settler colonial studies blog

Cultural production is more than about textual artifacts: Warren Cariou, Isabelle St-Amand, ‘Environmental Ethics through Changing Landscapes: Indigenous Activism and Literary Arts’, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 44, 1, 2017, pp. 7-24

19Apr17

Excerpt: aIn her story “Salmon Is the Hub of Salish Memory,” Sto:lo writer Lee Maracle reminds the reader of the relationship between the fish and the women, and she foregrounds the vital importance of honouring and nurturing these living entities and their interrelatedness amongst one another and within the environment that sustains them. Attentive to the context in which she writes, Maracle reiterates the story’s warning that failure to do so will result in their disappearance. She further ponders what “the story does not say” (51), that is, with regards to responsibility when settlers are the cause of the devastation. Her text immediately calls to mind ongoing struggles for the protection of Indigenous lands and lives against the combined forces of global capitalism and settler colonialism. It brings out the necessity for a recovery that Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang have described as a fundamental decolonization imperative, one that “must involve repatriation of land simultaneous to the recognition of how land and relations to land have always already been differently understood and enacted” (Tuck and Yang 7). With her re-telling of the Salish story, Maracle puts forth the idea that caretaking—under all circumstances—remains a vital element in the struggles for Indigenous peoples and for the continuation of life in all its forms. Moreover, as Kyle Powys Whyte and Chris Cuomo observe, it is precisely “[a]s enactments of complex commitments to care [that] indigenous environmental movements have made great strides in protecting indigenous lifeways against the parties who are responsible for the environmental problems they face” (5). These parties include “international bodies, nation-states, subnational governments, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations” (Whyte and Cuomo 5-6). The question of responsibility therefore remains at the heart of an understanding of Indigenous environmental ethics and of their actualization in today’s neoliberal globalized colonial settler contexts.

Often, and in many ways, the contemporary productions of Indigenous scholars, activists, writers, and filmmakers relate to Maracle’s assertion that “violence to earth and violence between humans are connected” (53). In their respective works, for instance, Innu poet Natasha Kanapé Fontaine (2014), Blood and Sámi filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (2011), and Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson (2016) have exposed the intricate connections between the settler colonial project, the devastation of ecosystems, and the lives of Indigenous women and girls. Their poetic, filmic, and scholarly narratives contribute to ongoing conversations on environmental ethics and social justice at times of climate crisis by exposing the planetary and the community implications of the state of relationships between the land and the people. Tailfeathers makes this explicit when describing her short experimental film Bloodland, which is broadcast on YouTube, as “a social statement on the irreversible and detrimental impact of gas and oil exploration on our planet; and in particular on the impact that hydraulic fracturing has and will have on Kainaiwa, or Blood land” (Tailfeathers). Drawing on aesthetics of gore, Bloodland shows interspersed images of drilling into the earth and into the body of a young woman. The two sets of images rapidly mingle together to denounce the concomitant taking of Indigenous lands and lives while pointing at the gendered quality of this extractive violence.

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Cultural production is more than about artifacts: Stéphane Guimont Marceau, Janice Cindy Gaudet, Véronique Audet, Marie-Josée Parent, Mélanie Lumsden, Jonathan Abitbol, ‘Urban Indigenous cultural productions in Quebec: vital connections to cultural reconstruction’, AlterNative, 2017

19Apr17

Abstract: This article aims to address a gap in research regarding the dynamics that underpin Indigenous cultural productions in urban areas in Quebec (Canada), to gain an understanding of conditions, practices and relationships surrounding urban Indigenous cultural productions, and to examine their role in cultural reconstruction. The research findings point to how urban Indigenous cultural productions are vital to the survival and reconstruction of Indigenous cultures and identities. Interviews and sharing circles with cultural producers stressed that cultural productions are much more than products. They are a way of life and a way of thinking and being. The research was conducted from August 2015 to April 2016 by an urban Indigenous organization, DestiNATIONS: Carrefour International of Indigenous Arts and Cultures. It involved an intercultural and interdisciplinary research team guided by an Indigenous research methodology. We drew inspiration from the wisdom of close to a 100 cultural producers concerning their cultural productions.

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Settler colonialism is about stereotypes (they may run and be unpredictable, but can they lead?): Nicholas Apoifis, Demelza Marlin, Andrew Bennie, ‘Noble athlete, savage coach: How racialised representations of Aboriginal athletes impede professional sport coaching opportunities for Aboriginal Australians’, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2017

19Apr17

Abstract: Representations of Aboriginal Australian peoples as genetically predisposed to sporting prowess are pervasive and enduring perceptions. This rhetoric belongs to a larger narrative that also describes a peculiarly Aboriginal style of play: full of flair, speed and ‘magic’. Such imagery has informed a common perception that, in many team sports, Aboriginal athletes are biologically more suited to playing positions characterised by pace, trickery and spontaneity, rather than those that utilise leadership acumen and intellectual skill. There has been a great deal of academic research exploring how such essentialised and racialised representations play out for Aboriginal athletes. In this paper, however, we extend that research, examining how racialised representations of Aboriginal athletic ability affect Aboriginal coaches. Premised on interviews with 26 Aboriginal Australian coaches, we argue that representations of Aboriginal athletes as naturally suited to speed and flair, rather than leadership and sporting-intellect, help maintain an environment that limits opportunities for Aboriginal Australians seeking to move into sporting leadership roles, such as coaching. This paper sheds light on the ways in which racialised representations of Aboriginal athletes feed into a settler colonialist narrative that stymies opportunities for aspiring Aboriginal professional coaches, and speculates on the limitations of this approach, in challenging the political hegemony of settler colonialism.

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An anthropology of entanglement: Françoise Dussart, Sylvie Poirier (eds), Entangled Territorialities: Negotiating Indigenous Lands in Australia and Canada, University of Toronto Press, 2017

16Apr17

Description: Entangled Territorialities offers vivid ethnographic examples of how Indigenous lands in Australia and Canada are tangled with governments, industries, and mainstream society. Most of the entangled lands to which Indigenous peoples are connected have been physically transformed and their ecological balance destroyed. Each chapter in this volume refers to specific circumstances in which Indigenous peoples have become intertwined with non-Aboriginal institutions and projects including the construction of hydroelectric dams and open mining pits. Long after the agents of resource extraction have abandoned these lands to their fate, Indigenous peoples will continue to claim ancestral ties and responsibilities that cannot be understood by agents of capitalism. The editors and contributors to this volume develop an anthropology of entanglement to further examine the larger debates about the vexed relationships between settlers and indigenous peoples over the meaning, knowledge, and management of traditionally-owned lands.

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Sovereignty is (the ability to sustain) nonrecognition: Elya L Milner, Haim Yacobi, ‘Spaces of sovereignty: A tale of an unrecognized Palestinian village in Israel’, Planning Theory, 2017

16Apr17

Abstract: This article discusses the spatial and political dimensions of an unrecognized Arab village in Israel, which is a subject of houses demolition during the last decade, taking part in parallel to a legal struggle for recognition. This case is part of a wide political act in Israel, where Palestinians are rendered ‘criminal’ and their spaces illegitimate. We will suggest that the unrecognized villages cannot be seen solely as a product of planning policies, but are essential to the understanding of the ways in which Israeli sovereignty is embodied. We will discuss the case using legal documents regarding the latest petition made to the High Court of Justice. Through those documents, we will try to analyse the ways in which Israeli sovereignty is being embodied using theoretical tools by Carl Schmitt and his debate with Hans Kelsen. At the conclusions, we will suggest some thoughts regarding the possibilities of resistance.

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Settler tell fables: Shef Rogers, ‘The instructive power of the fable in New Zealand’s Native School Reader (1886)’, History of Education Review, 46, 1, 2017

16Apr17

Abstract: This essay examines the cultural implications of James Henry Pope’s selection of fables for his 1886 Native Schools Reader designed to teach English to Maori students in Native Schools.The essay takes an historical approach. It surveys attitudes toward the fable as a pedagogical tool prior to 1880 and reviews Pope’s choice of fifty from the three hundred available fables in the Aesopic canon.The study finds that Pope was well informed and well intentioned, but nonetheless appeared to be unaware of potentially unsettling interpretations of his selected fables. While it may be relatively easy for twenty-first-century readers to perceive the cultural tensions of Pope’s work, exploring the historical context helps us to understand both why Pope compiled the text he did, and why he and his books were well regarded by both pākehā and Māori, despite almost certainly not conveying the values the settlers wished to inculcate in Māori.

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Decolonisation is a (up)rising: Jaskiran Dhillon, Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention, University of Toronto Press, 2017

16Apr17

Description: In 2016, Canada’s newly elected federal government publically committed to reconciling the social and material deprivation of Indigenous communities across the country. Does this outward shift in the Canadian state’s approach to longstanding injustices facing Indigenous peoples reflect a “transformation with teeth,” or is it merely a reconstructed attempt at colonial Indigenous-settler relations?

Prairie Rising provides a series of critical reflections about the changing face of settler colonialism in Canada through an ethnographic investigation of Indigenous-state relations in the city of Saskatoon. Jaskiran Dhillon uncovers how various groups including state agents, youth workers, and community organizations utilize participatory politics in order to intervene in the lives of Indigenous youth living under conditions of colonial occupation and marginality. In doing so, this accessibly written book sheds light on the changing forms of settler governance and the interlocking systems of education, child welfare, and criminal justice that sustain it. Dhillon’s nuanced and fine-grained analysis exposes how the push for inclusionary governance ultimately reinstates colonial settler authority and raises startling questions about the federal government’s commitment to justice and political empowerment for Indigenous Nations, particularly within the context of the everyday realities facing Indigenous youth.

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Settler ‘decolonization’ is about the garden: Brett M. Bennett, ‘Decolonization, Environmentalism and Nationalism in Australia and South Africa’, Itinerario, 41, 1, 2017, pp. 27-50

16Apr17

Abstract: Decolonization influenced the rise of environmental activism and thought in Australia and South Africa in ways that have been overlooked by national histories of environmentalism and imperial histories of decolonization. Australia and South Africa’s political and cultural movement away from Britain and the Commonwealth during the 1960s is one important factor explaining why people in both countries created more, and more important, public indigenous botanic gardens than anywhere else in the world during that decade. Effective decolonization from Britain also influenced the rise of indigenous gardening and the growing popularity of native gardens at a critical period in gardening and environmental history. Most facets of contemporary gardening—using plants indigenous to the site or region, planting drought-tolerant species, and seeing gardens as sites to help conserve regional and national flora—can be dated to the 1960s and 1970s. The interpretation advanced here adds to historical research tracing how the former Commonwealth settler colonies experienced effective decolonization in the same era. This article expands the focus of research on decolonization to include environmentalism. The interpretation of the article also augments national environmental histories that have hitherto downplayed the influence of decolonization on the rise of environmentalism. Putting decolonization into the history of the rise of environmental thought and action sheds light on why people in contemporary Australia and South Africa are so passionate about protecting indigenous flora and fauna, and so worried about threats posed by non-native invasive species.

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Tributary relations and settler colonialism: Russell Dylan Ruediger, Tributary Subjects: Affective Colonialism, Power, and the Process of Subjugation in Colonial Virginia, c. 1600 – c. 1740, PhD Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2017

13Apr17

Abstract: My dissertation explores tributary relationships between Algonquin, Siouan, and Iroquoian Indians and English settlers in Virginia, placing the process of political subjection into the heart of narratives of dispossession. Both indigenous Chesapeake and European political traditions shared ideas of tribute as a structure linking unequal, but conceptually autonomous and self-governing, polities in hierarchical relationships of power. By treating colonial tributary relations as a trans-Atlantic political institution, I interpret colonial power struggles in Virginia as a local instance of global battles over sovereignty, jurisdiction, and political subordination within the heart of the unfolding project of settler colonialism. Remarkably durable and continuously shifting, the tributary system and its central ritual of exchanging payments symbolizing subordination for the promise of protection and friendship, provides a powerful lens for understanding the collision of native and English ideas of subjugation that structured colonial interactions in the region. Framing settler colonialism as a contested but unequal political relationship in which subordinated native peoples retained considerable autonomy opens an otherwise obscure era of Virginia’s Native history, in which the English and several dozen Native peoples from the Chesapeake and the Southern Piedmont forged political ties based on a language of friendship and unequal alliance. Drawing on a variety of archival sources, I follow the efforts of small Native polities, who lived in a world of constrained options, to shape the terms of their subordination. Despite numerous disruptions, the tributary system was at the core of both dispossession and resistance in Virginia well into the eighteenth century. Moreover, tributary forms of power continue to structure the experiences of Indigenous peoples in the Chesapeake, the United States, and many of the world’s other settler-states. In Virginia, state-recognized tribes still pay tribute to the governor every fall. In the United States and beyond, indigenous people remain, both theoretically and legally, subordinated yet “sovereign,” or in John Marshall’s phrase, “domestic dependent nations.” By placing political allegiance and subjugation at the heart of settler colonialism, my work expands the scope of dispossession and offers a framework for thinking about contemporary Indigenous politics.

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Testimony is sovereignty: Brieg Capitaine, Karine Vanthuyne (eds), Power through Testimony Reframing Residential Schools in the Age of Reconciliation, UBC Press, 2017

12Apr17

Description: Power through Testimony documents how survivors are remembering and reframing our understanding of residential schools in the wake of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, which includes the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a forum for survivors, families, and communities to share their memories and stories with the Canadian public. The commission closed and reported in 2015, and this timely volume reveals what was happening on the ground. Drawing on field research during the commission and in local communities, the contributors reveal how survivors are unsettling colonial narratives about residential schools and how churches and former school staff are receiving or resisting the new “residential school story.”

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