From Gold Rush to Green Rush
The environmental consequences of cannabis cultivation

* "Professor Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) argues that the state's booming cannabis industry can be situated squarely within other extractive settler colonial enterprises such as gold mining and overfishing."

“The real gold is not gold, after all, but the land itself”

Kaitlin P. Reed, "Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California" (U Washington Press, 2023) >>
https://read.dukeupress.edu/agricultural-history/article-abstract/100/1/140/407075/Settler-Cannabis-From-Gold-Rush-to-Green-Rush-in?redirectedFrom=fulltext

* Reed "connects California cannabis production to the violence and dispossession of Indigenous land and people."

"Young countercultural back-to-the-land settlers flocked to northwestern California beginning in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, unregulated cannabis production proliferated on Indigenous lands."
https://www.degruyterbrill.com/de/document/doi/10.1515/9780295751573/html

#cannabis #extractivism #agriculture #logging #overfishing #BackToTheLand #counterculture #GreenIdyll #SettlerSociety #GoldRush #GreenRush #CannabisIndustry #water #pollution #disposession #FirstNationsPeoples #IndigenousPeoples
Image: Country idyll with river

"... With this arrival, this conquest, one idea reigns supreme. You are a numbers person. You believe in possession through measuring the thing. The land is this many metres, the elevation is this high off the ground. Where a traveller may have seen the land, been curious about what 50 names say about the tree, already your mind was quartering, the stake hammered right in..."

"Possession—the numbers game—requires brute strength and the willingness to eradicate the speakers too."

- Yumna Kassab, The Conquest of Land and Dream

#land #biodiversity #life #quality #diversity #dispossession #commodification #quantifiability #ratability #scalability #values #language #naming #LanguagePolicies #SettlerSociety #EuropeanColonisation #IndigenousPeoples #writers

https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-conquest-of-land-and-dream/

Oh no, not the bison again

The Trump Administration’s Latest Target: This Woolly American Icon >
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/trump-administration-doug-burgum-interior-american-bison-buffalo-ban-blm-grazing/

The Forest Service “Reorganizes” Under Trump
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-forest-service-a-force-across-rural-america-reorganizes-under-trump

Image: Photograph from 1892 of a pile of American bison skulls in Detroit (MI) waiting to be ground for fertilizer or charcoal. Wikipedia

#biodiversity #conservation #bison #wildlife #LandManagement #CattleGrazing #forests #LoggingIndustry #Pastoralism #extraction #nature #SoonHereToo #SettlerSociety #meat

Hunting with thylacines

* "They used to tell stories about going hunting with thylacines," Djalama man Joey Nganjmirra.

"Arnhem Land rock art raises questions about Tasmanian tigers living on mainland" >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-04/thylacine-rock-art-arnhem-land-tasmanian-tiger-mainland/106528418

* "The last known thylacine...died in captivity at Hobart's Beaumaris Zoo on September 7, 1936, due to neglect and exposure to extreme weather. The species was officially extinct in 1986, following decades of state-sponsored bounty hunting, habitat destruction, and disease that decimated the population" >>
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/extinction-of-thylacine

#thylacines #TasmanianTiger #Indigenouspeoples #djankerrk #RockArt #biodiversity #extinction #settlersociety

The ultimate neoliberal “dreamworld” – on desert sand without water
Expat influencers sold Dubai to the world and were paid to look the other way. Now the dream is crumbling

* "The Dubai project requires demanding visitors and expats to not think too much about the suffering or question what goes on beyond the city’s borders. And how that city came to be built in the first place."

"The whole social contract of Dubai involves a wilful blindness to the proximity of suffering and violence. After all, Gaza is geographically close." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/31/dubai-influencers-expats-denial-middle-east-crisis

* Living Well at Others' Expense: The Hidden Costs of Western Prosperity, Stephan Lessenich, 2019, Polity Press >>
https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=living-well-at-others-expense-the-hidden-costs-of-western-prosperity--9781509525621

#WesternProsperity #GlobalInequality #wealth #inequality #externalisation #mobility #Dubai #drylands #settlersociety #WilfulBlindness #CrumblingDreams #FossilFuels #oil #water #war #WarZone #ClimateCrisis

Illumination in dark times
A genealogy of modern Western selfhood and a post-Western world

"Smith ... outlines a genealogy of modern Western selfhood: a radically individual, hypermasculine character that was formed during the rapid nineteenth-century expansion of the white man’s world. “Bold, conquering, and altogether assertive,” it was “dedicated to action,” hostile to reflection, indifferent to community and the environment, and guilty of possessing, Smith writes, an “undeveloped heart,” a term borrowed from E. M. Forster’s assessment of the British elite." "

" “We must alter our very relations with the world around us.” This means giving up the exalted and exaggerated idea of the West that boosts a masculinist self-image but severely constricts thought and feeling. “We should welcome our era’s uncertainties,...the not-knowing of how the post-Western story will come out.” Smith’s final warning—that “we will not survive the Western notion of the individual much longer”—should resonate today, as nineteenth-century individualism reasserts itself in the degraded Nietzscheanism of Peter Thiel and Stephen Miller." >>

* Mishra, P. (2026, April). "The Authority of Thought". Harper's Magazine.
https://harpers.org/archive/2026/04/the-authority-of-thought-pankaj-mishra/

* Somebody Else's Century: East and West in a Post-Western World by Patrick Smith. 2010 >>
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/169395/somebody-elses-century-by-patrick-smith/
#TheWest #WhiteSupremacy #masculinity #ImpulseControl #EthnoNationalism #WesternCivilization #AngloAmerican #parochialism #individualism #subjectivity #SettlerSociety #Culture #RacialInequality #war #EastWest #PostWesternWorld #DarkTimes #illumination #narrative #environment

Image: Double Bay War Memorial, Steyne Park, Sydney

Social cohesion and gritted-teeth tolerance

"In 2022, for the first time in decades, the government commissioned a review of multiculturalism, Towards Fairness. It found Australia had muddled on, but squandered its world-leading status and recommended the government create a minister, a permanent commission and department for multiculturalism. Labor MP Dr Anne Aly was appointed multicultural affairs minister in 2025."

She delivered a powerful speech last November:

"Aly declared it was time to end “the conditional form of multiculturalism, that kind of gritted-teeth tolerance that,

'You are welcome here as long as your food tastes good,

your celebrations are colourful, and

your music is present to the ears.’"

"But any questioning, any speaking out, any disruptive participation in any practice of citizenship will not be tolerated. Instead, acts of citizenship afforded to the broader community are viewed as acts of defiance when performed by the other and are met with cries of, ‘Go back to where you came from,’ and ‘Love Australia or leave it.’ " >>
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2026/mar/23/social-cohesion-meaning-has-lost-feelgood-vibe

Full speech: Reimagining Multiculturalism in Australia, The Hon Dr Anne Aly MP, Minister for Small Business, Minister for International Development, and Minister for Multicultural Affairs 2025 >>
https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/anne-aly-2025

#SocialCohesion #ethnonationalism #Anglosphere #SettlerSociety #mainstream #belonging #diversity #IndigenousPeoples #CALD #hate #racism #silencing #culture #entertainment #SongAndDance #ScarilyDiverse #representation #participation #Australia #culture

Americana meets the Aussie bush

Trying to get some bread in a cafe on Bellingen's main drag. Once the obstacle course of the packs of dogs on extendable leads are overcome it is time for waiting in a long queue on a Saturday. Many hipster families are there to have breakfast done for them.

One set was showcasing their three toddlers in a full 'American Western-inspired aesthetic', cowboy hats and boots. Mum had that Instagrammable ‘Mar-a-Lago face’.

Wide-brimmed hats are ideal to protect oneself from Australia's sun, but this was in the comfort zone of a cafe.

The "cowboy core" aesthetic facade harks back to the wide‑open‑spaces where cattle-herders (cowboys, stockmen/ringers) managed grazing livestock, for the pastoral industry, particularly in the Australian outback or American Western frontier.

Already in the 16th century, the Conquistadors and other Spanish settlers brought their cattle-raising traditions to Mexico and Florida.

The Western portrayed the cowboy as an enduring cultural figure representing freedom.

So why are these urban folks from the suburbs running around in 'costumes' looking like pastoralist workers from a mythical past? What 'sense of belonging' do they buy?

Maybe the fashionable habitus points to a vibe shift of the wannabe cowboys expressing preemptive subordination or imperial obsequiousness?

The rise of cowboy core: What's behind it.>>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-10/dr-karl-how-things-work-cowboy-core-fashion/106336574

Plastic surgeons wrestle with requests for ‘Mar-a-Lago face’:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/nov/18/mar-a-lago-face-plastic-surgery

Image :
In 1859 European wild rabbits were introduced into Australia so they could be hunted for sport. Now hats are made out of some of the invasive species.
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/rabbits-introduced

#cowboys #pastoralism #SettlerSociety #fashion #WesternWear #CattleHerders #belonging #Bellingen #culture #MiddlePowers #subordination #RupturedGlobalOrder #BellingenObservations

Unleashing the racist underbelly of society by opening the floodgates of hate and violence

There has been "a shift in online rhetoric after the failed voice to parliament referendum in 2023. The campaign and its subsequent defeat unleashed a racist underbelly in society after a toxic debate, political divide and community harm coalesced in a way that has yet to be undone."

“Before the Nationals [and Liberals] decided to oppose the voice in late 2022, I didn’t experience much racism online...It exploded around the time that the Coalition started to ramp up a campaign against it. It was like they had not only given permission to racists to attack Aboriginal people, to try and intimidate us, and to try and make us cower and not pursue what we thought was just and right … It was like the floodgates were opened.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/mar/06/indigenous-australians-racist-social-media-messages-ntwnfb
#hate #IndigenousPeoples #SettlerSociety #violence #racism #Australia #HateSpeech

'English First' policies and
the uncomfortable waning of empire

* “The English Language Bill demonstrated that New Zealand First was "trying to appeal to a racist fringe". Professor O'Sullivan >
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-05/new-zealand-first-pushes-to-make-english-an-official-language/106410158

* "The English-only movement...is a political movement that advocates for the exclusive use of the English language in official United States government communication through the establishment of English as the only official language in the United States." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-only_movement

* “Australia is home to over 250 distinct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages, comprising around 800 dialects, which are deeply connected to specific land, culture, and identity.” >
https://www.alt.nsw.gov.au/learn/nsw-aboriginal-languages-information

* 'Scarily diverse' people from First Nations or from a culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
https://theconversation.com/a-shadow-on-your-art-how-do-first-nations-and-culturally-diverse-authors-feel-about-representation-275446

* "Monolingualism or unilingualism, is the condition of being able to speak only a single language." >
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolingualism

#EnglishLanguage #EnglishFirst #language #LanguagePolicies #monolingualism #MonolingualMindset #diverse #polyglots #MultilingualPeople #NormativeMonolingualism #ForcedAssimilation #settlersociety #Anglophones #FirstNationsPeoples #Gumbaynggirr