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The madness of settler colonialism: Kaori Wada, Karlee D. Fellner,’Decolonizing Psychiatric Diagnosis: Turning the DSM on Its Head’, American Psychologist, 2024

21Jan25

Abstract: The conception of this article came to us at the end of a land-based healing program informed by Indigenous approaches to wellness. In this article, we dismantle psychiatric diagnosis, particularly the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s notion of sociodiagnosics, we put DSM diagnostic categories under a sociogenic microscope. We assert that the DSM and psychologizing discourses are cultural products born out of coloniality, which continue to serve as tools for the subjugation of iyiniwak (Indigenous peoples), a phenomenon termed psycholonization. After setting our intentions and describing Fanon’s sociodiagnostics, we will examine various disorders and symptomatology from a decolonial lens. By using the very language of the DSM, we make visible and “diagnose” the colonial logics and ideologies inherent in these categories. This includes addiction to, and obsessions with, excessive material wealth and power that has justified the dispossession of iyiniwak land and now is causing a climate crisis that threatens humanity and all our relations. We assert that these colonial logics and ideologies are pathogenic not only for iyiniwak but also for settlers and all people. In the second section, we recenter vastly different worldviews that underpin Indigenous approaches to “assessment” and “diagnosis,” including a nonlinear understanding of time, listening to and engaging wisdoms, and the acknowledgment of diversity and divergence as a given that is celebrated and honored. We end this article by addressing the importance of conceptual humility to rectify epistemic violence that is at the core of jagged diagnostic worldviews colliding.


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The political ecology of settler colonialism: Emma Pearce, ‘Settler colonialism and the environment in Al-Walaja, Palestine’, The International Journal of Human Rights, 2025

20Jan25

Abstract: It is now widely acknowledged in the scholarship that Israel maintains a settler colonial regime, which has resulted in pervasive human rights abuses. However, the relation between ecology and settler colonialism in Palestine-Israel has only recently been subject to significant scholarly theorisation, despite the growing field of environmental colonialism and the present ecological crisis. This article adds to the limited field of eco-social and ecological settler colonial study of Palestine-Israel through the case study of Al-Walaja, a village in the illegally occupied West Bank, bordering the suburbs of East Jerusalem. Al-Walaja, a village known for its natural beauty and rich agricultural heritage, particularly its ancient terraced agriculture, has been transformed by Israeli settler colonial dispossession, which has claimed 89 per cent of the village’s land since 1947. This paper explores how settler colonialism and ecology intersect in Al-Walaja. First, by arguing that Al-Walaja is an example of the greenwashing and green grabbing practices that Israel uses to normalise the dispossession of Palestinians and obscure colonisation and environmental harms. Second, it examines how environmental harms, in particular restrictions on building in the village, cause the perpetuation of a settler colonial declensionist narrative and settler-native binary. Lastly, the decline of agriculture in Al-Walaja is contextualised in terms of the normalisation and erasure inherent to settler colonial projects.


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Shipwreck settler colonialism: Charlotte Ann Legg, ‘The Settler Colonial Ideal in Nineteenth-Century France: From Revolutionary Shipwreck to Settler Colonial Shores’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 86, 1, 2025 , pp. 109-139

20Jan25

Abstract: This article analyzes the published testimonies of French shipwreck survivors to trace the emergence of a settler colonial ideal in nineteenth-century France. Emerging from the encounters of French survivors with the men of the Anglo-World, this ideal encouraged compassionate, paternalist authority as a solution to the ongoing conflict of paternal despotism and disorderly fraternal freedom in France. The community of sentiment imagined in shipwreck testimonies was gendered and racialized, cultivating white compassion across colonial empires. These transimperial affective ties allowed the settler colonial ideal to persist in the early twentieth century, despite the abandonment of further projects for French settlement.


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Accumulation by Indigenous repossession? Thilo van der Haegen, Heather Whiteside,’Accumulation by repossession: Capitalist settler colonialism in Coast Salish territory’, EPA: Economy and Space, 2025

19Jan25

Abstract: Several Coast Salish First Nations are actively involved in land reclamation and redevelopment in the greater Vancouver region (Canada). Through their for-profit development corporations, entities like Nch’ḵay̓ Development Corporation (Squamish Nation) and the joint-venture Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil Waututh Development Corporation have become key players in the lucrative Vancouver property market in partnership with other public and private land developers. Situating multibillion-dollar holdings like the Jericho and Sen̓áḵw projects that further highest-and-best-use appraisal within the context of the area’s settler colonial history, we argue that land repossession and its associated development was made possible through settler colonial forms like corporate decisions, legal judgements and political frameworks that rendered land ready for disposal. Repossession thus created options for new types of reintegration into capitalist spheres, primarily as residential real estate projects, independent from specific configurations of land tenure as fee simple or reserve land. Advancing the concept of ‘accumulation by repossession,’ a recursive moment associated with dispossession, we describe how First Nations peoples are regaining land title and political-economic control at the same time as their development corporations are promoting urban capital accumulation through privatized profit making. Land ‘improvement’, speculation, and the creation of private real property have driven Indigenous dispossession in Coast Salish territory just as they now shape repossession.


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Upturning horrific settler narratives: Brad Buckhalter, More Than Horror, Other Than Fantasy: Stephen Graham Jones, Tanya Tagaq, and Decolonial Genre Fiction, MA dissertation, Texas Tech University, 2024

19Jan25

Abstract: In this project, I turn to Chadwick Allen’s (Chickasaw ancestry) trans-Indigenous methodology to consider how two Indigenous North American authors move within Euro-Western genre, or move beyond it altogether, in making fictive texts that advance decoloniality and Indigenous artistic sovereignty. First, I read Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians as a novel that adopts the exterior form of the mainstream slasher genre only to destabilize and indigenize the genre’s interior logic—its standard characters, narrative arcs, and tropes. By indigenizing this literary form, Jones not only undermines its conventions but also shows how it is founded on and perpetuates settler violence, how it serves as an optics for reading settler expansionism in the U.S. as slasher horror, and how it resonates with narratives that authorized the killing of Indigenous peoples as part of the settler project. Next, I turn to Tanya Tagaq’s written text Split Tooth and the music video for her track “Colonizer.” In the ways these texts portray kinship between Indigenous peoples and the other-than-human world, they function as what Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee) calls Indigenous wonderworks. Read together, as what I call a trans-media Indigenous wonderwork, they support one another in bolstering Tagaq’s message of decoloniality and Indigenous artistic sovereignty. Allen’s trans-Indigenous methodology shows that, when juxtaposed—or read close together—Jones’s and Tagaq’s texts ultimately act as lenses or tools for interpreting Indigenous cultural production that works within and beyond mainstream Euro-Western genres.


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The pandemic of settler colonialism: Alexandra Curran, Disaster Capitalism, Settler Colonialism, and Indigenous Environmental Justice in the COVID-19 Pandemic, MA dissertation, University of Manitoba, 2025

19Jan25

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic was experienced by nearly every person around the world. However, while the pandemic was borne by everyone, the weight of everyone’s burden was not equal and was heavily influenced by preexisting inequalities and harmful social structures. As they have in the past, Indigenous peoples in Canada, as well as around the world, experienced disproportionate impacts and losses from this most recent crisis. This may be largely connected to the ongoing presence of settler colonial ideologies and structures which, among other issues, resulted in a lack of necessary infrastructure needed to manage the pandemic within First Nations, as well as a patronizing disregard for Indigenous pandemic decision-making. In conjunction, disaster capitalism ensued throughout the pandemic, a practice defined by Naomi Klein as the exploitation of crises by the powerful to further their own agendas, which worked to further compound and hinder Indigenous efforts to ensure community safety and well-being. However, First Nations nonetheless determinedly asserted their self-determination, challenging harmful decision-making and prioritizing community well-being. This project utilizes two cases (Case Study 1: Keeyask Lockdown, Manitoba and Case Study 2: Ring of Fire, Ontario) to examine how the pervasive ideologies of settler colonialism interacted and influenced disaster capitalism during the pandemic, as well as how Indigenous Environmental Justice (IEJ) was then enacted by communities. An analysis of these cases demonstrate that, while disaster capitalism and IEJ were prevalent during COVID-19, the specific circumstances were nonetheless shaped by distinct, place-based histories and relationships among settlers and Indigenous peoples. Moreover, this project explores the narratives surrounding these cases, including how they were presented to the public by various Mainstream, Alternative/Advocacy and Indigenous news outlets by utilizing a media analysis. This analysis notably observed the considerable inclusion of settler narratives/biases by Mainstream sources, while Alternative/Advocacy, and Indigenous sources specifically, highlighted Indigenous voices/experiences and the context of sovereignty. Lastly, and being mindful of the general disregard and absence of Indigenous voices within academia and news media, the inclusion of a community experience chapter highlights placebased Indigenous experiences and ways of knowing regarding the Keeyask case study; Demonstrating the complexity of Indigenous relationships with industry and settler government, these experiences moreover spoke to a dedication to continue to take action, heal and move forward in a good way. By exploring these subjects of settler colonialism, disaster capitalism and Indigenous Environmental Justice through various lens’ (case studies, media analysis and community experiences) and by utilizing a two-eyed seeing approach which borrowed from qualitative and Indigenous methodologies, this project demonstrates the value of employing multiple perspectives and storytelling when striving to formulate contextualized, respectful and meaningful research.


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The stories that underpin settler reaction: Trent Tetterton, ‘”God’s country” in crisis: critical race theory, ontological (in)security, and white Christian nationalism in the USA’, International Politics, 2025

18Jan25

Abstract: The USA has witnessed an ongoing war against ‘critical race theory’ (CRT) alongside more virulent expressions of white Christian nationalism (WCN). Opponents maintain the narrative: CRT is an evil ploy by the Marxist Left posing a mortal threat to America. Building on ontological security scholarship and Lacanian theory on affect, discourse, and subjectivity, the article explores why this narrative has ‘succeeded’ and how WCN is related. It argues that WCN provides the ontologically insecure subject with an internal narrative-of-self. CRT threatens this self-narrative while the external anti-CRT narrative supports it. To the extent that it has influenced policy and transformed common language, the latter has ‘succeeded’ through its use of ‘affective sticking points’: valued signifiers, fantasies, and biographical narratives. An analysis of City Journal and Fox News articles published in 2020 and 2021 reveals that their use has crafted a fantasy portending the death of (white Christian) America.


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Settler ideologies and their psychological reverberations: Jaiden Herkimer, Becky Choma, Leen Nasser, ‘Non-Indigenous Canadians’ Post-Colonial Ideologies, Allyship and Collective Guilt Predict Support for Reconciliation, Collective Action and Political Tolerance’, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2025

18Jan25

Abstract: Since the release of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (2015) report and their 94 Calls to Action, there has been a push to advance truth and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Much of the heavy lifting has been done by Indigenous peoples; but to comprehensively redress injustices there is a need for non-Indigenous support. In two studies with non-Indigenous Canadians (n=355; n=341), we investigated post-colonial ideologies (historical negation, symbolic exclusion), ally/supporter identity and collective guilt as predictors of support for reconciliation and Indigenous collective action movements, and political tolerance of Indigenous peoples. Consistent with hypotheses, higher post-colonial ideologies, lower ally/supporter identification and lower collective guilt related to less support and less political tolerance. Collective guilt emerged as a mediator for support for reconciliation and Indigenous collective action (except for symbolic exclusion in Study 1); but it moderated the relations for political tolerance. Collective guilt also moderated relations between symbolic exclusion and ally/supporter identity with support for reconciliation in Study 1. Future directions for advancing understanding of post colonial ideologies and possible applied interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations are discussed.


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Unreserved Indigenous mobility: Liz Conor, ‘”Their Reserves Are a Mere Farce”: Aboriginal Stations in the Port Phillip Protectorate’, Australian Historical Studies, 2025

18Jan25

Abstract: The Aboriginal reserves of the Port Phillip Protectorate were short-lived and unsettled, largely due to the resistance of Kulin clans to residing in one place. In the earliest years of European incursion onto their Country, they contested being shunted from their homelands, networks of ceremonial sites, and wide-ranging harvestscapes onto small, unleased backblocks of Crown land. Instead, Kulin moved between reserves using them as nodes in their sovereignty in order to maintain seasonal generating and collecting, and familial obligations, as well as to practise ceremony and law. Drawing on the records of Assistant Protector William Thomas, and focusing on the Nerre Nerre Warren Station (1841–43) and the Pound Bend Reserve (1852–61), this article describes the continual movement of Kulin through and across the earliest of reserve sites on which they were supposed to ‘settle’.


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Whistleblowing settler colonialism: Darren Reid, ‘Whistleblowing on Indigenous Labour Abuses in Western Australia: Motivations of Settler Humanitarianism in the Late Nineteenth Century’, Australian Historical Studies, 2025

18Jan25

Abstract: This article investigates the motivations behind settler whistleblowing on Indigenous labour abuses in nineteenth-century Western Australia, focusing on two key figures, the ex-convict David Carley and the pearler and pastoralist John Walkinshaw Cowan. While historical narratives often portray such humanitarian activists as morally exceptional, this article argues that their motivations were complex, rooted in a duality of altruism and personal self-interest. It explores how Carley and Cowan’s personal grievances with local authorities and business competitors fuelled their activism, demonstrating how settler humanitarianism combined concern for Indigenous wellbeing with the pursuit of personal interests. Rather than viewing settler humanitarianism as merely flawed or cynical, the article suggests that its self-serving dimensions were integral to its very possibility. Ironically, the entanglement of moral action with personal benefit that made settler humanitarianism possible also made it vulnerable, since the existence of ulterior motives provided government officials with reason to doubt whistleblower credibility.


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