settler colonial studies blog

The imperialism of ‘imperialism’ (subordinating ‘settler colonialism’, or how to misunderstand dialectics): John Bellamy Foster, ‘Imperialism and White Settler Colonialism in Marxist Theory’, Monthly Review, 76, 9, 2025, pp. 1-21

23Mar25

Excerpt: The concept of settler colonialism has always been a key element in the Marxist theory of imperialism, the meaning of which has gradually evolved over a century and a half. Today the reemergence of powerful Indigenous movements in the struggles over cultural survival, the earth, sovereignty, and recognition, plus the resistance to the genocide inflicted by the Israeli state on the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, have brought the notion of settler colonialism to the fore of the global debate. In these circumstances, a recovery and reconstruction of the Marxist understanding of the relation between imperialism and settler colonialism is a crucial step in aiding Indigenous movements and the world revolt against imperialism. Such a recovery and reconstruction of Marxist analyses in this area is all the more important since a new paradigm of settler colonial studies, pioneered in Australia by such distinguished intellectual figures as Patrick Wolfe and Lorenzo Veracini, has emerged over the last quarter-century. This now constitutes a distinct field globally—one that, in its current dominant form in the academy, is focused on a pure “logic of elimination.” In this way, settler colonialism as an analytical category based on autonomous collectives of settlers is divorced from colonialism more generally, and from imperialism, exploitation, and class. Settler colonialism, in this sense, is often said to be an overriding planetary force in and of itself. In Veracini’s words, “It was a settler colonial power that became a global hegemon.… The many American occupations” around the world are “settler colonial” occupations. We are now told that not just the “pure” or ideal-typical settler colonies of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel can be seen as such, as originally conceived by Wolfe, but also the “whole of Africa,” plus much of Asia and Latin America, have been “shaped” to a considerable extent by the “logic of elimination,” as opposed to exploitation. Rather than seeing settler colonialism as an integral part of the development of the imperialist world system, it has become, in some accounts, its own complete explanation.

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The pain of Indigenbous peoples: Lívia G. Fernandes, Cheryl Davies, Chrystal Jaye, Jean Hay-Smith, Hemakumar Devan, ‘“We do not stop being Indigenous when we are in pain”: an integrative review of the lived experiences of chronic pain among Indigenous peoples’, Social Science & Medicine, 2025, # 117991

23Mar25

Abstract: Background: Chronic non-cancer pain is a major burden worldwide. Indigenous communities experience additional inequities in pain care and management influenced by long-standing impacts of colonization, including systemic racism, oppression, and marginalization. Traditional healing knowledges, practices and methods are valued by Indigenous people when managing their pain. However, mainstream health services often disregard this knowledge and fail to provide culturally safe management strategies. Aim: To understand how Indigenous peoples across the globe make sense of pain when experiencing chronic non-cancer pain. Methodology and methods: This integrative literature review is reported according to the PRISMA checklist and CONSIDER statement. We focused on qualitative data reported by Indigenous adults with chronic non-cancer pain in empirical and theoretical studies. Electronic searches were performed in databases from health and humanities scopes, in addition to grey literature, from 1990 to August 2023. We drew from critical theory approaches to thematically analyze data from the included studies, privileging Indigenous perspectives through a Western intellectual framework (Two-Eyed Seeing epistemology). Data extraction and thematic analysis were managed using NVivo. Primary data were mapped according to geography and theoretical framework. Results: After removal of duplicates, 1352 studies were screened using title and abstract, from which 99 full texts were assessed and 29 studies and 3 dissertations/theses were included. Included studies reported lived experiences of chronic pain among Indigenous peoples from Oceania, North America, and South America. Thematic analysis derived four main themes that indicated pain is entwined with nature, Indigenous identity, historical trauma, and the collective. Our findings suggest that pain is interconnected to a broader scenario of feelings, thoughts, peoples and places. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the layered and complex aspects of the lived experiences of chronic pain among Indigenous people. Indigenous-led alternatives focusing on culturally safe care can guide approaches to clinical pain practice and contribute to achieving health equity.

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Humanitarian settlers? Pietro Stefanini, Settler colonial humanitarianism: a genealogy of the settler subject in Palestine/Israel, PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 2025

23Mar25

Abstract: This thesis reorients settler colonial studies towards an understanding of humanitarianism’s role in the constitution of the settler subject. Grounded in the case of Palestine/Israel, the settler colonial modality of humanitarianism that I illustrate is two-fold: enabling the continuous establishment of the settler society; and providing a tool for the dispossession of Palestinians. To substantiate these central claims, I draw from a genealogical methodology that reconstructs the changing patterns and spaces in which humanitarianism came to shape the settler subject, tracing its appearance and evolution to present day. To trace this genealogy linking different historical moments to the present, I relied on research in multiple archives and over 60 interviews conducted primarily during fieldwork in Palestine/Israel. The global history of humanitarianism in colonial and settler colonial contexts tells us a story in which it is usually the native subject the recipient of humanitarian aid and sentiment. But archival research on the relief work of the Zionist Commission (1918-1921), which targeted settlers in need of aid to rebuild damaged colonies, reveals a distinct form of settler colonial humanitarianism which breaks from that historical pattern. After the First World War, humanitarian relief transformed into an instrument of settler sovereignty formation within the bounds of British imperial rule. Meanwhile, in revisiting the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe), I argue that the 1923 precedent on Greek-Turkish ‘population exchanges’ influenced how the expulsion of Palestinians was framed as a ‘humanitarian’ population transfer. This moment opens an avenue for understanding humanitarianism’s function in the dispossession of Palestinians. Yet, at this historical conjuncture, for the Israeli statehood project to succeed the mass depopulation of Palestinians that took place in 1948 had to be coupled with populating the conquered land with settlers. Here I argue that the ‘humanitarianisation’ of the Jewish immigration process facilitated the creation of the Israeli settler state. Drawing from an ethnographic approach and interviews with Israeli settlers, Israeli military officials, and staff of international humanitarian organisations, I explore the contemporary manifestations of the settler subject through two different processes. First, I examine a recent form of humanitarian governance adopted by the Israeli military which serves to buttress the control, counterinsurgency strategies, and ultimately dispossession of Palestinians. Second, a close appraisal of Israeli settlers evacuated from Gaza in 2005 reveals the multiple ways in which a settler colonial form of humanitarianism emerged. Israeli settlers began mobilising the figure of the refugee and the mental health discourse of trauma to disavow the process of de-settlement from Palestinian land. Through a reconstruction of the historical and contemporary contours of Israeli settler colonialism, this genealogical investigation thus shows how humanitarianism generates an eliminationist settler subjectivity that heralds the removal and replacement of Palestinians.

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Settler colonising the Apocalypse: Hannah Swearingen, Fu Otani, Sara Siddiqui, Ekem Dhesi, ‘Postcolonialisms in Post-Apocalyptic Landscapes: Colonially-Driven Environmental Degradation and Coloniality in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’, Trail Six, 19, 2025, pp. 68-76

23Mar25

Abstract: This paper builds on postcolonial and Indigenous climate change studies’ understanding of environmental degradation as a mode of colonial domination. We argue that a parallel can be drawn between the subjugation of Indigenous peoples under settler colonialism and that of both wajin – the dominant group – and Indigenous peoples (Ainu, Uchinanchu) of Japan under US imperialism. These groups’ similar experiences of inferiorization and subjugation under Eurocentric coloniality has generated a rich literary tradition of liberational futurities, expressed in Indigenous science fiction and Japanese apocalyptic science fiction. Through an analysis of Hayao Miyasaki’s (1984) film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, we argue for the subversion of colonial discourses as a powerful and necessary action in order to combat contemporary colonial oppression and environmental degradation.

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Settler hegemonies: Aidan Huang, ‘Gender(ed) Imaginations, Hegemony, and Counter-hegemony in Guatemala’, Trail Six, 19, 2025, pp. 31-41

23Mar25

Abstract: Guatemala’s socio-political landscape is well known as one marked by enduring conflict and state repression, often traced to settler colonialism and US imperialism. Compared to the attention on overt, physical violence, however, the role of ideological and cultural strategies in enabling this violence is less extensively discussed. In this paper, I draw upon Gramsci’s theory of hegemony to analyse how colonial-capitalist relationships of power in Guatemala operate not only through physical and political force, but are also underpinned by ideological and cultural domination. I argue that the cultural hegemony of Spanish colonisers and the settler colonial state have been and are reinforced by certain patriarchal ideas of gender, which are used to establish control over people in Guatemala, especially Indigenous Mayans. To illustrate this, I use examples from both colonial and post-independence periods, as well as my own experiences during a university study program. However, cultural hegemony in Guatemala remains incomplete, as counter-hegemonic imaginations and expressions of gender–rooted in Mayan cultures and resistance–challenge dominant gender roles and notions of identity, illustrating the ongoing contestation of power.

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Refugee settlerhood: Ambihai Akilan, ‘Between Borders and Histories: Refugee Settlerhood, Forced Migration, and Decolonized Belonging’, Trail Six, 19, 2025, pp. 77-84

23Mar25

Abstract: This paper explores the complexities of refugee settlerhood, examining the intersection of forced migration, settler colonialism, and the implications for Indigenous communities. Through the lens of personal experiences as a Tamil-Canadian, the tension between being both a product of colonization and a participant in the settler colonial project comes into focus, highlighting the differential experiences of migration that shape varying degrees of complicity. Using the insights of scholars like Xavier (2022), Wiegel et al. (2019), and Ellerman & O’Heran (2021), the paper critiques the commodification of citizenship and belonging in settler states and examines how refugees and migrants, despite fleeing violence and persecution, contribute to the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples. The paper argues that understanding settler complicity requires a shift away from binary notions of guilt and innocence, advocating instead for a framework of decolonized belonging. In this framework, belonging is redefined through Indigenous sovereignty, relational accountability, and active engagement in dismantling settler colonial structures. Ultimately, confronting colonial legacies and working toward transformative justice for Indigenous communities necessitates a collective responsibility, with refugee settlers playing a critical role in this process.

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You shall (not) have the (Indigenous) body (habeas corpus): Matthew Villeneuve, ‘Habeas Corpus and American Indian Boarding Schools: Indigenous Self-Determination in Body and Mind, 1880-1900’, Western Historical Quarterly, 2025

22Mar25

Abstract: This article examines the history of Native people’s use of habeas corpus to resist family separation employed in the United States’ system of Indian boarding schools. It highlights three cases brought by Native petitioners from Alaska, New Mexico, and Iowa between 1885 and 1900. These cases show how Native parents, husbands, and cousins challenged the federal agents responsible for boarding schools by appealing to federal courts for intervention on behalf of their kin confined in such schools. Moving beyond legal interpretations, however, this article further argues that Native people used these petitions to assert their capacity to make their own decisions about the proper education of their young people and to convey Indigenous values of teaching and learning. Consequently, these cases illustrate an important but understudied means by which Native people used the legal tools available to them to assert self-determination in education. These habeas corpus cases are therefore a crucial part of boarding school history, American Indian and Indigenous history, and the history of U.S. education.

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Water itself against settler colonialism: Teresa Shewry, Philip Steer, ‘The Poetics and Ontologies of Fresh Water in Settler Contexts’, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2025

21Mar25

Excerpt: In mid-twentieth-century Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Pākehā (settler) poet J. R. Hervey encounters a “squat citadel spraying power”—a hydroelectric dam—and finds that it has turned the river into “dumb, disciplined waters” (43). A decade later, the Māori poet Hone Tuwhare (Ngāpuhi) draws on his experiences as a worker on hydroelectric dam projects to also describe their environmental impact as a forcible act of silencing: “Nowhere is there greater fuss/to tear out the river’s tongue” (“Sea” 30). At first glance, the similarity between Hervey and Tuwhare’s portrayals of rivers rendered “dumb” simply attests to the far-flung extent of the modernist belief that hydroelectric infrastructure contributed to civilization’s necessary work of pacifying unruly nature. As Patrick McCully puts it in his history of large dams, aptly titled Silenced Rivers (1996), such infrastructure has come to “symbolize the progress of humanity from a life ruled by nature and superstition to one where nature is ruled by science, and superstition vanquished by rationality” (237). Framed by this binary opposition, literature seems to offer a powerful vehicle through which rivers might speak against the extractivist forces that would seek to silence them. Thus, Paul Kingsnorth aligns his recent poetic response to the “wild and blue, raging and unchanneled” rivers of Patagonia, Songs from the Blue River (2018), with theologian Thomas Berry’s insight that the “modern project” is predicated upon silencing these bodies of water: “We are not talking to the river, we are not listening to the river. We have broken the great conversation” (qtd. in Kingsnorth). Yet such straightforward assertions are complicated by the earlier examples of Hervey and Tuwhare, whose distinct cultural perspectives prompt questions both about the source of a river’s speech and the ability to understand what it might have to say. The matter of riverine voice has surfaced into western consciousness in recent years as a result of various legislative attempts to recognize prior and ongoing Indigenous understandings of rivers as living, ancestral, metaphysical entities.

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Nursing after settler colonialism: Gina Jang, ‘A Journey Toward Self-Reconciliation via Indigenous Wisdom Unraveling Identity: A Contemporary Issue in Nursing’, Nurse Education Today, 150, 2025, #106680

21Mar25

Abstract: The author delves into the intricate layers of identity and responsibility as experienced by an Asian immigrant in Canada. The author grapples with the complexities of being simultaneously an outsider and a participant in settler colonial dynamics. The narrative traces the author’s evolving comprehension of her settler identity.

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Settler colonial and sexist: Muhammad Rehan Sabir, Maryam Asim, Muhammad Rehan, Muqaddas Saif, ‘Joy Harjo’s Crazy Brave: An Artistic Reclamation of Native American Women’s Identity and Cultural Sovereignty’, International Conference on Next-Generation Innovations and Sustainability, 2025

21Mar25

Abstract: Native American women seem to struggle for emancipation from two kinds of status quo. One aspect focuses on breaking free from the colonial idea of the nation-state, while the other highlights resistance against heteropatriarchy that was planted into Native American tribes. This article applies theoretical lens of Andrea Smith on Joy Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave to highlight the involvement of settler colonialism in the obstruction of Native American consciousness. This paper investigates the resistive campaign of native women against intersectional politics of tribal men and colonial powers. Smith’s idea of spiritual activism unfolds the difference of white feminism and colored feminism to uncover the systematic violence against native women. This paper also explores how Joy Harjo, through memory, metaphor, storytelling, and spiritual activism, critiques the dual oppression of settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy to reclaim indigenous identity and cultural sovereignty. This research is an exploration of native women’s adversity of keeping tribal nationalism over sexism as their survival strategy in an imperial nation state by using Joy Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave as a specimen.

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