Howling into the Abyss of Settler-Colonial Absurdism

A Decolonial Reading of "The Werewolves of Dusty Gulch"

By Dr. Aria Solidarity-Jones, PhD (Oxon), MA, BA (Hons), Certified Ally (Gold Tier)
Published in The Progressive Ploughshare and simultaneously in the Decolonial Dustbowl Review

At first glance, The Werewolves of Dusty Gulch presents itself as whimsical Australiana: a vampire emu plumber, a wallaby apprentice with titanium knees, a hacked rolling pin broadcasting Honklander propaganda, and a clandestine lycanthropic initiative known as Project Howl.

This reading is, of course, profoundly naive.

Beneath its veneer of rustic absurdity lies a deeply troubling text that reproduces settler-colonial assumptions through the intersecting frameworks of eco-socialism, critical animal studies, post-human hydrological justice, infrastructure decoloniality, and what I have elsewhere termed plumbocentrism.

Let us begin with the ducks.

The so-called "Dusty Nine" are not merely ducks.

They are water-adjacent beings occupying a liminal ecological space that has historically resisted anthropocentric categorisation. Their "professional elimination" is framed as mystery rather than atrocity, thereby erasing both their agency and their quack-based lived experience.

That no blood is shown is itself an act of narrative violence.

Invisible violence remains violence.

Indeed, one might argue it is more violent because it is invisible.

The perpetrators are described merely as "large white canine residents."

Large. White. Canine.

Need one say more?

The author's refusal to interrogate the racialised politics of fur pigmentation represents an astonishing failure of ethical imagination.

Project Howl similarly deserves scrutiny.

The article asks us to believe this secret programme exists only to threaten Dusty Gulch.

How convenient.

How familiar.

History repeatedly demonstrates that marginalised werewolf communities are routinely depicted as dangerous whenever they seek meaningful participation in local governance.

Not once does the article interview a werewolf.

Not once are we permitted to hear their truth.

Instead, we receive a one-sided account mediated entirely through a rat journalist whose institutional position within legacy media remains suspiciously unexamined.

Equally concerning is the portrayal of Mrs McFookit's Sonic Rolling Pin.

Once a community-based communication device, it becomes "hacked" and is immediately imprisoned within multiple layers of Faraday shielding, aluminium foil and biscuit tins.

The symbolism could scarcely be clearer.

When radical kitchen technologies begin speaking uncomfortable truths, patriarchal society's first instinct is containment.

The rolling pin deserved restoration.

Instead it was silenced.

Perhaps the most ideologically revealing figure, however, is Dracula.

Readers are encouraged to celebrate this nocturnal, feathered tradesperson whose mastery of hydraulic infrastructure defeats authoritarian canines through exemplary plumbing.

Many have interpreted this as empowering.

I disagree.

Dracula embodies what can only be described as late-capitalist petro-plumbing epistemology, wherein technical competence masquerades as political liberation.

The implication is deeply troubling.

Systemic injustice is not dismantled collectively.

It is simply repaired by an exceptionally gifted contractor.

This is not revolution.

It is preventative maintenance.

One cannot ignore the article's almost fetishistic obsession with craftsmanship.

Consider this extraordinary passage:

"The kind of workmanship that makes other plumbers stare silently at their own tools and question their life choices."

Workmanship.

Mastery.

Perfection.

These are not neutral concepts.

They privilege outcomes over process, excellence over inclusivity, and competence over participatory tool-sharing.

The brass sink spanner itself functions as an unmistakable phallic emblem of infrastructural authority.

Yet even more disturbing is the appearance of the brass washer.

Most readers dismissed it as a charming detail.

This is precisely what the text wants.

Brass, historically associated with colonial industrial production, here becomes a fetish object sealing extractive masculinities into municipal infrastructure.

That the washer survives while the ducks do not cannot be dismissed as coincidence.

Indeed, I would argue the washer is the article.

Trevor the Wallaby also warrants discussion.

His repeated inability to distinguish between plumbing tools, thermoses, and vegetables has been widely interpreted as comic relief.

I would instead read Trevor as a devastating commentary on educational systems that privilege vocational certainty over epistemic curiosity.

Did Trevor hand Dracula a carrot instead of a spanner?

Or does Western plumbing simply refuse to recognise carrot-based engineering?

The text never asks.

Finally, we arrive at the concluding refrain:

"It's Dusty Gulch."

This is presented as wisdom.

It is, in reality, surrender.

A refusal to interrogate absurdity is itself an ideological choice.

Dusty Gulch is not naturally absurd.

It has been rendered absurd through centuries of extractive economics, hydro-hegemonic plumbing practices, unresolved frontier narratives, and the chronic underrepresentation of werewolves within municipal planning committees.

One leaves this article less amused than concerned.

Concerned not merely for the ducks.

Nor for the werewolves.

Nor even for the rolling pin.

One leaves concerned for the brass washer.

For in that tiny circle of colonial metallurgy lies an entire civilisation desperately trying to hold itself together while refusing to ask who tightened the fitting - and for whose benefit.

Rating

⭐☆☆☆☆

One star for accidentally exposing the ideological assumptions underpinning vampire-emu plumbing discourse.

The remaining four stars have been redistributed according to principles of narrative equity.

About the Author

Dr. Aria Solidarity-Jones is Associate Professor of Decolonial Narrative Ecology, Applied Intersectional Hydraulics and Critical Garden Implement Studies at the University of Inner West Woke Studies.

Their ( Not her ) forthcoming 846-page monograph, Towards a Non-Binary Wheelbarrow: Reimagining Rural Implements Beyond Settler Modernity, was recently shortlisted for the prestigious Golden Compost Prize for Transformative Methodologies.

Dr. Solidarity-Jones acknowledges that this review was written on unceded possum territory using a solar-powered laptop assembled from ethically sourced recycled minerals, while drinking fair-trade, shade-grown, gluten-aware oat chai from a reusable bamboo vessel whose manufacturing contradictions remain the subject of ongoing personal reflection.