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On the representation of settler privilege: Angela Failler, Peter Ives, Heather Milne (eds), ‘Caring for Difficult Knowledge: Prospects for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights’, Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Special Issue, 37, 2-3, 2015

21Jun15

Link to the Special issue’s ‘Introduction’.


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On Modrnism, and on the contribution of indigenous imaginaries to it: Allana Lindgren, Stephen Ross (eds), The Modernist World, Routledge 2015

21Jun15

Description: The Modernist World is an accessible yet cutting edge volume which redraws the boundaries and connections among interdisciplinary and transnational modernisms. The 61 new essays address literature, visual arts, theatre, dance, architecture, music, film, and intellectual currents. The book also examines modernist histories and practices around the globe, including East and Southeast Asia, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia and Oceania, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and the Arab World, as well as the United States and Canada. A detailed introduction provides an overview of the scholarly terrain, and highlights different themes and concerns that emerge in the volume.


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On settler colonialism in Palestine: Jamil Hilal, ‘Rethinking Palestine: settler-colonialism, neo-liberalism and individualism in the West Bank and Gaza Strip’, Contemporary Arab Affairs, 2015

21Jun15

Abstract: The 1967 occupied Palestinian territories have undergone three major types of development since the Oslo agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel was signed in 1993 and the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994. These developments have brought far-reaching structural changes in Palestinian politics and society. They have rendered Palestinian communities – inside historic Palestine and outside – very vulnerable, and made collective action against collective colonial repression (including a third intifada) more difficult. The three developments are identified as: the emergence of a political discourse that evicts Palestinians from history and geography and denies them a national identity; the escalation of collective repression, and settler-colonization; and the localization of Palestinian politics and the atomization of Palestinian society (in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and probably elsewhere) under the impact of settler-colonialism and neo-liberalism.


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Bridging the gap one miscalculation at a time: Brenda Elias, Karen Busby, Pat Martens, ‘One little, too little: Counting Canada’s Indigenous people for improved health reporting’, Social Science & Medicine, 2015

21Jun15

Abstract: The way state governments, worldwide, count or do not count Indigenous peoples has contributed to inconsistent reporting of Indigenous health statistics. To address unreliable reporting in Canada, we reviewed laws on Indian status and the development of a national Indian Registration System (IRS) to track Indian status and eligibility. With this information as a guide, we linked the IRS to the Manitoba provincial health registry systems and were able to identify individuals with Indian status for health reporting. To improve reporting, we identified individuals often missed in this type of linkage. For instance, we identified children and adult children who were eligible for Indian status but not yet registered. Equally as important, we identified individuals not eligible for Indian status but have Indian heritage and/or represent potential individual Indian status eligibility cases before the courts to right a historic form of identity sex discrimination that has made them invisible in Canadian society and health reporting. A familial kinship approach was used to identify Indian children and adult children typically missed when a strict legal entitlement criteria is used for data linkage. Our reflective socio-legal data linkage approach expanded the number of Indian peoples for health reporting purposes and demonstrated a feasible, inclusive way to report on the health of Indians in Canada.


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Dealing with settler privilege: Carrie Mott, ‘The Activist Polis: Topologies of Conflict in Indigenous Solidarity Activism’, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 2015

21Jun15

Abstract: Interpersonal conflict poses a serious threat to social justice activism. In the context of indigenous solidarity activism in southern Arizona, conflicts are often born of the challenges accompanying differentials in social privilege due to differences in race and ethnicity relative to white supremacist settler colonialism. This paper examines activist collaboration between Tohono O’odham and non-Native anarchist activists in southern Arizona, arguing that a topological activist polis is a useful lens through which we can better understand the roots of conflict in social justice activism. Non-Native activists are often aware of the ways white supremacist settler colonial society privileges particular identities while marginalizing others. Nonetheless, settler and white privilege give rise to tensions which can be seen topologically through the very different relationships non-Native and indigenous activists have to ongoing processes of white supremacy and to histories of the genocide of indigenous peoples.


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On settler colonial frontiers: Nicole Gombay, ‘“There are mentalities that need changing”: Constructing personhood, formulating citizenship, and performing subjectivities on a settler colonial frontier’, Political Geography , 48, 2015, pp. 11–23

21Jun15

Abstract: Settler colonial nations are sites of legal pluralism in which encounters between differing constructions of citizenship are formulated. These can involve customary, differentiated, and universal modes of citizenship. But the relationships amongst these are problematic, as are the ways they play out in the performance of subjectivities. To understand these dynamics, we need to think about ideas of personhood that are at their root. Based on research in Nunavik, this article focuses on how, through wildlife management, notions of personhood are being legally codified, particularly in relation to property. It examines the degree to which official ideas of personhood coincide with Indigenous ones in the construction of citizenship, and considers how these combine with property relations in the performance of subjectivities. Enforcing state wildlife regulations has altered the moral codes that define what persons are and determine how they should interact with one another. This research underscores the contradictions that arise as a result of codifying notions of personhood and citizenship in the context of settler colonialism.


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On settler appropriations: Kristen Dobbin, ‘Appropriation (?) of the Month: Indigenous Teacups’, IPinCH: Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage, 18/06/15

21Jun15

Excerpt: The artifacts in question are teacups, created by Indigenous artists from bark and grass or carved from stone. The teacups, often accompanied by matching saucers, remain formally recognizable, evoking European, especially British, civility and refinement, but are materially and technically distinct. In a certain light, their rendering by Indigenous artists from local materials has transformed them from something familiar to something exotic, foreign, and fundamentally “Other.” Is this an appropriation? If so, what is being appropriated here, exactly? Or does it, rather, represent the Indigenization of an everyday object, a process bound to occur in the colonial contact zone? These are questions that my colleague Lisa Truong and I debated earlier this spring, as we worked through our initial ideas about Indigenous teacups.


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First possession? Prior appropriation? Gary D. Libecap, Bryan Leonard, ‘The Economics of First Possession Rights to a Heterogeneous Resource: Prior Appropriation Rights to Water’, without mentioning indigenous peoples, 2015

21Jun15

Abstract: We analyze the economics of first-possession property rights to a large heterogeneous resource allocated under incomplete information and competitive claiming by agents. Our focus is on prior-appropriation surface water rights used in 18 western US states and generally in at least 3 western Canadian provinces, with specific attention to Colorado, 1852-2013. Prior appropriation was an institutional innovation, replacing common-law riparian rights, in a setting where water supplies were scarce, unevenly distributed, and remote from production sites where water was a key input. Prior appropriation emerged very rapidly within 20 years or less to be the dominant rights regime covering an immense area of over 1,197,000 square miles, suggesting large economic advantages relative to the incumbent institutional regime. Voluntary, large-scale property rights changes are unusual empirically. Prior appropriation encouraged valuable search and narrowed the information required to establish ownership to that described in immediate water diversion rather than an entire river basin. It thereby also lowered individual bounding and enforcement costs. Beneficial use revealed how much water remained for subsequent rights claimants. We examine the economic advantages of prior appropriation. The benefits of prior appropriation in general depended upon how rights were obtained, an issue that we examine in detail. At the time of claiming water there was little information about water source characteristics, and the process of claiming revealed such information. Hence, there was a tradeoff between claiming at a particular time and waiting. At any time, water rights claimants were equal in their lack of knowledge of the best water diversion locations. Each round of claiming revealed new information, but the quantities of remaining high-quality diversion sites were reduced. Individual claims were based on observable resource characteristics, such as current stream flow or quantity, distance to stream head, terrain topography, and proximate soil quality. Because claiming initially took place under open-access conditions, there was potential for rent dissipation. Nevertheless, so long as search revealed critical resource characteristics, they were stable, and individual claims were recognized, there was no basis for rent dissipation, even in a rush to claim given the number of claimants and resource size. In this regard we differ from the literature on first possession that generally points to full dissipation. Prior appropriation water rights became the basis for water trade, investment in dams and canals, and expansion of irrigated agriculture and other activities critical for economic development. Prior appropriation rights endure, affecting the distribution of water ownership and exchange. Assessment of the prior appropriation’s welfare effects requires accounting for its role in generating property rights to water, investment, production, and the transaction costs of water exchange.


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On settlers and natives: Janet Berry Hess, Osage and Settler: Reconstructing Shared History through an Oklahoma Family Archive, McFarland, 2015

18Jun15

Description: Drawing on a rare family archive and archival material from the Osage Nation, this book documents a unique relationship among white settlers, the Osage and African Americans in Oklahoma. The history of white settlement and colonization is often discussed in the context of the cultural erasure of, and violence perpetuated against, American Indians and enslaved blacks. Conversely, histories of American Indian nations often end with colonial conquest, and exclude the experiences of white settlers. The author’s anthropological approach examines the lived experience of individuals–including her own family members–and their nuanced and intersecting relationships as they negotiate cultural and geographic landscapes of oppression and technological change. The art, architecture, body ornamentation, sacred objects, ceremonies and performances accompanying this transformation are all addressed.


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On the politics of a settler society ‘manque’: David Chappell, ‘Decolonisation and nation-building in New Caledonia Reflections on the 2014 elections’, Political Science, 2015, 67, 1, pp. 56-72

18Jun15

Abstract: The French Pacific island ‘collectivity’ of New Caledonia has faced serious challenges in decolonising since the Second World War because, unlike Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, it is a settler country manqué. Instead of becoming a small minority, the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants (today called Kanak (invariable spelling)) comprise nearly half the population and hold 46% of the seats in the Congress. Most of them seek independence, whereas most settlers want to remain part of France, albeit with autonomy. For a century after French annexation in 1853, colonial segregation onto small, marginal native reserves and a lack of civil rights created a unified consciousness among the 30 indigenous language groups. Apart from forced or low-wage labour situations or conversion by missionaries, they intermingled very little with settlers, who included French convicts and small farmers, ranchers and nickel miners, as well as indentured Asian labourers and Polynesian workers from Wallis and Futuna or French Polynesia. The Kanak finally received civil rights in 1946 and were a demographic majority, so they supported a multiracial political party for a generation while the territory gained autonomy. However, in the 1960s, Paris revoked such self-governing powers during a nickel boom, and new immigration made the Kanak a minority, which hardened ethno-political polarisation and sparked an independence movement that culminated in a Kanak revolt in the 1980s. Two peace accords ensued, which restored autonomy and proposed a ‘common destiny’ for local citizens. The May 2014 elections chose a Congress that can hold a referendum on independence, but factionalism within each ethno-political bloc delayed forming a cabinet until April 2015, when some pro-independence leaders chose to cooperate with some loyalists.


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