Colonies, colonisation and, in particular, colonialism are concepts carrying heavy ideological subtexts – yet they loom over the current debate about the dynamism of the Iron Age Mediterranean. Forty years after M.I. Finley’s ‘attempt at a typology’, this paper tries to thin out the terminological jungle: by employing cross-cultural historical comparison, it demonstrates how complex and manifold seemingly straightforward ideal types are; and that ‘colonies’ and ‘colonialism’ in the classical period of European imperialism were altogether different from the settlements Greeks and Phoenicians established in their Mediterranean diasporas.

It begins:

Most of the twenty contributors to this volume work in departments of English or Literature, but this volume is also of great interest to sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists. I regret that, for this review, I can only single out a few chapters, although I found all of them to be stimulating.

Carol Campbell and James F. Smith, Necessaries and Sufficiencies: Planter Society in Londonderry Onslow and Truro Townships, 1761-1780 (Sydney, NS: Cape Breton Press, 2011).

Last week the African National Congress celebrated its centenary, marking a full hundred years of valiant struggle against colonialism, settler colonialism, racism and Apartheid in South Africa. All of us who had occasion to work with that great movement and its leaders and militants celebrated too.

Jenerali Ulimwengu for the East African.

I abandoned my thatch, my cobblestones, my tolerant Dutch protectors.
For barren oak trees. On empty shores. Under grey skies. The cold bites me in the arse.

I died in great numbers. Half of me died. Most of my women.
I am not a Sachem, God damn it! I cannot heal. I cannot lead. And God did not help us.
We have nothing to give thanks for.

I see Natives.

Squanto was not a Wampanoag.
He was a Patuxet.
Captured and sold off in Spain in a bundle,
Packaged with fish and corn.

Squanto unbundled himself.
Escaped the Spaniards.
Traveled to England.
Returned alone to the New World.

He spoke many languages but had no identity.
His people also had died.

The rest of the poem lives here.

From the blurb:

Are you ready to leave behind your home in England and risk your life in the name of exploration? You will have to face starvation and angry natives if you are going to set up a colony.

Check out the mixed reviews on amazon here, and for the sequel (You wouldn’t want to be an American Pioneer), here.

This article juxtaposes colonial guilt with selective historical memory of Palestinian narratives as presented in the Israeli state-mandated history textbooks. The advancement of colonial guilt imposes a particular subjective truth of oppressed groups’ historical memories. The purpose of colonial guilt is to keep the power structure intact by maintaining a victimhood hierarchy that engages oppressed groups to compete for the highest level on this scale. The current curricula position the Palestinian narratives on a low rank through its historical interpretation as existing in the shadows of other events. This notion is interrupted by the unofficial history in the Palestinian community, which challenges the presumption of colonial guilt and its manifestation in the Israeli educational system.

TOC:

Mauro Barelli: ‘Free, prior and informed consent in the aftermath of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: developments and challenges ahead’.

Marco Odello: ‘Indigenous peoples’ rights and cultural identity in the inter-American context’.

Kristin Hausler: ‘Indigenous perspectives in the courtroom’.

Heather A. Northcott: ‘Realisation of the right of indigenous peoples to natural resources under international law through the emerging right to autonomy’.

Sheryl R. Lightfoot: ‘Selective endorsement without intent to implement: indigenous rights and the Anglosphere’.

Sarah Sargent: ‘Transnational networks and United Nations human rights structural change: the future of indigenous and minority rights’.

Fiona Batt: ‘Ancient indigenous deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and intellectual property rights’.

Enzamaria Tramontana: ‘Civil society participation in international decision making: recent developments and future perspectives in the indigenous rights arena’.

Shayna Plaut: ‘‘Cooperation is the story’ – best practices of transnational indigenous activism in the North’

Jennifer Huseman & Damien Short: ‘‘A slow industrial genocide’: tar sands and the indigenous peoples of northern Alberta’

This paper explores the history of economic, social and environmental change associated with the Pine Point lead-zinc mine, a now-abandoned industrial site and town in the Northwest Territories. Recent perspectives in cultural geography and environmental history have sought to rehabilitate mining landscapes from their reputation as places of degradation and exploitation – the so-called ‘mining imaginary’. We argue that the landscapes of Pine Point epitomise the failures and contradictions of mega-project resource development in the north. While the mine and planned town built to service it flourished for nearly a quarter century, the larger goals of modernisation, industrial development and Aboriginal assimilation were unrealised. Ultimately, the mine’s closure in 1988 resulted in the town’s abandonment and the removal of the rail link, leaving behind a legacy of environmental destruction that remains unremediated. At Pine Point, the forces of mega-project development joined with modern mining’s technologies of ‘mass destruction’ to produce a deeply scarred and problematic landscape that failed in its quest to bring modern industrialism to the Canadian sub-Arctic.

aboriginal policy studies is a new online, peer-reviewed and multidisciplinary journal that, on a bi-annual basis, publishes original, scholarly, and policy relevant research on issues relevant to Métis, non-status Indians and urban Aboriginal peoples in Canada. We encourage the submission of articles by and for a wide audience of scholars, researchers, community activists, and policymakers. Though focused on the Canadian milieu, we welcome comparative work from an international Indigenous context pertinent to Canadian readers. A similarly broad scope of methodological approaches is encouraged.