scholarly journals Diamond Mining in Denendeh: Colonial Natural Resource Extraction and Indigenous Peoples in Canada’s Northwest Territories

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Julia Werkman
Keyword(s):  
Northwest Territories ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Reciprocal Relationships ◽  
Natural Resource Extraction ◽  
Diamond Mining ◽  
National Economies ◽  
Colonial Frontier ◽  
Indigenous Land

Diamond mining is a rapidly developing industry, with an immensely large presence in Canada's Northwest Territories (NWT) with two currently functioning mines. Since the opening of the first mine in NWT in 1998, the Canadian federal government has viewed diamond production as 'essential' to both the territorial and national economies, frequently highlighting the benefits of diamond production. Entrenched in colonial language, the very existence of diamond mines in operation within NWT violate teachings, values, and the time honoured reciprocal relationships with the land held by Indigenous peoples across the territory. In problematizing this relationship, this paper employs the theories of Glen Coulthard's work For the Land: The Dene Nation's Struggle for Self- Determination, and examines the ways in which the operation of diamond mines exist as strongholds of settler-colonialism while simultaneously seeking to 'modernise' Canada's North. This is achieved through an exploration of Indigenous land relationships, the false beneficiary nature of diamond mine corporations, and finally the homeland vs. colonial frontier dichotomy.

Indigenous Planning: From Forced Assimilation to Self-determination

2021 ◽  
pp. 088541222110266
Author(s):  
Michael Hibbard
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Indigenous Planning ◽  
Indigenous Land Rights ◽  
Indigenous Land

Interest in Indigenous planning has blossomed in recent years, particularly as it relates to the Indigenous response to settler colonialism. Driven by land and resource hunger, settler states strove to extinguish Indigenous land rights and ultimately to destroy Indigenous cultures. However, Indigenous peoples have persisted. This article draws on the literature to examine the resistance of Indigenous peoples to settler colonialism, their resilience, and the resurgence of Indigenous planning as a vehicle for Indigenous peoples to determine their own fate and to enact their own conceptions of self-determination and self-governance.

scholarly journals The Rise of Indigenous (Pluri-)Nationalism: The Case of the Sámi People

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1141-1158
Author(s):  
Aslak-Antti Oksanen
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
State Level ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Status ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Freedom Of Action

Indigenous peoples have found the nationalist language of peoples’ inherent right to self-determination helpful in articulating their political demands. Gerald Taiaiake Alfred’s model of indigenous nationalism explains the emergence of this form of indigenous self-assertion as a reaction to settler-colonial incursions. However, it cannot account for the timing of its recent successes in unsettling the status quo of indigenous–settler-state relations. This article addresses this limitation by incorporating Michael Keating’s concept of post-sovereignty, which highlights the supranational plane constraining states’ freedom of action, while providing indigenous peoples with laws and norms above state level to appeal to. Additionally, Keating’s concept of plurinationalism is drawn upon to capture the emerging reconfiguration of indigenous–settler-state relations. This combined conceptual framework is used to illuminate the Sámi people’s relations to the Nordic states as expressive of emergent indigenous nationalism, formed in reaction to settler-colonialism and enabled by international norms, laws and global indigenous peoples’ networks.

Grounding Indigenous Teacher Education Through Red Praxis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Garcia ◽  
Valerie Shirley ◽  
Sandy Grande
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Theory And Model ◽  
Indigenous Teachers

Red Praxis centers Indigenous sovereignty rooted in epistemological and ontological orientations to place—to land. Applying Red Praxis requires teachers to understand, in greater detail, the ways in which settler and Indigenous ontologies represent not only different but also competing ways of being in the world. Red Praxis asks teachers to reconceptualize an intellectual space that reaffirms, reclaims, and (re)stories our relations to land as a decolonial practice and pedagogy of refusal. Red Praxis calls for Indigenous teachers and community educators to ground teaching in decolonial practices and aims to regenerate a sense of hope in rebuilding Indigenous communities. The exigencies of Red Praxis can be found within Indigenous teachers’ application of critical Indigenous theories and ongoing acknowledgement and protection of our relationship to land—the origin for our claim to exist as Indigenous peoples. In doing so, Red Praxis is about creating curriculum and enacting pedagogy that makes evident and mitigates the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous communities’ knowledge systems and ways of being. Red Praxis is an extension of Sandy Grande’s theory and model of Red pedagogy. Grande proposed the pedagogical framework of Red pedagogy to rethink the ways in which teaching can confront the challenges Indigenous communities face in the 21st century. Red pedagogy is about critically analyzing the material realities resulting from the settler colonial project and creating decolonial spaces of resistance, hope, self-determination, and transformative possibility in Indigenous education. In addition to addressing structural issues, it is important for Indigenous teachers to address what is taught in schools—the curriculum—as well as how it is taught—pedagogy—as key factors in revitalizing and transforming Indigenous education.

Unsettling Expectations: (Un)certainty, Settler States of Feeling, Law, and Decolonization1

2014 ◽  
Vol 29 (02) ◽  
pp. 235-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Mackey
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Business Development ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Land Policies ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Positive State ◽  
Indigenous Land

AbstractGuaranteeing “certainty” (for governments, business development, society, etc.) is often the goal of state land rights settlements with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Certainty is also often seen as an unequivocally desirable and positive state of affairs. This paper explores how certainty and uncertainty intersect with the challenges of decolonization in North America. I explore how settler certainty and entitlement to Indigenous land has been constructed in past colonial and current national laws, land policies, and ideologies. Then, drawing on data from fieldwork among activists against land rights, I argue that their deep anger about their uncertainty regarding land and their futures helps to reveal how certainty and entitlement underpin “settler states of feeling” (Rifkin). If one persistent characteristic of settler colonialism is settler certainty and entitlement, then decolonization, both for settlers and for jurisprudence, may therefore mean embracing uncertainty. I conclude by discussing the relationship between certainty, uncertainty, and decolonization.

Land Education

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin R. Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Culturally Responsive ◽  
Logical Consequence ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Educational Implications ◽  
Epistemological Basis ◽  
Indigenous Land ◽  
Indigenous Learners

Land education from an Indigenous perspective can be understood as the learning of deep social, political, ethical, and spiritual relationships on and with land. By extension, the approach of land-as-pedagogy applies the understanding that the primary and ultimate teacher is the very land itself. Land education offers scholars and students a nuanced, culturally responsive, and responsible critique of the notion of place and field of place-based education, particularly with regard to historically minoritized students and communities such as Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Building from Indigenous scholarship and drawing connections between global examples of Indigenous relationships to land, the educational implications of land education and land-as-pedagogy compel everyone involved in enacting curricula and pedagogy to center such ideas into all learning irrespective of academic “subject” or discipline. By acknowledging where events, relationships, experiences, and understanding happen, communities and learners are afforded the opportunity to reassess and reaffirm the ontological and epistemological basis that all knowledge is contextualized and that contextualization starts with/in land. Examples of the positive educational outcomes of such curricular, pedagogical, administrative, and educational policy change around land include the affirmation and strengthening of Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty, self-determination, and self-education, as well as the larger enculturation of non-Indigenous learners to more applied, reflexive, and explicit alliances and interdependencies with land and other communities. Repositioning land education and land-as-pedagogy from a marginal to central place within formal and informal education initiates the logical consequence and responsibility of such pedagogy: the complex, ethical, and historically informed process of Indigenous land repatriation.

scholarly journals Resisting Invasions: Indigenous Peoples and Land Rights Battles in Mabo and Terra Vermelha

2016 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 151
Author(s):  
Aline Frey
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Environmental Preservation ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
Indigenous Group ◽  
Legal Battle ◽  
Indigenous Land

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2016v69n2p151This article examines two feature films, focusing on the link between Indigenous cinema, environmental preservation and land rights. The first film is Mabo (2012) directed by Aboriginal filmmaker Rachel Perkins. It centres on a man’ legal battle for recognition of Indigenous land’ ownership in Australia. The second film is Terra Vermelha (Birdwatchers, Marco Bechis, 2008), which centres on the violence endured by a contemporary Brazilian Indigenous group attempting to reclaim their traditional lands occupied by agribusiness barons. Based on comparative analysis of Mabo and Terra Vermelha, this article discusses the similar challenges faced by Indigenous nations in these two countries, especially the colonial dispossession of their ancestral territories and the postcolonial obstacles to reclaim and exercise self-determination over them.

Going Native

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-66
Author(s):  
David Uahikeaikalei‘ohu Maile
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Native Hawaiian ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Native Hawaiians ◽  
Alliance Politics ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Going Native

In South Park’s “Going Native,” the white character Butters becomes inexplicably angry only to uncover that his family contends the anger is “biologically” caused by their “ancestral” belonging to Hawai‘i. He then travels to Kaua‘i to resolve this anger by connecting with his “native” home. To parody the materiality of white settlers playing and going native, Butters is represented as “native Hawaiian.” This parody functions as a satire to ridicule and criticize settler colonialism in Hawai‘i. Yet, it does so by distorting, dismembering, and erasing Hawaiian Indigeneity. By deploying an Indigenous-centered approach to critical theory, I analyze South Park’s “Going Native” as a popular culture satire to make three arguments. First, “Going Native” produces Indigeneity in racialized, gendered, and sexualized (mis)representations. The representations of “native Hawaiians” recapitulate marginalizing misrepresentations of Native Hawaiians, which inverts the parody. Second, as the parody breaks down, “native Hawaiians” reify settler colonialism. South Park’s satire fails and becomes haunted by specters of settlement that call into question its critique. When the “native Hawaiians” eventually liberate themselves from encroaching tourists and U.S. military forces, an impasse emerges. Rather than signifying Native Hawaiians with agency, only “native Hawaiians” demonstrate the possibilities of self-determination, sovereignty, and decolonization, which exempt white settlers from enacting colonization and produce a discursive impossibility for Native Hawaiians. Third, I suggest cultural studies reimagine its scholarship to exercise an alliance politics that interrupts knowledge produced by popular culture satire attempting critiques of settler colonialism that simultaneously naturalize the dispossession and elimination of Indigenous peoples.

Indigeneity and US Settler Colonialism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Powys Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Blood Quantum ◽  
The Us ◽  
Collective Self

Indigenous identity in the US context presents many difficulties, including issues related to the use of blood quantum, ethnic fraud, and tribal disenrollment. These difficulties should be understood as oppressive dilemmas and disappearances that are built into those structures of US settler colonialism that seek to erase indigenous peoples. Kim TallBear suggests at least one possible alternative for addressing issues associated with indigeneity and settler erasure. TallBear’s alternative is multifaceted, focusing on collective self-determination, survival, and land, and it can be used—as just one example—to understand current uses of indigeneity in some contemporary indigenous environmental justice projects.

Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Natural Resources

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jérémie Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Law ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Potential Role ◽  
Food Sovereignty ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
International Human Rights Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Right

The issue of sovereignty over natural resources has been a key element in the development of international law, notably leading to the emergence of the principle of States’ permanent sovereignty over their natural resources. However, concomitant to this focus on States’ sovereignty, international human rights law proclaims the right of peoples to self-determination over their natural resources. This has led to a complex and ambivalent relationship between the principle of States’ sovereignty over natural resources and peoples’ rights to natural resources. This chapter analyses this conflicting relationship and examines the emergence of the right of peoples to freely dispose of their natural resources and evaluates its potential role in contemporary advocacy. It notably explores how indigenous peoples have called for the revival of their right to sovereignty over natural resources, and how the global peasants’ movement has pushed for the recognition of the concept of food sovereignty.

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