Settler Colonialism Research Articles

Race and authenticity in Argentine comics, 1950s–1970s: Indigenous peoples, mestizos, and white settlers on the frontier

ABSTRACT This article analyses several Argentine comics published between the 1950s and 1970s that depict the racialised hinterlands of state expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Whether set in Argentina or the US, these comics are often celebrated as works that dismantle traditional dichotomies found in comics (e.g. white heroes vs. Indigenous villains). Referring to their use of the archive, of more nuanced Indigenous characters, and even of narratives constructed from “an Indigenous worldview”, comics creators are seen to disrupt stereotypical depictions of race. Positioning the works within a history of race in Argentina and political struggles over its rural interior, I unpack the creators’ claims to “authenticity” to set out an alternative reading of Indigeneity, mestizaje, and whiteness in these comics. I argue that this corpus ultimately preserves existing racial hierarchies by promoting figures of whiteness who support white settlerism in the name of modernisation and progress.

Who are the Palestinian Children Against Which Israel Has Launched a Genocide?

In this essay, Heidi Morrison's goal is to bring much needed attention to the Palestinians children of Gaza who are the object of a genocide, despite the International Court of Justice declaring in 2024 that Israel should take steps to prevent genocide. Morrison makes three points. First, the reigning narrative on Palestinian children dehumanizes them, fueling the war on Palestinian children. Second, while humanitarian aid is much needed, it is not the long-term solution for Palestinian children’s trauma, which is caused by a structural and ongoing process of settler colonialism. Third, Palestinian children know and express resistance daily, despite their lack of formal citizenship.

Settler militarism: Affective colonial pursuits and the militarized atmosphere of war commemoration

This article examines settler militarism and how it is mobilized through affective practices that ultimately bolster the settler colonial project. With this intent, it develops the concept of ‘militarized atmosphere’ defined as a staged environment where war is positioned outside politics and critical scrutiny through a series of affective manoeuvres and aesthetics. A militarized atmosphere operates through military aesthetics to attune people’s bodies to a position of uncritical validation of a given discourse of war. This article argues that a militarized atmosphere crucially sustains the settler colonial project by removing or reducing contestation around the theme of war, which is a pillar of settler colonialism. In settler societies, numerous Indigenous individuals perceive themselves as embattled and seek acknowledgement of the history and legacy of colonial violence and warfare. In contrast, settler governments have a vested interest in concealing this history and its enduring legacy, and they do so by exalting military warfare as the foundation of the modern nation and creating affective attachments to the military. The article uses the case of Australia to elucidate the argument. It examines how the aesthetics of war commemoration at the Dawn Service, Australia’s major commemorative event, contributes to producing a militarized atmosphere that sustains the Australian settler colonial project. It proposes a framework that links the feminist concept of affective militarism to settler colonialism and contributes to the emerging literature on settler colonialism and militarism.

Examining Indigenous Identity as a Protective Factor in Mental Well-Being Research in the United States: A Scoping Review.

Due to historical and ongoing structural racism and settler colonialism, Indigenous Peoples and communities in the United States are at a higher risk for a variety of diseases, elevated stress, and negative mental health outcomes. In addition, the United States federal government and the public encourage a view that Indigenous Peoples are primarily a racial group. Federally-, state-, and un-recognized Indigenous Peoples have a collective right to self-determination and sovereignty, and individuals of these Peoples understand this. The goals of this scoping review were to examine what research on identity and mental well-being is currently being conducted with Indigenous populations in the United States, synthesize the results, and determine if researchers are utilizing toolsets and theories that reinforce the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples, communities, and the individual. The scoping review followed guidelines from the Joanna Briggs Institute guide for Scoping Reviews and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Four databases and over six thousand articles were searched for this review, with twenty-four that had data extracted and analyzed. Current research on the relationship between Indigenous identity and mental well-being shows mixed results. The findings of this scoping review highlight a need for Indigenous-specific tools for measuring identity in place of tools used for other ethnic and racial groups. More research must be conducted to create tools that specifically examine the phenomena of United States-based Indigenous identity.

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.

Uranium mining remediation, environmental assessment, and bureaucratic violence environmental sociology

ABSTRACT The US government has called for increased uranium mining to support nuclear energy as a replacement for fossil fuels. At the same time, remediating historical mines has been challenging, leaving Indigenous communities suffering as they fight for the removal of harmful mining waste from decades past. Examining two projects and their environmental assessments in the Navajo Nation, this study identifies how settler colonialism extends through state decision-making in the push for nuclear power. Promoting environmental justice, yet approving licenses for new mines and waste storage in Indigenous communities, constitutes a form of bureaucratic violence in which policies and procedures legitimate harm. State power is extended through claims of scientific legitimacy and participatory process, while defending decisions as just. The analysis of these processes shows how past land dispossession leads to forever environmental, ecological, and social damage under the guise of regulatory protection.

Truth-telling about (Teacher) education as settler-colonial project: ‘The past is always with us’

ABSTRACT One of the Editors’ 2022 Challenges to the Field was: What is the story this government wants us to tell our children? What is education for? Continuing this conversation leads to a related question: What can be learnt from reviewing the history of schooling in Australia in this light? I argue here that the nation’s founding discourse of White Australia produced a purposeful project of schooling and teacher education designed to ‘keep rural Australia white’. This also led to the disassociation of rural education and Aboriginal education that remains problematic for rural schools today. As a form of truth-telling from a non-Indigenous perspective, I offer a basis for reflection on the extent to which 21st Century educational practices continue to (re)produce this discourse. Understanding the past – about how the newly federated Australian states century set out to educate their future citizens – is crucial for teacher education aiming for social and environmental justice and change. An anti-colonialist reading of this history of colonial settler schooling might help us understand why the discourse of White Australia (and the systematic regimes of ‘truth’ about our country, its original inhabitants, and its waves of new settler-citizens) has remained so powerful over time.

Indigenous Perspectives on Dismantling the Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Rural Sociology☆

AbstractRural Sociology has failed to incorporate Settler‐colonialism and Indigenous theory in studying rural social relations. This presents a serious gap in the discipline's conceptualization of land as the foundation of social reproduction. Indigenous theory provides rich insights about humans' relations among themselves and with the more‐than‐human that inform our understanding of Settler colonialism as a driver of social formation, and human–environmental interactions more generally. This paper, written by four Indigenous environmental social scientists and one Settler rural sociologist, invites the discipline to engage Indigeneity and Settler colonialism in methodologically, theoretically, and ethically appropriate ways.

Understanding school discipline and exclusion in Australia: key issues

AbstractExclusionary school discipline is an emerging field of research in Australia, whereas it is more established in contexts such as the United States and United Kingdom. In this article we, therefore, seek to understand how exclusionary school discipline has been examined by Australian education researchers working across a range of disciplines. We conducted a critical literature review, analysing research directly and indirectly investigating school discipline and exclusion and (1) disability; (2) racialisation; (3) teacher safety and relationships with students; and 4) non-punitive responses to ‘student disruption’. The insights from this body of research demonstrate the need for further research that seeks to understand exclusionary school discipline within longer histories of settler colonialism and influenced by structural factors such as racism and ableism. Further, there are opportunities for research that engages the collective capacity of schools and communities in imagining radically different approaches to school and inclusion, that transform injustices and build solidarities.

Looking Back When Moving Forward: Researching Sites of Former Disability Institutions

This article discusses an inclusive research program where colleagues and co-researchers (with intellectual disability) guide and inform future research practice to ensure research is targeted to areas of significance and relevance to them. The research program is about sites of former disability institutions. Many people with intellectual disability in Australia were segregated and forced to live in disability institutions until deinstitutionalisation efforts became mainstream in the late 20th Century. We are a team of four people based in New South Wales, Australia. Our team includes disability advocates and researchers who have contributed to a program of research exploring connections between sites of former disability institutions and contemporary disability rights. In this article, we reflect on conversations about our research undertaken so far and where the research goes from here. We explore five pillars of action informing how research relating to disability institutions can progress: 1. Current use: research exploring erasure of experiences of institutionalisation communicated through educational resources and maps about current use of sites of former disability institutions; 2. Reparative planning processes: research developing frameworks for alternative approaches to planning and heritage processes supporting alternative uses of former sites of disability institutions; 3. Official recognition and redress: research exploring perspectives on governments formally recognising and remedying experiences of people with disability who were institutionalised; 4. Community-led repair and remembrance: research identifying practices for both celebrating advocates with disability and reckoning with and repairing familial and social bonds broken through institutionalisation; 5. Community-inclusive practices: research exploring endurance of institutional practices in disability accommodation in community settings. These five pillars are underpinned by three foundational layers: advancing disability human rights; reckoning with intersections between disability institutions and settler colonialism, other dynamics of oppression, and eugenics; and using inclusive practices.

Small Chemicals of Trauma: Epigenetics as Colonial Unknowing

In Australia, some Indigenous and non-Indigenous scientists, health workers, psychologists, and others have identified a resonance between epigenetics and Indigenous scholarship on intergenerational trauma. Epigenetics is a postgenomic science that seeks to demonstrate how environments can “get under the skin” to shape health outcomes by altering gene expression. Intergenerational trauma is a similar concept, as it describes how past harms such as colonial policies can make themselves felt in the present. Using ethnographic data from interviews with researchers across Australia and observations from scientific conferences, this article critically examines how the normative tools of epigenetic studies are increasingly positioned by scientists as the route to a valuable form of evidence for addressing intergenerational trauma and health injustice. Through the frame of “colonial unknowing,” we argue that the settler state functions by valuing certain forms of evidence of trauma over others; namely, epigenetics is positioned as offering objective scientific evidence seen as more valuable than narrative testimony and evidence rooted in Indigenous ontologies, thereby displacing prior knowledges of how trauma is embodied and enrolling communities into conditions of perpetual rediscovery. While many participants reject epigenetic knowledge production outright for this reason, we explore how others strategically engage with it in the present while simultaneously challenging its growing epistemic power and future promise.

Stigmatisation as settler colonialism: designating humanitarian and civic society organisations in Palestine as security threats

ABSTRACT Since Hamas’s 7th October attacks on southern Israel, the Palestinian population living in the Gaza Strip has been subjected to an unprecedented level of destruction that has decimated every aspect of Palestinian life. The ongoing Israeli military invasion has been considered a ‘plausible case of genocide’, and the humanitarian catastrophe has been compounded by major restrictions on access to humanitarian aid. Accusations of supporting ‘terror’ have been levied against UNRWA, the major provider of humanitarian services in Gaza, leading to an initial suspension of donor support to the organisation by many western governments. In this article, we consider the Israeli government’s tactics used to delegitimise those involved in providing humanitarian and lifesaving support for the Palestinian population, concluding that the construction and dissemination of narratives that depict them as being ‘terroristic’ or having ‘terrorist’ connections is a sophisticated additional layer of the settler colonial logic of elimination and erasure.

Settler Midwifery: A Colonial Tool in Canada's Reproductive Healthcare System.

The land we call Canada is a settler colonial country where reproductive healthcare is used as a mechanism to control, subjugate, and erase Indigenous people and to advance the White settler state. Healthcare providers play an integral role in the healthcare system and contribute to Canada's colonization. In this piece, we critically analyze how settler midwifery is complicit with colonialism in reproductive healthcare by exploring the history of midwifery in Canada, midwifery education, and contemporary settler midwifery. European settlers omitted the history of Indigenous midwifery in Canada and to justify their erasure, they conceptualized Indigenous Peoples as uncivilized and their birthing practices as substandard. To establish a colonial healthcare system, settler midwives replaced traditional Indigenous birth attendants. When midwifery became regulated, midwives were required to train in formal post-secondary institutions that sustain colonial logics, systems, and practices. Midwifery education programs maintain colonialism by reinforcing medicalized Western practices and sustaining barriers to the growth of Indigenous midwifery. As a result, Western birthing practices are widespread among settler midwives and Indigenous Peoples face barriers to comprehensive and culturally sensitive care. To decolonize Canadian midwifery, we must dismantle stereotypes about Indigenous Peoples and their birthing practices in historical narratives, implement an anti-colonial approach to midwifery education, support Indigenous midwives in returning birth home, and improve the provision of culturally sensitive care. Settler midwifery in Canada is complicit in colonialism; building anti-colonial alliances can help support Indigenous midwives in leading a decolonial future for reproduction and birthing.

Rez dogs and reflections: how Decolonizing Methodologies informs Indigenous research

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reflect on the role of Linda Tuhiwai Smith's book Decolonizing Methodologies in our work as Indigenous scholars.Design/methodology/approachThis article explores the application of Indigenous-centered research methodologies as outlined by Linda Tuhiwai Smith in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Through the collaborative work of two Indigenous scholars, we examine how traditional academic structures rooted in settler colonialism can be challenged and transformed.FindingsWe did not have findings as this is not a research paper, but a reflection on how we used Tuhiwai Smith's work in the development and implementation of an Indigenous centered research project.Originality/valueThe originality of this submission is that it reflects on how Tuhiwai Smith's work was used in the natural sciences as opposed to just education/social science research.

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.

Cabecitas Blancas: settler colonialism, racial capitalism and the (im)mobility of borders for Yucatecan migrant families

In this paper, I analyse the intersection of settler colonialism, racial capitalism and border violence by examining Cabecitas Blancas a project run by the Yucatecan government to reunite families divided by the US-Mexican border. A unique program in Mexico, Cabecitas Blancas helps elders who have not seen their children living in the United States for at least 10 years, due to their children’s precarious immigration status, reunite for a short period of time. I have developed the term tramitología to show the way the settler colonial state monitors and restrict Indigenous mobility by designating who is “worthy” of government support. I demonstrate how the flow of mostly Maya elders via Cabecitas Blancas between borders is facilitated only because they become state commodities that sustain racial capitalism via tourism and multicultural policies. Ultimately, I argue that reform programs such as Cabecitas Blancas enable and (re)produce exploitation, settler colonialism and border violence. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with government officials as well as YouTube videos and online news articles depicting different stages of the program.

Race, sovereignty, and White settler colonial studies: placing settlers at the Cultural Interface

ABSTRACT White settler colonial studies has been widely criticised for representing settler colonialism as an impenetrable and inevitable structure. This article therefore turns to explore how race preconditions and limits the construction of settler subjects. We draw on Torres Strait Islander theorist Martin Nakata’s Cultural Interface theory to unsettle ‘common-sense’ theories of race, and reconceive of the place where European and Indigenous cultures meet as sovereign Indigenous land. We extend Cultural Interface theory to locate White settler standpoints within the intertwined histories of racial capitalism and European and US imperialism. We argue that these histories orient settlers towards White possessive sovereignty. This article then deploys this framework to provide a deeper understanding of the disciplinary limits of White settler colonial studies through two case studies. First, we analyse Liberia’s construction as a settler colonial nation to denaturalise and historicise White settler standpoints. Second, we analyse the White settler standpoint institutionalised in White settler colonial studies’ descriptions of the settler/Indigenous binary, the logic of elimination, and settler sovereignty. In both cases, White settler standpoints are shaped and limited by the racialised logics of White possessive sovereignty. We nevertheless conclude that settlers may reorient themselves towards Indigenous sovereignty.

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.

Prophecy redux: a critique of Leanne Simpson’s concept of autogenocide

ABSTRACT This article examines the thought of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson as a case study in Indigenous decolonial theory. Primarily by engaging with Simpson’s approach in As We Have Always Done, it develops a critique of the concept of ‘autogenocide’. It argues that the liberatory potential of grounded normativity is undercut by Simpson’s juxtaposition of resistance with the immediate threat of self-destruction. This is signalled by the failure to exist in an adequately Indigenous ontological domain. The result arguably summons myths about Indigenous disappearance – that Indigenous peoples are a ‘dying race’ responsible for their own demise, and thus may read as injurious to Indigenous peoples who defy the markers of indigeneity outlined by Simpson in her Radical Resurgence Project. This critique is framed with reference to biopolitics, resilience, and Indigenous suicide. Transposing autogenocide to the Indigenous suicide crisis in Canada demands that the utility of the concept be evaluated in terms of another anti-colonial imaginary, where death by suicide exposes the structural violence of settler colonialism. It further contends that Critical Indigenous Studies is uniquely charged with confronting the intellectual, political, and philosophical consequences produced by the autogenocide concept. Most importantly, the alternative forms of essentialism and erasure that it heralds.