Settler Colonial Societies Research Articles

Indigenous Cultural Landscapes: Decolonizing Landscape Within Settler Colonial Societies

Geographic scholarship on landscape and colonialism has not substantially engaged with the specific logics of settler colonialism, propelling recent calls to “unlearn” and “decolonize” landscape studies. This article highlights the Indigenous cultural landscape (ICL), a policy tool used since the 1990s to protect aboriginal landscapes globally, as a vital resource for geographers interested in decolonizing both material landscapes and landscape studies. I analyze six ICL studies conducted by the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, a unit of the U.S. National Park Service, in robust partnership with Indigenous nations, academics, and conservationists between 2013 and 2022. In their approaches to scale, mobility, temporality, visuality, and modes of relationship, the ICLs documented and mapped in these collaborative studies fundamentally challenge settler colonial histories and conceptions of landscape. These conceptual distinctions have clear material impacts, as I demonstrate: In Virginia, the Rappahannock River ICL study facilitated the return of land along Fones Cliffs to the Rappahannock Tribe. Considering the processes, conceptual interventions, and material impacts of the Chesapeake ICL studies together, I argue that the ICL concept can generate and expand Indigenous relational space amid ongoing settler occupation, despite the tensions and limitations of working with the settler state to do so.

Rooted in Stone: Sculpture and Colonization in Medieval Regensburg

In 1153, a group of Irish monks living in the Bavarian city of Regensburg built a new church with a monumental portal. In place of saints or historical narratives, the portal presents an aesthetic wilderness. I argue that this wilderness plays on traditional monastic tropes while embedding radical ideas about nature that were popular in the Irish community. I then trace the impact of this monument to its intersection with the rhetoric supporting German colonization in the region and argue for the importance of recognizing the ideological role of images of nature in settler-colonial societies.

Re-imagining the image of the educator in post-secondary early childhood education: calling for epistemic justice

ABSTRACT Early childhood education (ECE) spaces within settler-colonial societies operate as sites of violence and oppression whereby non-conformity to white, rational, ableist, cisgender norms is weaponised as developmental deficits. In this paper, we refer to the refusals of non-dominant ways of knowing as forms of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007). We describe the foundational underpinnings of ECE throughout the twentieth century in Ontario, Canada and trace how normative ideas of children, educators, education, and childhood developed through a largely positivist, developmental orientation. Ultimately, we call for epistemic justice (Fricker 2007) as an emancipatory way forward in post-secondary ECE programmes.

Possessory stratigraphy: land title, dispossession and housing crisis

The myth that Indigenous sovereignty lives in the past is central to the lore of settler colonial societies. Sustaining that myth entails significant material and symbolic work, particularly organised around the recursive placement of the ‘original moment’ of dispossession and colonisation in the past to make the settler sovereignty that has been imposed appear legitimate and complete. This paper presents an analysis of the story of one public housing estate in inner Melbourne, Walker Street, that has been the subject of recursive dispossession and multiple enactments of displacement. We examine the history of title documents at Walker Street, tracing back and forward through time to consider how those land titles have come to be and the work they do to constitute questions of belonging and housing inequality on stolen land. The methodology we develop seeks to understand land title as a literal register of the ongoingness of settler colonialism to reveal how title documents affectively and materially underscore the myth of a thickening settler claim to territory whilst distancing Indigenous sovereignty: we call this a possessory stratigraphy.

Injustice by design

ABSTRACT Systemic epistemic failings in institutions are often explained through settler epistemologies and settler colonial frameworks that both obscure and reproduce the conditions necessary for those failings to endure. What is never questioned in the standard picture of institutional epistemic injustice is the implicit origin myth of an ‘institutional big bang’ that spawned many modern social institutions out of presumably noble orienting goals for a well-functioning society in democratic nation-states. We are concerned with the functional outcomes of institutions in settler colonial societies, and how these outcomes consistently undermine whitewashed narratives of any inherent institutional design allegedly aimed at promoting testimonial justice in settler colonial societies. Institutions are built to target and maintain a status quo, especially (but not only) when they are charged with securing part of the social order or fabric of settler colonial societies. We will illustrate this concern through a discussion of various functional outcomes of the U.S. institution of asylum using Shannon Speed’s (2019. Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State. The University of North Carolina Press) analysis of the violence Indigenous women migrants from Latin America experience within the complex administrative web of U.S. migration and asylum systems.

Reimagining democratic education by positioning Aboriginal Country-centred learning as foundational to curriculum and pedagogy

In settler colonial societies such as Australia, democracy has its origins in colonisation and so this influences educational structures, policies and what is taught every day in classrooms. The current national education vision, the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council Secretariat, 2019) states that a purpose of education is to create “a socially cohesive society that values respects and appreciates different points of view and cultural, social linguistic, and religious diversity” (p. 5), framing key democratic principles as central to this work. Paradoxically, as the corporate-style education agenda continues to narrow and limit an already Eurocentric, monocultural curriculum, and performance-manage teachers, democratic approaches such as critical thinking, problem-solving and experiential learning are at risk. In October 2023, the Australian people were asked to vote on altering the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander “Voice” to parliament. The Voice to Parliament would have provided greater representation in parliamentary processes and political decision making on matters impacting Indigenous peoples interests and rights (Fredericks, 2023, p. 125). The divisive debate and vilification of Indigenous Australians that preceded the referendum and resulted in a resounding “No” vote, reflects the historical failure of the education system to prepare students for active and informed citizenship. Learning from Country (LFC), where knowledges shared by Aboriginal peoples and Country are positioned as central to understanding this country, suggests a way in which we might decolonise Australian education and address the social, cultural and environmental issues facing all citizens. This paper discusses Country-centred learning where teacher educators and preservice teachers learn from Country through walking with and listen to Aboriginal community-based educators to develop the pedagogical skills needed to implement a participatory democratic approach in their classrooms. LFC supports opportunities to story Aboriginal ways of being, knowing and doing into curriculum and pedagogy using a framework to guide teachers in ways that respect multiple local community perspectives to build cohesive school communities.

Absence makes the heart grow colder: the harmful nature of invisibility of contemporary American Indians

ABSTRACT In settler colonial societies, settlers employ various practices to eliminate, replace, and erase Indigenous Peoples. We posit that the rarity of representations of contemporary American Indians in mainstream US culture legitimates other settler colonial practices in US society. We studied whether less exposure to representations of contemporary American Indians is associated with less support for challenges to other settler colonial practices. Using survey data from 903 White Americans, we examined associations between exposure to representations of contemporary American Indians, belief that American Indians are “a people of the past”, and support for challenges to settler colonial practices. We found that less exposure to representations of contemporary American Indians was indirectly associated with less support for challenges to settler colonial practices. This association occurs via double mediation – first through belief that American Indian Peoples are not contemporary and second through belief they are “a people of the past”.

Domestication Western-Style: Fantasies of Harmony and the Violence of Plasticity in Mary O’Hara’s My Friend Flicka

ABSTRACT Historically, animal characters and animal-child encounters in children’s narratives have served largely metaphorical functions. More recently, scholars have become interested in exploring literary human-animal relations as interesting in and of themselves and not purely as background for promoting values and attitudes considered desirable for adolescent readers. The article proposes a reading of Mary O’Hara’s novel My Friend Flicka (O’Hara 1941) which embeds the relationship between the human protagonist and the horse in the wider stories of equine domestication and the settling of the Western frontier. In effect, while the story of Ken and Flicka is read as a metaphor – a synecdoche even – it is not a metaphor of human-human encounters but of the contradictions and ethical dilemmas inherent to the process of human-directed animal domestication in a capitalist settler colonial society. Ken’s coming of age through the story of love and loss is representative of dilemmas that humans engaged in processes of domestication have had to grapple with: Ken must come to terms with the violence of domestication. Concurrently, Flicka’s story of pain, fear, and love is read not just as the unique story of an individual horse but of the generations of equines that have been forced to adapt to an environment shaped by human dominance.

Neo-Colonial Criminology 10 Years On: The Silence Continues

Decolonial academic discourse has gained substantial momentum since 2010, prompting the question of whether research on hyperincarcerated Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial societies has increased. Earlier research found a lack of engagement with this social problem in high-ranked criminology journals in the decade preceding 2010. This study focuses on the subsequent decade (2011–2020) to ascertain any discernible shifts. The discursive mass on hyperincarcerated populations (Indigenous, African American, Hispanic American) is determined, finding that it still fails to reach the critical mass required to mainstream the idea that most discussions of criminality cannot afford to remain colourblind considering lived realities. Publication-to-incarceration-rate ratios for hyperincarcerated populations are compared, finding that the relative silence regarding Indigenous peoples also continues. The study concludes that the surging decolonial debate had little effect on the quantity of topical research published in high-ranked mainstream criminology journals, calling for future research to investigate why and to address any qualitative changes.

Rethinking housing inequality and justice in a settler colonial city

This paper brings the housing studies literature into conversation with scholarship on settler colonialism to consider questions of housing justice in settler colonial societies. It begins from an understanding of Indigenous dispossession as not simply an historical context but an ongoing process in which housing is deeply implicated through its embeddedness in colonial land and property regimes. Furthermore, processes of exclusion, neoliberalisation, financialisation and gentrification have made housing central to the production of racial inequality in (and beyond) settler colonies. Liberal notions of inequality that dominate most housing policy and some scholarship are, therefore, inadequate; what is required is research and intervention oriented towards housing justice – the meaning of which is best understood through intellectual and practical engagement with movements struggling for it. In this spirit, the paper presents the story of a prolonged struggle in so-called Sydney, which suggests how housing initiatives and campaigns led by Indigenous people are iteratively reconstructing existing political and economic structures in ways that address commodification, dispossession, exclusion, and displacement. This story points to a need for housing justice scholarship to engage with concepts of reparations – an engagement towards which this paper, in its final section, makes some small but hopefully helpful steps.

“To dream of a wildness distant from ourselves”: Capitalism, colonialism, and the Robinsonade

ABSTRACT Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe holds an iconic position, not solely as a work of literature, but also for its influence in economic and social theory. This article reflects on this influence by mobilizing Charles Mills’s concept of epistemologies of ignorance and Lorenzo Veracini’s work on psychological defence mechanisms in settler colonial societies. This theoretical framework motivates a close textual analysis of Robinson Crusoe that focuses particularly on four textual strategies: paired contrasts between Xury and Friday that frame enslavement as a sacrificial act; strategic use of “cosmopolitan” ideals; a theory of subjection as the foundation for legitimate power; and moral relativisms that rationalize Crusoe’s theft of Indigenous land. This analysis then provides the foundation for an original interpretation of Marx’s Capital as a critically inverted Robinsonade: one designed to demonstrate how global relations of colonial expropriation generate a crucible in which a particular imaginary of autonomous individuality is forged.

Unsettling Peace: The Settler-Colonial Challenge to the Local Turn

ABSTRACT The local turn in Peace Studies has raised important practical and normative questions around the ‘liberal peace’ approach that defines post-Cold War international peacebuilding. However, recent critical interventions reveal the limits of the local turn’s engagement with themes including race, gender, class, and colonialism. Engaging Indigenous authors who ground diverse conceptualizations of peace in the restitution of Indigenous land, the following discussion shows how the local turn’s theoretical framing of indigeneity risks erasing decolonial accounts of Indigenous peacebuilding in settler-colonial societies through its conceptual reliance on international intervention and normative prioritization of hybrid peace outcomes.

The Canadian Home: The Fate of Owners and Investors in the Great Depression

Although Canada’s is a liberal, settler-colonial society that has long valued the right to property, we know remarkably little about the experience of owners of, and investors in, residential real estate during the Great Depression. This was a period of great suffering for both. Scattered and neglected sources, coupled with cautious comparisons with the better-documented us experience, makes it possible to provide a plausible sketch. Many mortgaged homeowners, and a higher proportion of the stigmatized landlords, lost their properties through default or tax sales. Unlike the situation in the United States, lending institutions did not go under, but most residential mortgages were provided by private individuals, many of whom suffered. Because numerous owners fell into tax arrears, while an increasing number of families demanded relief, municipalities were squeezed. Out of necessity, landlords, lenders, and municipalities offered concessions to tenants and property owners, respectively. Although the Depression was a decade of occasional conflict, it was also defined by everyday compromise and cooperation.

Geographies of COVID‐19

Geographies of COVID‐19

(Mis)Trust and Pragmatism as Grounded Normativity

(Mis)Trust and Pragmatism as Grounded Normativity

‘Primitive, Antique, and Modern’: An Exhibition of Music in Interwar Sydney and the ‘Australian’ Music Question

ABSTRACT In 1933, the city of Sydney hosted the first dedicated musical exhibition in Australia. Showcasing historic instruments, manuscripts, and ephemera in the settler-colonial society of Australia, this exhibition raised uncomfortable questions about the nation’s history. This article explores the exhibition in the context of contemporary musical culture and collecting practices, arguing that this event physically manifests ongoing debates about the formation of Australian social and cultural identity. Its displays demonstrate both a desire for connection with European traditions and an increasing awareness of Australia’s position in the Pacific and white Australia’s relationship with First Nations people and culture.

Sovereign Flows and the Obligation of Repayment

AbstractStephen Graham Jones’s 2020 novel, The Only Good Indians, depicts the haunting and killing of four Blackfeet friends—Ricky, Lewis, Cassidy, and Gabriel—by the spirit of an elk cow called “Elk Head Woman,” who stalks the men after they have killed her and her unborn calf. Their punishment, and the unpayability of their debt to the ghost, entail asking what lies beyond a regime of rights when those rights have been judged to be always already ignorable by settler-colonial society. But Elk Head Woman’s haunting also positions violence against the land (via fracking) and its more-than-human inhabitants as a metonym for settler-colonial violence against Indigenous women and girls. This essay asks what justice may look like beyond a framework of individual rights that create a temporal enclosure, tying people and harm to moments in time and specific places, arguing that the mobility of intergenerational debt and its unpayable reparations across times and places constitute a sovereign flow—the enduring movement of an ethical–political object (here, the elk-Blackfeet law) created between sovereign peoples (human and more-than-human) that persists apart from the settler-colonial state across whose legal and geographic spaces and time the flow moves.[The Only Good Indians’] fictional dramatizing of settler-Indigenous-nonhuman relations shows a world apart from settler-colonial social justice and forms of democratic inclusion: a haunting that . . . [refuses] violence against Indigenous women and ongoing forms of capitalistic extraction on tribal lands.

‘Success is different in our eyes’: reconciling definitions of educational success among Indigenous families and education systems in Alberta, Canada

ABSTRACT Notions of ‘student success’ feature prominently in emerging educational discourses and policy orientations. Current policy frameworks focusing on equity, performance, and reconciliation claim to offer validation for perspectives of Indigenous peoples and other racialized communities, but they are simultaneously raising the stakes for individual responsibility and performance. This paper explores these developments by examining how Indigenous students and family members understand and experience educational success in relation to the notions of success advanced by school systems. We present a case study conducted in Alberta, Canada, drawing on data from ten focus groups with 77 Indigenous youth and parents of Indigenous children connected to one school division. Highlighting the ways that social and educational policy frameworks related to employability and performance exacerbate contradictions inherent in settler colonial societies, we reveal how school systems, despite claims to the contrary, continue to adopt practices that undermine the capacity for many Indigenous people to achieve their aspirations.

Indian South Africans as a middleman minority: Historical and contemporary perspectives

Beginning in the 1940s, a literature on middleman minorities emerged to demystify the intermediary economic niche that Jews had occupied in medieval Europe. They were viewed as ethnic entrepreneurs occupying the economic status gap. In the 1960s, scholars began to apply middleman minority theory to colonial societies and to American society. More recently, Coloureds in South Africa have been identified as a middleman minority of another type: semi-privileged proletarians occupying an economic status gap in labour between whites and Africans. A political status gap between whites and Africans, both seeking alliances to achieve hegemony, is also occupied by Coloureds. Among South African Indians, one finds ethnic entrepreneurs: a small shopkeeping and trading class from South Asia. But there are also Indian semi-privileged proletarians who emerged from the indentured labour population in the early twentieth century. This article employs a historical institutional approach to analyse political tensions among Indians, and examines the cleavage between Indians and other races over political rights vis-a-vis the South African state. It also offers a typology contrasting ethnic entrepreneurs with semi-privileged proletarians in terms of the differing economic status gaps they occupy. Furthermore, it illustrates how Indians occupy a political status gap in a complex settler colonial society like South Africa.

Skilling Indigenous futures: crafts and resilience among the Paiwan people of Taiwan

For Indigenous people, what one knows and how one gets to know what one knows are political issues that have repercussions for self-determination and cultural resilience. This article reflects on the intersection of skilled practices and the politics of indigeneity among the Paiwan people, one of the 16 officially recognised Indigenous peoples in Taiwan. The revitalisation of crafts have for some years been key to cultural revitalisation efforts, as well as an avenue for Paiwan people to gain an income, importantly allowing individuals to work in the community and avoid migration to the cities to find wage labour. The article presents an ethnographic vignette of the activities of an initiative pairing knowledge holders with apprentices, before setting this initiative in social and historical context. The theoretical thread of the article develops Clifford’s ideas about ‘articulation’, the notion that Indigenous people are constantly engaged in the negotiation of needs that are often at odds, namely the desire for cultural continuity and self-determination, and the need to adapt to the demands of life in a settler colonial society. I argue here that it is fruitful to understand the social life of skills in Indigenous communities as shaped by such processes of articulation.