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Metissage as a way out? Heather Bensler, ‘Self-in-Relation: Seeking Understanding and Transformation through Indigenous Métissage’, Journal of Applied Hermeneutics, 2025

29Jul25

Abstract: In this article, I consider the narrative practice of Indigenous Métissage as a creative, subversive praxis to help understand my identity as a settler in Canada and how settler colonialism has shaped my relationship to Indigenous peoples, history, and Land in Canada. Given the hermeneutic roots of Indigenous Métissage, I suggest it is a research approach that can handle the complexities inherent in these relationships while also providing imagination and hope for transformation. I discuss how personal, and family stories can be textually braided with larger national narratives to draw attention to similarities and differences with the hopes of provoking understanding and new ways of seeing Indigenous and settler relations.


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The frozen language of settlers (II): Karen A. Rösch, ‘The Texas Alsatian Dialect in Medina County, Texas’, YGAS Supplemental Issue, 6, 2025, pp. 191-227

28Jul25

Excerpt: The Alsatian dialect was transported to Texas in the early 1800s, when entrepreneur Henri Castro recruited colonists from the French Alsace to comply with the Republic of Texas’ stipulations for populating one of his land grants located just west of San Antonio. Castro’s colonization efforts succeeded in bringing 2,134 German-speaking colonists from 1843-47 (Jordan 2004: 45-47; Weaver 1985:109) to his land grants in Texas, which resulted in the establishment of four colonies: Castroville (1844); Quihi (1845); Vandenburg (1846); D’Hanis (1847). Castroville was the first and most successful settlement and serves as the focus of this chapter, as it constitutes the largest concentration of Alsatian speakers. This chapter provides both a descriptive account of the ancestral language, Alsatian, and the current Alsatian language as spoken today, as well as a discussion of sociolinguistic and linguistic processes (e.g., use, shift, variation, regularization, etc.) observed and documented since 2007.


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The frozen language of settlers (I): Ryan Dux, ‘Wisconsin Pomeranian Low German’, YGAS Supplemental Issue 6, 2025, pp. 5-36

28Jul25

Excerpt: The U.S. state of Wisconsin is well-known for its rich German (broadly speaking) heritage and culture, yet the number of competent German speakers has drastically decreased over the past century. Here, I discuss the present state of the German language in Wisconsin, with a particular focus on the moribund Pomeranian Low German dialect spoken in Marathon and Lincoln counties in the central area of the state. The primary data for the linguistic analysis come from interviews conducted by the author in 2013 and 2014 with the last generation of German speakers in this area. “Wisconsin German” differs from other German-American varieties such as Texas German and Pennsylvania German in that immigrants from different German dialect areas formed small, relatively isolated communities and largely maintained their regional varieties, and these varieties did not mix or coalesce into a unified, mutually intelligible koiné. Thus, the moniker “Wisconsin German” is less appropriate than community-specific terms such as “Central Wisconsin Pomeranian,” “Dane County Kölsch,” or “New Glarus Swiss German.” Like most German-American varieties, Wisconsin German has undergone drastic language shift since around 1940 and is nearing the point of language death, as most competent speakers are well over the age of 65. The Pomeranian Low German community of central Wisconsin is representative of this linguistic situation: the immigrants formed a small community in a rural area centered around small country churches and most speakers had some command of both the regional dialect and standard High German, resulting in a unique situation of language contact. In this paper, I first provide a general overview of German(s) in Wisconsin (Section 2), before discussing the sociohistorical background (Section 3) and structure (Section 4) of Central Wisconsin Pomeranian.


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Indigenst research against settler colonialism: Bindi Bennett, Kelly Menzel (eds), Indigenous Research Knowledges and Their Place in the Academy, Springer, 2025

28Jul25

Description: This book privileges Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing in research and serves as a voice in taking on some of the more marginal topics within methodologies. It is significant in that it is written by indigenous scholars themselves. The contributors shed light, for example, on Queer BlaQ bodies and place Indigenous women as central in reimagining fair academic practice; others return to their foundational texts to reflect on the growth of Indigenous Standpoint Theory. This book sees Indigenous Peoples as holding greater significance within research objectives and institutional practices and reimagines a research world embracing storytelling as foundational to academia. It is intended for students and early researchers, particularly Indigenous researchers, whilst also serving as an invaluable textbook for non-Indigenous people as it aids in explaining and outlining Indigenous research and is a valuable tool in the classroom and with research students. It demonstrates that Indigenous research approaches can sit beside and be equal to Western research, especially when engaging with the ethics process and for PhD students. This book is invaluable for non-Indigenous allies and researchers globally to further explain and outline Aboriginal (Australian) Indigenous research.


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Even the Roman Empire! Jeremy Armstrong, Children of Mars: The Origins of Rome’s Empire, Oxford University Press, 2025

28Jul25

Description: A fresh narrative history of the rise of Rome’s empire in Italy, that exposes the monumental expansion of the Roman familial, social, political, and militaristic way of living across Italy. Before the Romans could become masters of the Mediterranean, they had to first conquer the people of their own peninsula. This book explores the origins of Roman imperialism and the creation of Rome’s early Italian empire, bringing new light and interpretations to this important but problematic period in Roman history. It explains how and why the Romans were able to expand their influence within Italy, often through the use of armed conflict, laying the foundations for their great imperial project. This book critically reexamines and reframes the traditional literary narrative within an archaeologically informed, archaic Italian context. Jeremy Armstrong presents a new interpretation of the early Roman army, highlighting the fluid and family-driven character which is increasingly visible in the evidence. Drawing on recent developments within the field of early Roman studies, Children of Mars argues that the emergence of Rome’s empire in Italy should not be seen as the spread of a distinct “Roman” people across Italian land, but rather the expansion of a social, political, and military network amongst the Italian people. Armstrong suggests that Rome’s early empire was a fundamentally human and relational one. While this reinterpretation of early Roman imperialism is no less violent than the traditional model, it alters its core dynamic and nature, and thus shifts the entire trajectory of Rome’s Republican history.


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The Return to the Land (RTTL) Movement: Settlers!

28Jul25

Your curated rabbit hole on the RTTL:

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5419057-whites-only-community-return-to-the-land-missouri-arkansas/amp/

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp-video/mmvo243787333559

https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/return-to-the-land-whites-only-b2795418.html#

https://news.sky.com/story/inside-the-whites-only-settlement-in-arkansas-the-group-building-a-fortress-for-the-white-race-13399875

The Times of Israel recognises a settlement when they see one:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/return-to-the-land-white-supremacists-building-whites-only-settlement-in-arkansas/amp/


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Settler colonialism resonates: Bill Rolston, ‘Ireland and Palestine: the roots of resonance’, Race & Class, 2025

26Jul25

Abstract: This article argues that, despite major differences across time and space, there are similarities between the colonial experience of the Irish in the midseventeenth century and the present-day colonial experience of Palestinians. This is illustrated by a detailed comparison of attacks by the Irish against English and Scottish settlers in 1641 and the Palestinian attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. In both cases, the indisputable violence of the attacks was exaggerated, thereby carrying out a crucial ideological role in underpinning the brutality of the state response. The collective memory of the Irish in relation to their own colonial experience allows for an easy identification of similar colonial experience elsewhere. The suffering of the people of Gaza resonates with people in Ireland in ways that it would not were the Irish not catching echoes of their own past in the contemporary experience of the Palestinians. That is the basis of the strength of pro-Palestinian actions in Ireland. Dismissed by some as evidence of antisemitism, these actions are instead instances of intense international solidarity.


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The rhetoric of settler colonialism: Joshua Smith, ‘Transforming Relationships: Land, Colonialism, and Rhetorical Sedimentation’, Journal for the History of Rhetoric, 28, 2, 2025, pp. 158-180

26Jul25

Abstract: This article uses the competing visions of land of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) to show the rhetorical operation of the human relationship with land. Telling two stories of the same land’s entanglement with diverging modes of relationship, it explains the concept of rhetorical sedimentation. Rhetorical sedimentation describes how certain rhetorics and discourses bury others, much as new dirt becomes stratified on top of old. With the aid of this geological metaphor, this article demonstrates the intersection of land relations with broader matters of cultural politics. Lee, it argues, follows the goals of settler colonialism and attempts to bury Indigenous peoples’ land relations with the Bears Ears National Monument. Through rhetorics of land relations, Lee claims the settler Utahn as “indigenous” and portrays federal ownership of public lands as a new form of colonialism. This article also argues that the coalition’s advocacy for Bears Ears serves to center its tribes’ land relations in public discourse about federal lands. Through such rhetorical work, the discursive terrain of Bears Ears and federal public lands gains new rhetorical strata. Attending to rhetorics of land relations, this article contends, affords rhetoric studies opportunities to resist complicity in colonial power.


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The style of settler colonialism: Mark Taylor, ‘”Literature in the Bush”: Samuel Butler, Style, and Settler Colonialism’, New Literary History, 56, 1, 2025, pp. 159-183

26Jul25

Abstract: This essay considers the relationship between settler colonialism and style in the work of Samuel Butler. Butler became an important influence on Anglophone modernism primarily through his semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh (1903). I argue that this text’s innovations were rooted in Butler’s time as a sheep farmer in New Zealand from 1859–64. Placing Butler in a theoretical tradition that insists on style’s essential tie to authorial personhood, I show how Butler’s “plain style” prose encodes a new, radically minimal conception of what it means to be a person—one profoundly shaped by the tensions of the settler experience.


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Parking settlers: Laura McKinley, ‘Commemorating Contested National Park Landscapes: The Canada 150 Discovery Pass and White Scopic Disremembering’, in Lourdes López-Ropero, Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż (eds), Literary and Cultural Responses to Mnemonic Landscapes, Springer, 2025, pp. 55-72

26Jul25

Abstract: This chapter explores the intricate relationship between memory, space, and white settler colonialism within Canada’s National Parks, using the Canada 150 Discovery Pass—a state-led commemorative program for Canada’s sesquicentennial—as a case study. It argues that these national parks, celebrated as iconic Canadian landscapes, are pivotal to a white settler national identity that necessitates the disremembering of colonial violence and dispossession for their very existence. The Canada 150 Discovery Parks Pass encouraged Canadians to reflect on, project, and imagine what it means to be Canadian through the viewing and spatial transit of these places purported to represent the best of Canada and its citizen-subjects. However, these parks are also sites of forced removals of Indigenous nations, marked by the dispossessive violence of white settler colonialism, which relies on the attempted erasure and forgetting of Indigenous presence. This chapter contends that these parks, while celebrated as iconic Canadian landscapes, are crucial sites for the production and maintenance of a white settler national identity. Drawing on the work of Critical Race scholars and Indigenous artist Rebecca Belmore’s aesthetic intervention, Wave Sound, the chapter demonstrates how the pass consolidates a white possessive subjectivity that justifies ongoing colonial land appropriation and elides colonial history. In contrast, Belmore’s sculptural objects, installed in four National Parks, invited visitors to listen to the land rather than merely view and transit through it, thereby offering an opportunity to challenge official memory and foster alternative forms of remembering.


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