settler colonial studies blog

‘Rural as White’ is a settler colonial ruse: Christabel Devadoss, ‘Intimate Geopolitics and “Rural as White” Narratives in the Rural Rust Belt’, Geopolitics, 2025

02Feb25

Abstract: This paper uses intimate geopolitics to disrupt the focus of ‘rural as white’ narratives in rural geographies. ‘Rural as white’ narratives have evolved from settler colonialism, systemic racism, Orientalism, and institutionalised genocide and enslavement that shape and uphold geopolitical positions of the United States. Meanwhile, intimate geopolitics, particularly Pain’s (2021) concept of geotrauma, has served as a lens to view the local impacts of global phenomena in intimate spaces (Pain 2014). I demonstrate how connecting geotrauma and ‘rural as white’ narratives to the experiences of people of colour living in rural Rust Belt spaces provides a more nuanced approach to rural scholarship. Scholars have noted how geopolitical actors and states intimately impact people’s everyday lives (Barabantseva, Ní Mhurchú, and Barabantseva, Ní Mhurchú, and Spike Peterson 2021). I demonstrate how nationalism and geopolitics shape intimate experiences for many minoritized communities in rural spaces. More importantly, I show how everyday geopolitical rhetoric manifests as rural geotrauma in rural Rust Belt communities.

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Indigenous autonomy against settler colonialism: Marcela Velasco, Curtis Kline, ‘Indigenous Autonomy in Latin America: The Impact of the Indigenous Rights Revolution on the Study of Politics’, The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, 2025

02Feb25

Abstract: This paper asserts that critiques of political science for neglecting Indigenous politics highlight a critical gap that risks overlooking significant conceptual and practical innovations. It emphasizes how Indigenous autonomy claims challenge traditional notions of sovereignty. Scholars of Indigenous politics in Latin America, publishing in area studies journals, provide essential insights into these autonomy claims and contribute valuable perspectives to the discipline. We identify rigorous scholarly work in English language, peer-reviewed journals exploring Indigenous autonomy, conceptualizing it as a multifaceted notion that encompasses political visions, practices, and social movement agendas. Through a comprehensive meta-analysis of literature in Latin American area studies, we argue that this field offers four fundamental insights. First, Indigenous peoples deploy diverse strategies to assert their rights, positioning themselves as active citizens and political agents rather than passive groups. Second, the emergence of multicultural institutions that integrate individual and collective rights is fundamentally reshaping politics and citizenship, leading to innovative governance structures. Third, accumulation by dispossession remains a crucial driver of wealth creation, severely undermining Indigenous autonomy and degrading their environments. Finally, a renewed emphasis on Indigenous territorial autonomy decisively challenges conventional views of state sovereignty, as Indigenous peoples assert territorial and nonterritorial rights.

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Settler colonialism indeed: M. Padrón Hernández, ‘”The Moroccan king wants Western Sahara without its people”: an argument for Western Sahara as a settler colony’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

02Feb25

Abstract: This paper examines the case of Western Sahara through the lens of settler colonial studies. A former Spanish colony in northern Africa, Western Sahara is most often described as ‘occupied’ by Morocco since 1975. I aim at shifting this narrative by applying settler colonial theory, more specifically Veracini’s concept of transfer, to the relation between Moroccan authorities and the indigenous population. Building on anthropological fieldwork in Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria and interviews with Sahrawis in Algeria, Morocco and Europe, I look at how Sahrawis have experienced a number of transfers whose compounded effect is the gradual elimination of the native population.

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Actually also about settler colonialism: Meitamei Olol Dapash, Mary Poole, Decolonizing Maasai History: A Path to Indigenous African Futures, Zed Books, 2025

02Feb25

Description: In this open access book, Maasai leader and activist Meitamei Dapash teams with historian Mary Poole to offer a new version of Maasai history based on Maasai memory and concerns. Through their rich and detailed narrative, we learn not only about the history of the Maasai as they understand it, but also about the relations between politics and Western history; about the untold history of Kenya both pre- and post-nationhood; about why the creation of nation-states is not synonymous with liberation; and about how and why Indigenous approaches to land obstruct global processes of resource extraction. All of this finds wider resonances that upend received narratives of post-“independence” Africa and offer new opportunities for the emancipation of Indigenous communities from neo-colonial regimes the world over.

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Acclimatising settlers: Simon Farley, ‘”Their beneficial effect upon a people”: settlers, songbirds and civilisation in nineteenth-century Victoria’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

31Jan25

Abstract: Through the figure of journalist and philanthropist Edward Wilson (1813–1878), this article explores the settler-colonial dimensions of the mid-nineteenth century acclimatisation movement in Australia. In the latter half of the 1850s, Wilson became obsessed with the new science of acclimatisation, which promoted the transportation of plants and animals across the planet for a variety of purposes. By importing familiar wildlife, especially birds, to Australia from the metropole, Wilson and his fellow acclimatisers hoped to ‘improve’ Australian landscapes and, consequently, the humans dwelling within those landscapes. In doing so, they also aimed to create a likewise ‘improved’ emulation of metropolitan society. By drawing links between Wilson’s promotion of acclimatisation, his rejection of convict transportation, and his interest in ‘civilising’ the Aboriginal peoples of Victoria, this article adumbrates the extent to which settler colonialism has shaped settlers’ feelings towards and interactions with flora and fauna.

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Nonsettler narratives: Niro Kandasamy, Michael McDonnell, ‘Powerful Stories: Indigenous and Refugee Histories of Dispossession and Displacement in Settler Colonies’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2025

31Jan25

Abstract: This paper illuminates the role of Indigenous and refugee autobiographies in serving as a radical critique of the settler colonial state. We examine the origins of self-writing in the creation of the nations of the United States and Australia before undertaking a closer examination of the proliferation of memoirs in late twentieth century and early twenty first century Australia. By tracing the powerful stories told by the dispossessed and displaced, we show how forced movements of Indigenous and refugee people are interlinked and foundational to the making of the settler colony. By centering their voices, we demonstrate that forced migrations have often been generative of new forms of self-expression, including non-textual forms such as film and poetry. The paper argues that reading the histories of settler colonial nations through these self-expressions is vital in radically revising national historical narratives that continue to privilege ideas of terra nullius, stories of ‘free’ migration, and the ‘othering’ of refugees as a contemporary ‘problem’ that is historically unprecedented.

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On diasporic indigeneity: Jonathan Robert Fairchild, They Intend to Conduct Us Out of Their Country: The Choctaw Diaspora, PhD dissertation, University of Houston, 2024

31Jan25

Abstract: This dissertation explores the complicated relationship between land, sovereignty, identity, and belonging at both the individual and tribal level in the Choctaw diaspora from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Tribal members of what are today the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians (Louisiana), the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, as well as other bands, navigated their relationships to one another and to a Choctaw identity across that diaspora, branching outwards from the spiritual locus of Nanih Waiya, the “Mother Mound” in Mississippi. Over the period examined, Choctaws faced numerous challenges and intense pressures: ranging from epidemic disease, warfare and civil war, land dispossession and removal, racism and segregation, and generations of repressive federal, state, and local policies and interactions. Choctaws within the diaspora utilized many different strategies to survive, adapt, and thrive, including migration, warfare, diplomacy, and trade. While the diaspora began in earnest in the mid-eighteenth century, within a century there were bands across the American south – in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma. Identity and belonging within that diaspora grew complicated, especially after the Dawes Act turned identity into a politicized issue of race through the imposition of “blood quantum.” Choctaws across the diaspora in the mid-twentieth century engaged in increased political activity, asserting their identity and promoting tribal sovereignty. By the turn of the century, the diaspora saw Choctaws spread throughout the nation, represented by multiple federally or state recognized bands ranging across the entirety of the historic geographic range of the diaspora. Though Termination and Relocation were federal policies aimed at continued settler colonialism and dispossession, indigenous agency and activism turned the mid-twentieth century into a period of cultural rebirth. Choctaw resilience and dedication to sovereignty and self-determination led to the creation of multiple federally or state recognized bands, including the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians (Louisiana), the MOWA Choctaw (Alabama; state recognized), the Choctaw-Apache of Ebarb (Louisiana; state recognized), and the Clifton Choctaw (Louisiana, state recognized), and Afro-Choctaws, descended from the Choctaw Freedpeople, formerly enslaved by Choctaws prior to the Civil War. These groups continue to navigate identity and “Choctawness” within the diaspora today. The historical, cultural, social, and ethnological events which have created so many Choctaw bands have created a rich, complex, meaningful legacy of what it means to be Choctaw, while leaving a powerful unifying sense of identity. Whether Choctaws are in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, or elsewhere, they have continued to defend their culture and sovereignty. The diaspora is alive and well, and the memory and symbol of Nanih Waiya remains a powerful beacon uniting Choctaws together. The Choctaw diaspora is the story of struggles, of displacement, of dispossession. Much more than that, however – it is the story of memory, of unity, of resistance, of survival, of perseverance.

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Metaphisically revolting? Valentin Clavé-Mercier, ‘Indigenous political theory, metaphysical revolt, and the decolonial rearticulation of political ordering’, International Theory, 2025

30Jan25

Abstract: Colonization processes have resulted in the naturalization and universalization of a particular Eurocentric construction of political ordering. As a result, Indigenous claims of sovereignty – especially significant in settler colonial contexts since the 1960s and 1970s – have historically been obfuscated and are still construed as anomalies or impossibilities. Based on poststructuralist international relations theory and Indigenous political theory, as well as interviews conducted with Māori actors participating in the mobilization of sovereignty politics, this article advances two main contributions. Firstly, it develops a particular approach to the state-Indigenous contention of political ordering by calling attention to the metaphysical foundations of the particular conceptions of sovereignty they respectively deploy. Secondly, it contends that Māori political actors are enacting a ‘metaphysical revolt’ through their reconceptualization of sovereignty theory and practice; one that contains potential for a decolonial rearticulation of political ordering. Through its direct engagement with Indigenous political mobilization and the theorizing sustaining it, this article illustrates how Indigenous theories of sovereignty translate into conceptual alternatives that break away from the colonial roots and underpinnings of paradigmatic sovereignty. Therefore, this article contributes to exploring alternative models of political ordering by illuminating the links between Indigenous thought and decolonial imagination.

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Decolonial entanglements against settler colonialism: David Myer Temin, ‘Indigenous Liberation and Decolonization: Circulations between Third and Fourth Worlds’, in Anne Garland Mahler, Christopher J. Lee, Monica Popescu (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of the Global South, Oxford Academic, 2025

30Jan25

Abstract: The history of Indigenous peoples’ liberation and decolonization movements have been undertheorized within—when not simply omitted from—histories of the Global South. The applicability of the decolonization framework and the limits of Third World solidarities have often been fraught with respect to Indigenous peoples’ movements, despite an overlapping, if not shared, heritage of decolonizing discourses and practices of (inter)national liberation and self-determination. This chapter explores how Indigenous studies scholars have reconfigured the framework of Red Power, arguing on behalf of the potential in more recent attempts to uncover and theorize the far more complex political and philosophical connections between transnational Indigenous peoples’ decolonization movements (labeled the “Fourth World” by George Manuel) and the “Third World.” In doing so, this chapter seeks to throw into relief the disjunctures and underexplored connections between histories of the Global South (especially its Third Worldist precedents) and of Indigenous peoples’ liberation/decolonization movements. The chapter narrows in primarily on North American Indigenous peoples’ movements and scholarship in Indigenous Studies but branches out in the final section to consider tensions between the contemporary geopolitical promise of the Global South and Indigenous struggles within and against the colonial and postcolonial world.

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Colonialist science fiction: Ben Woodard, Uninhabited: A fresh view on sci-fi and colonialism, Collective Ink, 2025

30Jan25

Description: Is it inhabited? This question makes the shared stakes of science fiction and colonialism obvious, wherein the wide imaginaries of empire and what counts as life – scientifically, ethically, politically – and the moral and technological possibilities of terraforming and the impulse for exploration are all fused. Science fiction, and the genres that preceded and grounded it, such as scientific romance and tales of lost civilizations, emerged alongside the birth of industrialized global trade and imperial rushes for new resources. If the scientific romance dramatized the effects of new technologies on history and forms of life, then lost civilization stories dealt with themes of the alien, the forgetting of history, and more explicitly, with episodes of war and oppression.

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