Settler Decolonization in Country/on Land: Rehearsing Collaboration

Anja Schwarz

I am a German professor of cultural studies at the University of Potsdam in Germany with a background in memory studies and postcolonial studies. I spent significant periods of my undergraduate and postgraduate training in Australia (especially at the The University of Melbourne), and much of my research and teaching focuses on the South Pacific (Australia, Polynesia and Aotearoa New Zealand). To see where I've published, click here.

This work has focused on two main fields over the past decade: Together with my colleague Lars Eckstein I have undertaken research into the Polynesian navigational knowledge conveyed by Ra‘iātean airoi and tau‘a, Tupaia through his 1769 map of Oceania. In 2022, this work culminated in the Te Ara Vaka Moana Conference, when we invited Pacific ancestral navigators and boatbuilders to Berlin to bring knowledge, reverence and life to the oceanic vessels on display in Berlin’s ethnographic museum, the Humboldt Forum. Click here for more information.

Another strand of my research and teaching concerns Germany's implication in the history and ongoing unfolding of Australian settler colonialism through its institutions, emigration histories and cultural imaginaries. In this context, I have been involved in research projects on Australian and German memory cultures around the settler-funded Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, and on German-Australian colonial entanglements. Together with Dr Eva Bischoff from the University of Trier, I am currently co-directing the collaborative and inter-institutional research project ‘Berlin’s Australian Archive’, funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, which focuses on Berlin’s extensive natural history collections from Australia. Working with colleagues in Australia, we are trying to learn more about the important role played by First Peoples in the formation of these collections, whose labour and knowledge was extracted by German-speaking naturalists. To find out more about the project, click here.

Nicole Waller

I am a German professor of American studies at the University of Potsdam in Germany. I was initially trained in Caribbean studies, Atlantic studies, and postcolonial studies. I have also studied American stereotypes about Islam. In the last 10 years, L/land relations have become a central concern of my work.

In my research, I have looked at intersections between ecocriticism and postcolonialism and engaged with Black and Indigenous studies’ critiques of posthumanism for its lack of post-and decolonial perspectives. Together with my Potsdam colleagues Anke Bartels, Lars Eckstein, and Dirk Wiemann, I have written a monograph on Anglophone postcolonial literatures which addresses the intersections of postcolonialism with settler colonial studies, Indigenous studies, and ecocriticism. I have also worked on Indigenous sovereignty and stewardship, publishing on Canadian Inuit interventions into discussions about sovereignty in the ‘Canadian Arctic Archipelago’. I have studied, taught about, and published on Black geographies, including its relation to Indigenous decolonization efforts. In collaboration with Jens Temmen, I organized a conference and a special journal forum on ‘American Territorialities’, a project that brought together researchers critically investigating territorial discourses of the US nation-state, as well as the counter-discourses of peoples and populations placed under US sovereignty but relating to L/land and water otherwise. A list of my selected publications can be found here.
 

In my teaching, I have looked with my students at settler decolonization and the possibilities of collaboration between Black diasporic populations, settlers, and Indigenous peoples in (zoom) conversation with invited speakers from the fields of Indigenous and Black studies on Turtle Island.

Renae Watchman

Tódich’íi’nii éínishłị dóó Kinyaa'áanii báshíshchíín. Dóó Tsídii/ Tsalagi (Gvgiyvwi Anitsisqua) éí da shichei. Táchii'nii éí da shinálí. Naat’áanii Nééz déé’ íiyisí naashá, áádóó Haudenosaunee dóó Mississauga bikéyah, dii shighaan. Ákót'éego Diné dóó Tsalagi Asdzą́ą́n nishłį́. Shí éí Renae Watchman yinishyé. 

I am Bitter Water Clan and born for Towering House. My maternal grandfather was Bird Clan from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and my paternal grandfather was Red Running Through the Water Clan. I am a citizen of the Navajo Nation, enrolled at Shiprock, New Mexico, and I live and work in Haudenosaunee and Mississauga homelands. These are what make me a Diné/Tsalagi woman. 

Diné stories illustrate the kinship responsibilities of the Tódich’íi’nii are as philosophers and educators, and the Kinya’áanii are as leaders and guides. I am an associate professor of Indigenous literary and creative arts at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. I am also the inaugural Graduate Chair of the MA Program in Indigenous Studies.  A list of my publications can be found here. 

I was recently named the Scholar-In-Community for the Faculty of Social Sciences, International as well as the McMaster Indigenous Research Institute (MIRI) Dawn Martin-Hill Community Fellow (2025-2027). For each, respectively, I am working to curate and elevate Southwest Indigenous writers in collaboration with the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures (ASAIL), of which I am the elected VP. I am also working with a Diné language nest, Saad K’idilyé to support their “planting the language seed” initiatives. One of my long-term collaborations is SSHRC-funded project called Racialized Ecologies, where I am specifically looking at how Indigenous literature and film explore belongingness, kinship, languages, presence, and thrivance to build worlds apart from this one that is dystopic and dying. 

Brigalow Joaquin Mcintosh 

I am a proud Muruwari and Kooma man and a researcher in the Collaborations unit under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Anja Schwarz. I hold a Bachelor of Arts Honours from the University of Melbourne. My Honours thesis, ‘Analysis of Youth Justice Policies in Aboriginal Communities: Government accountability and Aboriginal-led solutions,’ offered an in-depth, well-positioned exploration of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Closing the Gap initiative, and the Victorian Youth Justice Strategy, arguing for Aboriginal-led justice reinvestment as the alternative to failed policies.

While pursuing my Bachelors, I had the experience of working as a policy officer at an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCO) where I deepened my understanding of organisational governance and policy implications for Aboriginal communities. 
This experience coupled with my academic background fuelled my commitment to embark on a PhD to further interrogate how governance structures and policies embed Aboriginal self-determination.