settler colonial studies blog

Responsive settlers? Tim Delany, Sophie Rudolph, Lisa McKay-Brown, ‘Cultural responsiveness, Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports, and the settler colonial state’, The Australian Educational Researcher, 2025

15Feb25

Abstract: Positive Behaviour Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a whole school change framework and approach to learning and engagement that originated in the United States (US) and is now implemented around the world. Such a framework requires consideration of cultural responsiveness, particularly in settler colonial states such as the US and Australia. This article examines guidance for improving culturally responsive practice in the PBIS Cultural Responsiveness Field Guide: Resources for Trainers and Coaches (the Guide), a key resource for educators working with students from culturally diverse backgrounds. We employ critical policy analysis and Decolonising Race Theory (DRT) to analyse and discuss the possibilities and consequences of the Guide for educators who are working with Indigenous students in settings that inherit and uphold structural racisms endemic to colonisation. We identify possible intended and unintended effects of the Guide in settler colonial contexts, particularly Australia. Our critical analysis using DRT highlighted some silences and erasures within the PBIS cultural responsiveness advice. The tendency towards othering, binary thinking, and maintenance of the cultural status quo was also apparent. Through this analysis we show how DRT offers rich opportunities for unsettling settler colonial hegemonies in PBIS and in education more broadly.

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Zombie settlers: James Rose, ‘The Blood Running Through the Water: Decoding the White Settler Zombie in Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum’, in S. Bacon (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Zombie, Palgrave, 2025

15Feb25

Excerpt: Released in 2019, Jeff Barnaby’s (Mi’gMaq) Blood Quantum takes the established tropes of North American Zombie Cinema—the unexplained viral outbreak, the infectious bite, and the violent conflict between factions of survivors, the young, pregnant survivor and the symbolic potential of the zombie itself—and deftly reworks them through a First Nations perspective.

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Settler colonialism and Indigenous refusal: Charlie Amáyá Scott, Settler Colonialism and Refusal Through Indigenous Eyes, PhD dissertation, University of Denver, 2024

15Feb25

Abstract: The educational system within the united states has benefited and continues to benefit from the structures and systems of settler colonialism. Yet, despite such colonizing goals of displacement, removal, and genocide, Indigenous Peoples are still here. This critical Indigenous qualitative research study sought to understand descriptions and interpretations of settler colonialism from the perspectives of Indigenous undergraduate students and how they have, refused settler colonialism while navigating their undergraduate journeys. Indigenous ways of knowing and ways of being were centered and cited in a manner that made this dissertation more than just a research study; it became a home where Indigenous brilliance, beauty, and power were honored and celebrated. The “data” was gathered from semi-structured individual and group sharing circles comprised of seven amazing Indigenous undergraduate students from five public and private colleges and universities across the southwestern region of the united states. In alignment with the Decolonizing Arts-based Methodology, developed by combining the brilliance of Decolonizing Methodologies with the creativity of Arts-based Research, descriptions and interpretations of settler colonialism and refusal were shared through seven data poems. Through poetic inquiry, the love and frustrations of being an Indigenous student are expressed and experienced furthering our own understandings of settler colonialism and refusal. The collegiate experiences of these seven amazing Indigenous undergraduate students remind us that they know what settler colonialism is and are capable of refusing settler colonialism throughout their educational pathways because of community, home, and family. Their experiences indicate a need for us as researchers, scholars, faculty, and university staff to develop further systems of support on college and university campuses that honor, affirm, and uplift Indigenous students and continue to support and cultivate the practices of refusal of Indigenous undergraduate students and their communities.

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Diplomatic resistance against settler colonialism: Shamikh Badra, ‘Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Diplomatic Resistance in Palestine (1882 to 1914)’, State Crime Journal, 2024

15Feb25

Abstract: This article contributes to the study of settler colonialism and Indigenous resistance by introducing a novel framework: “Indigenous Diplomatic Resistance” (IDR). Michel Foucault’s theories are useful for highlighting how Indigenous groups use diplomatic channels to resist settler-colonial domination. By applying settler colonialism theory to the Palestinian case, this article offers new insights into Palestinian resistance against colonial Zionism, especially in the time of Jewish immigration between 1882 to 1914. Foucault’s notion of discursive power underscores how colonial powers impose knowledge systems that justify control, whilst Indigenous peoples push back through alternate forms of knowledge, including diplomatic strategies. This article challenges narratives that focus on military or grassroots resistance, suggesting that Palestinian diplomatic resistance was central to their resistance strategy. This approach provides a new lens through which to understand the nature of Palestinian resistance, emphasizing the epistemic struggle inherent in their fight against settler colonialism.

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Settler colonialist psychoanalysis: Leon Hoffman, ‘Book Essay: Settler Colonialism: Where to Now?’ Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2025

15Feb25

Excerpt: An examination of settler colonialism from a psychoanalytic perspective is valuable in several ways. Unfortunately, too many people view this very complex topic from a binary perspective, oversimplifying causes as well as modes of redress. One source of oversimplification is a result of the difficulty in managing/mastering our own aggression that is stirred up when we think of horrors from the past and observe them in the present. A variety of defense mechanisms are available to us to deal with our own pain and conflict. Splitting allows us to see the world as consisting of either good people or bad people, denying the ever present ambiguities. Projection allows us to imbue our own forbidden impulses and wishes onto those with whom we disagree.

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If not now, when? Joyce Dalsheim, ‘The temporality of the structure: When is settler colonialism?’ History ad Anthropology, 2025

15Feb25

Abstract: When does settler-colonialism begin? Using the case of Israel/Palestine, this article moves through multiple historical possibilities proposed by scholars and activists to understand the “beginning” of the colonization of Palestine. Patrick Wolfe’s nowfamous work argued that such colonization should be thought of as a structure. I call for expanding his analysis, arguing that thinking about temporality with structure—that is, thinking about the implications of settler-colonialism’s beginnings and ends–allows us to see the continuities and deeper structures that pre-exist particular settler invasions in specific places. Rather than presenting a linear analysis, I look for patterns that help us think with and beyond the stale categories of oppressed and oppressor, colonizers and colonized, which work to entrench the very systems they seek to dismantle. To move beyond such binaries, I build on Gil Anidjar’s theorizing about the idea of Europe that constructs Muslims and Jews as enemies, and about the continuities of al-Andalus. If the Spanish capture of Grenada and expulsion of Muslims and Jews from their land (1482–1492) is also a form of settler-colonialism, then other forms of expulsion such as the enclosure movement in early modern England might be as well. The long-term continuities of settler-colonial structure rest on interrelated processes of change in the ways we define enemies, organize property regimes, and eliminate or reformulate indigeneity as such.

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Settler colonialism on drugs: Tierney Kobryn-Dietrich, Indigenous Sovereignty and Canadian Drug Laws, PhD dissertation, McMaster University, 2025

14Feb25

Abstract: This dissertation explores how Canadian drug laws impact Indigenous sovereignty and
perpetuate settler colonialism. It analyzes cannabis, liquor, and tobacco regulations to show how
they have historically undermined Indigenous rights. The first chapter examines cannabis laws
from 1923 to the 2018 Cannabis Act, revealing how these laws limit Indigenous control and
criminalize resistance. The second chapter discusses liquor laws from the late 1800s to the early
1900s, highlighting how they shaped white settler identities by penalizing those who interacted
with Indigenous people. The third chapter critiques the Canadian tobacco industry’s portrayal of
the Mohawk tobacco trade as illegal, showing how this benefits the industry economically
through the criminalization of Indigenous peoples. Drawing on Settler Colonial Theory, Critical
Race Theory, and Indigenous Criminology, this study uncovers the complex ways colonial
power dynamics operate, helping us understand how drug laws continue to control Indigenous
peoples and legitimize the theft of their lands.

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Stressed settlers: Carly E. Nichols, ‘Frustrated farmers and the fee simple: property-stress, settler colonialism and race in the United States heartland’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 2025

14Feb25

Abstract: The notion that farming is an unusually stressful occupation has become a cultural truism, with calls to investigate ‘root causes’ of stress on the farm. This paper argues the racialized, colonialist foundations of United States fee simple property is a ‘root cause’ of farm stress in the US corn belt. I build on work that sees farm property as not just a vehicle for economic gains, but imbricated in the performance and affective experience of whiteness and settler personhood. Drawing on interviews with Midwestern women farmers, I find many of their concerns fall into a category that I call ‘property-stress’. That is, while most are fiercely allegiant to the sanctity of the fee-simple farm and vigorously ‘defend’ their land rights, the very nature of the fee simple as abstract, commodifiable, and perpetual simultaneously engenders a competitive landscape that generates much stress. I argue that the racialized agrarianist logics undergirding Midwest agriculture produce particular racial and colonialist valences in land as well as a contradictory relationship with the federal sovereign who is ultimately the underwriter of white possession. These dynamics mean when the colonialist-capitalist vision of fee-simple property ‘fail’, it creates existential stress and forecloses opportunities to imagine a Midwest otherwise.

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Settler education, literally: Andrew Herscher, Under the Campus, the Land: Anishinaabe Futuring, Colonial Non-Memory, and the Origin of the University of Michigan, University of Michigan Press, 2025

13Feb25

Description: In the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, Anishinaabe leaders granted land to a college where their children could be educated. At the time, the colonial settlement of Anishinaabe homelands hardly extended beyond Detroit in what settlers called the “Michigan Territory.” Four days after the Treaty of Fort Meigs was signed, the First College of Michigania was founded to claim the land that the Anishinaabeg had just granted. Four years later, the newly-chartered University of Michigan would claim this land. By the time that the university’s successor moved to Ann Arbor twenty years later, Anishinaabe people had been forced to cede almost all their land in what had become the state of Michigan, now inhabited by almost 200,000 settlers. Under the Campus, the Land narrates the University of Michigan’s place in both Anishinaabe and settler history, tracing the university’s participation in the colonization of Anishinaabe homelands, Anishinaabe efforts to claim their right to an education, and the university’s history of disavowing, marginalizing, and minimizing its responsibilities and obligations to Anishinaabe people. Continuing the public conversations of the same name on U-M’s campus in 2023, Under the Campus, the Land provides a new perspective on the relationship between universities and settler colonialism in the US. Members of the U-M community, scholars of Midwest history, and those interested in Indigenous studies will find this book compelling.

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Canoeing like a settler: Bruce Erickson, ‘Guiding reconciliation? Approaches to colonialism among canoe trip guides’, Leisure, 2025

12Feb25

Abstract: The last 30 years has seen a re-affirmation of the importance of canoeing for Indigenous communities throughout North America. These practices put an urgency to recent re-evaluations of the role of the canoe as a national symbol. Given these changes, those who guide canoe trips professionally are working through a unique landscape. This paper examines how those guides are navigating the relationship between canoeing and colonialism. Based on semi-structured interviews with guides working in Canada, the research found that awareness of colonialism and reconciliation has impacted the practices of guides, especially around the recognition of territory the trips travelled through, the relationship with Indigenous communities, the framing of wilderness, and the learning they hoped to pass on. The paper concludes by considering how recreational backcountry travel by settler organizations can engage with current discussions of reconciliation and decolonization, specifically around the discourse of wilderness and the affirmation of Indigenous jurisdiction.

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