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Settler colonialism queers indigenous peoples: Madeleine Clark, ‘Indigenous Subjectivity in Australia: Are we Queer?’, Journal of Global Indigeneity, 1, 1, 2015

30Dec15

Abstract: The introduction of queer theory in Australian Indigenous contexts presents powerful possibilities and challenging complexities; for the building of new histories, the inhabiting of the historical space, the “queering” of ideas of blood, family, community and lineage, and the limits of “being” and “doing” as they relate to bodies and genders. Queer First Nations people in settler-colonial contexts, particularly in Turtle Island, have begun to drawn on Queer theory to extend their understandings of colonialism and Indigenous sexualities. This paper will explore this move towards queer theory and analysis, in particular examining the recent introduction of the “subjectless critique” to Indigenous studies, changing the terms of engagement with colonialist histories and structures to argue that colonialism is a system of normativity which “queers” settlers and Indigenous people alike. The paper will challenge this mode of critique and contextualise it within Australian Indigenous studies, drawing on feminist theory, queer theory, decolonisation theory and critical race studies. It will also explore the politics of naming our experiences and histories as ‘queer’ given the western history and exclusivity of the term and the community surrounding it. This calls into question the politics of reclaimation; of language, history, and embodiment, and demands a reading of Indigenous gender and sexuality under regimes of global colonialism.


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On colonialism without colonies (introdicing a special issue of National Identities): Barbara Lüthi, Francesca Falk, Patricia Purtschert, ‘Colonialism without colonies: examining blank spaces in colonial studies’, National Identities, 18, 1, 2016, pp. 1-9

27Dec15

Access the introduction here.


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Introducing a special issue of Settler Colonial Studies: Eva Bischoff, ‘Experiences, actors, spaces: dimensions of settler colonialism in transnational perspective’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2015

27Dec15

Access the introduction here.


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On the ethnopolitics of settler projects: Mohamed Adhikari, ‘Invariably genocide? When hunter-gatherers and commercial stock farmers clash’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2015

27Dec15

Abstract: The five century long process of European overseas conquest included many instances of the extermination of Indigenous peoples. Where commercial stock farmers invaded the lands of hunter-gatherers conflict was particularly destructive, often resulting in a degree of dispossession and slaughter that destroyed the ability of these societies to reproduce themselves biologically or culturally. The frequency with which encounters of this kind resulted in the complete, or near complete, annihilation of forager societies raises the question whether this form of colonial conflict was inherently genocidal. The focus of this article is on how the global economic system tended to bring together the practices of metropolitan and colonial governments, the interests of providers of capital and the consumers of commodities, and the agency of local actors ranging from military commanders to graziers in remote outposts in ways that fostered the violent dissolution of native society. It seeks to identify salient shared features in conflicts between hunter-gatherers and market-oriented stock farmers that served to intensify hostilities and tilt the balance toward genocidal outcomes.


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Indigenous sovereignty as a non-territorial project: Torvald Falch, Per Selle, Kristin Strømsnes, ‘The Sámi: 25 Years of Indigenous Authority in Norway’, Ethnopolitics, 15, 1, 2016, pp. 125-143

27Dec15

Abstract: This article explores the case of the Sámi in the Nordic countries, with a specific focus on the most extensive Sámi political system, that found in Norway. The Norwegian Sámi parliament is an indigenous parliament in a unitary and ‘state-friendly’ society. As will be seen, that is not an easy position to be in. While most of the Sámi are concentrated in the most northern part of Norway, the Sámi language has a general protection by law. The language has a particularly strong protection within the so-called management area of the Sámi language (which includes 10 out of 428 Norwegian municipalities). The territorial dimension and the strong emphasis upon the traditional Sámi settlement areas are at the core of the Sámi political project. Even so, the Sámi parliament covers the whole of Norway, and a Sámi can register to vote for the Sámi elections independently of where in Norway that person is living. The Sámi are thus an indigenous people, for whom the development of a new public space since the 1980s has as its core the question of ownership of land and water in the key Sámi areas, while the jurisdiction of the Sámi parliament extends not only over the traditional Sámi areas, but also over the whole territory of Norway. The article discusses how this non-territorial model came about and what it implies for the Sámi political project. What kind of boundaries or limits concerning Sámi self-determination and self-rule do we see after 25 years of a Sámi Parliament?


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Undoing settler colonialism in education: Eve Tuck, Julie Gorlewski, ‘Racist Ordering, Settler Colonialism, and edTPA: A Participatory Policy Analysis’, Educational Policy, 30, 1, 2016, pp. 197-217

26Dec15

Abstract: This article tells the story of an intervention by a collective of teacher educators on New York State’s adoption of edTPA. Too often in education policy analysis, issues of race are discussed briefly, if at all. This article argues that attending to constructions of race specific to settler colonialism is an important approach to education policy analysis.


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Italian settlers? Catherine Dewhirst, ‘Colonising Italians: Italian imperialism and agricultural ‘colonies’ in Australia, 1881–1914’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2015

26Dec15

Abstract: The historiography of Australian imperialism before the First World War has often neglected a context wider than the relationship with Great Britain. Yet this era also implicated non-British governments and their emigrants. Despite their small numbers, Italian settlers are significant for highlighting Italy’s empire-building and Australia’s struggles for national and imperial unity. Italy’s foreign policies after 1901 opened commerical opportunities across its diasporic networks, which included subsidising agricultural ‘colonies’ in Australia. The contemporary discourses of sectarianism and racism voiced before Federation articulated political and popular resistance against Italian immigrants. The rhetoric shifted after Federation as state governments examined the issue of land tenure for closer settlements (small agricultural farms), appealing to an argument about serving unemployed Australians before approving foreign settler schemes. The history leading up to two Italian projects in Western Australia and Queensland in 1907 allows reflections on Italy’s diaspora colonisation and Australian responses to foreign imperialism.


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On native-newcomer relations in Canada (introducing a special issue commemorating 25 years since Jim Miller’s Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens): Keith Thor Carlson, Kathryn M. Labelle, ‘New Histories of Native-Newcomer Relations in Honour of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of J.R. Miller’s Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens’, Canadian Journal of History, 50, 3, 2015, pp. 417-419

26Dec15

Excerpt: It has been a quarter century since the publication of Jim Miller’s Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1989). Coming as it did in the wake of the modern Native rights movement and the Indigenous cultural renaissance of the 1970s and ’80s — and informed by a series of landmark court cases that alerted Canadians to the centrality of historical questions to pressing national political issues — Miller’s work marked the coming of age of a new type of Indigenous historical scholarship in Canada that brought to the fore the experiences and stories of Indigenous peoples even as it firmly situated them within the colonial history of the Canadian nation-state.

J.R. Miller caught a wave, as it were, for as he noted in his preface to the first edition, his study was “greatly stimulated by the work of others” (p. xiii). In the decades prior to Skyscrapers, many historians had already started to question the tendency of earlier scholars to relegate First Nations history to the introductory chapters of general Canadian survey texts or to consider that history as important only within certain subfields (most prominently in fur trade history). But it was really Skyscrapers, with its nation-wide coverage and its characterizing of Canada as a colonial settler state that led non-Indigenous Canadians to consider the history of Indigenous people as integral to the country’s narrative, rather than a mere backdrop. Miller highlighted how First Nations peoples and cultures had resisted and were renewing — indeed, that they were charting a course into the future despite Canadian policies that sought to displace and assimilate them. Skyscrapers was a history of what the Canadian state had done to First Nations, as well as a story of how Aboriginal people responded. But more than that, it was a work of scholarship that boldly challenged non-Indigenous Canadians to learn about their past so that together with First Nations peoples they could create a better future for everyone. As such, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Skyscrapers, coinciding as it does with the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action, remains a poignant and inspiring work of scholarship.


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Settler colonialism is an exercise in peer review (on trans-Tasman relations): Steven Loveridge, ‘The “Other” on the other side of the ditch? The conception of New Zealand’s disassociation from Australia’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2015

26Dec15

Abstract: A growing body of work has explored the shared qualities of Australian/New Zealand history and trans-Tasman association. Without denying these links, this article considers New Zealand’s simultaneous history of disassociation from Australia and investigates the contours and cultural content of disassociation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


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Tony Abbott is from circa 1885: ‘Removing Rhodes statue “moral vanity”, says Tony Abbott’, bbc news, 24/12/15

24Dec15

Excerpt: ‘[Oxford] university should remember that its mission is not to reflect fashion but to seek truth and that means striving to understand before rushing to judge’.

 


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