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Racial Violence in the Settler State
This course addresses how racial violence operates in the project of statecraft in settler societies. Our course analyzes the multiple registers and scales of racial violence by addressing the construction and maintenance of social, political, legal and geographic/physical boundaries in such societies. Our course considers the use of carceral spaces/criminalization in the making of the nation-state and attends to the ways in which settler colonialism is a sexed, gendered, and sexualized project.
The resources below represent only a small selection of materials available on racial violence and resistance in settler societies. This selection was curated to help students fulfill course requirements and, as a result, emphasizes primary documents and legal discourses available in english. Both open access resources and closed access databases are provided below. Users should be aware that materials document and illustrate racial violence, terror, and death and may include disturbing materials and images of racial violence.
It is our hope that in developing a rigorous understanding of the role of racial violence in settler society, we can also develop a critical race and feminist analysis to sustain political anti-violence projects.
The RVHub and RDIC
The Racial Violence Hub and Race and Deaths in Custody are projects of Dr. Sherene H. Razack, the UCLA Penny Kanner Endowed Chair in Gender Studies.
- The Racial Violence Hub
This site creates a virtual community of feminist critical race scholars, artists, activists, and organizations working on issues of racial violence and the state. The Hub’s goal is to foster research, develop critical pedagogies and share resources for anti-violence practices around state violence against Indigenous and racialized peoples. - Race and Deaths in Custody
This website contains case studies of Indigenous, Black and racialized peoples who have died in state custody in countries of the global North. From people shot by police, to those who die in immigration detention, all meet an untimely end, their deaths declared natural or justifiable. We analyze these deaths in custody to reveal their racial underpinnings.
Open Access Databases and Archives
- US: COINTELPRO DocumentsCOINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted by the FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations.
- US DHS: Mapping Immigration: Naturalized CitizensDepartment of Homeland Security information Maps which show LPRs in the United States for various years by class of admission and region/country of birth and the distribution of naturalized citizens over time.
- US: Fatal EncountersFatal Encounters represents a step toward creating an impartial, comprehensive and searchable national database of people killed during interactions with police.
- US Law Library of CongressThe mission of the Law Library of Congress is to provide authoritative legal research, reference and instruction services, and access to an unrivaled collection of U.S., foreign, comparative, and international law. To accomplish this mission, the Law Library has assembled a staff of experienced foreign and U.S. trained legal specialists and law librarians, and has amassed the world's largest collection of law books and other legal resources from all countries, now comprising more than 2.9 million items.
- US: Mapping Police ViolenceLaw enforcement agencies and the government fail to provide accurate numbers on the number of lives taken at the hands of police. MPV project suggest their data is the most comprehensive accounting of people killed by police since 2013.
- US National Archives: Milestone DocumentsThe primary source documents on this page highlight pivotal moments in the course of American history or government.
- US: Slavery and the LawThis collections provide readers with evidence of slavery and freedom in the United States, and exhibit the role laws have played in both the institutionalization of slavery and its destruction.
- Canadian Legal Information InstituteThe CanLII.org website provides access to court judgments from all Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, federal courts, and the courts in all Canada’s provinces and territories. CanLII.org also contains decisions from many federal and provincial administrative tribunals.
- Correctional Service Canada: Deaths in CustodyCSC produces an annual report on deaths in custody, which includes compiled information gathered by the CSC’s Research Branch.
- Canada: National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and GirlsThe Government of Canada launched a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, independent from the federal government.
- Australasian Legal Information InstituteThe Australasian Legal Information Institute provides free internet access to Australasian legal materials. AustLII's broad public policy agenda is to improve access to justice through better access to information.
- Global Detention ProjectThe GDP provides a source of accurate information and analysis about detention and other immigration control regimes, with a particular focus on the impact these policies have on the health, human rights, and well-being of undocumented migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees and maintains a regularly updated database that can be used to assess the evolution of detention practices, provide an evidentiary base for advocating reforms, and serve as a framework for comparative analysis
- Migration Policy InstituteThe MPI has established itself as a leading institution in the field of migration policy and as a source of authoritative research, learning opportunities, and new policy ideas. MPI maintains a special commitment to work on immigration and integration policies in North America and Europe.
- American Indian Digital History ProjectWelcome to the American Indian Digital History Project, a Digital History Cooperative founded to recover and preserve rare Indigenous newspapers, photographs, and archival materials from all across Native North America.
- American Indians of the Pacific Northwest CollectionThis site provides an extensive digital collection of original photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures, complemented by essays written by anthropologists, historians, and teachers about both particular tribes and cross-cultural topics.
- Asian Library Digital CollectionThe Asian Library Digital Collections feature a variety of digitized materials from the Asian Library, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean rare books and manuscripts, images, audio-visual materials, archival and primary sources such as correspondence, dairies, photos, pamphlets and ephemeral materials related to Asian studies.
- BlackPastAn online reference center that makes available materials on African American history. Includes an online encyclopedia of over 4,000 entries, the complete transcript of more than 300 speeches by African Americans, other people of African ancestry, and those concerned about race, given between 1789 and 2016, over 140 full text primary documents, bibliographies, timelines and six gateway pages with links to digital archive collections, African and African American museums and research centers, genealogical research websites, and more than 200 other website resources on African American and global African history.
- Blackfoot Digital LibraryDeveloped in collaboration with University of Lethbridge and Red Crow Community College to celebrate Akaitapii through various forms of media, to help and support the Kainai and other students of today and tomorrow.
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA).
- Bracero History ArchiveThe Bracero History Archive collects and makes available the oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in more than half of the states in America.
- The California Language ArchiveThe California Language Archive is a physical and digital archive for materials related to the Indigenous languages of the Americas, housed in the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.
- Centro ArchivesThe Centro Archives Digital Collections is a growing resource of material digitized from collections which provides access to photographs, documents, artifacts, art, maps, oral histories, moving image and audio clips, and other material pertaining to the Puerto Rican diaspora.
- Densho Encyclopedia – Japanese American IncarcerationA free on-line resource about the history of the Japanese American WWII exclusion and incarceration experience. The Encyclopedia was made possible by grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, administered by the National Park Service and by the California State Library through the California Civil Liberties Public Education Fund.
- The Invasion of AmericaAn interactive site that maps every Native American treaty and executive order between 1776 and 1886, as originally compiled by Charles Royce in 1899. The map contains links to the original treaty text, when available
- Japanese American Relocation Digital ArchiveThe JARDA project began in 1998 with the goal of providing a single point of entry to materials held by California institutions on the subject of Japanese American relocation and incarceration during World War II. Historically, these materials had been heavily requested, but difficult to access since they were scattered across many California archives, libraries, oral history programs, and museums.
- Museum of Indian Arts and Culture: Online ExhibitsThe Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology is to serve as a center of stewardship, knowledge, and understanding of the artistic, cultural, and intellectual achievements of the diverse peoples of the Native Southwest.
- Photo and Film Archive for Palestinian RefugeeUNRWA has produced and collected an audiovisual archive, covering all aspects of the lives and history of Palestine refugees. This archive consists of more than 430,000 negatives, 10,000 prints, 85,000 slides, 75 films and 730 videocassettes.
- Reciprocal Research NetworkCreated by the Musqueam Indian Band, the Stó:lō Nation/Tribal Council, the U’mista Cultural Society, and the Museum of Anthropology. It is an online tool to facilitate reciprocal and collaborative research about cultural heritage from the Northwest Coast of British Columbia.
- Refusing to ForgetBetween 1910 and 1920, ethnic Mexicans living on the Texas-Mexico border were targets of state-sanctioned violence. Refusing to Forget is a multifaceted project that seeks to incite public conversations through efforts such as: museum and online exhibits, historical marker unveilings, lectures, and curricular materials for public school teachers.
- South Asian American Digital ArchiveSAADA creates a more inclusive society by giving voice to South Asian Americans through documenting, preserving, and sharing stories that represent their unique and diverse experiences.
- Umbra Search: African American HistoryUmbra Search African American History makes African American history more broadly accessible through a freely available widget and search tool, umbrasearch.org; digitization of African American materials across University of Minnesota collections; and support of students, educators, artists, and the public through residencies, workshops, and events locally and around the country.
- Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral HistoryViet Stories actively assembles, preserves, and disseminates the life stories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. The project contributes to expanding archives on Vietnamese Americans with the primary goal of capturing first-generation stories for students, researchers, and the community.
- Voces Oral History CenterVoces Oral History Center is the leading Latino oral history archive in the United States. It began in 1999, with a mission of capturing untold stories of Latinos and Latinas who served, in the military or on the home front, during World War II. The archive has expanded to include the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and Political and Civic Engagement, focusing on the continuing fight for Latino civil rights.
Gender and Sexuality Studies
- The ONE ArchivesWelcome to the website for ONE Archives Foundation, the independent community partner that supports ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California (USC) Libraries, the largest repository of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ) materials in the world. Founded in 1952 as ONE Inc., the publisher of ONE Magazine, ONE Archives Foundation is the oldest active LGBTQ organization in the United States.
- The Out MuseumThe OutMuseum is the first LGBTQ+ arts and media virtual museum of its kind – available free to the public. Home to a combination of rotating and permanent exhibits centering themes, identities, and experiences which celebrate and commemorate the queer and trans communities we serve as an organization, the OutMuseum places the telling of our past, present, and future into the hands of those who have lived this past, are surviving its present and will be imagining a thriving future for it.
Migration Studies
- The Archive of Immigrant VoicesThe Center for Global Migration Studies established the Archive of Immigrant Voices to collect stories of the experience of migration. The purpose of the archive is to create, accumulate, and preserve a repository of memories that will not only reveal living history and features of the recent past, but will also document the fine lines of social change that might be otherwise ignored or lost to history.
- Brooklyn Historical Society Oral History CollectionBegun in 1973, BHS’s oral history collections provide a wealth of historical evidence about the lives of twentieth-century and twenty-first-century Brooklyn residents, and reveal how diverse individuals and communities have sought to preserve vital social, political, religious, and cultural traditions as Brooklynites, New Yorkers, and Americans. The collections contain interviews conducted in English, Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin, with narrators born as early as 1880.
- Center for Migration StudiesThe CMS Archive consists of nearly 130 collections that document the immigrant experience in North America from the mid-19th to the 21st century. The archive is an especially rich source for refugee, forced displacement, and Italian-American studies.
- Immigration History Research Center ArchivesUniversity of Minnesota archive dedicated to the study of immigration, ethnicity, and race featuring extensive digital collections.
- Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930Documenting voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression.
Disability Studies
- Disability History MuseumSearch across digital collections at multiple institutions by keyword, collection name, format, source, and date range.
- Disabled People's ArchiveThe Disabled People’s Archive is run by Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People with the support of Archives+ which is part of Manchester Central Library.
- Museum of DisABILITYThe Museum of disABILITY History's permanent collection takes visitors on a journey through disability history.
- Medical Heritage LibraryThe Medical Heritage Library, Inc. is a collaborative digitization and discovery organization committed to providing open access to the history of medicine and health resources. Collections include "Anti-Black Racism in Medicine" and "Disability and Technology."
- Carrying Our Ancestors HomeCOAH consists of a working group of tribal practitioners, tribal members, museum professionals, and academics, who have worked to create a website as an educational tool for people seeking to understand the process and diversity of returning ancestral remains and cultural items as well as the impact of repatriation on Indigenous communities around the world.
- #CharlestonsyllabusThe syllabus is a list of readings that educators can use to broach conversations in the classroom about the horrendous events that unfolded in Charleston, South Carolina on the evening of June 17, 2015. These readings provide valuable information about the history of racial violence in this country and contextualize the history of race relations in South Carolina and the United States in general.
- Farmworker Movement Documentation ProjectThe Farmworker Movement Documentation Project seeks to compile and publish primary source accounts from the volunteers who worked with Cesar Chavez to build his farmworker movement during the period, 1962-1993.
- The Freedom ArchivesThe Freedom Archives is a non-profit educational archive located in Berkeley dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of historical audio, video, and print materials documenting progressive movements and culture from the 1960s to the 1990s.
- Idle No MoreIdle No More started in November 2012, among Treaty People in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta protesting the Canadian government’s dismantling of environmental protection laws, endangering First Nations who live on the land. Born out of face-to-face organizing and popular education, but fluent in social media and new technologies, Idle No More has connected the most remote reserves to each other, to urbanized Indigenous people, and to the non-Indigenous population.
- #NoDAPL ArchiveThe #NoDAPL Archive contains links to resources that include photo, video, interviews and articles about NoDAPL, as well as resources about related struggles and solidarity actions taken outside of Standing Rock.
- Mapping Indigenous LAMapping Indigenous Los Angeles aims to uncover and highlight the multiple layers of indigenous Los Angeles through a storymapping project with youth, community leaders, and elders from indigenous communities throughout the city.
- The Palestine Poster Project ArchivesA web-based archives and curriculum project displaying more than 4,500 Palestine-related posters from 1898 to the present.
- #SayHerNameLaunched in December 2014 by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies (CISPS), the #SayHerName campaign brings awareness to the often invisible names and stories of Black women and girls who have been victimized by racist police violence, and provides support to their families
- #StandingRockSyllabusThis syllabus project contributes to the already substantial work of the Sacred Stones Camp, Red Warrior Camp, and the Oceti Sakowin Camp to resist the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which threatens traditional and treaty-guaranteed Great Sioux Nation territory. This syllabus brings together the work of Indigenous and allied activists and scholars: anthropologists, historians, environmental scientists, and legal scholars, all of whom contribute important insights into the conflicts between Indigenous sovereignty and resource extraction.
- Texas After ViolenceTexas After Violence is a public memory archive that fosters deeper understandings of the impacts of state violence. Our mission is to help build power with directly impacted communities, centering their dignity, agency, and expertise to cultivate restorative and transformative justice.
- Under Pressure: Representation, Information, and The Archive in PalestineThis syllabus aims to be an entry point to scholarship that deals specifically with the problems faced by information institutions such as libraries and archives in Palestine as they face a unique set of pressures that stem from a settler-colonial history and the ongoing occupation of its land.
Academic Research Databases and Archives
- American Civil Liberties Union Papers, The Making of Modern Law (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowThe records of the ACLU on free speech, citizenship, race, discrimination, immigration, labor, radicalism, and related topics support the study of American legal history and complement the modules in the Making of Modern Law series. Documents include newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, court files, memorandums, telegrams, minutes, and legal case records. UCLA provides access to Parts I and II: 1912-1990, and Southern Regional Office,
- Colonial America This link opens in a new windowOriginal correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, from 1606 to 1822. (The content is being published online in stages, and will not be complete until 2019,)
- Colonial State Papers This link opens in a new windowThousands of papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the 16th and 18th centuries.
- Empire Studies This link opens in a new windowFeatures primary source materials on British colonial policy and government; perspectives on life in British colonies; the relationship between gender and empire; race; and class.
- HeinOnline This link opens in a new windowIncludes 2500 legal journals, the entire Congressional Record, Federal Register, and Code of Federal Regulations, complete coverage of the U.S. Reports back to 1754, and entire databases dedicated to treaties, constitutions, case law, world trials, classic treatises, international trade, foreign relations, U.S. Presidents, and much more.
- Human Rights Studies Online This link opens in a new windowProvides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. Includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types. Topics include Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more.
- Legislative Insight This link opens in a new windowA collection of federal legislative histories, covering 1789 to 2016. (A legislative history is a list of all the hearings, debates, reports, and other documents produced during the process of passing a specific law.) Includes (and searches) full-text of most documents cited in the histories.
- Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1926 (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowContains constitutional conventions and compilations (including related reports, journals, proceedings, and debates), city charters and ordinances, law dictionaries, and early US state codes.
- Policy Commons This link opens in a new windowPolicy Commons is a one-stop community platform for research and grey literature from the policy experts, nonpartisan think tanks, IGOs, and NGOs. It covers many disciplines—agriculture, energy, pharmaceuticals, diversity, crime, history, area studies, economics, sociology, political science, health, climate, diversity, sustainable development, and more.
- Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) This link opens in a new windowIndex of western-language monographs, articles, and book chapters on all parts of Asia and Asian Studies (East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Indian Ocean) published since 1971.
- Bibliography of Indigenous Peoples in North America This link opens in a new windowIndexes books, essays, journal articles, US and Canadian government documents, and other publications concerning the history, life, and culture of native North Americans from the 16th century to the present. Contains the citations from the eight volumes of the Ethnographic Bibliography of North America as well as additional new citations.
- Ethnographic Video Online: Indigenous Voices This link opens in a new windowVolume III of Ethnographic Video Online. Streaming video of documentaries, feature films and shorts made by and for indigenous people and communities. Topics include the human effects of climate change, sustainability, indigenous and local ways of interpreting history, cultural change, and traditional knowledge and storytelling. See also volumes I and II, Foundational Films; and, volume IV, Festivals and Archives.
- Black Studies Center This link opens in a new windowHistorical and current material for researching the past, present and future of African-Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa itself. It is comprised of several cross-searchable component databases, including International Index to Black Periodicals, Black Literature Index and Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience (interdisciplinary essays written by leading scholars on the Black Experience).
- Chicano Database This link opens in a new windowBibliographic materials on Mexican-American topics 1967 to the present. Scope expanded in 1992 to include the broader Latinx experience, including Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants. Includes the Spanish Speaking Mental Health Database.
- Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowComplete text of articles from 1959 to the present from publications of the ethnic, minority, and native press. Covers news, culture, and history, and is searchable in both English and Spanish.
- Japanese American Internment: Records of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThis collection provides the background for a reassessment of how a leader and his advisors, who were fighting a war to preserve democracy, could have implemented such a profoundly unjust and undemocratic policy.
- Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowSearchable books, serials, manuscripts, court records, and reference publications. Access available for parts 1-4: Debates over Slavery and Abolition, Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, The Institution of Slavery, and The Age of Emancipation.
Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowDigitized primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues concerning gender and sexuality, and impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. Includes newsletters and newspapers, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, and more. Contributing repositories include: Kinsey Institute, British Library, Lesbian Herstory, Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, National Library of Medicine, and more. UCLA provides access to Parts I and II (LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940), Part III (Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century), and Part IV (International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture).
- GenderWatch This link opens in a new windowFull text database of publications that focus on the impact of gender across multiple subject areas. Publications include scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, and more.
- LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowOnline portal with full text books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements from the 20th century to the present. The purchase of LGBT Thought and Culture was made possible through a generous gift from the David Bohnett Foundation.
Migration Studies
- Border and Migration Studies Online This link opens in a new windowDocuments, videos, and images providing historical background on 30 key border areas, including: US and Mexico; the European Union; Afghanistan; Israel; Turkey; The Congo; Argentina; China; and Thailand.
- Immigrations, Migrations and Refugees Global Perspectives, 1941-1996 This link opens in a new windowTranslated and English-language radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, periodicals, government documents and books providing global insight on immigration in the mid-to-late 20th century
Disability Studies
- Disability in the Modern World This link opens in a new windowIncludes digitized resources on disability history and disability studies, including history, media, the arts, political science, education, and other subject areas. Includes primary sources, videos (documentaries, interviews, art films, performances), archival materials, advertising, and secondary monographs.
- American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThis collection includes the extensive FBI documentation on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest. In addition, there is documentation on the 1973 Wounded Knee Stand-off. Informant reports and materials collected by the Extremist Intelligence Section of the FBI provide unparalleled insight into the motives, actions, and leadership of AIM and the development of Native American radicalism.
- Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new windowThis collection searches primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.
- Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: A Selection of Primary Sources This link opens in a new windowOpen access selection of primary source documents including historical newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence and more that highlight the triumphs and resiliency of African Americans in the pursuit of equality through six periods of history.
- Politics, Social Activism and Community Support: Selected Gay and Lesbian Periodicals and Newsletters (Archives Unbound) This link opens in a new windowThis collection of periodicals focuses on newsletters issued by gay and lesbian political and social activist organizations throughout the country and on periodicals devoted to gay and lesbian political and social activist agendas. It also includes serial literature exploring the challenges and complexities of building gay and lesbian communities.
- Student Activism This link opens in a new windowA growing open access collection drawn from special collection libraries and archives, including fliers, pamphlets, newsletters, campaign materials, protest literature, clippings, periodicals, bulletins, letters, press releases, and other ephemera. Will cover a range of protest, political actions, and equal-rights advocacy from the 20th and early 21st century United States.
- Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new windowCollection of digitized documents, maps, and essays concerning the Atlantic slave trade, primarily from British and North American libraries. Includes 18th and 19th-century court records from Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, and North Carolina.