Ongoing Colonization Research Articles

Racial Regimes and White European Jewish Supremacy as Property

This article argues that the Zionist theft and expropriation of Palestinian land resulted in it being made into white property and that Zionism can be understood as a textbook case of Cedric Robinson's concept of racial regimes that explains how race is reproduced even though race is denied by the Zionist colonisers as justifying the relations of power. The article follows Cheryl Harris's and Noura Erakat's work on whiteness as property that, according to Erakat, leaves the Palestinian natives outside the category of Jewish nationals to be removed, dispossessed, and contained. The article illustrates how the ongoing colonisation of Palestine as expressing white European supremacy involves several aspects of racial capitalism—the Judaisation of Palestinian lands, the segmentation of labour from the Zionist policy of the Conquest of (Hebrew) Labour to the reliance on cheap and dispensable Palestinian labour, and the lebensraum plans to relocate the Gaza Strip population and re-settle it. 2

Beyond Compensation: Reparations and the Ongoing Colonization of Australia

ABSTRACTThis article examines the relationship between reparations as compensation and reparations as transformation in settler colonial Australia. Much of the global reparations debate on colonization and slavery has focused on important demands confronting the historic damages and ongoing accumulation of disadvantage from colonization in ex‐colonies or from plantation slavery. Much less has been said about reparations for settler colonialism which is a specific form of ongoing colonization in the here and now. Drawing on long‐standing work around reparations for colonization by Indigenous peoples in Australia, and the woeful compensatory responses the state and judiciary have offered, this article argues that reparations for ongoing colonization could consider options beyond monetary compensation. This includes the critical domain of reparations as transformation that aim less to offset damage and reconcile suffering, but rather to comprehensively transform colonial relations.

Social Experiences, Social Support and Residence as Determinants of Sedentary Behaviour Among Indigenous Adults in Saskatchewan

Centuries of ongoing colonization, assimilation and historic trauma have changed social structures, roles and responsibilities among Indigenous Peoples: First Nations, Métis and Inuit. Social factors and experiences can influence sedentary behaviour; however, relationships between social determinants and sedentary behaviour among Indigenous Peoples in Saskatchewan are unclear. Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine historic trauma, social support and residence as determinants of sedentary behaviour for Indigenous Peoples in Saskatchewan. Design: Historic trauma, social support, discriminatory experiences, residence type and sedentary behaviour were evaluated through questionnaires by 111 Indigenous adults from the University of Saskatchewan in 2018-2019. Results: Regression associated community, family and positive perceptions of social support, as well as rural/urban home communities, northern/southern home communities and age with continuous sitting among Métis (N=38, R=0.88, p<0.001). Among First Nations (N=69), regression associated age and friend support (R=0.40, p=0.01) with screen time, and community support (R=0.27, p=0.04) with continuous sitting. Regression among Indigenous participants (N=111) associated discrimination, on- and off-reserve home communities, and age (R=0.40, p=0.001) with sedentary behaviour, and discrimination and positive perceptions of support (R=0.33, p=0.01) with continuous sitting. Conclusion: Social supports, home communities and discrimination experiences are important determinants of sedentary behaviour, screen time and continuous sitting for First Nations and Métis, with experiences specific to each identity.

Medicine communication between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and health professionals: a scoping review protocol.

This scoping review will describe strategies to support communication between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and health professionals about medicines. Poor communication is a well-established risk factor contributing to adverse medicine events. Communication challenges are exacerbated for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples due to their poorer health status, greater use of medicines, a first language that may not be English, cultural bias and systemic racism in health services, and lower health literacy resulting from ongoing colonization. A scoping review will assist in summarizing strategies to support the communication process. The review will consider studies describing strategies related to medicine communication between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and health professionals. The proposed review will follow the JBI methodology for scoping reviews. The review will include all published and unpublished literature in English since 2000, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods study designs, systematic reviews, text and opinion pieces, and gray literature. Databases to be searched will include CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, Informit, Indigenous HealthInfoNet, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and Google Scholar. Two researchers will screen titles and abstracts independently and assess the full text of selected citations against inclusion criteria. Extracted data will be presented in narrative format accompanied by tables that reflect the objective of the review.

Decolonization and Restorative Justice: Addressing Canada’s Indigenous Incarceration

Mass incarceration of Indigenous people has been well documented in Canadian prisons. It represents a national crisis resulting from the government's failure to eradicate the ongoing colonization problem and poses a threat to the sustainability of Indigenous people and their communities. The government's response includes the landmark Gladue decision, which essentially recognized mass incarceration as a crisis and required judges to consider the background of Indigenous offenders when sentencing, as well as the process of decolonizing the prison by introducing programs that teach Indigenous culture and history. However, both these responses have not effectively addressed the problem. In this paper, I argue that the Canadian government's response to the over-incarceration of Indigenous people represents a human rights issue that the Gladue Report has not alleviated because the report has not been implemented in a meaningful manner during bail hearing or sentencing. Therefore, the government should consider an alternative measure that returns to the traditional Indigenous law through the implementation of restorative justice, which has been proven to be effective.

Understanding racial equity in research with Indigenous Peoples: including anti-racism and decolonization approaches

ABSTRACT Colonization of Indigenous Peoples living in what is now called the U.S. and U.S. territories began over 500 years ago, yet colonization continues today and results in historical trauma and inequities for Indigenous people. This paper describes the current application of racial equity in research and its limitations when applied to work with Indigenous Peoples. It highlights how the existing racial equity framework falls short in (1) respecting Indigenous sovereignty, (2) addressing historical and ongoing colonization through land dispossession and codified racism in blood quantum, and (3) acknowledging the profound impact of historical, cultural, and intergenerational trauma. We propose an expanded racial equity approach to research that incorporates an anti-racist and decolonizing approach. We conclude by outlining specific strategies researchers should adopt when employing a racial equity lens in their work with Indigenous populations.

Towards a planetary coalition (a Preamble)

When ‘megafires’ and ‘superstorms’ proliferate, who is the real sovereign of the Anthropocene: anthropos, or nature become monstrous? In the Teracene (‘tera’ meaning ‘monster’), I argue that sovereignty should mean the right to refuse that which turns our existential situation into a horror film, in order to defend what preserves life’s endangered conditions of possibility. To build this right, I first need to deconstruct the concept of sovereignty and to reveal its groundlessness. Acknowledging this groundlessness, I propose an ‘ecopolitics without guarantees’ in which the otherness at the core of possible new Constitutions would not engender an alternative sovereign subject (a subject that would just replace anthropos or the ruling class), but rather an unconditional requirement and the rights that it legitimates. I explain that this unconditional requirement concerns the necessity of caring not only for future generations but also for past ones. I finish my article with a political fiction: the outline of a Preamble for a Constitution able to give voice to the damned of the Teracene. To acknowledge the existence of those suffering from the ongoing exploitation and colonization of the Earth and of those who wither from a future erased in advance, this speculative Preamble is centered not around the present but around the heteronomous, divergent temporality of that which never existed enough and that which threatens to fall out of existence entirely.

Rightful Recognition of Kurdistan as a Colony and De-colonizing Knowledge Production

In recent years the field of Kurdish Studies has witnessed several workshops and panels on the theme of “decolonizing,” influenced by such conversations in Postcolonial, Black and Indigenous Studies. Interestingly, many of these attempts in academic venues have not engaged with the question of ongoing colonial status of Kurdistan and how this status impacts knowledge production. This paper aims to propose a clear definition of a relationship of coloniality with a focus on colonial violence in the region of Bakur and explain why such terminology is necessary, intellectually and politically. As it explains the limits of the terminology used in academic knowledge production about state violence and Kurdish resistance, it also discusses contemporary alternatives to these dominant academic frameworks. It is argued that a rightful decolonization of knowledge about Kurdistan and freedom movements in the region can take place when we simultaneously recognize ongoing colonization, and acknowledge that it is ultimately the organized anti-colonial movements, which can determine definitions of self-determination, as well as the political means to gain and sustain it.

Slowing taxon cycle can explain biodiversity patterns on islands: Insights into the biogeography of the tropical South Pacific from molecular data

AbstractIslands in the tropical Pacific Ocean are renowned for high biodiversity and endemism despite having relatively small landmasses. However, our knowledge of how this biodiversity is formed remains limited. The taxon cycle, where well‐dispersed, earlier colonizers become displaced from coastal to inland habitats by new waves of colonizers, producing isolated, range‐restricted species, has been proposed to explain current biodiversity patterns. Here, we integrate the outcomes of phylogenetic studies in the region to investigate the sources, age, number of colonizations, and diversification of 16 archipelagos in the tropical and subtropical South Pacific. We then evaluate whether the results support the taxon cycle as a plausible mechanism for these observations. We find that most species in the Pacific arrived less than 5 Mya from geographically close sources, suggesting that colonization by new taxa is a frequent and ongoing process. Therefore, our findings are broadly consistent with the theory of the Taxon Cycle, which posits that ongoing colonization results in the gradual displacement of established lineages. Only the oldest archipelagos, New Caledonia and Fiji, do not conform to this trend, having proportionally less recent colonization events, suggesting that the taxon cycle may slow on older islands. This conclusion is further validated by New Caledonia having lower diversification rate estimates than younger islands. We found that diversification rates across archipelagos are negatively correlated with area and age. Therefore, a taxon cycle that slows with island age appears to be a suitable concept for understanding the dynamic nature and biodiversity patterns of the Pacific Islands.

Geographies of collective responsibility: decolonising universities through place-based praxis

ABSTRACT This paper asks how can we as geographers, occupying positions of relative privilege but also beholden to institutions entangled with legacies of colonialism and ongoing colonization, find and embody our responsibilities to Indigenous people and nations and contribute to decolonization within and beyond the academy? We begin by reflecting on Doreen Massey’s (2004) theorization of geographies of responsibility and critiques of it in the intervening years. We then engage with important considerations including the politics of recognition, relational grammars of settler colonialism and Indigenous notions of relationality. To avoid the traps of recognition politics, which often foreclose the more transformative possibilities of responsibility, we propose ways of taking of decolonial responsibility in our teaching, research and professional service. While we cannot provide simple solutions to the difficult challenge of pursuing decolonization in the academy, we believe that centralizing and prioritizing relationships of responsibility to and through place in support of resurgent Indigenous nationhood is required to avoid the denuding, individualizing process of colonial recognition and superficial performative decolonisation.

Recommendations for culturally safe clinical kidney care for First Nations Australians: a guideline summary.

First Nations Australians display remarkable strength and resilience despite the intergenerational impacts of ongoing colonisation. The continuing disadvantage is evident in the higher incidence, prevalence, morbidity and mortality of chronic kidney disease (CKD) among First Nations Australians. Nationwide community consultation (Kidney Health Australia, Yarning Kidneys, and Lowitja Institute, Catching Some Air) identified priority issues for guideline development. These guidelines uniquely prioritised the knowledge of the community, alongside relevant evidence using an adapted GRADE Evidence to Decision framework to develop specific recommendations for the management of CKD among First Nations Australians. These guidelines explicitly state that health systems have to measure, monitor and evaluate institutional racism and link it to cultural safety training, as well as increase community and family involvement in clinical care and equitable transport and accommodation. The guidelines recommend earlier CKD screening criteria (age ≥ 18 years) and referral to specialists services with earlier criteria of kidney function (eg, estimated glomerular filtration rate [eGFR], ≤ 45 mL/min/1.73 m2 , and a sustained decrease in eGFR, > 10 mL/min/1.73 m2 per year) compared with the general population. Our recommendations prioritise health care service delivery changes to address institutional racism and ensure meaningful cultural safety training. Earlier detection of CKD and referral to nephrologists for First Nations Australians has been recommended to ensure timely implementation to preserve kidney function given the excess burden of disease. Finally, the importance of community with the recognition of involvement in all aspects and stages of treatment together with increased access to care on Country, particularly in rural and remote locations, including dialysis services.

Te heahea me ngā toi, te hikohiko: Productive Idiocy, mātauranga Māori and Art-activism Strategies in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract This article explores what it can mean to navigate notions of productive idiocy with aspects of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), through some recent art-as-activism practices of the author, Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Mark Harvey. The works explicated include Waitākere Drag and Auau in the Te Wao Nui ā Tiriwa forest ranges and Productive Promises, which was part of TEZA (Trans Economic Zone of Aotearoa) in Ōtautahi/Christchurch. Avital Ronell’s Nietzschean-influenced perspectives on idiocy are drawn from in relation to Western and Māori perspectives, along with Roger Sansi’s work on idiocy as dissent. From this aggregation of epistemologies, it is proposed that idiocy can be productive through art as activism and that this can align with Indigenous Māori perspectives on playing the fool as a form of resistance and refusal. Examples of Māori concepts engaged with here include perspectives on relationship building, human relationships with forests and the environment, and sovereignty under Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi). These art-activism projects promised micro-attempts at making positive changes for the communities in which they were situated through performatively generated actions from a Māori perspective within the shroud of ongoing colonization and capitalism.

Rastrojo: Re(in)surgent forests

<i>Rastrojo</i>: Re(in)surgent forests

Associations of Cultural Characteristics with Sedentary Behaviour and Screen Time Among Indigenous Adults in Saskatchewan.

Indigenous Peoples: First Nations, Métis and Inuit, have experienced significant disruptions of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health and well-being through centuries of ongoing colonization and assimilation. Consequently, breakdown of cultural connections, increasingly sedentary lifestyles and high levels of screen time contribute to health inequity experiences. The purpose of this study is to examine associations of cultural connectedness with sedentary behaviour and the influence of relocation from home communities for Indigenous Peoples in Saskatchewan. Cultural connectedness, sedentary and screen time behaviour were evaluated through online questionnaires among 106 Indigenous adults. Within Indigenous identities, 2 × 2 factorial ANOVA compared cultural connectedness scores with sedentary behaviour and traditional activity participation by relocation from home communities. Among First Nations and specifically Cree/Nehiyawak who relocated from home communities, positive associations of cultural connectedness scores with sedentary behaviour and screen time were identified, with no associations identified among those not relocating. Among Métis who did not relocate, greater ethnic identity, identity, spirituality and cultural connectedness (57.8 ± 5.36 vs. 81.25 ± 16.8; p = 0.02) scores were reported among those reporting 5 or more hours of continuous sitting. Cultural connectedness associations with sedentary behaviour depend on relocation from home communities and differ between First Nations and Métis. Understanding associations of sedentary behaviour specific to First Nations and Métis populations may enable appropriate strategies to improve health outcomes.

The Privacy of Hak-Shing William Tam: Imagining Asian American Families in Proposition 8 in California

In terms of Asian Americans whose reputations have been popularly derided, the concerned parent activist Hak-Shing William Tam perhaps ranks among the top. Tam was a citizen proponent of California's Proposition 8 in 2008 to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage and became a hostile witness for the plaintiffs in the subsequent 2010 lawsuit to overturn the amendment, Perry v. Schwarzenegger. In this paper, I explore Tam's claim to privacy in his understanding of these events, both in terms of his sexualized imagination of liberal civil society and his suffering from what he understood as violations of his own privacy. I argue that Tam tried to operationalize an understanding of society that idealized the "Asian family" as the bulwark of an order composed primarily of secure private spaces, which speaks (I further claim) to longstanding anxieties within Chinese America about how what Gary Okihiro calls the "social formation"–an interlocking institutional network that composes a governing apparatus–subjects Asian Americans to ongoing colonization. In so doing, I hope to show that Tam's concerns do not only speak to concerns in Asian American studies about pervasive evangelical influence in Asian American communities. Instead, they reveal that Asian American conceptions of the private sphere are ideologies that circulate within our communities and should be taken seriously in Asian American studies.

Fostering social justice leaders through the social action, leadership and transformation (SALT) model

Fostering social justice leaders through the social action, leadership and transformation (SALT) model

Race, Property, and Erasure in the Rust Belt

AbstractThis article builds on settler and domestic colonial histories and theories to advance our understanding of urban changes in segregated, disinvested, U.S. Rust Belt cities. While many major cities have rebounded in population and experienced gentrification since the mid-twentieth century, many Rust Belt cities have continued to decline. The resulting conditions call for new theories to describe their changes, trajectories, and the impacts for majority poor Black populations. We construct a Binocular Colonial Lens: an analytic framework that superimposes shared conceptual descriptions and theoretical explanations of settler and domestic colonialisms. With this lens, we can elucidate the practices of erasure that are deployed throughout colonized communities and focus them on phenomena associated with urban decline and revitalization. While some urban scholarship has used metaphors and language of settler colonialism to describe gentrification, most of these works at best reflect the salience of settler ideology, and at worst reinforce Indigenous erasure. Foregrounding shared conditions of colonization and conquest in the United States, we train this Binocular Colonial Lens on Detroit, which reveals myriad urban processes like ghettoization, urban renewal, suburbanization, and gentrification as ongoing colonization, wherein domestically colonized populations are subject to numerous forms of erasure at the behest of the settler state and toward the advancement of settler society. This lens advances urban theory by expanding the depth of our analyses of urban changes, and scaffolds connections with other axes of racialized inequality by revealing shared tools of erasure operative in, for example, mass incarceration and environmental injustices.

Belonging in Aboriginal Australia: A Political “Cosmography”

It is an increasingly accepted protocol to situate oneself discursively in order to approach a set of problems. This protocol, consolidated by Donna Haraway’s famous “situated knowledge,” is also evident in everyday Indigenous Australian practice.1 I begin, therefore, with my long association with the Goolarabooloo community in Broome, North-West Australia, and in particular with Paddy Roe, who started teaching me in the late 1970s. This text attempts to translate his sense of belonging to that territory, an attachment he had to struggle to maintain, both in the face of ongoing destructive colonization and also in the face of other Aboriginal territorial claims. These collective attachments are therefore inflected by history—not just settler history, but Indigenous history that has changed in relation to colonization. These changes are wrought through overwhelmingly rapid material changes, shifting institutional alliances, contested concepts, and new practices. This ethnographic history is an attempt to provide an overview of some of these changes in the North-West corner of Australia over the last forty years.

The acceptability and utility of Indigenous youth health assessments: a narrative systematic review.

Indigenous youth are navigating the transition from childhood to adulthood while contending with challenges of ongoing colonisation and everyday lived experiences of racism. A comprehensive assessment of Indigenous youth's health could enable early diagnosis and respond to health concerns. This narrative systematic review synthesises evidence about the acceptability and utility of primary health care-based health assessments for improving the health and wellbeing of Indigenous youth. A systematic search strategy was conducted using 20 electronic databases. Studies were included if they reported on health assessments conducted in primary health care with youth aged 12-24years who were Indigenous to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the USA, Taiwan, and the arctic regions of Scandinavia and Russia. A narrative synthesis was undertaken. Of 3061 unique studies identified, seven met the eligibility criteria. Included studies showed that youth health assessments were useful for making new diagnoses, detecting social and emotional wellbeing concerns, and biomedical parameters. Co-created health assessments with Indigenous youth conducted by clinicians familiar to the community were well accepted. Digital health assessments administered using an electronic tablet provide advantages. No health outcomes were reported. Additionally, no health assessments addressed the impacts of colonisation and racism. There is insufficient evidence to make firm conclusions about the benefits of health assessments; however, health assessments can be useful for detecting new diagnoses and concerns regarding social determinants of health, and social and emotional wellbeing. Future development of Indigenous youth health assessments needs to involve Indigenous youth's perspectives and interpretations of health.

Getting to the heart of the matter: a research partnership with Aboriginal women in South and Central Australia

ABSTRACT Within the vast majority of qualitative health research involving Indigenous populations, Indigenous people have been marginalised from research conceptualisation and conduct. This reflects a lack of regard for Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing, has served to perpetuate deficit narratives of Indigenous peoples’ health and wellbeing, and contributes to failure in addressing inequities as a result of ongoing colonisation and institutionalised oppression and racism. There is a need to place Indigenous voices and ways of doing at the centre of research by working in intercultural partnership, bringing together Indigenous and Western knowledges. This paper explores how such an approach can be applied, demonstrating a reflective process of conceptualisation and conduct that brings together Indigenous ways of working with grounded theory with Aboriginal communities in Australia. Furthermore, it supported a non-Indigenous researcher to learn ways of working respectfully, guided by community protocols. A six-stage research process was developed, overseen by an Aboriginal Women’s Advisory Group. Research conceptualisation and conduct centred on three principles: bringing together Aboriginal ways of working with Western research methodology; using women’s own voices to develop a narrative of cardiovascular health and wellbeing; and ensuring that tangible outcomes were delivered to women and communities in the spirit of partnership and reciprocity. This approach, guided at all steps by Indigenous women, demonstrates a way of adapting qualitative Western methodology to ensure values and principles of ethical guidelines of conduct are upheld to unravel constructs of colonisation, redress past wrongdoing, and reverse deficit narratives.