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The settler state within the modernist state: Benjamin W. Goossen, ‘Religious Nationalism in an Age of Globalization: The Case of Paraguay’s “Mennonite State”‘, Almanack, 14, 2016

20Dec16

Abstract: This article uses the example of Mennonite nation-building in Paraguay during the 1920s and 1930s to argue that state formation is not inherently modernist. Tracing nineteenth and early twentieth-century discourses of Mennonite colonies in Imperial Russia, Canada, and elsewhere as a “state within a state,” the essay advocates a reevaluation of theories of modern statehood advanced by thinkers like James C. Scott and Ernest Gellner. As conservative, pacifist Mennonites traveled from North America to the Paraguayan Chaco to escape the pressures of assimilation in democratic society, their migration paved the way for coreligionists fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union to join in the formation of a rural, autonomous “Mennonite state” that was organized internationally, characterized by deep religious observance, and conceived in opposition to high modernist projects.


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On decolonial temporalities, a special issue of Contexto Internacional

19Dec16

Narendran Kumarakulasingam, Decolonial Temporalities: Plural Pasts, Irreducible Presents, and Open Futures, Contexto Internacional: Journal of Global Connections, 38, 3, 2016.


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On the ends of settler sovereignty: David Myer Temin, Remapping the World: Vine Deloria, Jr. and the Ends of Settler Sovereignty, PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2016

17Dec16

Abstract: This dissertation reconstructs the political thought of Yankton Dakota activist-intellectual Vine Deloria, Jr. (1933–2005) in order to explore how Indigenous peoples in the Americas have developed a tradition of politically engaged, anti-colonial critique—a politics of decolonization. Since World War II, democratic theorists have mounted accounts of civic inclusion and multicultural representation to both invigorate projects of democratic state- and nation-building and to respond to legacies of racial and cultural injustice. Against these accounts, I argue that settler democracies make their boundaries through colonial projects of replacement and normalized incorporation that disavow and dissolve Indigenous peoples’ separate polities. Beginning with his leadership in the National Congress of American Indians in 1964, Deloria provided a) an analysis of narratives of civic inclusion and multicultural representation as colonial and b) translated practices of decolonization emergent from the Indigenous sovereignty movement into an evolving framework of shared Indigenous concepts. The project traces Deloria’s counter-proposals through three phases: First, Deloria confidently re-theorized democratic state-building as “empire” so as to promote among Indigenous peoples an anti-colonial politics of self-determination (1964–1969). Second, Deloria aggressively reimagined Indigenous sovereignty as a distinctive variant of constituent power (1969–1975). Third, Deloria disappointedly reckoned with the durability of colonialism and capitalism as twin engines of destruction and re-described Indigenous conceptions of sacred territory, relationship, and responsibility as the ethical-political foundations of decolonization (1975–2005). Through this reconstruction of Deloria’s work in conversation with contemporary Indigenous and Settler-Colonial Studies, my project provides a basis for refashioning political theory’s core interpretive commitments to address the questions of dispossession, landlessness, self-determination, and sovereignty most apt for decolonization struggles in settler-colonial contexts.


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Possessing history and a history of possession: Daniel Robert McClure, ‘Possessing History and American Innocence: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, Jr., and the 1965 Cambridge Debate’, James Baldwin Review, 2, 2016

17Dec16

Abstract: The 1965 debate at Cambridge University between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr., posed the question: “Has the American Dream been achieved at the Expense of the American Negro?” Within the contours of the debate, Baldwin and Buckley wrestled with the ghosts of settler colonialism and slavery in a nation founded on freedom and equality. Framing the debate within the longue durée, this essay examines the deep cultural currents related to the American racial paradox at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Underscoring the changing language of white resistance against black civil rights, the essay argues that the Baldwin and Buckley debate anticipated the ways the U.S. would address racial inequality in the aftermath of the civil rights era and the dawn of neoliberalism in the 1970s.


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With a chapter by Kyle Powys Whyte on indigeneity vs US settler colonialism: in Naomi Zack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, OUP, 2016

14Dec16

Access ‘Indigeneity and US Settler Colonialism’ here.


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With a chapter by Laura Jeanne Sims on pied noir resistance against ‘oblivion’ (if successful settlers are busy forgetting, failed ones are busy remembering): in Amy K. Levin (ed.), Global Mobilities: Refugees, Exiles, and Immigrants in Museums and Archives, Routledge, 2016

14Dec16

Access ‘”A Safeguard Against Oblivion”: Memorializing French Algeria in the Centre de Documentation des Français d’Algérie’ here.


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Settler colonialism demands discontinuous indigenous narratives: Deborah L. Madsen, ‘Discontinuous Narrative, Ojibwe Sovereignty, and the Wiindigoo Logic of Settler Colonialism: Louise Erdrich’s Marn Wolde’, Studies in American Indian Literatures, 28, 3, 2016, pp. 23-51

11Dec16

Access the article here.


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Settlers as weeds: Timothy Neale, ‘Settler Colonialism and Weed Ecology’, Engagement: A blog published by the Anthropology and Environment Society, a section of the American Anthropological Association, 02/11/16

11Dec16

Excerpt: Two propositions to start: there is a significant parallel (or companionship) between settlers and weeds; and, there is also a significant parallel (or companionship) between the structures of settler colonialism and those of weed ecology. These are the propositions that I want to work through in what follows, propositions that draw upon both the significant existing body of work by Indigenous and non-indigenous historians, anthropologists and others on the ways in which nonhuman actors have been mobilised within projects of settler colonial territorialization, and more recent work, including my own, in settler colonial nations such Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand where exotic nonhuman species dominate many landscapes.


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Surveilling: Tia Dafnos, Scott Thompson, Martin French, ‘Surveillance and the Colonial Dream: Canada’s Surveillance of Indigenous Self-Determination’, in Randy K. Lippert, Kevin Walby, Ian Warren, Darren Palmer (eds), National Security, Surveillance and Terror Canada and Australia in Comparative Perspective, Palgrave, pp. 319-342

08Dec16

Abstract: This chapter argues that the self-determining status of Indigenous peoples represents a challenge to claims of Canadian sovereignty. This challenge troubles the settler state’s dream of maintaining conditions of territorial integrity and economic security. Accordingly, the settler state seeks to identify and manage Indigenous peoples and their activities that are perceived to contradict its interests. The surveillance apparatus is fundamental to this governing project and forms the focal point of this chapter. Within this paradigm, assertions of Indigenous self-determination and jurisdiction are commonly conceptualised as threats to critical infrastructure. The expanded potential of Canada’s surveillance apparatus to capture assertions of self-determination is real. To illustrate, we detail recent institutional mutations and surveillance activities currently taking place.


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Negotiating …: Casey Burkholder, ‘Negotiating Settler Colonialism, Activism, and Emerging Scholarly Identities’, Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education, 7, 2, 2016

08Dec16

Abstract: Inspired by Indigenous water and land protectors in Standing Rock (ND) and Muskrat Falls (NL), as well as her new identity as soon-to-be ‘parent’, the editor suggests that issues of activism and identity are intertwined in the ways in which the political and academic lives of new scholars are developed during their training in Canadian post-secondary institutions. The editor also presents an overview of the five articles in this Fall issue related to issues of identity and rethinking educational theories in a variety of Canadian educational spaces, including: post-secondary vocational education (Gustafson), physical education programs and models-based practices (Baker), exploring feminisms in educational contexts (Syme Anderson), exploring academic discourse socialization in post-secondary institutions (Vasilopoulos), and a reflection on theories surrounding adolescent motivation in Quebec’s educational context (Gaudreau).


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