Settler Nationalism in America

The Ninth Ward, New Orleans

This episode examines the Lower Ninth Ward as a case study in the ongoing structure of settler colonialism and its impact on land, vulnerability, and community displacement. Rather than treating Hurricane Katrina as an isolated tragedy that impacted the Lower Ninth Ward, Shannon Lee and Gabriela Garza explore how disasters like this reveals deeper historical patterns: indigenous dispossession, racialized settlement after emancipation, political infrastructure like levees, and redevelopment policies that classify land as valuable while treating communities like expendable resources. Drawing on ideas of scholars such as Patrick Wolfe and Lorenzo Veracini, the episode argues that settler colonialism is not a past event, but a living structure that organizes land around capital, extraction, and occupation. This was first through labeling of indigenous land as vacant, then through the unequal provision of infrastructure to Black residents, and finally through post-Katrina redevelopment that frames the neighborhoods as a blank slate. The episode expands beyond New Orleans, connecting the Lower Ninth Ward to other sites of disaster and dispossession such as Houston’s 2017 floods, Maui’s 2023 fires, East Palestine, Ohio’s chemical derailment, and Port Arthur’s industrial exposure. Across these cases, the hosts highlight a recurring logic: land and capital are protected while certain communities are exposed to harm. Listeners will learn how settler colonial logics persist in policy, planning, environmental risk, and urban redevelopment, and how questioning these logic is essential for pursuing land justice and equitable rebuilding.

Levitt & Sons, Levittown, PA (1952)

In this podcast, Fiona Pravida and Olivia Brand examine the long history of Levittown, Pennsylvania to examine the ways that the racial restrictions of settler colonialism evolved into new legalized patterns of racial exclusion in the postwar period. In comparing the language of the Walking Purchase treaty of 1737 with the restrictive covenants recorded in Levittown deeds of the 1960s, Pravida and Brand find these two documents share a common racialized conception of land ownership, which "turn(s) words into boundaries." Since settler colonial ideas continue to evolve in the present, we must pay attention to what other patterns persist in subversively maintaining age-old standards of white supremacy in the American landscape.

Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, New York, NY (1907-1943)

In this episode, Lei'Aylah Anderson-Combee examines the critical role of terracotta as an ornamental material in promoting a Eurocentric conception of American character. Tracing its use in modernizing cities across Texas, Anderson-Combee compares the ways that terracotta ornament and indigenous cave painting produced diverging political interpretations of American indigeneity.

Colored Carnegie Library, Houston, Texas (1913), William Sydney Pittman architect

In this episode, Allison Frederick examines the ways that the Houston Colored Carnegie Library subversively promoted settler colonial ideas about white supremacy and Black inferiority. In her analysis, she demonstrates the ways that philanthropy, whiteness, and imperialism worked together to keep the settler narrative alive, even as Black communities became stronger and self-sufficient. Settler Colonialism doesn’t end when the land is taken, but lives within the institutions that help people live in it.

P. L. Mannen Residence, San Antonio, Texas, Ayers & Ayers Architects (1926)

In this episode, Rohan Bergfield investigates the settler colonial overtones of the L.P. Mannen Residence, a 1926 home that looks like it belongs to the romantic Spanish mission era. This home's mission aesthetic displaces the indigenous Mexican architectural identities originally found on this site with a selective, idealized image crafted to instate white ownership and belonging.