settler colonial studies blog

Educating settler-teachers: ‘Digital Narratives as a Means of Shifting Settler-Teacher Horizons toward Reconciliation’, Alexandra Bissell, Lisa Korteweg, Canadian Journal of Education, 39, 3, 2016

20Sep16

Abstract: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action report (2015), in the section “Education for Reconciliation” (p. 7, #62–63), calls for the integration of Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into the curriculum and for better preparation of teachers to deliver Indigenous content. Settler-teachers, however, have not been adequately prepared for this mission, nor are they well-prepared to teach Indigenous students. This article discusses a project of dual purpose in support of reconciliation: to give Indigenous students the opportunity to represent their Land-based dogsledding experiences as iMovie digital narratives and to give settler-teacher candidates direct experience for relationship-building in an indigenized context of education. Drawing upon theories of settler-colonialism, decolonization, and reconciliation in education, the article illustrates the imperative of immersing settler-teachers into contexts where Indigenous students self-representing their identities and Indigenous knowledge are at the centre of the curriculum.

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To teach or not to teach (hint: you cannot change what happened by disallowing its teaching)? Sam Levin, ‘UC Berkeley reinstates class on Palestine following outcry over its suspension’, The Guardian, 20/09/16

20Sep16

Excerpt: Shari Huhndorf, chair of the department of ethnic studies, said in a letter to administrators that she had determined that the “course is structured by open inquiry rather than a specific agenda”.

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Settlers invade everything: Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘The Occupation of the Senses: The Prosthetic and Aesthetic of State Terror’, The British Journal of Criminology, 2016

17Sep16

Abstract: Colonial and settler colonial dispossession is performed through various forms of violence, justified by cultural, historical, religious and national imperatives. In this paper, I define one of these forms of violence as the occupation of the senses, referring to the sensory technologies that manage bodies, language, sight, time and space in the colony. This paper analyses the parades, marches and festivals performed in the Palestinian city space of occupied East Jerusalem; shares the slogans, chants and graffiti used by Israeli civil, religious and nationalist entities; and explores what is lived, seen, heard, felt and smelled by the colonized to uncover the political violence implicated in the occupation of the senses.

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Teaching settler colonialism (II): Kala Bechard, ‘Decolonizing Pedagogies: Interrupting the Settler Colonial Narrative of Landownership in Ontario Social Science and History Curriculum’, Research Paper, Queen’s University, 2016

17Sep16

Abstract: Drawing upon Ontario Social Science and History curriculum documents and textbook imagery and language, this paper examines how narratives of settler landownership strategically present Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples within the Canadian grand narrative. The curriculum and text material educators and learners are guided by ignore ongoing colonial violence towards Indigenous peoples and perpetuate the ideology of inevitable ‘peaceful’ interrelationships in national contexts. Learners develop identities in relation to land and how land is acquired. They come to understand themselves as part of a just nation in the particular sequence of Canadian Social Science and History teaching and learning. To go beyond simply adding content about Indigenous peoples in the classroom, educators and learners must adapt a decolonial approach to instead learn from Indigenous perspectives. Such a methodology would require the opening of a “third space” where the transmission of western curricular knowledge is interrupted. Educators and learners must create a space for problematizing the source itself and deconstruct the national grand narrative using inquiry, questioning and reflection, rather than repetition and regurgitation. This analysis reveals that particular placements of Indigenous peoples and settler Canadians in curriculum and classroom text material must be challenged by educators and learners to disrupt colonial narratives and to seek ongoing reconciliatory opportunities in and beyond the school walls.

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Teaching about settler colonialism: Tricya Bazinet, White Settler-Colonialism, International Development Education, and the Question of Futurity: A Content Analysis of the University of Ottawa Master’s Program Mandatory Syllabi in Globalization and International Development, MA Dissertation, University of Ottawa, 2016

17Sep16

Abstract: In this thesis I explore the relationships between post-secondary education in the field of international development, and the maintenance and practices of white settler-colonialism at home and abroad. My method is to search for recurring present and absent themes found in French and English course syllabi of the Canadian Master’s Program in Globalization and International Development of the University of Ottawa. Through search strings in 81 syllabi of four mandatory courses taught over an 8-year period, 2007-2015, I find that colonialism is little mentioned, and when it is, it is usually either as something of the past or something geographically distant. I conclude that, for students, academics and others to address settler-colonialism as an obstacle to decolonization, requires (1) acknowledging their current role in naturalizing settler-colonialism, (2) denaturalizing the logics of settler-colonialism, and (3) working to deliberately give up on white settler futures, while other futures (Indigenous futures) are flourishing through the process of decolonization. While this content analysis is only a small and possibly ungeneralizable example of higher education and its simultaneous potential for colonization and decolonization, it nevertheless represents an addition to the few applications of the theoretical field of settler-colonial studies and of its material implications.

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Indigeneity as transgression: Caitlin Elliott, You Will Be Punished: Media Depictions of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, MA Disserttion, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2016

17Sep16

Abstract: The following thesis focuses on media depictions of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women, a list that carries upwards of 1,200 names. The news coverage of these stories is reminiscent of television crime dramas in their depictions of
minority victims of crime, specifically in regard to victim blaming. In order to examine
this relationship, the present study compares coverage of missing and murdered
Indigenous women in Canadian news articles to depictions of victims, particularly
minority female victims, within crime procedural television shows. An ethnographic
content analysis (ECA) was conducted in order to parse out common themes between
news articles featuring missing and murdered Indigenous women (N = 50) and television
crime drama episodes (N = 65) from Law & Order: SVU (N = 37), CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation (N = 17), and Criminal Minds (N = 13). The overarching message portrayed
within these forms of media is the importance of conforming to social mores. Both forms
of media act as morality plays depicting the harm that will come to women if they
transgress society’s definition of ‘appropriate’ behaviour. These morality plays are aimed
at white women in order to protect their virtue and stifle female sexual agency. These
morality plays act as a way to enforce and engrain hegemony within society.

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The ‘mission complex’ and settler expansion: Lori J. Daggar, ‘The Mission Complex: Economic Development, “Civilization”, and Empire in the Early Republic’, Journal of the Early Republic, 36, 3, 2016, pp. 467-491

15Sep16

Abstract: The “mission complex” expanded the influence and power of the United States in the Ohio Country and beyond. It linked missionaries, humanitarians, manufacturers, federal employees, and indigenous peoples through networks of markets and capital: the material goods used in the agricultural missions offered a means both to stimulate business for eastern (and developing western) manufacturers and to develop a new consumer base in the Ohio Country. Attention to the functioning of this system, based upon free yet hierarchical relations of power, reveals how the early U.S. empire thrived off of economic growth. Paying attention to indigenous peoples’ appropriation and manipulation of the complex, moreover, reveals that some Native communities and individuals endeavored to take advantage of missionary labor, while others endeavored to facilitate their engagement with the U.S. economy by reinforcing ties with both the federal government and Euroamericans. Ultimately, analysis of the mission complex reveals that imperial state policy, as well as a myriad of Native and non-Native actors, facilitated the development and expansion of capitalist markets and forms of labor in the early republic.

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Who is indigenous? James J. A. Blair, Extracting Indigeneity: Oil, Environment and Self-Determination in the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), PhD Dissertation, CUNY, 2016

15Sep16

Abstract: This ethnographic and historical project examines how the settlers of the Falkland Islands (In Spanish, Malvinas) are constructing themselves as “natives” through new forms of governance over energy resources. Three decades after a violent war that cemented the archipelago’s British status, offshore oil discoveries led Argentina to renew its sovereignty claim. In response, the Falkland Islanders held a 2013 referendum on self-determination, in which 99.8% voted to remain British, with just three dissenters out of 1,517 valid votes. Most of the Islanders are white settlers, making their invocation of self-determination different from that of former colonial subjects with aboriginal rights. Unlike comparable settler colonies predicated on the elimination of the native, there is no historical trace of a pre-colonial indigenous population on the islands. To understand how the settlers are securing rights to territory and resources, this project examines debates around political, economic and ecological stability. The research incorporates participant observation, analysis of colonial letters and reports, and interviews collected during 20 months of fieldwork in the Falklands/Malvinas, Argentina and the United Kingdom. Drawing on this data, chapters explore contradictory practices of territorialization, through aspects of displacement, enclosure, peoplehood, personhood, infrastructure, science and nature. The dissertation concludes that by claiming self-determination, the Falkland Islanders are crafting a settler colonial protectorate for hydrocarbon production through popular consent to British sovereignty.

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Development is settler colonialism: Omar Jabary Salamanca, ‘Assembling the Fabric of Life: When Settler Colonialism Becomes Development’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 45, 4, 2016, pp. 64-80

13Sep16

Abstract: This article brings attention to the political geography of settler colonialism and the ways in which the Palestinian built environment materializes in space, consolidating uneven and racialized landscapes. It argues that settler-colonial space is intimately related to the building of infrastructures structured by development and humanitarian practices. More specifically, the discussion explores how roadscapes are materially and symbolically constructed; it also examines the ways in which development, rather than constituting a tool of empowerment, becomes a mechanism to manage the short-term “humanitarian” needs of Palestinians that arise from the imperatives of settler colonialism. Problematizing road infrastructure allows us to explore the relationship between Palestinian and donor agendas, and concomitant discourses on economic development and state building—in other words, how settler infrastructures are normalized through their association with tropes of modernity, progress, humanitarianism, and development.

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Lobbying with IGOs: Jan Lüdert, ‘Conditions apply: non-state actors challenging state sovereignty through Intergovernmental Organizations: an analysis of national liberation movements and indigenous peoples at the United Nations’, PhD Dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2016

13Sep16

Abstract: This dissertation contributes to the study of Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs), such as the United Nations, and demonstrates their important function to convene multiple actors engaged in normative contestation and change. It achieves this by offering a systematic theoretical and empirical account of how non-state actors (NSAs) challenge the institution of state sovereignty. The argument offered specifically seeks to answer how and under what conditions this challenge is possible, and whether and when states respond by limiting IGOs and/or NSAs. To answer this question, the dissertation analyzes the successes and failures of two sets of non-state actors that have sought to alter prevailing conceptions of state sovereignty: national liberation movements and indigenous peoples. The dissertation’s original contributions to existing knowledge are threefold. First, I build on existing constructivist theory to argue that state sovereignty is despite being resilient and hard to change, also a mutable and variable composite institution. I specify that state sovereignty’s variance finds its clearest expression in three international norms that makes up the institution: territoriality, non-interference and self-determination. Second, I develop and apply the significance of three explanatory factors of non-state actors using IGOs to challenge and change the composite parts of state sovereignty: a) non-state actors require meaningful access and must expand participation capabilities to relevant venues within the nested structure of the IGO; b) non-state actors rely on the often essential role of allies active in the IGO to influence venue constraints and outcomes; c) non-state actors and their allies must find, create and/or be able to change relevant venues in order to advance collective goals through persuasion and social pressure tactics. I identify a particularly critical venue type which is coined sheltered venue. Sheltered venues establish a foot in the door to the IGO through which non-state actors deepen their interaction with states. Finally, I offer a detailed empirical investigation of national liberation movements and indigenous peoples interacting with the UN. No study of these actors in comparison exists to date. I, as such, explore how decisions and outcomes that benefited national liberation movements impacted indigenous peoples’ engagement at the United Nations.

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