Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism

The ‘deer‐men’ and the ‘bowhead‐men’: The colonial co‐optation of Arctic Indigenous knowledge within the ‘origins of the Inuit’ debates

“…The ways in which colonial knowledge regularly led to the dispossession of land and territory, the forced relocation of entire communities, and facilitation of various forms of physical, psychological and epistemic harm toward the peoples of the circumpolar north are now beginning to be exposed (see, for example, Damas, 2002; de Leeuw, 2007; Harris, 2020; Loo, 2019; McLean, 2020). The insights offered by this article seek to support ongoing scholarship that is investigating, critiquing and destabilising the various colonial and racist projects that were enacted in the Arctic and sub‐Arctic regions during this period (Barnd, 2017; Coulthard, 2014; Daigle, 2016; Deloria, 1997; de Leeuw, 2016; Smith, 2012; Louis, 2007).…”

“…Yet it must be acknowledged that the Indigenous intermediaries framework has had somewhat limited engagement with the second body of geographical literature from which this article draws. There has been limited input into these discussions from scholars offering decolonial and Indigenous critiques relating to the troubling racial history of the geographical discipline and the still‐colonised nature of modern‐day geographical knowledge (Barnd, 2017; de Leeuw & Hunt, 2018; Esson et al, 2017; Legg, 2017; Louis, 2007; Radcliffe, 2017, 2022). As this article will show, closer engagement between these two fields is vital.…”

Settler aesthetics—Theorizing and contesting settler colonialism through art practice

“…Artistic interventions rupture settler aesthetics and enable decolonial aesthetics that imagine a "world otherwise" (Cheng & De Lara, 2019;Escobar, 2007;Martineau & Ritskes, 2014;Rice et al, 2020). Activists and artists deploy decolonial aesthetics in Indigenous struggles today by reclaiming Indigenous social and political self-determination through decolonial imaginaries and representations (Barnd, 2017;Cusicanqui, 2015;Martineau & Ritskes, 2014).…”

“…Emerging scholarship on settler cities and contesting the settler city presents new research agendas that demonstrates how urbanism intersects with settler colonial and racialization processes (Ellis‐Young, 2022; Fincher et al., 2019; Hugill, 2016; McGaw et al., 2011; Porter & Yiftachel, 2019; Tomiak, 2017, 2019). Urban spaces were and continue to be produced through settler colonial spatial technologies such as private property laws, practices of mapping and surveying, zoning laws, corporate and municipal regulations, and everyday banal spatial markers such as street signs (Barnd, 2017; Bates et al., 2018; Escobar, 2007; Sandercock, 2004; Tomiak, 2017). Just as settlers view unurbanized land as empty or Terra nullius to deny Indigenous land ownership and sovereignty, viewing urban space as “underutilized” in need of “revitalization” (or as urbs nullius ) is also eliminatory in nature (Addie & Fraser, 2019; Ellis‐Young, 2022; Moran & Berbary, 2021).…”

Interpreting spatial struggles in the historical record: Indigenous urbanism and erasure in 20th-century Mexico

“…Scholarship on Indigenous urbanism builds on a substantial body of work on settler colonial theory-which examines the mechanisms by which settlers dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands and other resources to build settler societies in their place (Wolfe, 1999), noting that nowhere have Indigenous peoples been rendered more invisible than in cities (Coulthard, 2014;Hugill, 2017;Simpson and Hugill, 2022). Concerned with the way Indigenous peoples have been represented in urban culture-as either absent or marginalscholars of Indigenous urbanism have sought to illuminate the diversity of experiences that constitute Indigenous experiences and productions of urban space, exploring, for example, how Indigenous people navigate multi-spatial identities in cities (Kukutai, 2013;Lucero, 2013); highlighted the activities of pan-Indigenous community spaces (Johnson, 2013;Ramirez, 2007); documented activism that reclaims urban space as Indigenous space (Negrín, 2019;Ramirez, 2020); and underscored Indigenous resurgence that counters the dispossession of land and other resources intrinsic to colonialism and racial capitalism, including the role of everyday place-making practices in unsettling colonialism (Barry and Agyeman, 2020;Barnd, 2017;Dorries et al, 2022;Ramirez, 2020). Most of these studies focus on North America, rarely drawing comparisons with the rich experiences of Indigenous urbanism in Latin America; this siloing reinforces existing settler-imposed borders.…”