Higher Education as Institution of Decolonization

Higher education should be an institution of decolonization––one centered on the repatriation of land and ocean to Indigenous peoples. Quantitative methods are used to perpetuate the historical and ongoing processes of Indigenous dispossession. However, quantitative methods courses often fail to reckon with these colonial histories and are taught in ways that are inaccessible for Indigenous students. Drawing from the first author's experiences as a professor of political science in Hawai‘i, this chapter proposes three classroom-level interventions that educators can pursue to make quantitative methods relatable and empowering for Indigenous students: (1) designing lectures to center the experiences of Indigenous students, (2) designing assignments that invite Indigenous students to interrogate the settler-colonial and neocolonial structures perpetuating Indigenous dispossession, and (3) maintaining university-community partnerships that provide Indigenous students with opportunities to use quantitative methods to support Indigenous sovereignty movements.

Carbon Forests at the Margins of the State: The Politics of Indigenous Sovereignty and Market Environmentalism in the North-eastern Hills of India

In the north-eastern hills of Meghalaya, the Khasi Hills project, self-advertised as ‘one of the first Redd+ initiatives in Asia to be developed and managed by indigenous governments on communal lands’, is often presented as one of the rare success stories of India’s recent experimentation with market instruments as part of its forest governance. This article uses this example to extend existing discussions on the neoliberalization of forest governance, and its intersections with the cultural politics of resource control. Unlike mainstream forestry projects criticized for being too concentrated in the hands of the Forest Department, this project explicitly taps into the particularities of a region located on the margin of the Indian nation-state, where, crucially, ownership and control of the land lie formally with the people rather than with the state. The article explores the politics of this curious marriage of (formal) indigenous sovereignty with market environmentalism, showing, first, the centrality of these assumed cultural and ecological specificities within the regime of justification of such market project; second, how the aspirations of project proponents for community engagement unravelled in practice; and, third, the limits of their endeavours due to larger structural social inequalities and the requirements of such market projects. I conclude with the idea that far from being anecdotal, this case brings interesting perspectives in the context of the struggle for the recognition of forest rights in the rest of India.

Journey of Survivance from a Cultural Practice to Legal Precedent in Kashmiri Rhetorics: An Indigenous Study of Memoirs of Basharat Peer and Rahul Pandita

This research focuses on the practice of survivance and its journey from a cultural practice to legal precedent for likely move to constitutional praxis in the Kashmiri context. It analyzes this practice as a priori argument of the Kashmiri narrativized rhetorics selecting two memoirs, Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night and Rahul Pandita’s Our Moon has Blood Clots, representing two Kashmiri communities. The objective is to pinpoint survivance practices as the basis of the Kashmiri assertion for indigenous sovereignty over the land, assuming Kashmiri narrativized rhetorication of the Kashmiri culture assists survivance practices transforming them into legal precedents even if they are oral testimonies of the indigenous legal claims likening them to the Vizenorian claim of the fourth person. The research validates this argument that the Kashmiri survivance practices enter the political realm and compete with paracolonialism in legal validation of the native claims but fall short of claiming constitutional praxis which requires further research through a legal standpoint regarding their affectivity in this arena.

Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty

As part of a collective thinking project, article proposes that all Black Canadians move to Nova Scotia to set up a decolonial, anti-racist, non-patriarchal, abolitionist settlement. Recognizing the denial of the right to collective self-determination for Black Canadians, this article explores how Black Canadians can work in solidarity with Indigenous solidarity movements to correct the injustices of settler-colonialism.

Beyond convergence and divergence: Towards a ‘both and’ approach to critical race and critical Indigenous studies in Australia

Although the study of race in relation to both settler colonialism, and Indigeneity and Indigenous sovereignty is insufficiently supported by sociology and the social sciences in Australia as elsewhere, scholars are exploring the synergetic possibilities between critical race and decolonial, Indigenous-centred approaches to theorizing the racial state. Nevertheless, some scholars have argued that the critical race toolbox is insufficient for making sense of how race is produced, reproduced and maintained in settler colonial states. Contributing to this critical discussion, this article explores the conceptual, empirical and practical relationship between race, Indigeneity and Indigenous sovereignty as lenses to examine racism, antiracism and Indigenous self-determination as interrelated, but discrete, issues. In particular, via a discussion of the concept of ‘interest convergence’, the article examines the synergetic possibilities of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Indigenous theories and methodologies. The authors conclude that rather than ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ by jettisoning CRT, we should work to deepen and broaden scholarship that connects race, Indigeneity and Indigenous sovereignty in ways that benefit both local and global understandings of the many and complex workings of race.

First occupants: the erosion of indigenous sovereignty through legal narratives

Land claim cases within Canada have yielded mostly small wins for Indigenous nations. While certain cases represent success in reinstating rights to cultural practices, granting certain levels of autonomy, and acknowledging rights to land use for culturally relevant activities, overriding sovereignty rests with Canada. Even land claim cases deemed successful are still adjudicated within the Canadian court system, and it is the nation-state of Canada that determines the validity of Indigenous claims to traditional territories. In this paper, I explore the discursive and narrative devices utilized within judicial rulings that uphold Crown sovereignty and deny Indigenous sovereignty. I argue that Indigenous sovereignty is undermined in legal discourse through the use of concealed narrative acts, which serve to sterilize racialized legal doctrines and distort the social and political history of relations between Indigenous nations and the Crown.

First occupants: the erosion of indigenous sovereignty through legal narratives

Land claim cases within Canada have yielded mostly small wins for Indigenous nations. While certain cases represent success in reinstating rights to cultural practices, granting certain levels of autonomy, and acknowledging rights to land use for culturally relevant activities, overriding sovereignty rests with Canada. Even land claim cases deemed successful are still adjudicated within the Canadian court system, and it is the nation-state of Canada that determines the validity of Indigenous claims to traditional territories. In this paper, I explore the discursive and narrative devices utilized within judicial rulings that uphold Crown sovereignty and deny Indigenous sovereignty. I argue that Indigenous sovereignty is undermined in legal discourse through the use of concealed narrative acts, which serve to sterilize racialized legal doctrines and distort the social and political history of relations between Indigenous nations and the Crown.