Rationale: This one day workshop kindly supported by the Institute of Latin American Studies and the OWRI Cross-Language Dynamics project will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars engaging with settler colonial theory and its application in Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC). Seldom is LAC considered within the ambit of Settler Colonial Studies, and settler colonialism in the region is not often theorized using insights from other settler contexts. Our aim is to bridge these gaps, asking how SCS might enrich interpretation of Latin American and Caribbean society, and how reflection on LAC might in turn enrich settler colonial theory. Designed as a brainstorming conversation to develop a field of enquiry, this event hosted by CECSAM (Swansea University’s Centre for the Comparative Study of the Americas) will enable a much-needed conversation about a theoretical framework that has significant potential to shape analysis of societies in LAC, but also to foreground the LAC region in academic debates outside the area studies niche.

Register here.

Description: This book offers an original and compelling analysis of women’s madness, gender and the Australian family. Taking up Anne McClintock’s call for critical works that psychoanalyze colonialism, this radical re-assessment of novels by Christina Stead and Kate Grenville provides a sustained account of women’s madness and masculine colonial psychosis from a feminist postcolonial perspective. This book rethinks women’s madness in the context of Australian colonialism. Taking novels of madness by Christina Stead and Kate Grenville as its point of critical departure, it applies a post-Reconciliation lens to the study of Australia’s gender and racial codes, to place Australian sexism and misogyny in their proper colonial context. Employing madness as a frame to rethink postcolonial theorizing in Australia, Gender, Madness, and Colonial Paranoia in Australian Literature psychoanalyses colonialism to argue that Australia suffers from a cultural pathology based in the strategic forgetting of colonial violence. This pathology takes the form of colonial paranoia about ‘race’ and gender, producing distorted gender codes and ways of being Australian. This book maps the contours of Australian colonial paranoia, weaving feminist literary theory, psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory with poststructuralist approaches to reassess the traditional canon of critical madness scholarship, and the place of women’s writing within it. This provocative work marks a radical departure from much recent feminist, cultural, and postcolonial criticism, and will be essential reading for students of Australian literature, cultural studies and gender studies wanting a new insight into how the Australian psyche is shaped by settler colonialism.

Abstract: Located at the juncture of critical animal studies and decolonial theory, this analysis contemplates the connections and entanglements between settler colonialism and animality in Canadian constitutional discourse. How are coloniality and anthropocentricism — and the borders they draw between humanity, infra-humanity, and non-humanity — (re)produced with and through one another in Canadian constitutional jurisprudence and discourse? The very concepts used to understand and dispute the legal status of non-human animals (property and personhood, humanity and citizenship, rights and sovereignty) are shot through with the coloniality of their genealogies (see, for example, Anghie 2007; Isin 2012). Canadian constitutional law and legal discourse — the juridical warp and woof of the settler colonial state — therefore serves as one productive site for investigating the underexplored relationship between settler colonialism and animality, and for thinking through the mutual salience of decolonial and animal liberation projects.

Beenash Jafri, “Ongoing Colonial Violence in Settler States,” Lateral 6.1 (2017).

Melissa Gniadek, “The Times of Settler Colonialism,” Lateral 6.1 (2017).

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, “Thinking with Melissa Gniadek and Beenash Jafri,” Lateral 6.1 (2017).

Description: Often when Native nations assert their treaty rights and sovereignty, they are confronted with a backlash from their neighbors, who are fearful of losing control of the natural resources. Yet, when both groups are faced with an outside threat to their common environment-such as mines, dams, or an oil pipeline-these communities have unexpectedly joined together to protect the resources. Some regions of the United States with the most intense conflicts were transformed into areas with the deepest cooperation between tribes and local farmers, ranchers, and fishers to defend sacred land and water.

Unlikely Alliances explores this evolution from conflict to cooperation through place-based case studies in the Pacific Northwest, Great Basin, Northern Plains, and Great Lakes regions during the 1970s through the 2010s. These case studies suggest that a deep love of place can begin to overcome even the bitterest divides.

Excerpt: It was only a matter of time before Zionism and Native American Studies [NAS] came into conflict—or, to be more precise, before Zionists began targeting the field for acrimony and recrimination, as they have long done to various humanities and social science disciplines. 

Access the article here.

Abstract: While “inclusion” has been seen as a central mode of redressing ongoing injustices against communities of color in the US, Indigenous political experiences feature more complex legacies of contesting US citizenship. Turning to an important episode of contestation, this essay examines the relation between inclusion and the politics of eliminating Indigenous nations that was part of a shared policy shift toward “Termination” in the Anglo-settler world of the 1950s and 1960s. Through a reading of Indigenous activist-intellectual Vine Deloria Jr.’s Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), it demonstrates how the construction of what I call the “civic inclusion narrative” in post–World War II American political discourse disavowed practices of empire-formation. Widely considered a foundational text of the Indigenous Sovereignty Movement, the work repositioned Indigenous peoples not as passive recipients of civil rights and incorporation into the nation-state but as colonized peoples actively demanding decolonization. Deloria’s work provides an exemplary counterpoint to the enduring thread of civic inclusion in American political thought and an alternative tradition of decolonization—an imperative that continues to resonate in today’s North American and global Indigenous struggles over land, jurisdiction, and sovereignty.

Excerpt: Some might say there is nothing more American than the children’s classic The Wizard of Oz or its author, L. Frank Baum. More than a hundred years after the book’s first printing in 1900, it’s still popular and beloved, with new additions to the franchise appearing in movies, books, an upcoming biopic, and even a casino.

Recently, the Oneida Nation in Chittenango, New York, announced plans to build a twenty-million-dollar casino that will honor the late author’s birthplace, an endeavor that will provide jobs and economic growth in the area. Yet the decision has warranted public criticism due to Baum’s 1890 editorials in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, calling for the “annihilation of the few remaining Indians.” While many historians and readers see the editorials as resounding evidence of Baum’s racist views toward Native Americans, others believe his fiction demonstrates that he was sympathetic to their plight, especially their loss of land, religion, and culture.

L. Frank Baum’s nonfiction writing and editorial work serve as a resource for understanding his position on politics and race. Baum moved his family from Chittenango to the Great Plains, hoping to find open space and a newfound freedom, one that the “city life” couldn’t offer. Hardly settled, he opened Baum’s Bazaar and quickly made a name for himself selling fancy goods, like Chinese lanterns and music boxes, to Aberdeen’s wealthy decision makers.

With business doing well, Baum bought the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer and filled it with news and entertainment for his readers, including the “Editor’s Musings” and “Our Landlady” columns. A staunch supporter of women’s rights, Baum devoted a considerable amount of space voicing his opinions on the subject, advocating for a women’s right to vote. His mother-in-law, Matilda Gage, was a cofounder of the National Woman Suffrage Association with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and she not only encouraged him to write but is said to be the influence behind the feminist themes found in the Oz books. Gage was also “adopted” into the Mohawk Nation in 1893.

Around this time, relations between Native Americans and European settlers had been one of conflict. The General Allotment Act of 1887 sought to relocate the Sioux onto reservations. Within two years, North and South Dakota were formed. While settlers feared a Sioux uprising, they would’ve also witnessed suppression of Native culture and religion, and even loss of hunting lands, leading some to starvation. Meanwhile, settlers were dealing with their own struggles, including economic hardships and food scarcities, as the area faced continued drought—another topic Baum covered fiercely.

Eventually, Baum was forced to close the store. He then focused solely on the newspaper, reporting on the issues of his day, including the relationships between the Sioux and settlers. One story he’s credited with publishing was written by Aberdeen resident Hamlin Garland, who attempted to reach common ground between the two sides. In The Real Wizard of Oz, Rebecca Loncraine explains, the settler in Garland’s story, burdened by labor and loneliness, gets emotional when “for the first time in his life he got a glimpse of the infinite despair of the Indian.” The settler approaches “Drifting Crane,” a reference to the Sioux chief Drifting Goose, and tells him that the war is “all wrong . . . there’s land enough for us all, or ought to be.” The settler doesn’t understand why it can’t be shared.

Abstract: With Alberta Education planning new policies and curricula that focus on Indigenous content, it is important to see how educators recognize and explain racism. This quanti-qualitative study examines the ways in which Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) members understand and articulate racism through their responses to an anonymous online survey. This is investigated through an interrogation of the idea of “reverse racism.” Utilizing settler colonialism as a theoretical framework, this article uses the history of race as a concept and an exploration of terms related to racism to refute the possibility of white people experiencing racism in Canada. The article concludes that settler colonialism and racism are coexisting and oppressive systems that prohibit reconciliatory thinking for settlers.