Indigenous Places and Colonial Spaces ― The Politics of Intertwined Relations

Indigenous peoples are striving to reframe the worlds they inhabit in ways that more closely resemble their own aspirations. Such a process requires settler-colonial policies to recognize not only Indigenous peoples’ contestations of existing power relations, but also the inadequacy of their responses to these contestations.

This book critically explores the extent to which these parties are managing to reformulate the conditions by which they live in shared territories. It brings together a range contributions across the humanities and social sciences, from international and leading researchers, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous themselves. Part I provides an ontological overview to frame the conceptual worlds of Indigenous peoples in historical and contemporary contexts. Part II examines strategies used by Indigenous peoples to enact territorial obligations to land. Often, such obligations have been negotiated through settler colonial states’ attempts to delimit who they deem to be Indigenous and what rights then accrue as a consequence. Part III examines the contradictions and tensions stemming from such processes of state recognition.

This thorough insight into indigenous communities will appeal to researchers in the field of Cultural Geography, Rural Studies, Population Geography and Indigenous Peoples.

Nicole Gombay, Associate Professor at the Universite de Montreal. Since the 1990s, both within and outside of academia, Nicole has sought to understand the experiences of Indigenous peoples in the context of settler colonialism. Inevitably, this has also made her think about her own experiences as a settler.

Marcela Palomino-Schalscha, Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington. Marcela has research interests in development studies, human geography and political ecology, with a special emphasis on Indigenous issues. She theorises the politics of scale and place, diverse and solidarity economies, decolonisation, tourism and development in Latin America.