White Settler Society as Monster: Rural Southeast Kansas, Ancestral Osage (Wah‐Zha‐Zhi) Territories, and the Violence of Forgetting

Abstract

This article provides a critical analysis of the practices and discourses of white settler “men” in Southeast Kansas (Ancestral Osage Territories) by examining the inextricable links rural masculinity has with settler colonialism. I begin by underscoring how efforts in erasing Indigenous histories have been sanctioned through processes of dispossession, bordering, and nation‐state building. I then explore how hetero‐patriarchal rural hierarchies are assembled via capitalistic desires for private property; conservative Christianity's rhetoric of altruism and good intentions; white supremacist conceptions of race; and masculinist perspectives regarding work and gender. Next, I highlight how the spatial assertion of white settler masculinity reproduces colonial oppressions based upon interlocking subject positions and notions of difference. I continue by suggesting denial and disaffiliation are banal exercises of disavowal employed by white settler societies as attempts to forget colonial violence. I then finish by illustrating how a masculinist status quo might be disrupted, resisted, and transformed.

Toxic sights: The spectacle of hazardous waste removal

“…He was following procedures. His intentions were good – he even had a sense of pride in his team’s work – but good intentions are often at the centre of (neo)colonial interventions (de Leeuw et al., 2013; Gahman, 2016).…”

Conceptualising historical privilege: the flip side of historical trauma, a brief examination

“…The incursion of white settlers into Indigenous territories can thereby be more accurately viewed as iterative and evolving courses of action that have never ceased, rather than isolated events that happened as different points along a fictive linear timeline that gets called “history”. (Gahman, 2016, p. 316)…”

“…In this sense, the ongoing nature of the colonisation process, as outlined by Gahman (2016), is also important to acknowledge here in terms of these effects on collectives that share a broader identity than family. If we apply this to historical privilege, we see that rather than these windfalls and intergenerational accumulations of wealth, power and social positioning across multiple generations being understood as fundamentally a thing of the past, the ongoing nature of colonisation as a process of settler privilege can be seen in the current conceptualisations of what might be considered “normal” in New Zealand society, what constitutes “mainstream”.…”

Toxic Encounters, Settler Logics of Elimination, and the Future of a Continent

“…In her apology, she includes a seemingly gratuitous nod to Canada's history of colonialism; however, unsurprisingly she never mentions that this violent legacy continues to unfold at the very moment her apology is delivered. Scholars have pointed out that settler colonial structures rely upon a masking of the very harms that colonial governments purport to ameliorate (Belcourt 2018;Coulthard 2014;de Leeuw et al 2013;Gahman 2016;Nunn 2015). As Bennett's apology demonstrates, the maintenance of settler colonial hegemony relies on compartmentalising various toxic encounters and framing these incidents as distinct and unrelated.…”

“…Scholars have pointed out that settler colonial structures rely upon a masking of the very harms that colonial governments purport to ameliorate (Belcourt ; Coulthard ; de Leeuw et al. ; Gahman ; Nunn ). As Bennett's apology demonstrates, the maintenance of settler colonial hegemony relies on compartmentalising various toxic encounters and framing these incidents as distinct and unrelated.…”