'Decolonization' and the politics of settler state/Indigenous relations Research Papers (original) (raw)

The dispossession at the core of the fur trade is barely perceptible, especially when recounted as part of the genesis narrative of British North American capitalism and state-formation. By focusing on the exploitation of Indigenous... more

The dispossession at the core of the fur trade is barely perceptible, especially when recounted as part of the genesis narrative of British North American capitalism and state-formation. By focusing on the exploitation of Indigenous peoples' labour by company traders, I make this dispossession more conspicuous, revealing it as neither a direct nor a uniform process, but rather fragmented and driven by a host of legal, economic, and geopolitical factors. To achieve this, dialectical materialism is the preferred mode of analysis. Such a perspective brings into relief the uneven and combined nature of legal and economic transformation, disclosing the inner dimensions of dispossession that are the principal legacy of the fur trade and British North American settler-colonialism alike. At stake in this study is not only a comprehensive account of the processes of dispossession, but also a commentary on the insidiousness of these processesthat is, an inside look at how customary reciprocity was distorted through exploitative practices that served of dispossession.

Not everything is wrong with the idea of botanical decolonisation: science tells us that biodiversity is generally good for ecosystems. But I argue that we need to think harder, longer and in more complex ways about the chains of... more

Not everything is wrong with the idea of botanical decolonisation: science tells us that biodiversity is generally good for ecosystems. But I argue that we need to think harder, longer and in more complex ways about the chains of inference linking our thinking – from plants to animals, peoples, and territories and starting from the meaning and agency of the word “native”. This paper explores the current debate, critically addresses the idea of decolonization in the garden, and untangles the biological and symbolic threads that complicate the ways we think about plants in our backyard.

Decolonization. Focus: America There is no doubt that an in-depth knowledge of reality requires a positive, constructive approach, a clear willingness to put oneself in the other's shoes and therefore to question one's own certainties,... more

Decolonization. Focus: America
There is no doubt that an in-depth knowledge of reality requires a positive, constructive approach, a clear willingness to put oneself in the other's shoes and therefore to question one's own certainties, beliefs and conventions. An articulated exercise that also requires a certain maturity, a predisposition to dialogue and above all a training and scientific basis that can support human actions.

The paper draws upon the controversy over the use of indigenous-related sports emblems that has recently sparked a series of protests across the United States against the Washington Redsk*ns name and imagery. It focuses on the visual... more

The paper draws upon the controversy over the use of indigenous-related sports emblems that has recently sparked a series of protests across the United States against the Washington Redsk*ns name and imagery. It focuses on the visual aspect of the debate, tracing the white supremacist foundations of the Washington team’s insignia to the institutional construction of Native identity through popular Indian head pennies, gold coins, and buffalo nickels in the period between 1859 and 1938. Pointing at the seemingly paradoxical discrepancy between the minted messages and the systematic political, legal, and military invasion on American Indian sovereignty in that period, it proceeds to deconstruct the paradox by exposing the numismatic pictorial language as a manifestation of the same ideological project and the configurations of power that have remained unchanged to this day. The continued circulation of indigenous-based iconography in the contemporary American context shows that the same cultural imagination continues to serve not only as a powerful rationale for European America’s historical, national, and political narrative but also as a form of “anti-conquest” that both obscures and enacts the established formulas of colonial domination and control. Observing the alterations of the Washington Redsk*ns logo design across some of the key socio-historical moments of the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the analysis explores how various forms of national anxiety transcend into identity through the politics of representation. In that light, it regards recent activism against mass-mediated symbolization of indigenous identity as an important arena in which centuries-old hegemonic discourses are contested against new venues of self-determination and internal decolonization.

World-Making Stories is a collection of Maidu creation stories that will help readers appreciate California’s rich cultural tapestry. At the beginning of the twentieth century, renowned storyteller Hanc’ibyjim (Tom Young) performed Maidu... more

World-Making Stories is a collection of Maidu creation stories that will help readers
appreciate California’s rich cultural tapestry. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
renowned storyteller Hanc’ibyjim (Tom Young) performed Maidu and Atsugewi
stories for anthropologist Ronald B. Dixon, who published these stories in 1912. The
resulting Maidu Texts presented the stories in numbered block texts that, while
serving as a source of linguistic decoding, also reflect the state of anthropological
linguistics of the era by not conveying a sense of rhetorical or poetic composition.
Sixty years later, noted linguist William Shipley engaged the texts as oral literature
and composed a free verse literary translation, which he paired with the artwork
of Daniel Stolpe and published in a limited-edition four-volume set that circulated
primarily to libraries and private collectors.
Here M. Eleanor Nevins and the Weje-ebis Majdy (Keep Speaking Maidu)
Language Revitalization Project Team illuminate these important tales in a new
way by restoring Maidu elements omitted by William Shipley and by bending the
translation to more closely correspond in poetic form to the Maidu original. The
beautifully told stories by Hanc’ibyjim are accompanied by Dan Stolpe’s intricate
illustrations and by personal and pedagogical essays from scholars and Maidu
leaders working to revitalize the language. The resulting World-Making Stories is a
necessity for language revitalization programs and an excellent model of indigenous
community-university collaboration.

Photography has been used by settlers to document and fictionalize colonial encounters in Canada since the mid-19th century as an attempt to displace Indigenous peoples from the land, to contain them within settler albums. In this paper,... more

Photography has been used by settlers to document and fictionalize colonial encounters in Canada since the mid-19th century as an attempt to displace Indigenous peoples from the land, to contain them within settler albums. In this paper, I look at visual practices of settler photograph albums in British Columbia from the turn of the 20th century to argue that this is a key site of settler forgetting and erasure of colonial violence. Specifically, I analyse the visual practices of depicting the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of colonial encounter in two personal photograph albums of contractor Andrew Onderdonk, (ca. 1885) and photographer and civil servant Benjamin Leeson (n.d., active 1887-1900). Paulette Regan’s methodology of ‘unsettling’ (2011) guides a destabilization of the historical narratives that are supported by these personal photographic albums, and asks how they produce settler denial and guilt about Indigenous-settler relations, as well as what we can learn about colonial injustice and violence through an unsettling encounter with these same images.
This paper is a part of a larger decolonizing project that aims to destabilize the objectivity of photographic documentation to show how this archive is used to structure a fantasized ‘before’ and ‘after’ of settler contact that erases the violence of Indigenous-settler relations to depict North American colonization as a benevolent intervention.

In early April 2016, Attawapiskat First Nation declared a state of emergency when 11 young people tried to kill themselves in one day alone. The response from the state was to send in crisis workers. As I write, occupations and protests... more

In early April 2016, Attawapiskat First Nation declared a state of emergency when 11 young people tried to kill themselves in one day alone. The response from the state was to send in crisis workers. As I write, occupations and protests have erupted across Canada to draw attention not only to youth suicides in First Nations communities, but also to the state’s response to them. As protests continue, the state’s reactions to these situations raise alarming questions about its relationship with Indigenous peoples. On April 10, Justin Trudeau tweeted, “The news from Attawapiskat is heartbreaking. We’ll continue to work to improve living conditions for all Indigenous peoples.” We, the state, will work to improve living conditions for all of you, Indigenous peoples. Taking a page out of an old paternal script, the state sees itself as the champion that can deliver improvement – and, in doing so, it erases its own direct role in inflicting the ravages of structural violence in the long history of this settler state. Against this backdrop, Sherene Razack’s Dying from Improvement is a critical intervention, as it provides an analysis of the banality of settler-state violence framed through narratives of improvement and inquiry….

This article emerges from one collaboration with Palestinian clinicians while presenting the work of Frantz Fanon to a group of training clinicians in the Maana Center of EMMS Nazareth Hospital in Nazareth (al‐Nasirah). Reading and... more

This article emerges from one collaboration with Palestinian clinicians while presenting the work of Frantz Fanon to a group of training clinicians in the Maana Center of EMMS Nazareth Hospital in Nazareth (al‐Nasirah). Reading and discussing Fanon in Palestine with Palestinian clinicians and trainees elicited deepseated feelings of affirmation and validation, while also disclosing anxieties arising from colonial alienation, as Fanon would say. At the same time, Fanon conjures in Palestine an affirming and empowering spirit that, inevitably, results in a consideration of how Palestinian indigeneity, no matter how mediated by regimes of domination and control, recenters itself as a repost to the extractive psychological and material violence that constitutes settler colonialism; in this case, Zionism. Adopting a decolonial methodology, we came to understand how psychological theory and practice provides Palestinian clinicians a means to work for selfawareness within a regime of oppression. Centering indigenous lives, their relationships to their own collectives and communities, and their relationship the psychopathy of settler colonial structures, produced critical psychological and social knowledge.

The coastal Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, Mexico – known locally as the Istmo – is regarded as one of the best wind energy generating sites in the world. Marketed as a preeminent solution to mitigating climate change, wind... more

The coastal Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, Mexico – known locally as the Istmo – is regarded as one of the best wind energy generating sites in the world. Marketed as a preeminent solution to mitigating climate change, wind energy is now applying increasing pressure on indigenous groups in the region. The article begins by outlining a definition of colonialism that assists in identifying the temporal continuity of the colonial project to understand its relationship with wind energy development. The next section briefly reviews colonial genocide studies, discussing disciplinary debates between liberal and post-liberal genocide scholars, the relevance of self-management within colonial systems, the genocide-ecocide nexus and the ‘intent’ of destructive development projects. This leads into reviewing the claims and findings that emerged from fieldwork in the Istmo, which is divided into the north and south to show the different, yet similar dynamics taking place in the region. Finally, the article concludes that wind energy development as a ‘solution’ to climate change not only distracts from its dependence on fossil fuels and mining, but renews and continues a slow industrial genocide, assimilating and targeting (indigenous) people who continue to value their land, sea and cultural relationships.

Megumi Chibana translated into Japanese the "Teaching for Maunakea: Kiʻai Perspectives” forum from Amerasia Journal. The translated article published in a magazine entitled Ekkyo Hiroba. This magazine has targeted readers and customers in... more

Megumi Chibana translated into Japanese the "Teaching for Maunakea: Kiʻai Perspectives” forum from Amerasia Journal. The translated article published in a magazine entitled Ekkyo Hiroba. This magazine has targeted readers and customers in East Asia interested in social movements, literature, and other creative and critical activities in Okinawa. This volume's theme was "Politics of Islands."

This chapter focuses on contemporary proposals to implement private property regimes on First Nations reserves. First, I examine the arguments used by proponents of the First Nations Property Ownership Act to motivate support for this... more

This chapter focuses on contemporary proposals to implement private property regimes on First Nations reserves. First, I examine the arguments used by proponents of the First Nations Property Ownership Act to motivate support for this legisla- tion, demonstrating how it represents a rearticulation of past proposals, albeit as a ‘restoration’ of precolonial property rights regimes. Second, I discuss how this legisla- tion informs contemporary discussions within academia concerning Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation. Finally, I discuss how disputes over First Nations property rights demonstrate that both settler colonial subjection and continued assertions of Indigenous identity are inseparable from relationships with land.

How can settlers in restorative justice, while citing restorative justice/ restorative practice's Indigenous roots and committing themselves to repairing harms, live on land stolen from Indigenous Peoples through genocide and not act to... more

How can settlers in restorative justice, while citing restorative justice/ restorative practice's Indigenous roots and committing themselves to repairing harms, live on land stolen from Indigenous Peoples through genocide and not act to undo this catastrophic harm? How can settlers in restorative justice credibly hold children accountable for stealing others' property or personal belongings and not hold themselves accountable for the mass fraud and crimes that their settlement in North America involves--crimes from which settlers benefit and Indigenous Peoples suffer everyday? By calling these questions out of silence, unsettling as they are, I aim to heighten critical awareness of how White fantasies keep harms against Indigenous Nations off settlers' radar and prevent settlers in restorative justice from "walking the restorative talk."

The aim of this article is to interrogate the concept of cultural genocide. The primary context examined is the Government of Canada's recent attempt at reconciliation through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Drawing on the work... more

The aim of this article is to interrogate the concept of cultural genocide. The primary context examined is the Government of Canada's recent attempt at reconciliation through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Drawing on the work of Audra Simpson (Mohawk), Glen Sean Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene), Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi), Stephanie Lumsden (Hupa), and Luana Ross (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, located at Flathead Indian Reservation in Montana), I argue that cultural genocide, like cultural rights, is depoliticized, thus limiting the political impact these concepts can invoke. Following Sylvia Wynter, I also argue that the aims of “truth and reconciliation” can sometimes serve to resituate the power of a liberal multicultural settler state, rather than seek systemic changes that would properly address the present-day implications of the residential school system. Finally, I argue that genocide and culture need to be repoliticized in order to support Indigenous futurity and sovereignty.

In the 1990s several countries that had been divided by episodes of mass violence or gross human rights violations instigated projects of national 'reconciliation'. Reconciliation initiatives sought to provide an alternative to... more

In the 1990s several countries that had been divided by episodes of mass violence or gross human rights violations instigated projects of national 'reconciliation'. Reconciliation initiatives sought to provide an alternative to traditional state diplomacy and realpolitik by focusing on restoring and rebuilding relationships in novel and context sensitive ways that promoted state legitimacy, forgiveness and social stability. In 1991 the Australian parliament unanimously passed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act, which heralded the start of a process of reconciliation between the indigenous peoples and wider society. The Preamble to the Act founded the need for a reconciliation process on the injustice of colonial dispossession and on the continuing dispersal of indigenous people from their traditional lands. Yet, as this paper will show, the notion of 'justice' was deemed inappropriate from the start, and the resulting process was framed in a nation building discourse that placed a definite ceiling on indigenous aspirations. This paper seeks to demonstrate that, far from being a genuine attempt at atonement that is responsive to indigenous aspirations, Official Reconciliation exhibits a subtle, yet pervasive, assimilationist agenda, and consequently the process should be understood as but the latest phase in the colonial project. The paper will conclude by suggesting a de-colonising approach to reconciliation that addresses the problem of internal colonisation and which more closely reflects indigenous aspirations.

Given the centrality of land, territory, and sovereignty to settler colonial formations, it is unsurprising that geographers and other scholars working on such topics are increasingly finding settler colonial studies fruitful in their... more

Given the centrality of land, territory, and sovereignty to settler colonial formations, it is unsurprising that geographers and other scholars working on such topics are increasingly finding settler colonial studies fruitful in their research agendas. However, work on settler polities in political geography has historically been marked by the present absence of this framework, which has been consequential in terms of circumscribing the kinds of political analysis that geographers can offer. It also limits the nature, depth, and scope of radical critique of violent domination by skirting certain questions about the core drivers of dispossession and responsibility for them. This article examines political geographical engagement (or lack thereof) across each of four themes: population management/governance, terri-tory/sovereignty, consciousness, and narrative, paying particular attention to works which challenge the present absence of settler colonial theory in political geography. We argue that analyzing settler colonial formations as such is essential to conceptualizing their workings and linkages or disjunctures with other forms of empire. Yet this focus also has broader political stakes related to geography's complicity with racialized state power, violence, and empire, as well as and efforts to decolonize the discipline. K E Y W O R D S biopolitics, consciousness, decolonizing geography, narrative, political geography, present absence, settler colonialism, territory

In June 2019 Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report. This short Reflection focuses on the National Inquiry’s supplementary legal analysis, which concerns the law of... more

In June 2019 Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report. This short Reflection focuses on the National Inquiry’s supplementary legal analysis, which concerns the law of genocide. I contend that this analysis is correct in holding that the murder and disappearance of large numbers of Indigenous women, girls, and other persons ought to be understood as an ongoing crime facilitated by specific policy choices, legal decisions, and socio-economic structures. I also contend that the systemic, recurrent, and large-scale nature of this crime is best captured by the term “genocide.” I argue that formal legal definitions of “genocide” such as the one offered in the 1948 Genocide Convention, though conceptually clunky, historically contingent, and politically inadequate, are key to illuminating some of the structural forces underlying and animating a range of events that may otherwise appear unrelated. Genocide, the ultimate collectivist crime, is a concept of preponderantly legal origin, which means that serious consideration must be given to its specifically legal definition when trying to determine whether it is justifiable or appropriate to apply it to a given social phenomenon. Its standard legal definition may be unable to do justice to the specificities of different modes of group violence, but its abstract generality is also what enables those who employ it to highlight the intrinsically systemic character of such destruction. Ultimately, I suggest that Canada’s genocide “debate” turns on the relation between “law” and “society”—the question, that is, of how precisely a legal definition is to be interpreted and applied under different, and often rapidly changing, social conditions.

Most Friday nights, crowds pack into the Coloseo de Villa Victoria, a multipurpose arena in a working class neighborhood of La Paz. This week, the main event of Líder Lucha Libre is between Juanita la Cariñosa and Claudina la Maldita.... more

Most Friday nights, crowds pack into the Coloseo de Villa Victoria, a multipurpose arena in a working class neighborhood of La Paz. This week, the main event of Líder Lucha Libre is between Juanita la Cariñosa and Claudina la Maldita. These two luchadoras, dressed in sparkly pollera skirts and shawls, perform as chola characters, roughly based on indigenous women who have migrated to urban areas of Bolivia and stereotypically work as market vendors. The luchadoras often wrestle male luchadores, who wear clothing ranging from spandex bodysuits to mummy and werewolf costumes. In these improvised bouts, they jump from the ropes, flip their opponents, and body slam each other, while trying to win the match by pinning their competitor for a count of three. The cholitas luchadoras are almost always audience favorites, but at times are disparaged by other Bolivians for performing in ways that represent a lack of respect towards indigenous women.

La decolonización es un camino de invención Cergio Prudencio (Luna, 2001) La representación del OTRO como confirmación del YO (artista) es una cuestión de violencia epistémica. Mayra Estévez Trujillo (2008, 95) Boletín Música # 37, 2014... more

La decolonización es un camino de invención Cergio Prudencio (Luna, 2001) La representación del OTRO como confirmación del YO (artista) es una cuestión de violencia epistémica. Mayra Estévez Trujillo (2008, 95) Boletín Música # 37, 2014 de «lo contemporáneo» -académico, costarricense, occidental-, produciendo objetos/sujetos de saber que remiten a modelos de «historia» y «memoria» patrimonial. Estos «saberes» serán utilizados en la creación contemporánea, como la obra compositiva del propio Acevedo demuestra, señalando hacia lo que Hal Foster identifica como artista-etnógrafo.

Norwegian ethnologist Jakob Melöe (1988:400) once wrote " a landscape belongs to those who belong to it. " Behind his thoughts were the experiences of the world from two different perceptions – that of the Norwegian fisherman and that of... more

Norwegian ethnologist Jakob Melöe (1988:400) once wrote " a landscape belongs to those who belong to it. " Behind his thoughts were the experiences of the world from two different perceptions – that of the Norwegian fisherman and that of the Sámi reindeer herder, creating what he called two landscapes of northern Norway. These two groups according to Melöe view the world through different sets of skills attached to their livelihoods that create a language and identity placed in relation to the land or water they work from. For example, a natural harbor can only be known to someone who is in need for one. Or the perfect lichens for grazing reindeer on can only be known by knowing how reindeer feed. Thus, those who belong to a landscape express a shared identity with it based on different forms of engagement. Engaging with a landscape is simultaneously what makes a landscape. To know where you are is bound by how you come to perceive the landscape. It is this philosophical standpoint that I find interesting to consider where dual landscapes overlap and at times become highly contested. While Melöe describes two landscapes of Norway through sets of skills, I wish to make a point of how colonial and indigenous power relations also come into play, changing perceptions of the landscape to forms of resistance. And to understand this, you must also know something about when you are and how the present is experienced through the past. Decolonization is what I use to describe how indigenous points of view are asserted through landscape in recognition of colonial structures that inhibit indigenous landscapes. For many indigenous peoples, place and memory are intertwined in landscapes of competing worldviews, sharing in the indigenous and the colonial, the traditional and the modern. With the examples I present in this paper from North America and Swedish Sápmi, indigenous past is constantly present for indigenous communities. Among Crow Indians in Montana and their Sioux brothers and sisters in the Dakotas, the past is often up close and personal, directly linked through generations of people in the same place at different times, carried on through vivid storytelling. For Sámi reindeer herders, much of this is the same. The past is known by the coming of age and the changes to herding life – whether it is for the herder or the reindeer, it is the same. When looking at what brings such changes to livelihoods and cultural ways for the Crow, the Sioux and the Sámi, they are linked to similar processes of colonialism and concepts of development. I give examples of how some indigenous persons reach for the past as a means to understand the present and act upon colonial structures, allowing them to decolonize time and space. First I address the protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the prophecy of the Black Snake. Then I shall review an example from the Crow Nation in Montana and how they negotiate indigenous meanings in landscape and stories in recovery programs. And finally, I will reflect upon an example from a Sámi reindeer herding community and the uncovering of old dwelling sites used to secure rights to the land.

This case study explores non-Indigenous youths' experiences of cultural immersion in Indigenous communities in Canada. This research acknowledges and situates itself in the socio-political context of Aboriginal-settler relations, drawing... more

This case study explores non-Indigenous youths' experiences of cultural immersion in Indigenous communities in Canada. This research acknowledges and situates itself in the socio-political context of Aboriginal-settler relations, drawing upon historical and recent impediments to these relations, with an emphasis on continued colonial injustices to Indigenous communities. As such, a critical post-colonial emancipatory paradigm is adopted in understanding the theoretical framework of the contact hypothesis. In this study, two groups of youth composed of undergraduate university students participated in a series of focus groups and interviews, while keeping journals about their experiences in an Indigenous community-immersion program. Participants' experiences of immersion impacted their relationship to Indigenous community through the personal connections they formed with the host community and the heightened awareness they developed related to challenges facing Indigenous communities. Findings suggest potential areas of social intervention that could ameliorate relations and foster intercultural understanding, while also highlighting critical considerations for intercontact theory. Furthermore, it is proposed that the contact hypothesis can, ironically enough, be used to decolonize Canadian youth.
Available also from the Indigenous Studies Portal at: http://iportal.usask.ca/index.php?sid=777258713&id=60789&t=details

One of the leading features of colonialism is the imposition on a given territory and people a framework for what constitutes authority that renders pre-existing governing practices and legal orders unrecognizable as features of... more

One of the leading features of colonialism is the imposition on a given territory and people a framework for what constitutes authority that renders pre-existing governing practices and legal orders unrecognizable as features of legitimate law and governance. In this sense, colonialism has rendered Indigenous law and governing practices invisible. As a result, decolonization requires changing how authority is apprehended and not only how it is distributed. The paper compares two frameworks of authority in the conflict on Wet’suwet’en territory: liberal post-colonial statism and relational pluralism. It shows how each framework provides a distinct lens through which to understand the pertinent features of political authority but argues that relational pluralism presents a better account of how to reconceive political authority in the context of real world conflict.

In Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, Candace Fujikane contends that the practice of mapping abundance is a radical act in the face of settler capital's fear of an abundance that feeds. Cartographies of capital enable the seizure... more

In Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, Candace Fujikane contends that the practice of mapping abundance is a radical act in the face of settler capital's fear of an abundance that feeds. Cartographies of capital enable the seizure of abundant lands by enclosing "wastelands" claimed to be underdeveloped. By contrast, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) cartographies map the continuities of abundant worlds. Vital to restoration movements is the art of kilo, intergenerational observation of elemental forms encoded in storied histories, chants, and songs. As a participant in these movements, Fujikane maps the ecological lessons of these elemental forms: reptilian deities who protect the waterways, sharks who swim into the mountains, the navigator Māui who fishes up the islands, the deities of snow and mists on Mauna Kea. The laws of these elements are now being violated by toxic waste dumping, leaking military jet fuel tanks, and astronomical industrial complexes. As Kānaka Maoli and their allies stand as land and water protectors, Fujikane calls for a profound attunement to the elemental forms in order to transform climate events into renewed possibilities for planetary abundance.

This article analyses the political and policy discourses of Quebec’s integration toolkit for immigrants. With a focus on value codes for immigrants, I argue first, that recent debate on accommodation of immigrants and religious... more

This article analyses the political and policy discourses of Quebec’s
integration toolkit for immigrants. With a focus on value codes for immigrants, I argue first, that recent debate on accommodation of immigrants and religious minorities resuscitates the dominant historical narrative of Quebec’s fragility as a conquered settler colonial nation but where the major threat is defined as the cultural otherness of racialized immigrants and religious minorities. Second, such value codes instantiate a form of governmental strategy that combines neo-liberal and communitarian rationalities and insist on cultural assimilation as the price of entry into Quebec citizenship. Finally, the paper examines how Quebec’s current national imaginary of the ‘worrier nation’ maps spatially onto the urban-rural divide.

"Reading Elizabeth Strakosch’s incisive account of the procedural mechanisms whereby neoliberal settler colonialism seeks to reduce the politics of conquest to a welfare issue reminds me of second-wave feminism’s transformative... more

"Reading Elizabeth Strakosch’s incisive account of the procedural mechanisms whereby neoliberal settler colonialism seeks to reduce the politics of conquest to a welfare issue reminds me of second-wave feminism’s transformative insistence that the personal is political. Lucidly, methodically and with great intelligence, Strakosch shows how, in the twenty-first century, the technical has become political, as she uncovers the technocratic ruses whereby Australian governments have sought to convert the unresolved question of Indigenous sovereignty into a depoliticised managerial agenda, the preserve of service delivery rather than international relations. The implications of this astute analysis are immediate and profound".
Patrick Wolfe, La Trobe University, Australia.

Australia has a 30-billion-dollar knowledge industry, yet this industry barely recognises Indigenous Australian knowledge developed for over 60,000 years. This knowledge is important to understanding life on this planet. A 2012 regional... more

Australia has a 30-billion-dollar knowledge industry, yet this industry barely recognises Indigenous Australian knowledge developed for over 60,000 years. This knowledge is important to understanding life on this planet. A 2012 regional Aboriginal education report noted "These ways of thinking and planning are our great gift to a world that desperately needs solutions...Unfortunately, this gift has not been accepted yet, or even noticed" (NSW Department of Education and Communities). Through continued denial of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experience, their knowledge is largely hidden from mainstream Australia and to the rest of the world. This study examines what inhibits appreciation of Indigenous Australian knowledge through two sequential interviews with 26 non-Indigenous senior managers in business, finance and economics.

In this paper, I center Indigenous water governance at the nexus of extractive capitalist development, water contamination and dispossession, and Indigenous self-determination. I do so by focusing on colonial capitalist legacies and... more

In this paper, I center Indigenous water governance at the nexus of extractive capitalist development, water contamination and dispossession, and Indigenous self-determination. I do so by focusing on colonial capitalist legacies and continuities that are unfolding on Mushkegowuk lands of what is otherwise known as the Treaty 9 territory in northern Ontario, Canada. Through a spatial analysis, I trace contemporary forms of water dispossession through mining extraction to the larger colonial-capitalist objectives of the original signing of the James Bay, or Treaty 9, agreement. I argue that the colonial capitalist dispossession of water, through the seizing of land and interconnected waterways, and through the accumulation of pollution and contamination, is inextricably linked to larger structural objectives of securing access to Mushkegowuk lands for capitalist accumulation, while simultaneously dispossessing Mushkegowuk peoples of the sources of their political and legal orders. I end by discussing how Mushkegowuk peoples are resurging against settler colonial and capitalist regimes by regenerating their water relations, and how water itself cultivates a particularly spatial form of resurgence that regenerates Indigenous kinship relations and governance practices.

Protecting land and natural resources seems far from the genocidal violence of Native dispossession. This sense of distance can be mobilized as an aggressive belief in the virtuousness of all conservation; a presumption that a purely... more

Protecting land and natural resources seems far from the genocidal violence of Native dispossession. This sense of distance can be mobilized as an aggressive belief in the virtuousness of all conservation; a presumption that a purely self-less love of nature or academic desire to learn about it guides conservation efforts, or merely in the practical view that it does not matter why someone kills invasive species or builds bulwarks against erosion so long as the work gets done. One problem with these approaches is that they make Hawaiian self-determination an adjunct to the main task of conservation. And this is not so.

This essay is written to address conversations about the best ways to engage in knowledge exchange on important sustainability issues between Indigenous knowledges and fields of climate, environmental and sustainability sciences. In terms... more

This essay is written to address conversations about the best ways to engage in knowledge exchange on important sustainability issues between Indigenous knowledges and fields of climate, environmental and sustainability sciences. In terms of sustainability, a crucial facet of the self-determination of peoples such as Indigenous nations and communities is the responsibility and the right to make plans for the future using planning processes that are inclusive, well-informed, culturally-relevant, and respectful of human interdependence with nonhumans and the environment. Indigenous knowledges often play a crucial role in Indigenous planning processes. In my work, I have found that scientists often appreciate what I will call here the supplemental-value of Indigenous knowledges—the value of Indigenous knowledges as inputs for adding (i.e. supplementing) data that scientific methods do not normally track. In the domain of supplemental-value, Indigenous people’s planning processes will improve, in turn, by having access to the supplemented and hence improved science. But it is also the case that Indigenous knowledges have governance-value. That is, they serve as irreplaceable sources of guidance for Indigenous resurgence and nation-building. Scientists should appreciate governance-value because it suggests that for some Indigenous peoples in knowledge exchange situations, we need to be assured that the flourishing of our knowledges is respected and protected. I hope to make the case for why it is important for scientists who work with Indigenous peoples to understand governance value in the hopes that this understanding will improve their approaches to knowledge exchange with Indigenous peoples.

Our report intervenes into the currently accelerating water transition by clarifying the political functions of “relief” in COVID-19 water policy agendas through grounded analyses of harmful technological solutions in local contexts... more

Our report intervenes into the currently accelerating water transition by clarifying the political functions of “relief” in COVID-19 water policy agendas through grounded analyses of harmful technological solutions in local contexts throughout North America and Central America. We find that crisis-and-relief water transition policies, and their corresponding technological solutions, work against possibilities for water justice as they do not address the realities of racial capitalism and settler colonialism in water governance.

This article examines the meaning and progress of post-1994 constitutional democracy in South Africa from the perspective of its (dis)continuity with the longue-duree history of colonial conquest, settler-colonialism and white supremacy.... more

This article examines the meaning and progress of post-1994 constitutional democracy in South Africa from the perspective of its (dis)continuity with the longue-duree history of colonial conquest, settler-colonialism and white supremacy. The argument developed in this essay is that the lack of restoration and fundamental change that haunts the present South African legal and political order can be traced to this (dis)continuity. This argument is deepened by a problematisation of the widespread public, political and academic worship of the South African constitution as well as a synthesis of a variety of critical perspectives on post-1994 law, society and constitutionalism into a challenge to the putatively transformative and revolutionary pedigree of the 1996 constitution. This article ultimately defends the emerging critique of the constitutional order as a historical opening for the reimagining of a new social order and, for the purposes of this article, an alternative jurisprudence as well.