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Fishy settler colonialism: Barrie Blatchford, ‘Salmon propagation and settler colonialism in California: the United States Fish Commission, the McCloud River Hatchery, and the dispossession of the Winnemem Wintu’, Settler Colonial Studies, 2025

08Mar25

Abstract: Congress created the United States Fish Commission (USFC) in 1871 to investigate the causes of fish diminution on the Atlantic seaboard, but the USFC’s remit soon expanded from study to intervention. In settler California, the USFC set up one of its first hatcheries for chinook salmon propagation on the McCloud River, a tributary of the Sacramento. In so doing, the USFC dispossessed and subordinated the Winnemem Wintu people who lived on the river, a sad story of colonial violence that has been downplayed in existing historiography. The USFC distributed the products of this hatchery – millions of chinook salmon eggs and juvenile fish – across America and to foreign nations interested in fish ‘acclimatization’, the contemporary term for non-native species introductions. New Zealander and Australian acclimatization societies contracted with the USFC in the 1870s and 1880s to introduce chinook salmon there in hopes of aggressively remaking waters to better suit the culinary tastes and angling preferences of European-descended settlers. Over time, the salmon productivity of the river declined, ceasing entirely with the Shasta Dam’s construction in the 1940s. But in an exemplar of Indigenous resilience and environmental stewardship, today the Wintu are leading efforts to restore chinook salmon to the river.


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Settler homebuilders: Lindsey R. Peterson, ‘”Home-Builders”: Free Labor Households and Settler Colonialism in Western Union Civil War Commemorations’, The Journal of the Civil War Era, 15, 1, 2025, pp. 33-54

08Mar25

Abstract: In the trans-Mississippi West, white Union veterans and their families commemorated the American Civil War in ways that supported the colonization of American Indians and privileged themselves. This article analyzes the gendered dimensions of this process. In Memorial Day addresses, monument dedication speeches, and GAR and WRC records, western Union veterans celebrated themselves for preserving and expanding free, single-family households west, which they asserted was a legacy of their Civil War military service. Contending Union veterans and their wives best exemplified civilization, they employed Civil War commemorative rituals to argue they were the most deserving of western lands and entitlements.


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Degrowth settler colonialism: Kelly Gingrich, Lina Brand-Correa, Elaine Howarth, Anna Stratton,’Ecological Economics Degrowth in a settler state: climate-just economic transitions and Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples in Canada’, Ecological Economics, 232, 2025, #108549

08Mar25

Abstract: Degrowth offers pathways to stay within ecological limits while increasing human and planetary wellbeing. As non-indigenous scholars living in the settler state of Canada we see a gap in the degrowth literature regarding degrowth transitions within settler societies, as much of it comes out of a European context. In this paper, we analyze three political commitments that Canada has signed – the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), the Paris Climate Agreement and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,- to explore how a degrowth transition may help us move forward together on the path of Reconciliation with (and decolonization of) First Nations, Metis and Inuit Peoples (Indigenous Peoples). We do this by searching for interconnections between Canada’s current obligations towards Reconciliation and three pillars of degrowth thought: ecological limits and Reconciliation with the land; autonomy and Indigenous sovereignty; and alternative views of ‘the good life’. We offer an exploration of these interconnections to open up ways to ground degrowth transitions in reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. Our aim is to encourage and challenge the ecological economics and degrowth communities to engage with pluralistic and decolonial imaginaries in settler societies specifically.


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Settler and fascist colonialism: Giuseppe Finaldi, ‘It is a Fascist Empire. Some points of discussion on the nature of the Italy’s colonialism during the Fascist period, Revista Estudos do Século XX, 24, 2024

08Mar25

Abstract: On May 9, 1936, in one of his most celebrated speeches delivered from the balcony of Rome’s Palazzo Venezia, Mussolini announced to Italy and the world that the nation ‘finally had its empire.’ Italian troops had entered Addis Ababa a few days earlier; Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian king of kings, had fled into exile. The Duce’s words were broadcast across the country and throngs gathered in all of Italy’s piazzas where loudspeakers – sixteen had been set up in Milan’s Piazza Duomo for example[i] – blared out Mussolini’s speech in real time. In the following days newspapers and newsreels ad infinitum repeated what came to be called the declaration of the ‘foundation of the empire’. Vittorio Emanuele, previously merely Italy’s king, was by law now also to be referred to as ‘emperor’. According to historian Renzo De Felice, the blacksmith’s son and former socialist, at the height of his popularity, refused Vittorio Emanuele’s offer to be made a prince, informing the monarch that the Mussolinis came from a long line of peasants, something he was proud of.


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Settlers and their ghosts: Sladja Blažan, Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America, University of Virginia Press, 2025

08Mar25

Description: Ghost stories as a window on the American settler psyche. In this innovative book, Sladja Blažan explains the foundational role of ghost stories in fostering the cultural imaginary, offering a medium for framing political ideologies, philosophical thought, racial anxieties, and social concerns. Ghosts and Their Hosts analyzes American ghost stories, considering their role as a settler colonial tool that emerged to help justify land appropriation and human labor exploitation. Blažan breaks with the long tradition of reading ghosts as harbingers of justice, arguing that early American ghost stories worked instead to suppress the presence of non-Europeans through fantasies of European transcultural incorporation. Images of sentient forests and nature possessed by spirits helped develop fixed racial, gendered, and sexualized categories, while authors used ghosts to affirm existing hierarchies and establish new ones. Focusing on the cultural exchanges between Germany, England, France, and the United States around the turn of the nineteenth century, Blažan deploys a groundbreaking ecocritical and comparative approach to shed light on this haunting subject.


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Truth under settler colonialism: Marc Owen Jones, ‘Evidencing alethocide: Israel’s war on truth in Gaza’, Third World Quarterly, 2025

07Mar25

Abstract: This paper examines Israel’s systematic deployment of disinformation during its war on Gaza since October 2023, introducing the concept of ‘alethocide’ – the systemic destruction of truth. Using a mixed-methods approach combining cross-media ethnography and open-source intelligence, this study analyzes key disinformation campaigns across digital platforms, including the widely circulated “40 beheaded babies” narrative, state-sponsored influence operations targeting African Americans, and coordinated attacks on UNRWA. The research proposes a novel framework for assessing disinformation campaigns based on dimensions including intensity, reach, depth, penetration, recidivism, hierarchy, harm, and longevity. Findings reveal Israel’s production of atrocity propaganda, systematic efforts to dehumanize Palestinians, and organized campaigns to undermine humanitarian organizations. The study demonstrates how disinformation is modulated by geopolitical actors, media outlets, and tech platforms, which act as selective amplifiers within the broader technopolitical landscape. The research situates this alethocide within the context of settler colonialism and epistemic violence, arguing that disinformation serves not just to mask violence but to actively construct alternative realities that legitimize genocide. By examining the intersection of disinformation with power structures and technology, this study advances beyond traditional episodic definitions of disinformation to demonstrate how it functions as a component of symbolic power that reinforces existing geopolitical hierarchies.


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Contesting the future of settler colonialism: Kristina Baudemann, The Future Imaginary in Indigenous North American Arts and Literatures, Routledge, 2022

07Mar25

Description: This book examines the future in Indigenous North American speculative literature and digital arts. Asking how different Indigenous works imagine the future and how they negotiate settler colonial visions of what is to come, the chapters illustrate that the future is not an immutable entity but a malleable textual/digital product that can function as both a colonial tool and a catalyst for decolonization. Central to this study is the development of a methodology that helps unearth the signifying structures producing the future in selected works by Darcie Little Badger, Gerald Vizenor, Stephen Graham Jones, Skawennati, Danis Goulet, Scott Benesiinaabandan, Postcommodity, Kite, Jeff Barnaby, and Ryan Singer. Drawing on Jason Lewis’s “future imaginary” as the theoretical core, the book describes the various forms of textual representation and virtual simulation through which notions of Indigenous continuation are expressed in literary and new media works. Arguing that Indigenous authors and artists apply the aesthetics of the future as a strategy in their works, the volume conceptualizes its multimedia corpus as a continuously growing archive of, and for, Indigenous futures.


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Introducing a special issue on the parliaments of settlers: David Thackeray, Amanda Behm, ‘Settler Colonialism and Parliamentary Democracy – Histories and Legacies’, Parliamentary History, 2025

04Mar25

Abstract: In this introduction we make the case for a new understanding of the relationship between settler colonialism and the development of democratic governance. The concurrence of franchise reform in Europe with the establishment of parliaments in the settler colonies during the mid 19th century is usually seen as consolidating an exclusionary concept of citizenship rooted in the values of whiteness, manliness, and respectability, undermining existing forms of political assertion by marginalised peoples.While still emphasising the fundamental inequalities of power which settler-led governments fostered, the articles in this special issue consider how the advent of settler democracy and the variety of constitutional experiments initiated in the colonies complicated understandings of what parliamentarism meant. Far from there being a narrowing of concepts of democratic norms and practices in the second half of the 19th century,these concepts became increasingly multivocal and disparate as different interest groups sought to assert their right to participate in parliamentary democracy. Understanding the historical challenges to settler democracy, as well as its legacies, is important when considering the ongoing dilemmas which parliaments face in making political decision-making more inclusive for all communities.


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The constitutions of settlers: Alex Martinborough, ‘Writing Settler Constitutions, Debating Imperial Responsibility, and Managing the Conscience of Parliamentary Empire, c.1860–1910’, Parliamentary History, 2025

04Mar25

Abstract: This article explores how settler self-government and written constitutions provoked questions about the responsibilities towards Indigenous peoples and the role of British parliament in the imperial constitution. It traces how British and settler commentators drew connections between colonies in their responses to Indigenous and humanitarian critiques of imperial policy, contributing to changing ideas about constitutions, self-government, and the future of empire. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, self-government was a central component of British political thinking.Debates over self-government raised important questions with moral and ethical implications that politicians and public commentators grappled with throughout the empire. British politicians used self-government as a justification for empire and to distance themselves from responsibility for the injustices of settler colonialism. Constitutions were a flexible political technology that were used to justify imperial inaction and to manage the imperial conscience while facilitating a belief among British politicians that a legal empire could also be a moral one. Such visions never materialised. This article revisits the historic and continuing relationship between democracy, constitutions, and settler colonialism. It argues that as Britons debated the importance of self-government and colonial constitutions, seemingly settled constitutional ideas were deeply contested and remade through intercolonial debates.


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Settler colonialism is not your job (at CUNY): Liam Knox, ‘Under Pressure, CUNY Removes Palestine Scholar Job Posting: System leaders took down a job posting for a Palestinian studies professor at Governor Hochul’s insistence. Faculty say it’s an unprecedented breach of academic autonomy’, Inside Higher Education, 26/02/25

03Mar25

Excerpt: New York governor Kathy Hochul took an unusual interest in the hiring practices of the City University of New York on Tuesday when she ordered the public system to take down a job posting for a professorship in Palestinian studies at Hunter College. CUNY quickly complied, and faculty at Hunter are up in arms over what they call a brazen intrusion into academic affairs from a powerful state lawmaker. The job posting was for “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality.”


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