settler colonial studies blog

A settler colonial Gran Chaco? Laura Pensa, Considerations on settler colonialism theory for the study of the Gran Chaco’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

11Apr25

Abstract: In the last few decades, colonial studies have benefited from the engagement with Settler Colonialism Theory (SCT) in different case studies. Particularly in the Southern Cone, this articulation expanded the knowledge of present-day Uruguay and the Argentine Patagonia, territories traditionally inhabited by highly mobile groups. The Chaco has yet to be considered under the parameters of said model. During colonial times and up until the late nineteenth century, this region represented one of the most difficult challenges for advancing colonial and later national control due to the nature of their terrains and the strategies implemented by their Indigenous Peoples. In this article, I will review some aspects that make this a rugged region to categorize completely under any given theoretical framework and then explain how some of the concepts from SCT can help us elucidate certain processes of conquest and colonization in the Gran Chaco.

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Indigenous person to settler, not P2P: Yara Hawari, ‘Critique of People-to-People Projects: Undermining Palestinian Rights and Israeli Accountability’, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, 21/03/25

11Apr25

Abstract: This policy brief critiques the revival of People-to-People (P2P) projects, arguing they undermine Palestinian rights and Israeli accountability. P2P initiatives, framed as promoting cooperation and peace, are based on a flawed premise that equates the colonizer and the colonized. The author contends that P2P projects normalize the occupation and are ineffective and unwanted by most Palestinians. The recent Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act, which funds P2P projects, is criticized for potentially benefiting Israeli settlers and discouraging Palestinian pursuit of justice through international legal mechanisms.

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Birds of prey: Ruby Ekkel, ‘”Making friends with lyre-birds”: Alice Manfield and settler belonging in Mount Buffalo National Park’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

11Apr25

Abstract: Alice Manfield (1878–1960) was a naturalist, photographer, and mountain guide on Mount Buffalo, in southeastern Australia. She embodied emerging ways of understanding and relating to native flora and fauna, publishing the first known photographs of male lyrebirds and attributing her success to long-term familiarity with these endangered animals and their environment. For credibility and emotional appeal, she also invoked her family’s colonial heritage: the Manfields participated in the dispossession of the local Mogullumbidj people and other Indigenous groups for whom Mount Buffalo, or Dordordonga, was sacred. Drawing on her pictorial and literary archive, this article argues that Manfield connected nostalgia for ‘pioneering’ settler colonialism with what were framed as more enlightened, intimate engagements with the threatened environment. In postFederation Australia, this combination fostered settler territoriality and elided the displacement of Aboriginal people and knowledge. Through her tours and publications, Manfield encouraged deep familiarity with colonised landscapes and strengthened settler affinity with native animals, who were increasingly recruited as affirming indigenes. More broadly, this article is concerned with changing styles of settler-colonial environmental knowledge production and circulation in the early twentieth century, which drew on notions of friendship and benevolent protection while remaining tied to earlier forms of colonial domination.

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The boycott of settlers: Muhannad Ayyash, ‘The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign: Challenging the Unintelligibility of Palestinian Decolonial Resistance in Canada’, Journal of Palestine Studies, 2025

11Apr25

Abstract: This article examines the hegemonic and counter-hegemonic moves between the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and the Canadian state. First, the article conceptualizes the centralized and diffused organizational structure of the campaign as it was developed in Palestine. It highlights how organizers in Palestine sought to challenge Israeli settler colonialism and anticipated the hostile reactions against the campaign in Western institutions. Second, the article analyzes the trope of condemnation in the Canadian state’s response to BDS as a counter-campaign that has sought to weaken BDS through a form of indirect institutional action. It is within this context that the article situates student encampments, which are demanding that Canadian universities adopt BDS, and examines how students are challenging the unintelligibility of Palestinian decolonial resistance in Canada, securing BDS victories in the process.

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Suicides by settlers: Joanna Brooke, Caroline Lenette, Marianne Wobcke, Marly Wells, ‘Revaluing Indigenous Models in Suicidology: A Brief Narrative Synthesis’, Social Sciences, 2025

11Apr25

Abstract: This review uses an anti-colonial approach to explore the characteristics of Indigenous interventions and best practice relating to suicidality. Well-established interventions led by Indigenous communities exist globally, yet their prevalence in academic discussions of suicide is comparatively limited. This represents a missed opportunity for the field of suicidology to learn from Indigenous community-driven models, which have the potential to be translated across contexts. The challenges of sharing best practice Indigenous interventions in academic literature can be situated within a pervasive colonial discourse, which categorises suicide as an ‘Indigenous problem’ and creates ill-fitted evaluation and intervention methodologies. Here, we provide a brief narrative synthesis of contemporary research on Indigenous suicide intervention models in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the United States and Canada, focusing on key characteristics of interventions and a selection of Indigenous community-driven projects. These characteristics are: cultural and collective approaches as protective factors; recognising social determinants of health and the impact of colonisation; community control and governance; evaluation and available research; and relationships and connection. We discuss issues of sustainability, funding, decontextualised research, and publishing and put forward recommendations for future research. Rebalancing academic discussions to centre Indigenous leadership and culturally grounded research and practice is not without its challenges and complexity but can crucially enrich the field of suicidology.

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A history of settler colonialism: Rafael Verbuyst, ‘”Everything We Do Is About Our History”: Indigenous Resurgence and Its Critique of History’, Critical Sociology, 2025

10Apr25

Abstract: The role of history in perpetuating settler colonialism is well documented. However, the manner in which Indigenous people draw on the past to resist this oppressive structure remains undertheorized. An anthropological approach is needed to appraise how Indigenous people entwine past and present in the context of Indigenous resurgence. I illustrate this by drawing on the concept of historicity as well as ethnographic fieldwork conducted among ‘Khoisan revivalists’ in South Africa. I focus on how activists, academics, and artists have criticized popular and academic representations of the 17th century Khoisan woman Krotoa. These critiques, manifested through, among others, protests, theatrical performances, and the creation of alternative historical narratives, underscore the pursuit of healing, existential orientation, and empowerment that is characteristic of Indigenous resurgence. I conclude by analysing the tensions between this critique of history and conventional academic historiography, with particular attention to concepts of truth, objectivity, and Indigenous authorship.

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Subaltern settlers? Kirsten Emiko McAllister, Mona Oikawa (eds),After Redress: Japanese Canadian and Indigenous Struggles for Justice, UBC Press, 2025

08Apr25

Description: Indigenous peoples and Japanese Canadians have demanded justice from the Canadian state for its discriminatory systems of colonialism and racial management. Since the early aughts, critics have argued that state apologies co-opt those demands. Meanwhile, many Canadian institutions still attempt to control narratives about residential schools and other violences committed against Indigenous peoples, as well as the internment of Japanese Canadians. After Redress examines how struggles for justice continue long after truth and reconciliation commissions conclude and state redress is supposedly made. Contributors to this trenchant volume analyze the complex, often paradoxical process of redress from the perspectives of the communities involved. In a context where mechanisms for reconciliation and redress have been defined by the settler state, this book reveals how Indigenous peoples and Japanese Canadians have responded to Western liberal notions of justice, whether by challenging or conforming to them or pursuing their own approaches. It asks: What are the links between knowledge systems and governance, between narrative tactics and political strategy? After Redress uncovers the effectiveness and the effects of demands for reparations and strategies to assert resistance. This collection will have broad appeal for scholars and students of Japanese Canadian and Asian Canadian studies, Indigenous studies, critical race studies, and sociology. It is also necessary reading for activist members of Japanese Canadian and Indigenous communities, and for all those concerned with social justice alliances with Indigenous peoples and other racialized groups.

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Come and see settler colonialism: Rami K. Isaac, Michael C. Hall, ‘Resistance to settler colonialism in Palestine through tourism: the case of Kairos “Come and See”, Palestine’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

08Apr25

Abstract: Settler colonialism has been theorised as a form of oppression and domination distinct from other colonisation and imperialism processes. This paper aims to deconstruct settler colonialism domination by illuminating both the power of oppression and the power of resistance in Palestine and in the establishment by Israel of settler colonial tourismscapes. Building on Foucault’s examination of power and resistance, settler colonialism is theorised as a disciplinary, bio-power, and sovereign power, and the paper explores how different stakeholders resist the dominant settler discourse in a tourism context. Theoretically, this study contributes to understanding settler colonialism and tourism through the lens of power and resistance. The outcomes of the study find that Israel has contributed to the reorganisation of Palestine as a Jewish homeland and suppress stories of colonial brutality and oppression while selling imaginary geographies that normalise the presence of Jewish settlers in Palestine. Findings also shed some light on how Palestinian tourism initiatives, such as the Kairos Palestine in Bethlehem, produce spaces of constructed Palestinian visibility through tourism. This initiative highlights how alternative tours through the ‘Come and See’ experience might contribute to the re-articulation and reordering of venues, thereby forming a counter-discourse and resistance.

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A song of settler colonialism: Anthony Trujillo, Dylan Nelson, ‘Riding on the ‘City of New Orleans’: cosmos and cataclysm on settler colonialism’s dual-rail groove’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

08Apr25

Abstract: This article engages with the folk and country song ‘City of New Orleans’ to explore the meanings of structure, territoriality, spatial production, and historical process in settler colonial studies. We model a mode of interpreting the song’s lyrics, formal elements, gestures, and affect that reveals the habits, tastes, and dispositions (habitus) by which invasion proceeds and territoriality is reproduced. We propose the ‘dual-rail groove’ as a heuristic for identifying the interaction between historical processes (e.g. the political economy of railroads) and habitual and affective dispositions (shaped by expressive practices like songs) as constituting settler colonialism’s structure. Contemplating ‘City of New Orleans’ as a musical voyage and a tonal portrait of a railroaded American landscape invites us to ask what kind of world we not only venture into, but participate in producing, when we listen to the song and sing along with it. How are Native peoples, places, stories and histories erased through the making of this world? How are listeners enticed into hopping onto this train and accepting the logics, romance, and violences of a settler colonial world? Throughout, we also engage a chorus of Indigenous interlocutors to interrupt the settler colonial cosmos even as we tune into this world’s making and reproduction.

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Settler Identity and Colonialism 2.0: Emma Battell Lowman, Adam J. Barker, Settler Identity and Colonialism, 2nd Edition, Fernwood, 2025

08Apr25

Description: A decade ago, the first edition of this defining book explained what it meant to be Settler — acknowledging that Canada has been forged through ongoing violence, displacement, and assimilation of Indigenous communities and Nations — and argued that accepting this identity is an important first step towards changing relationships with Indigenous Peoples. The national conversation about settler colonialism has advanced significantly since that time, thanks to Indigenous struggles that have resulted in high-profile official apologies and inquiries into the devastating inequity between Indigenous and Settler lives in Canada. However, this progress is not enough — many of the same problems persist due to the underlying inequities at the core of Canadian identity, politics, and society. In this revised second edition, Battell Lowman and Barker reflect on the term’s changing, more nuanced, and continued importance. Touching on the rise of right-wing nationalism, the power and limitations of social media, and ten years of federal Liberal government, this new edition of Settler considers the successes and failures of Settler Canadians in supporting decolonization and charting our next steps towards transformative change.

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