Settler Colonial Context Research Articles

Embodied Thermal Insecurity and Counter‐Hegemonic Heat Mapping

AbstractLived experiences with urban heat are often rendered invisible, shrouded under the cloak of neoliberal resilience discourse and sanitised heat mapping and messaging. This is particularly tragic for disadvantaged at‐risk populations in white, settler colonial contexts where heat tolerance is worn as a badge of honour. Here, drawing upon semi‐structured interviews and focus group discussions in Perth, Western Australia, and with feminist emphasis on the embodied, the everyday, and bodily difference, we illustrate how corporeal thermal insecurities among rough sleepers, people with disabilities, and across intersectional disenfranchisement immobilise and dehumanise. By employing the logic of structures of violence to thermal suffering, we reveal how housing and energy precarity exacerbate entrenched racism and normalised discrimination. Our aim is to expand current debates on heat action plans (HAPs) and cool refuges by examining what “better weathering” could mean in practice, via the materialities of heated urban bodies (HUBs) and to demonstrate how such counter‐hegemonic heat mapping serves as a corporeal critique of the neoliberal resilient subject.

“They talk about it like it's an overdose crisis when in fact it's basically genocide”: The experiences of Indigenous peoples who use illicit drugs in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood

Indigenous Peoples who use illicit drugs (IPWUID) are disproportionately represented among toxic drug poisoning deaths in Canada. These drug-related harms are framed by the historical and ongoing trauma related to settler colonialism and are acutely visible in Vancouver, Canada's Downtown Eastside - a low-income neighbourhood that is an epicenter of the drug poisoning crisis and characterized by entrenched poverty, substance use, violence, and homelessness. This study was undertaken to examine the experiences and perspectives of IPWUID in the Downtown Eastside regarding the drug poisoning crisis and the responsiveness of harm reduction programs within the context of settler colonialism. Indigenous-led qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 IPWUID recruited by Indigenous peer researchers. Indigenous ways of knowing were embedded throughout the entire research design to ensure research was culturally congruent. Interview transcripts were analyzed thematically and interpreted by drawing on concepts of social violence and racial capitalism. Our analysis reviewed three key themes that centered the experiences of IPWUID in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside in relation to the drug poisoning crisis: (1) that the drug poisoning crisis is understood as a form of genocide toward Indigenous Peoples; (2) that the crisis is experienced within the context of pervasive distrust and adversarial relationships with police rooted in structurally racist experiences of place-based policing practices; and (3) that there is a desire for culturally-safe harm reduction care with Indigenous representation, cultural integration, and that addresses inequities and injustice stemming from colonialism and structural racism. Findings demonstrate how responses to the drug poisoning crisis among IPWUID need to respond to social and materials conditions perpetuated by colonialism and racial capitalism, while also centering IPWUID through the development and implementation of Indigenous-led and culturally safe harm reduction approaches.

From European Roots to Settler Soil: Adapting Foucault’s Biopolitics to Canadian Settler Colonialism

This article examines the applicability of Michel Foucault’s biopolitical theory within the Canadian settler colonial context. Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, which describes the shift from sovereign power to the regulation of life and populations, is grounded in European historical contexts. In contrast, the Canadian settler colonial experience diverges significantly, necessitating a re-examination of biopolitics. The article argues that in Canada, the relationship between sovereignty, population, and territory does not follow the European model described by Foucault. Instead, Crown sovereignty established its control through legal mechanisms that defined ‘Indian’ status, displacing Indigenous territorialities and political structures. By analysing the evolution of ‘Indian’ status within the Indian Act (1985), the article highlights the centrality of law in constructing settler colonial biopolitics. This legal framework was used to manage and assimilate Indigenous populations, reflecting a unique biopolitical strategy aimed at creating a relationship to territory and population. The study contributes to a more specific understanding of biopolitics in settler colonial contexts, emphasizing the distinct role of law in these processes.

Gazacide: Palestinians From Refugeehood to Ontological Obliteration

This article addresses the ongoing genocide in Gaza and argues that it must be understood in a larger historical context of settler colonialism. While Israel has always sought the completion of its settler-colonial project, I argue that the current genocide seeks immediate results of dispossession and annexation. My study examines the plight of refugees and contends that the right of return is at the center of Palestinians’ struggle. Return, land, and resistance are three key elements of the Palestinian identity that should be stressed in genocide studies. I argue that Israel’s approach before 7th October constituted slow-motion genocide and after that date its approach marked an accelerated form of genocide. I employ the new term Gazacide to encompass Israel’s approach in Gaza since the 1948 Nakba. To gain a deeper understanding of genocide and the destruction inflicted upon Gazans as a social group, I employ figurational sociology. I conclude with a discussion on culpability and intent and argue that all levels of the Israeli bureaucratic system as well as individuals must be held accountable.

Food security and the ma(s)king of indigenous peoples’ dispossession: the example of Inuit in Canada

ABSTRACT Focusing on constructions of food security in settler colonial contexts, this article demonstrates how its contemporary conceptualization is heir to long-standing schemes to reform Indigenous peoples and validate state projects. It highlights how discursive regimes of food security in the areas of health, conservation, and economics were conceived within frameworks that instruct Indigenous peoples as to correct behaviour, blame them for their misconduct, and ignore the role of settler states and populations in defining notions of right and wrong and in creating the conditions that promote and sustain those definitions. Ignorance, blame, and indoctrination are thus constitutive features of state interventions aimed at promoting Indigenous peoples’ food security. Using instructional publications directed at Inuit, the article demonstrates how, through the provision of services, and in the exercise of settler nation-building, Indigenous peoples have been subjected to programmes of indoctrination and ideological pacification whilst larger contexts of dispossession are bracketed out.

Unravelling settler ideology: navigating treaty dynamics in settler-colonial contexts

ABSTRACT Indigenous activism in North America often hinges on the conceptual apparatus of the treaty relationship between Indigenous peoples and the settler state to ground struggles waged in a wide array of political, cultural, and social sites. Yet, a persistent question lingers: Why do Indigenous activists continue to emphasize treaties, despite a history of broken promises by the settler state? This article scrutinizes the ideological role of treaties as a means of concealing the underlying systemic violence of settler colonialism through Marxist ideology critique. I challenge the notion that treaties can supply a solid foundation for decolonial justice, and further suggest that a heavy focus on treaties and rights-based discourse risks inadvertently offering an ideological alibi to the settler state and legitimizing its claims to sovereignty and territory. This deeply complicates struggles for reconciliation and justice within the socio-political context of settler colonialism, and there is an urgent need to encourage exploration of alternative strategies for achieving decolonial justice beyond the structures of settler colonialism.

‘Harmonise with the rest of the Empire’: Empire’s influence on religious instruction in Australian and New Zealand primary schools, 1880–1962

ABSTRACT This article argues that imperial identities embracing Britishness within Anglo-settler colonies significantly influenced provisions for religious education in Australia and New Zealand primary schools from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, corresponding with James Belich’s chronology of recolonisation. The article begins with an overview of the foundational Education Acts of Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and New Zealand, each of which included stronger legal provisions for secularity than in other Australian and settler colonial contexts. The article then tracks the enduring campaigns to promote additional religious instruction in classrooms, revealing a common imperial imaginary shared by Protestant settlers within Australian and New Zealand contexts. Proponents drew upon one another’s tactics, including campaigns for referenda, the creation of Bible-in-Schools Leagues, and parliamentary lobbying campaigns. They also drew upon the idea that Britishness necessitated Christianity, though their calls sometimes did not reflect the legislative reality in Great Britain itself. In the mid-twentieth century, the context of the Second World War precipitated a renewed focus on Britishness as a bulwark and protector of the British Empire. When combined with the diffusion of Agreed Syllabuses, this enabled religious instruction advocates to overcome fierce opposition to strengthen systems of religious instruction from 1940 to 1962.

Spiritual Leadership in the Upheaval of Settler Colonialism

In the current global landscape, characterized by religious fervour, social and political unrest, economic instability, and environmental challenges, spiritual leaders stand as pivotal agents of change. Their role is especially crucial in contexts marred by ingrained injustices and persistent conflicts, such as the Palestinian–Israeli settler colonial context—a reality I have been intimately involved with over three decades of reconciliation work. This paper contextualizes scholarship on spiritual leadership within the Palestinian–Israeli context by integrating it with settler colonial theory. By applying insights about spiritual leadership to this context, three key traits of spiritual leaders—(1) spiritual authority, (2) discernment, and (3) the ethical use of power—are identified as essential for envisioning an alternative future. By embodying these traits, spiritual leaders can effectively guide their communities through the multifaceted realities, advocating a transformative approach to leadership and interreligious work.

The Political Economy of Land Reparations in South Africa

ABSTRACTThis article examines white settler colonialism and racial capitalism as the primary mechanisms for the historical and ongoing land dispossession of Afrikan people in South Africa. It argues that by addressing land dispossession through land restitution, South Africa could begin to meaningfully address the ongoing impacts of settler colonial displacement of Afrikan people. It contends that land reparations are central not only to restorative physical and spatial justice but also to physical healing. The aim of this contribution is to historicize and herstoricize the South African land question; situate this within the context of racial capitalism and settler colonialism; provide a framing of the racialization and feminization of the land economy; and expound on the particularities of misogynoir and critical feminist theory in theorizing the acute land dispossession of Afrikan women. Situated within the Azanian School of thought, its essential contribution is the suggestion that land restoration is a necessary and meaningful reparative measure for South Africans.

Land-based resistance: Enacting Indigenous self-determination and kai sovereignty

This article outlines the role of land relations in the advancement of food sovereignty in the settler colonial context of Aotearoa New Zealand by exploring how land-based anti-colonial resistance movements, including the recent #ProtectIhumātao campaign, can inform food system transformation. First, this article draws on theories of Indigenous food sovereignty, land sovereignty, and critical property theory to argue that in settler colonial contexts, food sovereignty movements must take a critical approach to questions of the state and sovereignty, property relations, and Indigenous struggles for territorial authority and self-determination. Drawing on land-based resistance movements which have included food production as a method of reclamation, this article further proposes a need to understand food sovereignty in the Aotearoa context as firmly grounded in Māori land sovereignty and territorial authority. Finally, this article explores how the struggle to protect Ihumātao ruptured the seemingly settled nature of property relations and state sovereignty, opening space for the articulation of new modes of land governance and new constitutional arrangements more conducive to Māori aspirations for land management and stewardship—including food sovereignty.

The waste of nations: Household trash and the affective politics of recycling in Israel

Solid waste treatment is an acute concern for countries facing waning landfilling capacity, increasingly strict controls on waste transport and treatment, and the persistent threat of climate change. These challenges are typically met by neoliberal and technocratic solutions that privatize public services while encouraging curbside recycling. I examine such an effort to promote curbside recycling in Israel. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the Israeli recycling world, and on anthropology, geography, science and technology studies and critical waste studies literatures, I interrogate the affective politics of household waste recycling in Israel over the past decade and attempts to configure a Europeanized and moral national space through recycling. I describe the cultural and ethnonational repertoires through which curbside recycling was naturalized in the Israeli landscape, how recycling was mutually animated with a range of sociopolitical concerns that far exceeded its financial or environmental significance, and how these mutually shaped waste as a social–environmental problem. I argue that social and material conditions gave rise to a dual process, in which both the problem of waste, and its necessary solutions, were actively and mutually constructed. This paper contributes to comparative literatures on national cultures of waste recycling, shedding light on how a project of Western ecological modernization was translated and became locally meaningful in Israel's settler-colonial context, how household waste was ontologically coproduced in this process, and how its stakes were experienced, voiced, and materialized.

From other-representation to self-representation: exploring identity and activism in historical news media writing

This study addresses a significant gap in our understanding of self-representation in historical news media reporting. It focusses on one significant historical publication: the first nationally distributed Indigenous Australian newspaper written and edited by First Nations people – The Australian Abo Call: The Voice of the Aborigines (hereafter The AAC). The AAC was published in six editions in 1938, the year of the 150th anniversary of invasion of the continent now known as Australia. The corpus consists of all (non-fiction) articles from all six editions of this newspaper, which was founded, edited and largely written by Yorta Yorta man J.T. (Jack) Patten. As such, the study offers a synchronic ‘snapshot’ of a particular moment in Australian history. The study uses corpus-assisted discourse analysis to explore the linguistic construction of self-representation – how First Nations people write about themselves and the communities they represent. I proceed from inductively identifying group-based identity labels to categorising these labels in terms of their positionality in relation to ‘self’ and ‘other’. Using concordances, the study also qualitatively examines these identity labels through transitivity analysis. The results suggest that The AAC was a site of political awakening directed at both Indigenous and white Australians, calling on the former to mobilise, on the latter to listen, and on both to act. The analysis also shows that this activism sits very much within the dominant Western/Colonial frame, reflecting the historical settler-colonial context of the period in which this newspaper was published. The study has broader implications for corpus-assisted discourse analysis, by indicating the insights we gain by shifting our gaze away from ‘other’-representation in mainstream newspapers towards ‘self’-representation in community-led publications.

Unbalanced or Absent: Assessing Indigenous Representation in Interpretive Materials at Government Administered Heritage Sites in Cascadia and Hawai‘i

ABSTRACT Unbalanced or absent Indigenous representation in interpretive materials at government administered heritage sites in settler-colonial contexts can create contention and perpetuate a misinformed or one-dimensional visitor experience and historical narrative. This research therefore examines representation in interpretive materials accessible in 2019 at heritage sites with Indigenous ancestral connections in settler-colonial contexts. This study uses 10 U.S. case study heritage sites and two supplementary sites in Washington, Idaho, and Hawai‘i. Researchers utilized participant observation and systematic photography during two 2019 research phases to document interpretive materials. Quantification generated 731 analytic units which were subsequently assessed for the presence of inductively and deductively generated codes. The assembled empirical results illustrate three overarching themes: (1) controlled historical narrative; (2) absence of shared authority; and (3) challenges in representing and/or integrating different ways of knowing. This research contributes to heritage studies and practical heritage site management in two ways: (1) offering a timely multi-sited and multicultural sample of settler-colonial heritage site interpretive materials comparable to other sites; and (2) illustrating empirical trends in interpretive materials that privilege settlers over Indigenous peoples. This research suggests that future interpretation could benefit from a more balanced multivocal approach that recognizes ancestral and contemporary Indigenous homelands and the complexity of Indigenous-settler interactions.

Unravelling colonial education: from Dazzling White to Deliberately Decolonised and supporting the case for Indigenous universities

ABSTRACT Western universities continue to produce ethnic inequities in educational outcomes within settler colonial contexts. Juxtaposed are Indigenous and tribal universities, producing thousands of graduates despite a challenging environment. This conceptual paper critically examines teaching practices to encourage reflection and action from white and/or racialised teachers. Drawing on the lived experiences of Indigenous and non-Indigenous teachers from Aotearoa, Australia, and the United States, this paper articulates a double spiral of teaching practice drawing on anecdotal and research evidence. The spiral spins, forward and back, from Dazzling White to Off-White Aspirations, Culturally Safe, Intentionally Anti-Racist to Deliberately Decolonised. We use the holistic measurement of what one may feel, hear, and see in these classrooms to illustrate the dimensions. To address educational disparities in Western academia, we encourage non-Indigenous educators to develop their racial literacy. Furthermore, we support the recognition and investment in Indigenous universities where Indigenous peoples are more likely to thrive.

The Pedagogization of Traditional Indigenous Games in Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand

Pedagogization can be understood as an umbrella term for increased educational action. In settler-colonial contexts, the pedagogization of traditional Indigenous games has gained traction in recent years. As noted by a number of academic studies, traditional games have been used in efforts to promote cultural connectedness, inclusion, and engagement and address social justice in physical education programs. This commentary aims to survey the pedagogization of traditional Indigenous games in Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand. We argue, with cautious optimism, that traditional Indigenous games may act as a conduit for more culturally relevant physical education curricula and reconciliatory pedagogical training for physical education teachers.

The Leafy Tree: The Lindsay Family and Siblinghood in Australia

ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, social, cultural and political change were mediated through sibling networks. During this period in Australia, no middle-class family was more culturally influential than the Lindsay family, many of whom became internationally renowned artists and writers. This paper examines the Lindsays’ sibling bonds from childhood into adulthood and explores how the social relationships and networks created between the siblings acted as cultural incubators. The Australian settler-colonial context provides a unique lens through which to understand the importance of sibling relationships throughout the life cycle, and speaks to broader patterns around the intense character of sibling relations during this period.

Not About U: Social Dissonance at a Land‐Grab University

AbstractMattin's durational concert Social Dissonance and concept of social dissonance offer compelling devices to understand a central tension within institutions of higher education in settler colonial contexts. As faculty and students increasingly enact and experience forms of decolonial pedagogy in their classrooms, the settler colonial origins and structures of the university remain unchallenged. In the specific case of the ‘Land‐Grant’ university system, created through the federal 1862 Morrill Act, the findings of a 2020 ‘Land‐Grab Universities’ report describes the extent of their founding on the forced expropriation of Indigenous land and life. This article mixes the settler author's repeated experiences of Social Dissonance at documenta 14, in both Athens, Greece, and its traditional home of Kassel, Germany, and how its institutional and pedagogical contexts translate to a sequence of teaching experiments in his classrooms at a ‘Land‐Grab’ university. These experiences and experiments are framed by two failures, both institutional and individual, that offer the author a concrete insight into the concept of social dissonance to understand how different levels of alienation operate through colonial intrusion into educational contexts by an exclusionary settler worldview. At the same time, the author attempts to harness this settler colonial noise‐as‐device by attuning to echoes of Social Dissonance in the vital work of living, Indigenous artists, and their alternative pedagogical initiatives.

'Untold stories': The relationship of word and image in the work of Shaun Tan

Primarily known as a children's book author and illustrator, Shaun Tan has repeatedly resisted this label and rather positioned himself between the fields of literature and fine art, emphasising that his training and primary interest are in the latter. This essay approaches Tan's work via his idea of 'untold stories', articulated in the eponymous section of his book The bird king and other sketches (2011) and in the 2018 solo exhibition at Beinart Gallery in Melbourne, Untold tales. Untold essentially means unpremeditated in Tan's vocabulary and relates to his evocation of Paul Klee's idea of 'taking a line for a walk'. Using his idea of untold stories as my central point, the essay foregrounds the untold critical story of Tan as a fine artist, focusing in particular on works that have received minimal to no critical attention: his 2015 series of paintings Go, said the bird, his 2003 public mural The hundred year picnic, and his ongoing 9x5 inch series of observational works in the tradition of the Heidelberg School of Australian Impressionism. The latter is a particularly strong and formative influence on Tan's career as a painter, allowing for a discussion of his work in the broader context of postcolonial art history and settler colonialism.

Indigenous rights and ontological plurality in the institutional arrangements for the Waikato and Waipā Rivers in Aotearoa

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the institutional arrangements for the Waikato and Waipā Rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand to consider how effectively they promote Indigenous rights and the exercise of Māori law and relationships with place. We ask how these arrangements shape power relations and dynamics among different (human and non-human) actors and whether they foster relationality and create the enabling conditions that generate alternatives to modernist ways of governing. After examining the detail of these complex institutional arrangements in a way that exposes their ontological foundations, this paper argues that, despite limitations, particularly in relation to implementation, these arrangements operate to increase Iwi authority and, thus, promote Indigenous rights, and legal and ontological pluralism. This outcome demonstrates a vibrancy and plurality of thinking in relation to new models of law and institutional arrangements in settler-colonial contexts—beyond those grounded in rights of nature—and that there are a variety of pathways towards the realisation of Indigenous rights and authority, and the related promotion of legal and ontological pluralism.

A negotiated sovereignty: Surfacing Indigenous geopolitics within settler colonialism

This paper examines Indigeneity within the less-explored settler colonial context of Taiwan in the face of China’s increasing irredentism. I review two processes of Indigenous reconciliation developing in Taiwan and frame them as Indigenous geopolitics – the survey and legislation of traditional territory and the instrumentalization of Indigeneity to assert the island’s autonomy from China. I highlight that Indigenous political struggles that have otherwise often been contained within a stable conception of the settler nation-state can have outward facing effects and suggest that Indigenous rights won can be seen within a spectrum of Indigenous sovereignty in varying degrees, from mere recognition in history books to the extent of making representations to other states. Noting the highly visible process of reconciliation that has thus far yielded limited legislative outcomes in Taiwan, I propose that Indigenous geopolitics should not be considered independent of or in opposition to the settler state. Rather, Indigenous representatives necessarily negotiate their politics within the framework of the settler state in an unequal relationship that nonetheless hold benefits for both sides.