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The struggle against settler colonial climate change: Sadie Beaton, Emily Eaton, Michelle Paul, ‘Peace and Friendship on the Sipekne’katik: Treaty as a Transformational Practice in the Resistance against Alton Gas’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2026

21Feb26

Abstract: Drawing on the successes of the Mi’kmaq-led struggle against the Alton Gas natural gas storage project from 2014-21, this paper proposes the Peace and Friendship Treaties as the Peace and Friendship on the Sipekne’katik relational framework best equipped to address the worsening climate crisis and build liveable futures in Mi’kma’ki. We argue that existing government and social movement approaches have been unable to adequately arrest climate pollution, and often work to reinscribe the settler-colonial land relations at the heart of intersecting socio-ecological crises. The Treaty Truckhouse movement, which emerged from the successful resistance to Alton Gas, however, builds a resurgent geography capable of addressing both climate change and settler colonialism in the way that it holds Mi’kmaw and settlers together in evolving relations of care that embrace relational responsibilities to the lands, waters, and climate. The paper draws on both research interviews with people involved in climate action in Mi’kma’ki and on the authors’ own involvement with the movement.


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Settler colonial Zimbabwe: Robert Zeinstra, ‘Where have the Chapungu gone?What connects Zimbabwe’s chimurenga spirit, the disappearing bateleur eagle, and the stubborn afterlife of colonial capital?’ Africa is a Country, 2026

20Feb26

Excerpt: “Fast Track Land Reform” was rhetorically aimed at “white farmers,” not at colonial-era investor-owned land which posed a much larger threat to Zimbabwe’s future than the remnant white farmers. Gains were made: A Union Carbide–owned ranch near Zvishavane was resettled, one of two major parcels owned by De Beers was partially resettled, and jambanja activists resettled a small section of Austrian-Swiss-German-owned Border Timbers land in Chimanimani. In all three examples, the government turned their back on resettled families, which, coupled with the dearth of international aid in resettlement areas, made life in these places increasingly precarious. Small and abandoned mines made their way into the hands of elite and middle-class Zimbabweans, but in the same era, international capital reinvested in Zimbabwe’s colonial-era mines along the Great Dyke.


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Settler colonial greater Rhodesia: Charlton Cussans, ‘”Our Greater Rhodesia”: Settler Aspirations, Indigenous Fears, and Whitehall Concerns Regarding Amalgamation, 1919-1945’, South African Historical Journal, 2026

20Feb26

Abstract: In the interwar period, and even into the Second World War, white Southern and Northern Rhodesians tried and failed to ‘amalgamate’ their colonies. An examination of this failure allows useful lessons to be drawn about the divergences and differences between colonial and metropolitan opinion regarding the purpose of the British Empire and the relationship between coloniser and colonised. The British Empire, ultimately, was defined by sets of interlocking contradictions. These contradictions were between the interests and demands of white settlers, metropolitan colonial officials, and the black African subjects.


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The cumulative effects of settler colonialism: Indigenous Centre for Cumulative Effects, ‘Cumulative Effects 101’, 2026

20Feb26

Excerpt: Settler colonialism is a governing system where a foreign power moves in, seizes the land, and works to permanently replace Indigenous inhabitants, dismantling their existing political structures and ways of life. As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final summary report stated: “The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources” (TRCC 2015: 3). This project of dispossession is ongoing in Canada and has created the foundation for cumulative effects experienced by Indigenous communities today.


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Like Interstellar, but here (and settler colonial): Roxane Gabet Severne, Adam Searle, ‘Somaforming on an alien Earth’, Geoforum, 170, 2026, #104559

19Feb26

Abstract: The realities of climate catastrophe increasingly threaten opportunities for multispecies liveability on this planet; Earth is becoming more alien every day through unequal intensities of weirding. We explore the conceptual provocations in the idea of ‘terraforming Terra’: that is, exploring the politics of transforming exoplanets – fabulated in the pages of science fiction – in contemporary empirical situations on an alien Earth. Gleaning insight from the speculative fiction of Becky Chambers in her 2019 novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate, we examine her concept of ‘somaforming’ in relation to terraforming. Chambers presents somaforming as a technology deployed to adapt bodies to alien planets, as an explicit alternative to terraforming, enabling human survival in hostile exoplanetary environments. We read somaforming with empirical reference to ongoing technoscientific efforts seeking to adapt bovine bodies to the imagined futures caused by global warming, in preparation for weird worlds to come. We analyse two scientific experiments that attempt to adapt cattle to the negative environmental impacts of climate change – respectively parasitism and heat stress – affecting animal welfare and agricultural productivity. While these somaforming practices each use a different technology transforming the cows’ body – through paint or gene editing – we argue that both illustrate the dangers of allowing ‘somaforming experiments’ to pre-empt an alien Earth, in its foreclosing of alternatives to ‘business as usual’.


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Doubts about Irish settler colonialisms: Timothy S Forest, ‘Reassembling the Mosaic: Western Irish Colonization and Redefining the “Other” in Canada in the Early 1880s’, Western Historical Quarterly, 2026, #19

18Feb26

Abstract: In 1880, the British and Canadian governments proposed a trial colonization scheme to transplant western Irish crofters to Manitoba. Proponents initially viewed these immigrants as idealized Britons whose traditional agrarian values would redeem the West from the perceived threats of modernization, socialism, and ethnic heterogeneity. However, as the “New Ireland” project was debated, perceptions shifted dramatically; the settlers were increasingly othered and stereotyped as lazy, disloyal, and unsuited for modern farming. This failure revealed deep-seated anxieties regarding racial hierarchies and the definition of Britishness and Irishness. In doing so, the scheme’s rise and fall challenges assumptions, past and present, surrounding Whiteness, borderland and settler colonial studies, privilege, and the construction of historical narratives.


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Irish settler colonialisms: John C. Mitcham, ‘Imperial Politics,the Dominions,and the Irish Question, 1907–21’, Journal of British Studies, 65, 2026, #e5

18Feb26

Abstract: It has long been recognized that the “Irish Question” was also an imperial question. The vast Irish diaspora in the settler colonies ensured that Home Rule had enormous consequences for the wider empire. But scholars have yet fully to appreciate the part that political elites in the self-governing Dominions played in this story. This article explores the role of colonial statesmen in Anglo-Irish affairs. FigureslikeAustralia’sBillyHughesorSouthAfrica’sJanSmutswereabletonavigatetheemotional complexities of Irish nationalist politics in a manner that transcended British party politics. In the process, they framed “colonial” Home Rule as a compromise between British rule and independence. This article shows how Irish nationalist politics became enmeshed with imperial politics in a manner that blurred the line between the local, national, imperial, and global.


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The genres of Indigenous survival: Jade Jenkinson, ‘From Indigenous Gothic to Indigenous Futurisms: Charting generic decay and renewal’, Literature, Critique, and Empire Today, 2026

18Feb26

Abstract: This article investigates the capacity for genre fiction to function as a site for decolonial and politically transgressive storytelling through an examination of the emergence and evolution of “Indigenous Gothic” and “Indigenous Futurisms.” I trace the definition and development of each genre and interrogate how these labels arise through an active dialogue shaped by creative works, political activism, market trends, and critical inputs. Rather than viewing Indigenous Futurisms as a replacement of the Indigenous Gothic, the article argues that Futurisms expand and exceed the Gothic’s parameters, absorbing and recontextualizing Gothic tropes while unsettling expectations informed by Western genre conventions. Drawing on a decolonial comparative approach that foregrounds Indigenous scholarly perspectives, the article closes with a close reading of Brandon Hobson’s The Removed (2021) to illustrate both the generic shift proposed and the ways Indigenous genre fiction provides a flexible mode for articulating what Dillon (2007) terms “practical humanism,” through its engagement with tropes from both genres to explore historical and contemporary concerns. The article contends that decoloniality is central to the evolution in genre, demonstrating how Indigenous authors redefine and extend the possibilities of genre through Indigenous methodological and epistemological frameworks.


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The landscape of settler colonialism: Eileen Crist, ‘Landscape meditations: Native versus colonist’, The Ecological Citizen, 9, 1, 2026, pp. 3-10

18Feb26

Excerpt: How can people be so insensitive to the dignity and independence of landscape?” author John O’Donahue asked (2010: 134). By people, he did not mean all human beings nor was he calling our attention to human nature. O’Donahue was talking about the human as “lord of creation” possessed by “luciferian pride” (ibid.). He was talking about the human identity gone global: the Earth settler colonialist.


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Health and connectedness are associated (another scoping review): Simran Brar, Albert Ben, Maria B. Ospina, ‘The association between cultural connectedness and health-related quality of life among Indigenous peoples in the CANZUS countries: a systematic review’, BMC Public Health, 2026

18Feb26

Abstract: Background: Cultural connectedness–the extent to which individuals feel connected to their culture through practices, language, traditions, and identity– is increasingly recognized as a key determinant of health among Indigenous peoples across the life course. High levels of cultural connectedness have been associated with improved health-related quality of life (HRQoL). Although several studies have examined this relationship, the evidence has not yet been comprehensively synthesized. Methods: A comprehensive search of six databases was conducted from database inception to June 2024. Searches were updated up to September 2025 to identify observational studies examining associations between cultural connectedness and HRQoL, mental health, or physical health among Indigenous populations in Australia, Canada, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the United States. Two independent reviewers conducted screening, data extraction and risk of bias assessment. Risk of bias was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale for cohort studies and its adapted version for cross-sectional studies. Effect direction plots and vote counting were used for synthesis. Results: From 7,444, records, 12 studies met the inclusion criteria (Canada n = 3; Australia n = 1; Aotearoa New Zealand n = 3; United States n = 5). Studies examined HRQoL (n = 2), mental health/well-being (n = 9) and physical health (n = 4), and included infants (n = 1), youth (n = 2), adults (n = 7), and Elders (n = 2). For HRQoL, one study reported a positive association with cultural connectedness and one reported no evidence of association. For mental health-well-being, three studies reported positive associations and six reported no evidence of association. For physical health, three studies reported positive associations and one reported no evidence of association. Conclusions: Across countries with similar histories of colonialism, evidence suggests that cultural connectedness may be associated with better physical health and, for some Indigenous populations, better mental health/well-being. Evidence for mental health/well-being and HRQoL remains less consistent across studies. Further research using culturally grounded measures and rigorous designs is needed to strengthen the evidence base and inform culturally responsive policies and programs that support Indigenous health and well-being across the life course.


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