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On Sierra Leone as a settler colonial project: Joseph Kaifala, Free Slaves, Freetown, and the Sierra Leonean Civil War, Palgrave, 2017

02Dec16

With two historical chapters of special interest for the readers of this blog: 1) On the ways in which a diaspora was constituted as a settler body politics; and 2) On the ways in which a settler polity refused taxation.


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Mobility as access to spatially defined rights: Naama Blatman-Thomas, ‘Commuting for rights: Circular mobilities and regional identities of Palestinians in a Jewish-Israeli town, Geoforum, 78, 2017, pp. 22–32

30Nov16

Abstract: Mobilities in settler states have become a defining feature of indigenous spatiality. This is mainly due to the structural disadvantage of indigenous communities in relation to urban locations. In Israel, Palestinian citizens are relocating to Jewish cities because of systemic discrimination, primarily in the allocation of land and housing construction permits in Arab locales. Yet, as this paper shows, their movement is neither unidirectional nor an one-time event, but ongoing and circular. Able to enjoy only certain economic and social rights in indigenous spaces and other rights in settler spaces, Palestinian citizens continuously commute between the two. Utilizing a human rights based approach, the paper unpacks Palestinian mobility practices to illuminate a lacuna in the literature, which has overlooked the quest for rights as a driving force of indigenous mobilities. The paper further demonstrates that circular mobilities become a generative act that connects the settler city to neighboring localities in a way that undermines the separation between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Palestinian’ spaces, and collapses the distinction between the ‘urban’ and ‘regional.’ Rather than attempting to integrate within the city, Palestinians incorporate the city within their own ethno-regional topography, thereby asserting their presence and a claim to the city-space itself.


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Countermapping was always there: Siomonn P. Pulla, ‘Critical Reflections on (Post)colonial Geographies: Applied Anthropology and the Interdisciplinary Mapping of Indigenous Traditional Claims in Canada during the Early 20th Century’, Human Organization, 75, 4, 2016, pp. 289-304.

30Nov16

Abstract: This paper examines tensions between mapping as a practice of nation building and the practice of applied anthropology and “counter-mapping” in Canada during the early 20th century as expressions of Indigenous territoriality. This research helps to correct a misconception within the scholarly community that counter-mapping as an applied practice within anthropology emerged during the 1950s and 1960s. Tracing the emergence of this practice through Frank Speck’s anthropological work on the family hunting territory complex during the early 1900s provides important context for understanding the history of and continued use of maps and mapping practices to challenge colonial ideologies and support Indigenous claims for land and access to resources.


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Cultural continuity is decolonising work: Monique, D. Auger, ‘Cultural Continuity as a Determinant of Indigenous Peoples’ Health: A Metasynthesis of Qualitative Research in Canada and the United States’, The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 7, 4, 2016

30Nov16

Abstract: As a strengths-based alternative to Western notions of enculturation and acculturation theory, cultural continuity describes the integration of people within their culture and the methods through which traditional knowledge is maintained and transmitted. Through reviewing relevant, original research with Indigenous Peoples in Canada and the United States, the purpose of this metasynthesis is to describe and interpret qualitative research relating to cultural continuity for Indigenous Peoples in North America. This metasynthesis was conducted through the selection, appraisal, and synthesis of 11 qualitative studies. Across the selected studies, five key themes arose: the connection between cultural continuity and health and wellbeing, conceptualizations of cultural continuity and connectedness, the role of knowledge transmission, journeys of cultural (dis)continuity, and barriers to cultural continuity.


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On reconciliation: Jennifer Matsunaga, David Long, Anthony Gracey, Lee Maracle, ‘CRS Symposium on Reconciling Indigenous-Settler Relations in Canada: Whose Voice Counts?’, Canadian Review of Sociology, 53, 4, 2016, pp. 457–460

30Nov16

Access the introduction and the special issue here.


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Reparations for settler colonialism: Susan Slyomovics, ‘Reparations and the Nakba’, The Nakba Files, 22/11/16

29Nov16

Excerpt: Since 1948, there have been numerous maximalist and minimalist proposals to resolve the fates of Palestinian refugees by those outside the homeland and those internally displaced within Israel. For the State of Israel and many Jewish Israelis, the ideal solution encompasses a hoped-for absorption (i.e. disappearance) of Palestinians into host countries elsewhere. For Palestinians, the rights of return and reparations (including restitution and compensation for lost properties and human suffering) are non-negotiable.


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A chapter also on what is to be done: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Facing the Settler Colonial Present’, in Sarah Maddison, Tom Clark, Ravi de Costa (eds), The Limits of Settler Colonial Reconciliation: Non-Indigenous People and the Responsibility to Engage, Springer, 2016

29Nov16

Abstract: This chapter focuses on a specific mode of domination and its contemporary manifestations. It outlines what is here defined as the global settler colonial present: a predicament fundamentally characterised by a logic of elimination and containment rather than exploitation. This appraisal of a developing dispensation is offered as a reminder of the need to develop indigenous-nonindigenous alliances.


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Introducing a special issue on what is to be done: Eve Tuck, K. Wayne Yang, ‘What Justice Wants’, Critical Ethnic Studies, 2, 2, 2016, pp. 1-15

29Nov16

Abstract: In this introduction, coeditors Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang discuss critically productive tensions that serve as the foundation for this issue’s theme of “what justice wants.” Tuck and Yang consider how justice operates as a catalytic concept in conversations like critical ethnic studies and among activists and organizers. The article addresses the limits and possibilities for justice, as a redress discourse, as a form of action, and through the State. Highlighting the varying and sometimes contradictory meanings of justice, the authors then consider the “elsewheres” beyond justice. This introduction also provides short descriptions of the articles that make up this issue and approach their own perspectives on what justice wants.


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The actual politics of refusal require engagement: Patricia Burke Wood, David A. Rossiter, ‘The politics of refusal: Aboriginal sovereignty and the Northern Gateway pipeline’, The Canadian Geographer, 2016

27Nov16

Abstract: This study examines the politics of Aboriginal title in British Columbia in the context of the approval process for the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal. We highlight presentations made by First Nations representatives and individuals during the Community Hearings for Oral Evidence stage of the Joint Review Panel, as well as the political actions of First Nations governments, organizations, and individuals outside the hearings. Speakers from several different nations articulated common points with regard to territory, property, and place in support of a case for sovereignty. Building from Aboriginal political theory, we argue that the evidence supports a reading of Aboriginal positions on the pipeline as a politics of refusal, the starting point of which lies within Aboriginal knowledge and governance systems, and not mere reaction to the development proposal. We hope to see more critical geographies of natural resource development incorporate Aboriginal theory into their frameworks.


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New China: Gregory Rohlf, Building New China, Colonizing Kokonor: Agricultural Resettlement to Qinghai in the 1950s, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016

27Nov16

Description: Building New China, Colonizing Kokonor: Resettlement to Amdo and Qinghai in the 1950s examines rural resettlement to the Sino-Tibetan cultural borderlands in the 1950s. More than 100,000 eastern Han and Hui Chinese were sent to Qinghai province—known in Mongolian as Kokonor and Amdo to Tibetans—to plow up new fields in areas that were being incorporated into the Chinese state for the first time. The settlers were to bring their skilled labor, literacy, and modern thinking to “backward” Qinghai to fully exploit its natural resources of oil, natural gas, gold, and empty lands for the benefit of the industrializing nation. The book is a social and political history of resettlement, focusing on the people who were moved and the overall impact the program had on the province. It is a frontier history, but it also narrates a story of state building in modern China that spans the twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first.


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