Walking the Land: Settler Futurity

Walking the Land: Local Practices of Settler Futurity

Presenter: Theresa Burruel Stone, Ph.D.

Presenter Status: Faculty

Department: English

Screenshot URL: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1yOHVzzkFiJTJIVTudY6bdY5lIhhewBDQ

Abstract:
In order to emplace the white possessive logics (Moreton-Robinson, 2015) of the settler state operating in the local site of a high school’s college preparation program for Latinx youth, I engage critical place inquiry (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) in an ethnographic project to examine the settler relations embedded within the narratives surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area city where the program is located. I consider the normalization of settler futurity (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013) perpetuated via local historical sites. Like other emplaced narratives, local history sites such as a California mission, city website, and annual township festival provide stories about who ‘we’ are, in the sense of a local collective, connecting histories and identities to a particular place in the present, and in the process, shaping possibilities of who youth socialized into academic success in that place learn to be (Sarmento, 2009; Baquedano-López, 1997; Baquedano-López & Hernandez, 2011).