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Settlers restrict everyone else’s mobility: Jonathan Hyslop, ‘Oceanic Mobility and Settler-Colonial Power: Policing the Global Maritime Labour Force in Durban Harbour C. 1890–1910’, The Journal of Transport History, 36, 2, 2015, pp. 248-267

16Dec15

Abstract: Recent scholarship on seafarers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has tended to emphasise the mobility and diverse geographical origins of the global steamship workforce. This article, while sharing that perspective, cautions that a more nuanced view is called for, which also recognises the limits of their mobility. In doing so, it suggests, more broadly, that the period before the First World War cannot be thought of simply as an ‘Age of Acceleration’, but also needs to be seen as a period in which new kinds of limitation to mobility emerged. In the British colonial port of Durban, although there was in this period a vast increase in shipping activity, seamen were subject to an intense regime of restriction. An immigration bureaucracy initially created to exclude Indian immigrants, also shut out sailors of all nationalities and races. A particular precipitant of this policy was the hostility of Natal officials to the crews of ‘cattleboats’, ships bringing livestock to southern Africa from the Mediterranean, Argentina, Australia, the US and elsewhere. Across the globe, immigration controls in this period were in general less intense than they became after 1914, but in some places, such as Durban, new forms of limitation on mobility were being tried out. The article also highlights the vast worldwide system of labour documentation operated by the British merchant marine through Shipping Offices and Consuls in almost every significant port. Mobility in the British Empire was radically differentiated, with numerous centres of power making their own claims to control movement.


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Social work is settler colonialism: Marjorie Johnstone, ‘The Pervasive Presence of the Discourse of White Civility in Early Canadian Social Work in Immigration Services (1900–30)’, The British Journal of Social Work, 2015

16Dec15

Abstract: The first half of the twentieth century was formative for the Canadian social work profession. White settler Canada was at an intersection between the social forces of capitalism, socialism, feminism, nationalism, imperialism and social reform ( Cohen, 1996; Gaudet, 2001). A discourse of British imperial ideas was in wide circulation, although there was contestation and diverging ideas. Through the osmotic transmission process of cultural imperialism, many of these imperial ideas became part of the fabric of social work. Using a comparative historical archival approach, I examine two politically different social work organisations—the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire and Toronto University Settlement—in order to show that this discourse crossed the political spectrum. I consider the influence of imperial discourses on the formation of Canadian social work and the legacy this has left us with.


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Settler colonialism (and other interactions) in the ancient world: Pekka Pitkänen, ‘Ancient Israel and Philistia: Settler Colonialism and Ethnocultural Interaction’, Ugarit Forschungen, 45, 2014, 233-263

16Dec15

Abstract: This essay, concentrating on the Iron Age I period, looks at the possibility of seeing the early Israelite and Philistine societies as two settler colonial societies formed through colonising migration. An important part of the processes of settler colonialism involves intermixing and mutual influence between colonisers and indigenes, and an analysis of these aspects will be included. Some reflection will be made on the interplay of textual and archaeological evidence in trying to construct a settler colonial model. The essay will also include reflection on broad patterns of group identity formation based on consideration of ethnicity.


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On the relationship between postcolonial and settler colonial studies: Diana Brydon, ‘Postcolonial and Settler Colonial Studies Offer Human Rights a Revised Agenda’, in Pavan Kumar Malreddy, Birte Heidemann, Ole Birk Laursen, Janet Wilson (eds), Reworking Postcolonialism: Globalization, Labour and Rights, Springer, 2015, pp. 183-198

16Dec15

Abstract: This essay puts postcolonial and settler colonial studies in dialogue with human rights imaginaries to consider what a reworked postcolonial studies can offer educational workers committed to advancing human rights, as a scholarly discipline, a politics and an engaged social practice. The paper works through this question from the perspective of a Canadian settler colonial positioning, which complicates both hegemonic postcolonial and human rights thinking. By putting these different discourses into dialogue, the essay concludes that postcolonial and settler colonial studies can offer human rights a revised framework within which to set agendas for achieving social justice in contemporary times.


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Avoiding the pitfalls of settler decolonisation (II): Jeremiah Chin, Nicholas Bustamante, Jessica Ann Solyom, Bryan McKinley, Jones Brayboy, ‘Terminus Amnesia: Cherokee Freedmen, Citizenship, and Education’, Theory into Practice, 2015

13Dec15

Abstract: In 2007, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma amended its constitution to limit membership to only those who can trace lineal descent to an individual listed as “Cherokee by Blood” on the final Dawes Rolls. This exercise of sovereignty paradoxically ties the Dawes Rolls, the colonial instruments used to divide the lands and peoples of the Cherokee Nation, and self-determination. In the process it effectively disenrolls Cherokee Freedmen, the descendants of Blacks enslaved by the Cherokee Nation. In this article, we explore the implications of this history in the context of self-determination and sovereignty, particularly looking at the influence of colorism on the Dawes Rolls and its ongoing effects. Our goal is to share a piece of history that is often obscured or unknown; to explore how and to what extent the exercise of self-determination and sovereignty in Indigenous nations is impacted by colorism; and finally to consider implications for practice created by the disenfranchisement of peoples from Indigenous nations.


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Avoiding the pitfalls of settler decolonisation (I): John Lowe, ‘Multiculturalism and its exclusions in New Zealand: the case for cosmopolitanism and indigenous rights’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 16, 4, 2015 , pp. 496-512

13Dec15

Abstract: In light of biculturalism’s prevalence as a power-sharing agreement between New Zealand Maori and the Crown, any attempts to establish a state-sponsored project of multiculturalism have been treated by Maori with suspicion and controversy. This article presents cosmopolitanism as an appropriate solution to citizenship and cultural diversity in New Zealand that can coexist in harmony with the country’s biculturalism that enjoys a constitutional-like status. A state-sponsored policy of liberal multiculturalism comparable to the legal species found in Western democracies, it is argued, would remain mutually exclusive and hostile towards biculturalism. This work concludes with a discussion on the theoretical applications of cosmopolitanism in New Zealand and how it could work empirically, in practice, without attenuating biculturalism.


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Against the ‘settler common sense’, a decolonial one: Christopher Clements, ‘Between Affect and History: Sovereignty and Ordinary Life at Akwesasne, 1929–1942’, History and Theory, 54, 4, 2015, pp. 105–124

13Dec15

Abstract: This essay seeks to recover the ordinary and its analytical and decolonial potential within the extraordinary conditions created by settler colonialism. To do so, it investigates moments when Mohawks at Akwesasne, a community that straddles the US–Canada border, refused to acknowledge settler authority, paying particular attention to the relationship between their refusals and the condition of ordinary life. This article also considers the historical challenge of how to preserve moments of experience and their complex meanings without enveloping them in broader narratives dominated, in this case, by questions of sovereignty. How do theories of sovereignty affect the production of history, and what constraints do they place on our ability to narrate Indigenous experiences? What if we cast away the two narratives that dominate tellings of Indigenous histories: that of a settler crisis over control and that of an age-old struggle for sovereignty? Is it possible, or useful, to differentiate between acts focused primarily on maintaining the contours of ordinary, everyday life—expressions of lateral agency less about the “long haul” than about the here-and-now—and deliberate acts of political engagement, consciously aimed at the structural inequality undergirding a particular situation? Through a deep historical treatment of several moments within Akwesasne’s early twentieth-century history, this essay proposes and attempts to execute a methodology that draws together multiple theories of affect and sovereignty.


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Reimagining unsettlement as a ‘true crime’: Rachel Franks, ‘A True Crime Tale: Re-imagining Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines’, M/C Journal, 18, 6, 2015

13Dec15

Excerpt: Approximately 100 Proclamation Boards (the Board) were introduced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur (after whom Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula is named). The purpose of these Boards was to communicate, via a four-strip pictogram, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony that all people—black and white—were considered equal under the law. “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). This is reflected in the narrative of the Boards. The first image presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second, and central, image shows “a conciliatory handshake between the British governor and an Aboriginal ‘chief’, highly reminiscent of images found in North America on treaty medals and anti-slavery tokens” (Darian-Smith and Edmonds 4). The third and fourth images depict the repercussions for committing murder, with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man also hanged for shooting an Aborigine. Both men executed under “gubernatorial supervision” (Turnbull 53).


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Proclaiming one’s existence, appealing against removal: Samuel W. Rose, Richard A. Rose, ‘Outside the Rules: Invisible American Indians in New York State’, Wicazo Sa Review, 30, 2, 2015, pp. 56-76

11Dec15

Abstract: The purpose of this essay is, through an examination of the academic literature, to showcase what indigenous populations are known to have existed in the twentieth century (and into the present) in New York State beyond the officially recognized tribes. This essay thus discusses the nonrecognized indigenous communities within the state, and places a particular focus on the role that scholars have in shaping indigenous identity in relation to the colonial apparatus. It serves to bring back into the discussion of indigenous peoples those communities that for so many years have existed outside of mainstream discourse and consciousness, and outside of the existing colonial legal structure and its processes of recognition.


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Defending treaty traditions, appealing against removal: Claudia B. Haake, ‘Appeals to Civilization and Customary “Forest Diplomacy”: Arguments against Removal in Letters Written by the Iroquois, 1830–1857’, Wicazo Sa Review, 30, 2, 2015, pp. 100-128

11Dec15

Abstract: In this essay I argue that in order to persuade the U.S. government that it was unnecessary to remove them, members of the Iroquois Confederacy had to engage with the discourse of progress toward civilization the government used to justify the removal policy. In their appeals to remain within their ancestral homelands, the Iroquois referred to their own progress toward civilization by writing about agricultural advances and the existence of settlements, as well as by drawing attention to their progress in religion, morality, and educational achievements. Yet Haudenosaunees also drew on some of their own traditions to reject their proposed removal. A number of their written appeals followed in the tradition of wampum, strings of shell beads that had formerly been an essential element of diplomacy. Haudenosaunee representatives also used kinship terms of address reminiscent of those in use during the heyday of “forest diplomacy” in which the Iroquois had been known to Europeans as masterful diplomats. While at times the use of such customary elements from “forest diplomacy” were probably due to the way their appeals were composed, at other times they constituted Haudenosaunee efforts to renew proper diplomatic relations with the U.S. government and to find compromises between their respective positions, as they had been able to do during the colonial era and into the early republic.


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