settler colonial studies blog

Ultimately, decolonial theory does not consider settler colonialism: Sindre Bangstad, ‘The Aporias of Decolonial Anti-imperialism’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 2026

21Apr26

Abstract: Following the 2015 #RhodesMustFall movement in South Africa and amidst calls to «decolonize academia», decolonial theory has become increasingly read and cited in many academic disciplines. But as I seek to demonstrate in this essay, decolonial theory as elaborated by the leading exponent of it, Walter D. Mignolo, is beset with internal contradictions and inconsistencies relating to its view of non-Western imperialism and settler colonialism, which has led it to not only being appropriated by a transnational far-right, but also to increasingly work in tandem with it. These, then, are the aporias of decolonial anti-imperialism.

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Settler vandalism: Feras Hammami, ‘Cultural Heritage Barrenness: The Case of Dispossession, Social Death, and Liberation in Palestine’, in I. Saloul, B. Baillie (eds), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict, Springer, 2026

21Apr26

Abstract: The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza is not only a humanitarian catastrophe but also a cultural one, marked by the systematic erasure of Palestinian identity, memory, and cultural heritage. This entry examines the destruction of Gaza through the lens of settler colonialism, tracing its roots to the early Zionist project and the violent establishment of the Israeli state. It argues that the dominant discourses on Gaza’s cultural heritage—centered on monumentality, pastness, and global relevance—fail to recognize the contemporary history of Palestine under Israeli settler colonialism, the lived cultural heritage of refugeeism, sumud (steadfastness), and Gaza’s cosmopolitan legacy. Drawing on settler colonial studies and cultural herita ge theory, the entry critiques how international heritage frameworks often replicate colonial values, overlooking the cultural and political agency embedded in refugee camps. These camps have become vital space s of memory work, resistance, and cultural production, embodying a cultural that challenges both local and global narratives. By foregrounding the cultural heritage of refugeeism, this work reveals how Palestinian sumud is not only a response to violence but also a form of cultural continuity, political expression, and resistance to dispossession. It calls for a rethinking of cultural heritage practices that center Indigenous experiences and confront the colonial foundations of cultural heritage discourse in the context of genocide.

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The wind of unchange: Elle Eriksson, May-Britt Öhman, ‘Wind Power, the EU (Un)Green Deal, SDG7, and Environmentally Destructive Settler Colonialism in Indigenous Sámi Territories: Hällberget’, in Reetta Toivanen, Vladislava Vladimirova, Carl-Gösta Ojala (eds), Decolonizing the Sustainable Development Goals: Community Perspectives, Social Justice, and the Challenges of Pluralism, Springer, 2026, pp. 135-153

21Apr26

Abstract: The 2019 EU Green Deal and the 2015 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development, with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7 on sustainable energy, both strongly encourage investments in renewable energy sources, amongst others wind power. However, wind power is but the latest in a long line of encroachments on the Indigenous Sámi peoples’ territories, leading to environmental destruction and negative impacts on Sámi reindeer herding, livelihood, and wellbeing. From the nineteenth century, alongside increasing racism and discrimination, the Swedish state took control of Sámi lands. Today, due to their mobilization, the Sámi are recognized as a people within the Swedish constitution and as a national minority. Sámi reindeer herding territories are protected in Swedish legislation. Yet, wind power establishment is promoted by politicians and authorities at the expense of Sámi reindeer husbandry and the reindeer. Discussing the case of the planned wind power area at Hällberget within Váhtjer (Gällivare) Forest Sámi community, we argue that the EU Green Deal and SDG7 are in conflict with Swedish legislation, as well as core values of human, minority, and Indigenous rights, and that wind power is neither sustainable nor green, and a continuation of destructive settler colonial policies.

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Dreaming of settlement: Jessica Vasquez-Tokos, Alejandra Pedraza, ‘Reimagining the American dream: redefining, decolonizing, and reclaiming a national ethos’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2026

20Apr26

Abstract: In a time of declining belief in the American dream (the U.S.-based meritocratic ethos that hard work results in socioeconomic mobility), this article asks how people are reacting to the concept. Drawing on interviews with 65 respondents in Oregon, this article demonstrates that critiques of the American dream as a tool of settler colonialism and racial capitalism serve as a springboard for transforming it. We argue that respondents endeavor to cultivate belonging in the context of racial, class, cis-heteropatriarchal and settler-colonial hierarchies by reimagining the American dream in three ways: (a) personalizing it to prioritize happiness and wellbeing beyond material gain, (b) collectivizing it to emphasize care, connection, and multigenerational family relations and (c) advancing a decolonial and racially-, class-, and culturally-inclusive vision that rejects oppressive systems. Respondents reframe the American dream from an exclusionary ideal into one that emphasizes individualized self-expression, connection to a collective and a more inclusive future.

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Nursing the wounds of settler colonial violence: Amélie Blanchet Garneau, Joannie Gill, Christine Cassivi, Shenda Collin, ‘Allyship with Indigenous Peoples as a Practice of Resistance in Nursing: Uniting Our Voices’, Aporia, 18, 1, 2026

20Apr26

Abstract: Allyship is increasingly recognized as a key concept in nursing to support the rights, resurgence, and healing of Indigenous Peoples. It is presented as a practice of resistance that challenges settler colonialism, disrupts the status quo, and fosters social justice. Yet, allyship remains difficult to define and operationalize in practice. This discussion paper contributes to the critical reflection on allyship by exploring its meaning and practice in nursing. The paper draws on a dialogue among two Indigenous graduate nursing students, one white graduate student, and one white professor, who share their experiences and perspectives through a series of questions on the definition of allyship, identity, engagement, and challenges. Grounded in lived and professional experiences and the literature, the paper positions allyship as both an individual and systemic commitment. It calls on nurses to actively resist Indigenous-specific racism and take part in the collective effort toward Indigenous self-determination, healing, and justice.

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Grief against settler colonialism: Melike İşleyen, ‘Unsettling settler colonial management of life and death through decolonial gestures’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2026

20Apr26

Abstract: This article is located in decolonial perspectives, framing grief and mourning as a liberatory praxis against carceral coloniality and settler colonial violence. As decolonial, Indigenous, and Black feminist thinkers propose, there is hope for justice so long as we do not forget injustice. This proposal takes us to the conundrum: How not to forget systematically erased children towards resistance and re-existence. How does this conundrum turn into an even more complicated one when we think of grief, mourning, and refuturing in the context of Gaza, in a modern colonial world, in which ways of seeing are determined to indiscriminately erase the land, culture, and history from Palestinian presence? By focusing on the settler colonial management of death through frameworks of settler colonial theory, the coloniality of childhood, and decolonial mourning and aesthesis, this article highlights how art-based practices challenge the settler colonial logic of elimination. It argues that these practices delink from the sovereign settler ‘I’ and the occupation of senses towards projects, ways of being, seeing, and sensing through decolonial gestures, which are often overlooked in scholarship that analyses such works without attending to the coloniality of visuality and its entanglement with broader modern colonial power structures.

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Settler colonialism in Kashmir: Waleed Rasool, ‘Settler Colonialism in Kashmir and the North East: India’s Inter- and Intra-State Strategies andImplications for SAARC’, Policy Perspectives, 23, 1, 2026

20Apr26

Abstract: This qualitative study relies on a theory-driven analysis of legal and institutional sources to evaluate the application of post-colonial theory to the Kashmir issue by India, comparing the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir with India’s North-Eastern states at the intra-state level and India’s brinkmanship with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations at the inter-state level. The paper identifies a recurring pattern of territorial hegemony in which limited political accommodation is initially granted, followed by legal and institutional restructuring that converts occupation into annexation and brings settler-colonization into play. The Indian unilateral moves of 2019 in Jammu and Kashmir is shown as set pattern and replication of strategies previously employed in India’s North-Eastern and peripheral regions. The paper makes three key contributions. First, it advances post-colonial theory by demonstrating how India, once a colonized state, itself functions as a colonizing power. Second, it provides a fact-based legal assessment of potential actions by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General under Article 99, highlighting gaps between international norms and United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Third, through a comparative approach, it evaluates Indian brinkmanship and draws strategic lessons for smaller SAARC states in future where India eyes to expand. The paper establishes that Kashmir has entered a most crucial phase of settler colonialism, placing the Kashmiri people at demographic extinction.

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The Fair Play (settler) Republic: Christopher R. Pearl, Declarations of Independence: Indigenous Resilience, Colonial Rivalries, and the Cost of Revolution, University of Virginia Press, 2024

20Apr26

Description: How Indigenous Americans and colonial settlers negotiated the meaning of independence in the Revolutionary era. On July 4, 1776, two hundred miles northwest of Philadelphia, on Indigenous land along the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, a group of colonial squatters declared their independence. They were not alone in their efforts. This bold symbolic gesture was just a small part of a much broader and longer struggle in the Northern Susquehanna River Valley, where diverse peoples, especially Indigenous nations, fought tenaciously to safeguard their lands, sovereignty, and survival. This book immerses readers in that intense, decades-long struggle. By intertwining the experiences of Indigenous Americans, rebellious colonial squatters, opportunistic land speculators, and imperial government agents, Christopher Pearl reveals how conflicts within and between them all set the terms and ultimately shaped the meaning of the American Revolution. In the crucible of this conflict, memories, histories, and animosities collided and converged with tremendous consequences. Declarations of Independence delves into the racial violence over land and sovereignty that suffused the Revolutionary Age and helps restore Indigenous peoples to their central position at the founding of the United States.

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Settler colonialism in space will be expensive: Steven Griggs, ‘How to Pay for Settling Space’, Space Enabling Paper Series, 2025

19Apr26

Abstract: Human space-faring societies have been the subject of science fiction and the imagination of countless people desiring a different way of life. Various concepts of what life would be like in space, whether on a spacecraft, space station, or other planets or moons, vary with the imagination of those seeking various idealistic or altruistic reasons. Lifestyles, environmental, and survival technologies have been the subject of engineers, scientists, and human behavior specialists for decades. Payload and volume constraints have limited the practical capability of humans in a space-faring society. Advances in private/public space launch by SpaceX and Blue Origin have advanced space flight with affordability as the key driver. SpaceX is pushing heavy-lift reusable rockets to impressive rocket payloads in mass and available volume. Although cost has been reduced over previous rocketbased solutions, the total cost of creating a space settlement is in the trillions of dollars. How will Earth-based human space settlers pay for the opportunity to settle in space? This paper will explore an integrated space economy concept that will provide how thousands of humans can compensate for Earth-based investment in developing a human space settlement society. Trillions of dollars will be required, but trillions are available to return to Earth-based investors or repay government entities.

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Settler indifference: Emily Grafton, ‘The Reproduction of Settler Colonial Logics as Reinforcement of Settler Indifference in Canada’, International Journal of Conflict & Reconciliation, 6, 1, 2026, pp. 23-40

19Apr26

Abstract: This article presents a meta-narrative examining the Canadian settler public’s indifference toward Indian Residential Schools and associated genocide denial. To produce this meta-narrative, its research methodology of re-framing draws on critical anti-colonial and decolonial scholarship. The findings demonstrate a clear connection between the logic of settler colonialism and Canadians’ indifference to the nation’s history with Indian Residential Schools. This indifference is reinforced by long-standing settler colonial narratives. This article contributes original insights to the field of settler colonial scholarship by integrating existing research on settler colonial narratives and critiques of reconciliation to develop a new framework—a meta-narrative—for understanding settler indifference and its impact on Canadian society. The social implications of this framework include a deeper understanding of the insidious and destructive nature of settler colonial logic within reconciliation practices, which often perpetuate settler indifference. The evidence suggests that reconciliation efforts can reproduce settler colonial logics through dominant narratives, resulting in superficial or inauthentic understandings of reconciliation. In conclusion, reconciliation processes ought to be built through new and transformational relationships instead of relying on and reifying past settler colonial logics.

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