settler colonial studies blog

Islamophobia and settler colonialism: Heather Porter Abu Deiab, Islamophobia’s Transnational and Settler Colonial Realities: Gaps Within Ethnic Studies Narratives, PhD Dissertation, San Francisco State University, 2016

17Jul16

Abstract: This research traces Islamophobia from 1492 Spain to its institutionalization in the U.S. settler colonial state in 1776.1 argue that settler colonial projects against Indigenous communities and colonized communities inform concepts of race that has developed U.S. Islamophobia and its distinct justifications. My project argues for the centrality of this history of Islamophobia and racial and religious oppression to theoretical frameworks within influential critical race studies and ethnic studies. I offer the tools of transnational and intersectional feminism, and recognition of settler colonialism as intertwined with European colonization as an approach to better incorporate these narratives. Finally I discuss how this invisibilization has undermined the institutionalization of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University. Ultimately my research underscores the need to recognize Islamophobia in studies of systematic oppression as well as the futility of separating the transnational beginnings of Islamophobia in the Americas as well as the grounded realities and struggles of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. from critical race studies.

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Settler colonialism must be represented: Madalena Santos, ‘Palestinian narratives of resistance: The Freedom Theatre’s challenge to Israeli settler colonization’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2016

17Jul16

Abstract: This article focuses on the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine, to consider the Theatre’s project and performances as practices of creative resistance. It theorizes creative resistance to examine the Theatre as a mode of narrative performance against the logics and materiality of settler colonialism. In exploring this creative project, this study conceives of narratives as sites of struggle that are significant in the contestation and transformation of dominant settler colonial myth.

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Settler manhood must be displayed: Melisssa Bellanta, ‘”Poor Gordon”: What the Australian Cult of Adam Lindsay Gordon Tells Us About Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Masculine Sentimentality’, Gender & History, 28, 2, 2016, pp. 401–421

17Jul16

Abstract: The popularity of the British-born Australian poet and sportsman, Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833–1870), flowered after his death. Between 1870 and 1920, he was widely extolled as an exemplar of the Australian bushman and of British imperial masculinity alike. Fans lauded Gordon as a daredevil horseman who had lived in the bush in the Australian colonies’ roaring days. Fascinatingly, though, they expressed their enthusiasm for him in sentimental terms. This article shows that sentimental expressions of devotion to Gordon were part of a distinctive form of masculine sentimentality emerging in Western culture at the turn of the nineteenth century. The proponents of this sentimentality encouraged the members of Western imperial and settler-colonial publics to sympathise with rugged bushmen such as Gordon – to collectively experience their sorrows, griefs and joys. In so doing, they helped to reinforce masculine and settler-colonial power, since they elevated the sentiments of hardy masculine types at the expense of feminine ones. In Australia, sentimental representations of Gordon also helped divert attention from the violence committed by settlers against Aboriginal peoples. Based on the insight that masculinity and sentiment were profoundly intertwined in the day, this article calls for a new way of thinking about the relationship between these two phenomena in the turn-of-the-century era.

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How indigenous are indigenous youth: Audreylee Hudson, Decolonizing Indigenous Youth Studies: Photography and Hip Hop as Sites of Resilience, PhD Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2016

17Jul16

Abstract: This dissertation examines the role an arts-based educational program played in unleashing youth’s creativity as they confront various structures of power that become challenges to social identity, belonging, and self, under different local and national circumstances. My research questions considered how Indigenous youth utilized a photography and hip hop based educational program as a resource to explore social identity and relations, indigeneity, place/space, and the legacy of settler colonialism on education. I also considered how the findings from this study informed and contribute to decolonize Indigenous youth studies and how programs such as mine help Indigenous youth comprehend crisis in the urban environment.

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‘They are the 1%’: Ann Curthoys, ‘The impossibility of section 70 aboriginal protection, amelioration, and the contradictions of humanitarian governance’, Studies in Western Australian History, 30, 2016, pp. 13-28

14Jul16

Abstract: In 1887, as Western Australian demands for self-government were intensifying, and it seemed that Western Australia’s poor record on Aboriginal protection and welfare might prove an obstacle to Britain’s approving a new constitution, the governor of the colony, Frederick Broome, came up with a suggestion. One way to grant responsible government without handing Aboriginal protection and welfare to the very settlers who so opposed it, he wrote to his superiors in the Colonial Office in London, would be to keep the colony’s recently established Aborigines Protection Board under the control of the governor and not hand it over to the proposed elected colonial government. The board, whose task was to oversee Aboriginal protection, education and welfare, could be funded by requiring the colonial government to set aside a reserved annual sum of 5,000 from colonial revenue, thus making the board independent of colonial treasury decisions and indeed colonial politics. To this end, the Constitution Bill Broome drafted in May 1888 included a clause eventually known as section 70, which took his initial idea a step further. It ensured that the payment of 5,000 pounds annually to the board would convert to 1 per cent of the colony’s annual revenue when it exceeded 500,000 pounds. When, after some prolonged debate over a range of issues, the British Parliament passed the colony’s new constitution in 1889 and brought it into operation in 1890, the proposed clause was included.

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On the settler colonial present (recognition as justification): Duncan Ivison, ‘Justification, not recognition’, Indigenous Law Bulletin, 8, 24, 2016, pp. 12-18

14Jul16

Abstract: The debate over the constitutional recognition of Indigenous peoples in Australia should be seen as a deeply political one. That might appear to be a controversial claim. After all, there has been much talk about minimising the scope for disagreement between ‘constitutional conservatives’ and supporters of more expansive constitutional recognition. And there is concern to ensure that any potential referendum enjoys the maximum conditions and opportunity for success.

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On the settler colonial present (white supremacists on ‘public land’): Carolyn Gallaher, ‘Placing the Militia Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 15, 2, 2016, pp. 293-308

14Jul16

Abstract: This intervention examines the recent militia occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. There is no consensus on how to place the group. Some commentators suggest the group was white supremacist. Others argue that it was animated by religious fanaticism. Still others emphasize the group’s grievances with the Bureau of Land Management. I argue here that the Malheur occupiers’ politics cannot be understood with reference to a single identity position. Rather, we need to focus on the group’s anti-government rhetoric because it funnels and shapes multiple interests at once. Here I examine how the group’s anti-government rhetoric frames race and class interests. In terms of race, I argue that anti-government rhetoric obscures the white interests behind the occupation. This concealment is based on a selective reading of history that emphasizes the end of settlement, when the government took ownership of land not claimed during the settlement period, instead of the stage leading up to it, when the government seized Indigenous land for white settlement. So construed, the occupiers could claim they were taking the ‘people’s’ land back from the government rather than engaging in a second round of white theft of Indigenous land. In terms of class, I argue that because the occupiers framed their fight as against government tyranny instead of as for privatization, the occupiers did not have to confront the inequities that come with privatization.

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Development, equality and settler colonialism: Hanae Tsukada, ‘Developer’s Story 3: Don’t Aboriginal peoples want equality? What is it that they want then?’ Time and Place at UBC: Our Histories and Relations, 2016

10Jul16

Abstract: This story illustrates a “light bulb moment” that I had as I tackled with the question of why Aboriginal communities rejected the 1969 white paper. As part of unpacking debates on the white paper, I explored the myth of multiculturalism located within settler colonialism.

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Settler colonialism as misopedy: Toby Rollo, ‘Feral children: settler colonialism, progress, and the figure of the child’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2016

08Jul16

Abstract: Settler colonialism is structured in part according to the principle of civilizational progress yet the roots of this doctrine are not well understood. Disparate ideas of progress and practices related to colonial dispossession and domination can be traced back to the Enlightenment, and as far back as ancient Greece, but there remain unexplored logics and continuities. I argue that civilizational progress and settler colonialism are structured according to the opposition between politics governed by reason or faith and the figure of the child as sinful or bestial. Thus, it is not contingent, but rather necessary that justificatory frameworks of European empire and colonialism depict Indigenous peoples as children. To illustrate how the theoretical link between Indigenous peoples and children emerges not as a simple analogy, but rather, as the source of the premodern/modern and savage/civilized binaries, I trace the various historical iterations of the political/childhood opposition through the classical, medieval, enlightenment, and modern eras. I show how the model of civilizational progress from a premodern and savage state of childhood continues to serve as the model for settler colonial exclusion and domination of Indigenous peoples.

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Settlers managed their currencies: Wadan Narsey, ‘Currency and Monetary Policies in White Settler Colonies and Dominions: Superior Alternatives to Colonies’, in Wadan Narsey, British Imperialism and the Making of Colonial Currency Systems, Palgrave, 2016, pp. 229-251

07Jul16

Abstract: Discussions of colonial currency policies seldom include the experiences of much earlier white settler colonies in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa¹, even though they had quite similar currency problems invariably generating similar conflicts with the imperial decision-makers. Indeed, discussions of colonialism rarely look at England’s early colonization of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, with the rare exception of Philippa Levine (2007). Yet the contrasting imperial reactions to the currency policies in these white settler colonies, later to be granted self-government status and eventually called ‘Dominions’ ² which became ‘developed’ economies, highlights the negative consequences of imperial policies in colonies proper, which were adamantly refused self-government and treated quite differently in currency and monetary matters, as well as broader economic policies. ³ The central issue is why the white settler colonies were given the leeway that the colonies proper were not. The differential treatment of white settlers in ‘mixed’ white settler colonies, such as South Africa and Rhodesia, where non-whites were in the majority and given inferior treatment by the state, illustrates also the factor of racism underlying monetary imperialism, a factor considered important also by Accominotti et al (2005) below.

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