Search Results (140)

The inception of Jamaica’s education system was built based on European settler colonial ideologies and White supremacist logic. Almost two centuries after the abolition of slavery and over six decades after independence from British rule, colonial vestiges pervade Jamaican education policy and practice, resulting in the continued marginalisation of Black students from low-income backgrounds. Despite the commissioning of multiple reports on the state of the education system, these racist and classist injustices persist. In this article, we examine social justice issues at the nexus of national education policy and school leadership practice in Jamaican public schools based on our reflexive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with two Jamaican education policymakers, five education researchers and four public school leaders, alongside Jamaica’s National Student Dress and Grooming Policy Guidelines 2018. Our findings highlight a hierarchical relationship among stakeholder groups in the creation and implementation of Jamaican education policy. Our findings also highlight four themes suggesting that this results from deeply ingrained valorisation of Eurocentric values in policy design that leads to heightened tensions between the Ministry of Education and Youth (MOEY) and school administrators at the level of policy implementation, distraction of school staff from teaching and learning, and disproportionate exclusion of Black students from low-income backgrounds. Implications from our study are the need for stronger cohesion among education policy stakeholders, the incorporation of social justice in teacher and leader preparation and the integration of critical pedagogies at all levels of the Jamaican education system. Full article

While concepts of remoteness have long conditioned the fabulation of alterity, remoteness is not a quality ascribable to distant places and strange peoples “out there”. No one is by nature “remote”. Building from this proposition, this article argues that a heritage of European aestheticization of the “far” north grew out of European ways of imagining the world and contributed to settler social imaginaries of remoteness. Through historical analysis of travelling accounts, colonial exhibitions, and the settler art theorical work of Francis Sparshott about the “cold and remote art” of “far” northerly Inuit peoples, the concept of an aesthetics of remoteness—modes of appreciation and taste that produce a “darkness” not inherent to the Arctic itself but projected by the settler-colonial milieu, which maintains control through the creation of distance. The study shows how Indigenous Arctic art becomes aestheticized through settler sensoria of faraway and incomprehensible forms of beauty that mask histories of colonial extraction and dispossession. The article further contextualises a close, critical reading of Sparshott into relation with the wider history of trade and colonisation, to consider how colonial markets for art objects interface with both European narration of remote peoples and European markets for art from remote parts of the world. The work ultimately argues for a reorientation that refuses this projection of an aesthetics of remoteness and proposes an ethics of recognition that confronts the colonial histories embedded in art circulation and appreciation within Canada and beyond. Full article

Background: Children’s development is dependent on a range of factors influencing their life course outcomes. Protective and challenging social and cultural determinants impact how Indigenous families support their children’s developmental foundations. However, there is a lack of international evidence investigating Indigenous child development interventions. To gain a perspective across nations with comparable settler-colonial histories, this scoping review summarised studies on family and community-centred approaches among Indigenous populations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, focusing on outcomes and evidence gaps. Methods: A scoping review followed PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Medline, CINAHL, and PsycINFO (Ovid) were searched from their inception to October 2025, including grey literature sources from Aboriginal HealthInfoNet, the Lowitja Institute and the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care. Empirical studies, including quantitative, mixed-methods, evaluation studies, and descriptive or case-study designs, were included provided they reported empirical data on intervention outcomes. Due to study heterogeneity, data were synthesised narratively. Results: Following screening of 2355 records, eight from 2013 to 2020 met the inclusion criteria. These were mostly small-scale, non-randomising designs evaluating different interventions, with the behavioural and emotional domain being the most frequently assessed outcome, alongside developmental vulnerability and academic/educational areas. There was limited consideration of protective cultural determinants of health in the study design and implementation. Six studies reported positive associations between interventions or programmes and early childhood development outcomes. Conclusions: While the number and rigour of identified interventions were limited, several demonstrated potential benefits for Indigenous children’s early childhood development. However, strengthening the evidence base requires culturally grounded, adequately powered evaluations using rigorous study designs that include culturally co-designed adaptations conducted with Indigenous families and communities. Support is recommended for capacity building and funding. Full article

Humans tend to mark their presence and thus their lands by naming charismatic places such as mountains, canyons, rivers, and lakes. Toponyms is the term for marking places with names. In doing so, cultural groups claim the lands and the recognition of their presence through names in their language and behaviors reflecting their culture. When other cultures occupy these lands, they similarly mark them with their own place names, thus replacing earlier names and evidence of occupation. A conflict of toponyms occurs when one cultural group uses their power to maintain a superior attachment to the land. This chapter uses six toponym ethnographic studies to understand the origins of debates between Native American and settler colonial peoples in North American. Research findings from these studies define both the importance of toponyms to cultural groups and possible resolution of heritage conflicts. All studies have been reviewed and approved for public use for place interpretations, visitor education, and culturally appropriate management by funding agencies and participating Native American tribes and Pueblos. Full article

A reading of the American Revolution and the post-Civil War Reconstruction period through the lens of W.E.B. Du Bois’s early writings provides new insights into his theory of racial monopoly capitalism. Many Americans saw the 1776 revolution as an idealistic fight for liberty, for the slaveholding elite who held disproportionate power within the revolutionary coalition; however, consolidating power and defending their property and expansionist ambitions were primary objectives. For them, the Revolution was a strategic move to establish racial nationalism and preserve slaveholder control over economic growth and national power. A century later, Du Bois’s analysis of the “bargain of 1876” revealed a similar consolidation of power, influencing both his research on the revolutionary period and his writings on Reconstruction. The political deal in 1876 abandoned the promise of Reconstruction’s “abolition democracy,” restoring white supremacist rule. Du Bois saw this as the victory of monopoly capital, which used racism to weaken interracial labor solidarity and enforce a system of super-exploitation. By linking 1776 to 1876, Du Bois demonstrated that U.S. capitalist development had been shaped by racial oppression from its settler-colonial roots through the rise of monopoly capitalism, consistently blocking the achievement of a true, non-racial democracy. Full article

This article explores the media practices of the Karrabing Film Collective through the lens of a materialist model of (colonial, ecological, and digital) unconscious, reconceived as a dynamic interplay of repression, expression, compression, and distension. Drawing on Jean-François Lyotard’s reworking of Freudian operations and Elizabeth Povinelli’s critique of late liberal geontopower, the paper analyzes how Karrabing’s improvisational realism and aesthetic strategies—particularly their use of smartphone filmmaking and digital superimposition—navigate and resist the structural pressures of settler governance. The article equally focuses on their augmented reality archive project, Mapping the Ancestral Present, as a potent example of how digital compression can be refunctioned to enact distension across space and time. Situating the unconscious not only in the psychic or symbolic but also in the infrastructural and technological, the article argues that Karrabing’s practice maps a politics of survivance in the “cramped space” of settler modernity. Full article

First Nations children remain dramatically over-represented in Australia’s Out-of-Home Care (OOHC) system, particularly in New South Wales (NSW), which continues to report the highest numbers nationally. This narrative review, grounded in a relational First Nations Standpoint Theory and decolonising research paradigms, to critically examine the systemic, structural, and historical factors contributing to these disproportionalities. Drawing on interdisciplinary evidence across law, criminology, education, health, governance studies, and public policy, the analysis centres Indigenous-authored scholarship and contemporary empirical literature, including grey literature, inquiries, and community-led reports. Findings reveal that the OOHC system reproduces the colonial logics that historically drove the Stolen Generations. Macro-level structural drivers—including systemic racism, Indigenous data injustice, entrenched poverty and deprivation, intergenerational trauma, and Westernised governance frameworks—continue to shape child protection policies and practices. Micro-level drivers such as parental supports, mental health distress, substance misuse, family violence, and the criminalisation of children in care (“crossover children”) must be understood as direct consequences of structural inequality rather than as isolated individual risk factors. Current placement and permanency orders in NSW further compound cultural disconnection, with ongoing failures to implement the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle (ATSICPP). Contemporary cultural rights and Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) frameworks highlight the urgency of restoring Indigenous authority in decision-making processes. The literature consistently demonstrates that cultural continuity, kinship networks, and ACCO-led models are sort to produce stronger long-term outcomes for children. The review concludes that genuine transformation requires a systemic shift toward Indigenous-led governance, community-controlled service delivery, data sovereignty, and legislative reform that embeds cultural rights and self-determination. Without acknowledging the structural drivers and redistributing genuine power and authority, the state risks perpetuating a cycle of removal that mirrors earlier assimilationist policies. Strengthening First Peoples governance and cultural authority is therefore essential to creating pathways for First Nations children to live safely, remain connected to family and kin, and thrive in culture. Full article

South Africa has relatively recently transitioned from a condition of legislated racial stratification to a democracy in which all South Africans now enjoy political enfranchisement. While political emancipation has been achieved, economic and social emancipation remain elusive for the majority of Black South Africans who still bear the brunt of poverty and deprivation. South Africa’s white colonial communities, having relinquished political power, continue to retain and enjoy economic and social class privileges. Despite state-driven social cohesion and nation-building initiatives, the envisaged ‘rainbow nation’ (a metaphor coined by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu) is becoming an increasingly fragile social aspiration. Historical legacies, especially regarding white affirmation, wealth accumulation, and the imperative for economic redistribution and land reform, have become key flashpoints in contemporary South Africa. This paper addresses the issue of how South Africa’s corrective justice and affirmative action policies are re-racialised into narratives of reverse racism, white persecution, and white genocide. It examines how racial arbitrage works where whiteness is systematically re-racialised and traded for its value in a different country context. It examines how disillusioned white South Africans leverage white racial and class privilege for transnational mobility and protections, white settler-colonial receptivity and white nationhood. It draws attention to the tensions and contradictions in global asylum regimes, illuminating transnational networks of privilege and economic superpower coercion. Full article

Native communities confronted Eurasian colonialism in ways that reflected their own unique histories, social organizations and cultural values. In this paper, we are interested in how such legacies shaped Indigenous survivance, the active presence of Indigenous peoples on the landscape or the refusal to disappear or assimilate into settler society. We seek to understand the climate changes that Native Alaskan Sugpiaq people faced during the Little Ice Age (LIA; ca. CE 1400–1850), how they responded to those changes prior to Russian incursion, and how new or renewed climate adaptations shaped Sugpiaq survivance. Drawing insight from a new multi-proxy analysis of climate change, ecological dynamics, human population history, archaeology, and ethnohistory of the Kodiak Archipelago, we argue that changes in climate variance during the LIA contributed to Sugpiaq cultural elaboration in the centuries prior to Russian colonialism. Persistent cultural values and relationships with marine resources, adaptations of those relationships under expanded levels of harvesting, and responses to evolving opportunities and political realities were key legacies carried into colonial circumstances by Sugpiaq people. In addition, we see the foundational role of Sugpiaq women in procuring and sharing subsistence foods and the development of regional Indigenous identities as important factors in Sugpiaq survivance in the Russian colonial period. While colonialism introduced novel threats, Sugpiaq people confronted those challenges with the tools and values they inherited from their past, and they persisted through the active deployment of creative and culturally appropriate responses to the co-crises of colonialism and climate unpredictability. Full article

This article examines the migration patterns that shaped the early settlement of Dorchester County, Maryland. Dorchester County is located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, an area distinctive in terms of its geography, history, and culture. In U.S. history, migration has generally proceeded from eastern areas to western ones and from northern areas to southern ones, a pattern dating back to the earliest colonial settlements. Settlement in Dorchester County proceeded primarily from east to west and south to north, with additional migration streams coming from the north out of Delaware and from the west out of Somerset County. This gave Dorchester County an unusual historical dynamic because of the different socio-cultural and religious backgrounds and settlement patterns from the regions in which those migrants came. The Eastern Shore’s geography, shaped by an extensive coastline and major riverways, contributed to this settlement pattern, for the Chesapeake Bay region, with its complex network of rivers and streams, forms one of the world’s three largest natural estuaries. In terms of genealogy and family history, this mix of settlers importantly shaped the cultural dynamics of the Eastern Shore, leading to complex family histories that blended different cultural, religious, and linguistic influences. Free European-American settlers dominated migration into early Dorchester, but unfree laborers, including slaves and, early on, white indentured servants, came to Dorchester in substantial numbers along these same routes and made important contributions to the cultural development of Dorchester and surrounding areas. In later years, out-migration from the Eastern Shore took settlers of all backgrounds throughout the growing United States and carried the influence of the Eastern Shore to the south and west as well as into the urban areas of the northeast. Full article

This article examines the current statutory care and protection landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa), focusing on the operations of Waikato-Tainui, a post-treaty settlement entity operating on behalf of the Waikato tribe (iwi), within this complex colonial context to safeguard and nurture mokopuna (descendants) and whaanau (families). Waikato-Tainui supports indigenous mokopuna within a fundamentally flawed settler-colonial care and protection system while concurrently reimagining an indigenous-led model rooted in ancestral wisdom and knowledge systems. Mokopuna Ora (Thriving descendants) is an indigenous whaanau-led and mokopuna-centred care and protection initiative that has been piloted, tested, researched, evaluated, and expanded over the past eleven years within the current settler colonial system. Drawing from deep empirical ancestral wisdom, the authors reimagine a new approach, building a roadmap for mokopuna and whaanau success. Ki Tua o Ngaku Mokopuna is presented as a cultural practice framework encapsulating Waikato ancestral wisdom and knowledge. While still in its early implementation stages, its development has been generations in the making, belonging to Waikato paa (communal meeting places) and hapuu (sub-tribes). Beyond a tool for frontline staff, this framework offers a vision, measures of success, and standards of excellence to inform theory and practice. This work addresses continuous indigenous resistance against negative colonial impacts, reflecting a shared indigenous experience and system of care and protection. In contemporary Aotearoa, the neo-colonial challenge is exacerbated by the current right-wing coalition Government and its ideological stance. The swift and extensive legislative reforms driven by harmful racist ideology are unprecedented, facilitating the exploitation of people, Papatuuaanuku (the earth mother), and te taiao (the natural world) for corporate gain and profit. Maaori tribes, organisations, sub-tribes, families, and individuals are actively countering these racist ideologies, legislations, strategies, policies, funding decisions, and operational practices. This ongoing colonial violence is met with the strength of ancestral knowledge and wisdom, envisioning a future where mokopuna thrive. The framework represents indigenous love, growth, prosperity, and abundance amidst enduring colonial harm and ideological warfare. Full article

This paper investigates the cultural landscapes established by nineteenth-century German immigrants in South Australia and the southern Riverina of New South Wales, with particular attention to settlement patterns, architectural traditions and toponymic transformation. German immigration to Australia, though numerically modest compared to the Americas, significantly shaped local communities, especially due to religious cohesion among Lutheran migrants. These settlers established distinct, enduring rural enclaves characterized by linguistic, religious and architectural continuity. The paper examines three manifestations of these cultural landscapes. A rich toponymic landscape was created by imposing on natural landscape features and newly founded settlements the names of the communities from which the German settlers originated. It discusses the erosion of German toponyms under wartime nationalist pressures, the subsequent partial reinstatement and the implications for cultural memory. The study traces the second manifestation of a cultural landscapes in the form of nucleated villages such as Hahndorf, Bethanien and Lobethal, which often followed the Hufendorf or Straßendorf layout, integrating Silesian land-use principles into the Australian context. Intensification of land use through housing subdivisions in two communities as well as agricultural intensification through broad acre farming has led to the fragmentation (town) and obliteration (rural) of the uniquely German form of land use. The final focus is the material expression of cultural identity through architecture, particularly the use of traditional Fachwerk (half-timbered) construction and adaptations such as pug-and-pine walling suited to local materials and climate. The paper examines domestic forms, including the distinctive black kitchen, and highlights how environmental and functional adaptation reshaped German building traditions in the antipodes. Despite a conservation movement and despite considerable documentation research in the late twentieth century, the paper shows that most German rural structures remain unlisted and vulnerable. Heritage neglect, rural depopulation, economic rationalization, lack of commercial relevance and local government policy have accelerated the decline of many of these vernacular buildings. The study concludes by problematizing the sustainability of conserving German Australian rural heritage in the face of regulatory, economic and demographic pressures. With its layering of intangible (toponymic), structural (buildings) and land use (cadastral) features, the examination of the cultural landscape established by nineteenth-century German immigrants adds to the body of literature on immigrant communities, settler colonialism and landscape research. Full article

The Mutanchis, known by their derogatory exonymic term ‘Lepcha’, are autochthonous to Sikkim, India. The name ‘Mutanchi’ derives from the phrase ‘Mutanchi Rumkup Rongkup’, eliciting the response ‘Achulay’, meaning ‘Beloved children of It-bu-mu, who have come from the snowy peaks’. The nomenclature prompts an ontological understanding rooted in the community’s eco-geographical context. Despite possessing a well-developed script categorised within the Tibeto-Burman language family, the Mutanchis remain a largely oral community. Their diminishing, scarcely documented repository of Mutanchi clan narratives underscores this orality. As a Mutanchi, I recognise these narratives as a medium for expressing Indigenous value systems upheld by my community and specific villages. Mutanchi clan narratives embody spiritual and cultural significance, yet their fantastic rationale reveals complex epistemological tensions. Ideally, each Mutanchi clan reveres a chyu (peak), lhep (cave), and doh (lake), which are propitiated annually and on specific occasions. The transmigration of an apil (soul) is tied to these three sacred spatial geographies, unique to each clan. Additionally, clan etiological explanations, situated within natural or supernatural habitats, manifest beliefs, values, and norms rooted in a deep ecology. This article presents an ecosophical study of selected Mutanchi clan narratives from Dzongu, North Sikkim—a region that partially lies within the UNESCO Khangchendzonga Man-Biosphere Reserve. Conducted in close consultation with clan members and in adherence to the ethical protocols, this study examines clans in Dzongu governed by Indigenous knowledge systems embedded in their narratives, highlighting biocentric perspectives that shape Mutanchi lifeways. Full article

The North American Great Lakes offer a dynamic case study of inundated cultural landscapes. These bodies of water and the life around them have never been static. While submerged lands offer avenues for archaeological research, it is essential to first understand that these cultural landscapes have also been flooded with invasive power dynamics through settler colonialism. For example, the land and water systems in Anishinaabe Akiing (the northern Great Lakes) have fundamentally shifted from flourishing life systems to poisoned areas and now struggle to deal with invasive species. When seeking to learn from or otherwise engage Indigenous knowledge, it is essential to work from a perspective that takes all these changes into consideration. There are Indigenous communities who are interested in these inundated landscapes, and in this research, but a pause, naandamo, is needed to ethically consider the ongoing process of settler colonialism and Indigenous perspectives. Here we address ethical considerations for researchers participating in, or interested in participating in, submerged site research. By incorporating settler colonialism as a methodology of understanding, we will provide an ethical starting place for working with Indigenous communities and inundated landscapes. Full article

This article introduces the Third Space of Indian child welfare to theorize how Indigenous nations simultaneously engage and disrupt settler legal systems while building sovereign, care-based alternatives. Drawing from legal analysis, Indigenous political thought, and sociohistorical synthesis, I trace the historical continuity from boarding schools to today’s foster care removals, showing how child welfare operates as a colonial apparatus of family separation. In response, Native nations enact governance through three interrelated strategies: strategic legal engagement, kinship-based care, and tribally controlled family collectives. Building on Bruyneel’s theory of third space sovereignty, Simpson’s nested sovereignty, and Lightfoot’s global Indigenous rights framework, I conceptualize the Third Space as a dynamic field of Indigenous governance that transcends binary settler logics. These practices constitute sovereign abolitionist praxis. They reclaim kinship, resist carceral systems, and build collective futures beyond settler rule. Thus, rather than treating the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) as a federal safeguard, I argue that tribes have repurposed ICWA as a legal and political vehicle for relational governance. This reframing challenges dominant crisis-based narratives and positions Indigenous child welfare as the center of a “global Indigenous politics of care” with implications for theories of sovereignty, family, and abolitionist futures across disciplines, geographies, and social groups. The article concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of the Third Space for other Indigenous and minoritized communities navigating state control and asserting self-determined care. Full article