settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialism can help making sense of parasite and host: Warwick Anderson, ‘Postcolonial Ecologies of Parasite and Host: Making Parasitism Cosmopolitan’, Journal of the History of Biology, 49, 2, 2016, pp. 241-259

21May16

Abstract: The interest of F. Macfarlane Burnet in host–parasite interactions grew through the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in his book, Biological Aspects of Infectious Disease (1940), often regarded as the founding text of disease ecology. Our knowledge of the influences on Burnet’s ecological thinking is still incomplete. Burnet later attributed much of his conceptual development to his reading of British theoretical biology, especially the work of Julian Huxley and Charles Elton, and regretted he did not study Theobald Smith’s Parasitism and Disease (1934) until after he had formulated his ideas. Scholars also have adduced Burnet’s fascination with natural history and the clinical and public health demands on his research effort, among other influences. I want to consider here additional contributions to Burnet’s ecological thinking, focusing on his intellectual milieu, placing his research in a settler society with exceptional expertise in environmental studies and pest management. In part, an ‘‘ecological turn’’ in Australian science in the 1930s, derived to a degree from British colonial scientific investments, shaped Burnet’s conceptual development. This raises the question of whether we might characterize, in postcolonial fashion, disease ecology, and other studies of parasitism, as successful settler colonial or dominion science.

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Stealing indigenous and exogenous children: Shurlee Swain, ‘Enshrined in Law: Legislative Justifications for the Removal of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Children in Colonial and Post-Colonial Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, 47, 2, 2016, pp. 191-208

21May16

Abstract: While the completion of two different inquiries, along with separate apologies and reparation packages, might suggest that the policies justifying the removal of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in Australia were distinct, the situation is far more complex. Both child and ‘native’ welfare were colonial and later state responsibilities, creating the potential for policies and practices to be informed by different forces and to vary by jurisdiction. However, by analysing the debates around legislation from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this article establishes commonalities as well as differences in both the arguments used to justify Indigenous and non-Indigenous child removal and the practices that evolved in the implementation of such legislation. By interrogating such arguments through the lens of whiteness and race, the article identifies the role which child removal was imagined to play in the process of building the settler colonial nation.

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Frontier intimacies and estrangements: Amanda Nettelbeck, ‘Proximate Strangers and Familiar Antagonists: Violence on an Intimate Frontier’, Australian Historical Studies, 47, 2, 2016, pp. 209-224

21May16

Abstract: A generation of scholarship on the experiences of the frontier—spanning models of violent conflict to various kinds of intimacy—has been highly influential in building a nuanced picture of Australia’s colonial race relations. Regionally-focused histories provide a valuable avenue for bringing these models of frontier historiography together within the same frame, because it is at the localised level of social relations that the cross-hatched intersections between violence and intimacy can emerge into clearest view. This article traces the threads of cross-cultural encounter on one Australian frontier to assess how violent conflict could arise as much from conditions of inter-connectedness and familiarity as from conditions of strangeness and fear, and to ask, under such conditions, what kinds of frontier violence drew the intervention of the law.

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On German settler colonialisms: Dörte Lerp, ‘Beyond the Prairie: Adopting, Adapting and Transforming Settlement Policies within the German Empire’, Journal of Modern European History, 14, 2, 2016, pp. 225-244

21May16

Abstract: The article investigates the emergence of state-sponsored settlement schemes in various empires throughout the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The main focus lies on the German Empire and how settlement policies were introduced to and implemented within it. Focusing on inter- and inner-imperial borrowings, as well as adaptations and transformations, the article explores whether or not and to what extent, the inner colonisation of the eastern Prussian provinces was influenced by North American settlement schemes like the United States Homestead Act of 1862 and the Canadian homestead legislation of 1872. It also takes a close look at the development of policies within Germany’s so-called settlement colony, German Southwest Africa: a process that was shaped by the Prussian precedent to some degree, but even more so by British settlement policies in South Africa. However, even though scholars and politicians were engaged in the transfer of ideas and concepts from one locale to another, it was primarily the administration that determined the directions the policies took. It is therefore not surprising that the settlement programmes in the eastern Prussian provinces and German Southwest Africa differed considerably not only from the settlement acts in North America or British South Africa, but also from each other. This article argues that, in order to fully grasp the emergence of various state-aided settlement programmes within and beyond the German Empire, we have to look beyond inter- or intra-imperial transfers and analyse the broader concepts of space and population that informed those programmes.

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Soviet settler colonialism: J. Otto Pohl, The Deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the Context of Settler Colonialism’, Uluslararasi Suçlar ve Tarih, 16, 2015, pp. 45-69

20May16

Abstract: The Soviet ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tatars, the subsequent settlement of their lands with Russians and Ukrainians, and the de-Tatarization of the peninsula s place names has a number of similarities with various cases of settler colonialism in the Americas, Africa, Australia, and Palestine. The treatment of the exiled Crimean Tatars in Uzbekistan, the Urals, and other regions also had a number of similarities with how settler colonies treated their indigenous populations. These similarities, however, have not been thoroughly explored by historians and other scholars. Instead the USSR has been considered as being completely outside of the framework of colonial and ethno-racial relations that developed between Europeans and indigenous peoples in other parts of the world. This article seeks to make a first attempt at suggesting ways in which Soviet policies towards various indigenous peoples in the USSR can be compared to the better studied cases of settler colonialism in places like South Africa and Palestine. In particular it uses the Soviet deportation of the Crimean Tatars and their prolonged exile in Uzbekistan under various legal restrictions as a case study comparable in a number of important ways to settler colonialism. It is hoped that this article will inspire further inquiries and research in a comparative manner regarding this topic.

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Colonial possessions: Alyosha Goldstein, ‘The Jurisprudence of Domestic Dependence’, Darkmatter Journal, 2016

20May16

Excerpt: Settler colonialism in the United States today is an assemblage of claims to place, possession, and permanence. Yet the dynamics of these claims are not simply the culmination of unchallenged and uninterrupted indigenous dispossession under US empire and settler-colonial governance. Rather, such claims pointedly seek to undo the contemporary particularity of indigenous sovereignty through an affirmation of privatisation, domestication, and heteronormativity. During the 1970s, United States policymakers responded to escalating Native American juridical and social movement demands with legislation that shifted the emphasis of federal Indian law, the distinct legal doctrine partially based on historical treaties and encompassing federally-recognised tribes in the United States. These demands gained international media attention with the tribal fishing rights protests in Washington State beginning in 1964, the occupation of Alcatraz Island by the Indians of All Tribes in 1969, the return of Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo won in 1970, the Trail of Broken Treaties cross-country march in 1972, and the bloody counterinsurgency waged against the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1973. In this context, legislation such as the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 reasserted forms of tribal authority and jurisdiction, even if neither fundamentally unsettled the plenary power of the US Congress.

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Incarceration is genocide: Andrew Woolford, James Gacek, ‘Genocidal carcerality and Indian residential schools in Canada’, Punishment & Society, 2016

20May16

Abstract: This paper contributes to the criminology of genocide through examination of settler colonial destruction within the broader context of what we term ‘genocidal carcerality’. We employ this term to examine the ways in which space is implicated in the physical, biological, and cultural destruction of group life. In this paper, our purpose is not to create a typology of genocidal carcerality, but rather to demonstrate the multiplicity of spatial strategies at work within any genocidal context, with specific focus on Indian Residential Schools. In so doing, we critique attempts to reduce genocidal carcerality to a single spatial form, such as the camp. We illustrate our main points through a case study of the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School in Manitoba, Canada.

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On remembrance and indigenous lasting: Joseph Gaudet, ‘I Remember You: Postironic Belief and Settler Colonialism in Stephen Graham Jones’s Ledfeather’, Studies in American Indian Literatures, 28, 1, 2016, pp. 21-44

18May16

Access this article here.

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Dignity as site of resistance: Nadim N. Rouhana, ‘Homeland Nationalism and Guarding Dignity in a Settler Colonial Context: The Palestinian Citizens of Israel Reclaim Their Homeland’, Borderlands e-journal, 14, 1, 2015

18May16

Abstract: This paper seeks to examine the foundations of indignities inflicted upon a native population in a settler-colonial condition and to explore how they face these indignities, both in their popular rhetoric and political action. I look at how Palestinian citizens in Israel articulate their homeland nationalism in the face of a unique Zionist view
denying the Palestinians’ relationship to their homeland and claiming it exclusively for the Jewish people, who have come to identify themselves as the true natives. The indignities accompanying such claims are so profoundly and naturally entrenched in Israel’s settlercolonial structure that the state’s hegemonic political culture takes
their intense and repeated occurrence for granted.

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On indigenous nationalism, indigenous nations, and their reconstitution: Simone Poliandri (ed.), Native American Nationalism and Nation Re-building, SUNY Press, 2016

18May16

Description: Presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the recent developments of Native American nationalism and nationhood in the United States and Canada.

Bringing together perspectives from a variety of disciplines, this book provides an interdisciplinary approach to the emerging discussion on Indigenous nationhood. The contributors argue for the centrality of nationhood and nation building in molding and, concurrently, blending the political, social, economic, and cultural strategies toward Native American self-definitions and self-determination. Included among the common themes is the significance of space—conceived both as traditional territory and colonial reservation—in the current construction of Native national identity. Whether related to historical memory and the narrativization of peoplehood, the temporality of indigenous claims to sovereignty, or the demarcation of successful financial assets as cultural and social emblems of indigenous space, territory constitutes an inalienable and necessary element connecting Native American peoplehood and nationhood. The creation and maintenance of Native American national identity have also overcome structural territorial impediments and may benefit from the inclusivity of citizenship rather than the exclusivity of ethnicity. In all cases, the political effectiveness of nationhood in promoting and sustaining sovereignty presupposes Native full participation in and control over economic development, the formation of historical narrative and memory, the definition of legality, and governance.

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