the road goes beyond its physical form to its ‘place’ in understanding their own identity.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Settler colonialism is apocalyptic (a good topic to end THIS year): Avery Slater, ‘Apocalyptic Commons: Derek Jarman’s The Last of England’, Transformations: Journal of Media & Culture, 28, 7, 2016

31Dec16

Abstract: This article investigates the critical interplay between utopian collectivity and post-industrial ruins as “apocalyptic commons” in Derek Jarman’s film The Last of England. This film’s Thatcher-era critique reveals global capitalism’s repressed yet intensified settler-colonial dimensions, portraying abandoned manufacturing sites intercut with nonlinear evocation of Britain’s imperial past. I argue that this film’s post-apocalyptic ruins perform an allegorical critique of settler colonialism by linking economic histories of imperialism and the “closing of the commons” to the neoliberal present. In this film, Jarman extends the utopian promise of the commons toward an equally radical potential inhering in the dystopian commons. These dystopian commons work to reopen a futurity, staging the alleged aftermath of historic crisis as already present-tense. Jarman’s apocalyptic commons reflect unsolved legacies of neoliberal capital, liberal imperialism, early modern financialization, and post-Fordism. The Last of England navigates a global landscape where property-relations are liquefied, engendering ad hoc assemblages of survival. Centered in ruins of metropolitan industry, Jarman’s film widens the imagination of global annihilation –nuclear, epidemic, neoimperial – while raising specters of earlier, colonial annihilations. In The Last of England, pyrrhic potentials bind together a collectivity of aftermath within a dystopian commons uncannily recognizable as the horizon of the neoliberal present-day.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Indigenous territorial claims and settler governance: Mansharn Kaur Toor, Settler Modes of (Re)production: Indigenous Territorial Claims in Australia and Canada, MA Dissertation, University of Alberta, 2016

31Dec16

Abstract: This thesis is guided by an inquiry into the state responses to Australia’s Mabo v Queensland 1992 and Canada’s Calder v British Columbia 1973 rulings in the struggle for Indigenous rights to self-government. Australia’s Cape York Peninsula and Canada’s Nisga’a Nation serve as case studies for this thesis, to answer the research questions: What consequences came out of the Mabo and Calder cases for Indigenous territorial claims in Australia and Canada? And how does the settler state reterritorialize and limit Indigenous rights to self–government? Utilizing Henri Lefebvre’s concepts of homogenization and fragmentation, this thesis finds the settler state is continuously reinventing the structures of terra nullius (vacant lands) to preserve political and economic stability. Lefebvre introduces us to the concept of reterritorialization, as state mechanisms used to reconfiguration of social, political, and economic relationships to ensure Indigenous rights to self–government are limited. In the aftermath of the Mabo and Calder decisions, this thesis traces the settler state’s mechanisms to gain political and economic certainty by removing Indigenous rights to self–government. My findings reveal Australia’s ‘bundle of rights’ approach under the Native Title Act further limits Indigenous rights of self–government relative to Canada’s comprehensive land claims process.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

A ‘foreign settlement’ is a ‘special economic zone’: Anton N. Gazetov, ‘The Foreign Sloboda As a Historical Russian Experience for Present Times’, Transylvanian Review, 25, 4, 2016, pp. 125-137

31Dec16

Abstract: This article represents an overview of the assimilation of people from Western Europe, drawing on research combining migration policy and the policy of territorial and innovative development of Russia in historical perspective. We suggest that the 1897 census significantly marked down the number of people not identifying themselves as Russian, as the second generation of migrants to the Russian Empire indicated Russian as their native language. During 2011-2013, however, only 23,700 people (6.8% of the immigration total) came from countries more developed than Russia. To balance an influx of immigrants we suggest using the experience of the Russian Empire, which set up settlements for foreigners from technologically developed countries-the Sloboda. A Sloboda enjoyed a special legal status providing for the observance of foreign law, within the limits of Russian law. The Slobodas can be territories adapted to the foreign residents’ economic and administrative system, and they may complete the Special Economic Zones in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East with European centers of business and innovative activity.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Indigenous health choices; indigenous sovereignty: Monique Auger, Teresa Howell, Tonya Gomes, ‘Moving toward holistic wellness, empowerment and self-determination for Indigenous peoples in Canada: Can traditional Indigenous health care practices increase ownership over health and health care decisions?’ Canadian Journal of Public Health, 107, 4-5, 2016

31Dec16

Abstract: OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to understand the role that traditional Indigenous health care practices can play in increasing individual-level self-determination over health care and improving health outcomes for urban Indigenous peoples in Canada.

METHODS: This project took place in Vancouver, British Columbia and included the creation and delivery of holistic workshops to engage community members (n = 35) in learning about aspects of traditional health care practices. Short-term and intermediate outcomes were discussed through two gatherings involving focus groups and surveys. Data were transcribed, reviewed, thematically analyzed, and presented to the working group for validation.

RESULTS: When participants compared their experiences with traditional health care to western health care, they described barriers to care that they had experienced in accessing medical doctors (e.g., racism, mistrust), as well as the benefits of traditional healing (e.g., based on relationships, holistic approach). All participants also noted that they had increased ownership over their choices around, and access to, health care, inclusive of both western and traditional options. They stressed that increased access to traditional health care is crucial within urban settings.

CONCLUSIONS: Self-determination within Indigenous urban communities, and on a smaller scale, ownership for individuals, is a key determinant of health for Indigenous individuals and communities; this was made clear through the analysis of the research findings and is also supported within the literature. This research also demonstrates that access to traditional healing can enhance ownership for community members. These findings emphasize that there is a continued and growing need for support to aid urban Indigenous peoples in accessing traditional health care supports.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

A reiteration of the settler trick (the real contest opposing government and settlers hides indigenous land and sovereignty): Matthew Rozsa, ‘Cliven Bundy’s “army” is back with more armed threats: “Time for another win”; Cliven Bundy’s gang of scofflaws are back after Obama designates Nevada land into a national monument’, Salon, 31/12/16

31Dec16

Excerpt: The designation of the Gold Butte National Monument was part of a larger conservationist plan implemented by President Obama on Wednesday. In addition to the 300,000 acres outside of Las Vegas, Obama also designated 1.35 million acres in the Four Corners region of Utah as the Bears Ears National Monument. The purpose of both these designations is to protect the lands from energy development and other exploitative practices, while respecting the interests of both Native American tribes and environmentalists.

The Gold Butte National Monument will exist in the area near where Cliven Bundy led an armed standoff against federal agents in 2014. Two of his sons, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, led the seizure of Malheur. Although those two Bundy brothers and five co-defendants were acquitted in October, seven people face a separate trial next year for their role in the seizure. Similarly, Cliven Bundy, four of his sons, and 12 other people are facing a multitude of charges for their actions in Nevada from 2014.

So far the Bundy family itself has not threatened another showdown, despite the rhetoric of their supporters on social media. “This is about control, pure and simple,” they declared in a statement. “You don’t love this land, you have never visited here, but you love being in control of this land.”

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

‘Investment’ is not self-determination: Recovering Subjects: Robyn Green, Investment in an Era of Reconciliation, PhD Dissertation, Carleton University, 2016

30Dec16

Abstract: This doctoral project examines reconciliation and how Canada’s Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (2005) was designed to provide reparations to former students who were harmed in residential schools. In the past three decades, many Indigenous leaders and organizations identified a need for public investment to address historical injustice. In response, settler governments reframe these demands as opportunities for economic investment that are guaranteed to produce self-esteem and social inclusion for Indigenous peoples. This dissertation documents and problematizes an ideological shift whereby demands for redress and restitution give way to an investment rationale that is used to bypass demands for self-determination (Green 2015). Therefore, in this study I ask: how do investment discourses structure Indigenous-settler relationships? What is specific about the application of investment rationale when deployed during redress and reconciliation processes? In order to answer these questions I use a multi-site methodology to examine material and symbolic reparations, such as the Independent Assessment Process, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and therapeutic health supports. I draw on governmentality literatures to argue that an investment rationale disciplines individual compensation claimants through categories of harm and legal accounting processes to construct Indigenous subjects as dysfunctional and wage employment as emancipatory. I then examine how Indigenous health supports are subject to disinvestment, which effectively marginalizes Indigenous conceptualizations of health that privilege self-determination. Finally, I explore how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission routinely valorizes “mutually beneficial partnerships” as a template for contemporary Indigenous-settler relationships. My analysis thus contributes to the field of settler colonial studies and reveals how investment rationale is deployed to contain the cost of reparations and to create a politics of exchange where a return can be recovered from monies allotted to reparative strategies. The expected return that is desired by the settler state is, ultimately, the assimilation of Indigenous peoples’ into neoliberal citizenship.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Settler New Zealand declares ‘war’ against settler Israel (but luckily New Zealand’s 55th largest trading partner de-escalates): Henry Cooke, ‘Israel pauses further sanctions on New Zealand “until further notice”‘, stuff, 28/12/16

29Dec16

Excerpt: Israel’s ambassador to New Zealand Itzhak Gerberg will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to discuss whether further sanctions against NZ are appropriate.

The Israeli government has already withdrawn its ambassador and barred New Zealand’s ambassador from Israel.

Israel’s embassy said “until further notice” no more sanctions would be imposed against New Zealand.

This news came after reports of a bitter phone call between the Israeli leader and New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully where Netanyahu said NZ’s actions amounted to a “declaration of war”.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

Indigenous biographies are not settler ones (introducing a special issue): Alice Te Punga Somerville, Daniel Heath Justice, ‘Introduction: Indigenous Conversations about Biography’, Biography, 39, 3, 2016, pp. 239-247

27Dec16

Abstract: Rather than being focused on Indigenous biographies as such, this special issue of Biography was conceived by Alice Te Punga Somerville (Māori), Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee Nation), and Noelani Arista (Kanaka Maoli) as a wide-ranging conversation among Indigenous scholars, writers, artists, and filmmakers about the ethics, relations, practices, and considerations of representing Indigenous lives. The introduction by Te Punga Somerville and Justice offers observations about the process of bringing together a large community of Indigenous thinkers from a wide range of geographic, ancestral, and disciplinary contexts to this topic, and how this discursive approach shifted their understanding—individually and collectively—of the power and possibility of Indigenous biography.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Closed

what’s new

contribute