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Researching indigenous issues in a settler colonial context: Francis J. O’Donahoo, Kirstin E. Ross, ‘Principles Relevant to Health Research among Indigenous Communities’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 12, 5, 2015, pp. 5304-5309

27May15

Abstract: Research within Indigenous communities has been criticised for lacking community engagement, for being exploitative, and for poorly explaining the processes of research. To address these concerns, and to ensure ‘best practice’, Jamieson, et al. (2012) recently published a summary of principles outlined by the NHMRC (2003) in “one short, accessible document”. Here we expand on Jamieson et al.’s paper, which while commendable, lacks emphasis on the contribution that communities themselves can make to the research process and how culturally appropriate engagement, can allow this contribution to be assured, specifically with respect to engagement with remote communities. Engagement started before the research proposal is put forward, and continued after the research is completed, has integrity. We emphasise the value of narratives, of understanding cultural and customary behaviours and leadership, the importance of cultural legitimacy, and of the need for time, not just to allow for delays, but to ensure genuine participatory engagement from all members of the community. We also challenge researchers to consider the outcomes of their research, on the basis that increasing clinical evidence does not always result in better outcomes for the community involved.  


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On the need for settler homogeneity: Phil Griffiths, ‘The “Necessity” of a Socially Homogeneous Population: The Ruling Class Embraces Racial Exclusion’, Labour History, 108, 2015, pp. 123-144

27May15

Abstract: In 1888, the colonial governments of Australia came together to agree on a policy of racial exclusion — aimed at preventing Chinese immigration. This article argues that key figures in the colonial ruling class feared the development of a racially divided population and shows them drawing on the mainstream liberal theory of anti-slavery, and John Stuart Mill’s theory that representative government required social homogeneity, to construct and legitimise their position. While anti-slavery has long passed as a major element in public policy, Mill’s argument for homogeneity shaped Australian justifications for White Australia through much of the twentieth century and, arguably, still informs elements of contemporary immigration policy.


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The birth of settler colonialism at birth: Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, ‘The Politics of Birth and the Intimacies of Violence Against Palestinian Women in Occupied East Jerusalem’, British Journal of Criminology, 2015

27May15

Abstract: Focusing on the embodiment of violence against pregnant women, this paper borrows from Palestinian women’s own words and descriptions to reveal intimate aspects of aggression against and surveillance over their bodies and lives. The paper examines both the effects of violence on young mothers and their community and the denial of violence by the settler colonial state. I emphasize the structural regime that exacerbates such aggression, as well as women’s agency in subverting the system of oppression. The paper concludes by stressing that surveillance embedded in Israeli biopolitical measures and geopolitical constraints inscribe severe violence over birthing Palestinian women. Such violence invades the public and intimate spaces of women’s homes, bodies and minds, leaving them trapped in a vicious maze.


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Non settlers get title if they are not from somewhere else: Neil Canaday, Charles Reback, Kristin Stowe, ‘Race and Local Knowledge: New Evidence from the Southern Homestead Act’, The Review of Black Political Economy, 2015

27May15

Abstract: The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 was a large-scale effort by Congress to make land ownership accessible for recently freed slaves by opening 46 million acres of public land exclusively for homesteading. Using new micro-data from Louisiana, we examine the factors that led to successful homesteading. We compare homesteaders to the agricultural population, finding few differences other than wealth. A disproportionate percentage of homesteaders were white. We substantiate some of the claims put forth in the earlier literature, such as large amounts of fraud. Further, we present a more nuanced interpretation of a greater success rate for African-Americans. Being local or non-local had no meaningful impact on white success rates but had a large impact on African-Americans. Local African-Americans were more likely to obtain title to their land while non-local African-Americans were less likely to succeed. We hypothesize that regional knowledge, kinship networks, and white resistance to non-local African-Americans are possible explanations for this racial difference.


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On Canada’s settler cultural policy: Jonathan Paquette, Devin Beauregard, Christopher Gunter, ‘Settler colonialism and cultural policy: the colonial foundations and refoundations of Canadian cultural policy’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2015

24May15

Abstract: This article aims to reintegrate the colonial history of Canada as part of the grids of analysis for understanding the evolution of its Federal cultural policy. Building on the notion of settler colonialism and its implication for Indigenous population (For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘Indigenous’ is used in place of, perhaps, more popular or familiar terms – such as ‘Aboriginal’ or ‘Native’ – in order to remain consistent with current Indigenous politics. In particular, some Indigenous scholars are reluctant to accept the label Aboriginal because they feel it is consistent with the colonial order imposed by the Canadian government [Alfred and Corntassel 2005, p. 599]). The term Indigenous also alludes to a global political awareness and to forms of alterity between different populations from North America, South America, Asia, and the Pacific. in Canada, this paper documents different transformations in cultural policy and illustrates some of its paradoxes and challenges. Building on principles developed by Indigenous scholars, this article highlights some of the components for decolonizing cultural policy in Canada. It is argued that a post-colonial cultural policy must build on the grounds of ethics (and ethos).


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On indigenous ‘lasting’, a settler international classic: Norman P. Franke, ‘Romantic spectres in the Waikato caves: William Satchell’s The Greenstone Door as a chronotopical intertext and a critique and affirmation of bourgeois modernity’, Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, 3, 1, 2015, pp. 39-57

24May15

Abstract: Set in New Zealand during the Land Wars, William Satchell’s Bildungsroman, The Greenstone Door is widely considered to be one of the most seminal novels in New Zealand literary history. The text contrasts the rural topography and the social life of the Waikato with the urban landscapes and mentalities of Auckland and relates the development of its main protagonist, Cedric Tregarthen, to these (symbolic) spaces. This article examines the forms and scope of Satchell’s use of German literary discourses to narrate and comment on the New Zealand Land Wars, and on the ascent of bourgeois modernity and colonial mentalities in New Zealand. Authors and works considered in this comparative context include Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Friedrich Schiller’s ‘Das Lied von der Glocke’, Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen and Karl May’s Winnetou. Drawing on theories developed by Sigmund Freud, Yuri M. Lotman and Mikhail Bakhtin, this article focuses in particular on The Greenstone Door’s key ‘chronotopes’. In this context, special emphasis is paid to the cave scene in which the novel’s protagonists anticipate the tragic future of traditional Maori culture. My reading suggests that the cave scene in The Greenstone Door can be understood as an adaptation and inversion of the cave scene in Novalis’s early Romantic novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, thus necessitating an extension of Bakhtin’s and Lotman’s theoretical framework, which may be termed ‘chronotopical intertextuality’. The article concludes with a critical assessment of Satchell’s and Novalis’s ‘prophetic’ passages about the political and cultural future of German and New Zealand culture.


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Fantasies of settler indigeneity: Stasja P. Koot, ‘White Namibians in tourism and the politics of belonging through Bushmen’, Anthropology Southern Africa, 2015

24May15

Abstract: Namibian Bushmen, such as the Hai//om and the Ju/’hoansi, are increasingly involved in the growing, white-dominated tourism industry. In this, white Namibians tend to position Bushmen and themselves as people of nature and conservationists. Elsewhere, white from southern African have avoided contact with blacks by identifying more with nature than with people. This has been an important element in their “politics of belonging” to the land. From this perspective, Bushmen occupy a special position because they are considered “part of nature” while they are also members of contemporary society. Although this view is paradoxical at first sight, I argue that essentialising Bushmen as people of nature and modernising (developing) them “into society” are compatible ideas that can strengthen white Namibians’ belonging to nature and society. Against the background of the global indigenous movement and local history, crucial elements in this process of belonging are the tourists’ quest for authenticity and southern African paternalism.


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Settlers and debt and what it all means: Christie Swanepoel, Johan Fourie, ‘”Impending ruin” or “remarkable wealth”? The role of private credit markets in a settler colony’, Economic Research Southern Africa (ERSA) Working Paper, 2015

22May15

Abstract: Credit markets develop hand in hand with a market economy. Pre-industrial credit markets, like credit (and capital) markets today, developed in order to smooth consumption, ease trade, and enable long-term investment. Yet in the eighteenth century Cape Colony, a Dutch settlement at the southern tip of Africa, commentators of the day were skeptical about what an active credit market could contribute to the economy: for them, borrowing was a sure sign of poverty. Historians have expressed the same view. We present a different picture of the Cape Colony. We use 4,160 probate inventories, listing 12,637 credit trans actions and 12,580 debt transactions, to show that the main reason for borrowing was long-term capital investmentin property through bonds, and that a particular driver of the Colony’s extensive use of credit was slaveownership. We also show that those who benefited from the Colony’s thriving credit market were rich, not poor.


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On (indigenous) death as (settler) improvement: Sherene Razack, Dying from Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries into Indigenous Deaths in Custody, University of Toronto Press, 2015

20May15

Description: No matter where in Canada they occur, inquiries and inquests into untimely Indigenous deaths in state custody often tell the same story. Repeating details of fatty livers, mental illness, alcoholic belligerence, and a mysterious incapacity to cope with modern life, the legal proceedings declare that there are no villains here, only inevitable casualties of Indigenous life.


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On Aboriginal Rights and legal practice in a settler society: S. Ronald Stevenson, ‘The Political Theory of Aboriginal Rights Law in Canada: Prospects for Reconciliation, University of Ottawa, 2015

20May15

Abstract: While the thesis will proceed with a step by step development of the core arguments from the political theory literature, followed by a detailed analysis of corresponding issues in the jurisprudence, it may help the reader to have a summary statement of the thesis argument from the very start. The core argument is that the Canadian approach to constitutionalism reflected in the model centered on Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, provides a framework, a methodology and a model for practice that could lead the Crown and aboriginal peoples within Canada towards the elusive goal of reconciliation. This framework, rooted firmly in the obligations of the nation-state, is materially different from most normative and legal literature that tends to gravitate to positions that emphasize either the lack of legitimacy of the nation-state or the lack of legitimacy of efforts to recognize aboriginal claims. In other words, this thesis develops an argument for the practical utility of a “middle-ground” approach. This middle-ground approach will depend on a novel interpretation of the foundational methodology adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada to animate Section 35, a particular interpretation of the “nested” relationship between Canadian domestic law, international law and indigenous legal systems and a development of the embryonic emphasis placed on dialogical processes to resolve deep disagreement about fundamentally disparate ontological and epistemological assumptions about attachments to land. In other words, the thesis attempts to develop a constitutional framework to support a practical blueprint to achieve a morally and politically defensible conception of aboriginal rights. Rather than simply defending the constitutional status quo, the thesis will develop what is intended to be a unified approach to Section 35 that will point the way towards several crucial additions to the jurisprudential framework so it can enable the deep deliberation that lies at the very heart of the best aspirations of Canadian constitutionalism.


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