Abstract: This article offers a political-ecological reflection on Navajo (Diné) sovereignty, emphasizing lived and territorial interpretations of sovereignty, expanding our standard, juridical-legal notions of sovereignty that dominate public discourse on tribal economic and energy development. Operating from a critical analysis of settler colonialism, I suggest that alternative understandings of sovereignty – as expressed by Diné […]

On panic being ‘an intrinsic accompaniment to the very establishment of imperialism, especially on settler frontiers‘ (p. 23).

Abstract: There were times in Australian history when the singular, awesome power of ‘the Crown’ was wielded over colonial subjects of the British Empire, including citizen settlers occupying new lands and subject populations whose territories were claimed on behalf of the sovereign. This article presupposes that many consequences of invasion under eighteenth century conventions of […]

Abstract: This article addresses Indigenous Australian claims to water resources and how they inform and relate to current Australian law and contemporary legal thinking about future possibilities. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from historical records, previous ethnographic investigation with Indigenous Australians, current legal scholarship, and social anthropological theory. In doing so, it analyses Indigenous […]

Abstract: Gulf Country Aboriginal people perceive water as an integral part of the broader cultural landscape rather than a conceptually distinct element. Customary connection to and ownership of water therefore intersects with links to contiguous areas known in the anthropological literature as ‘estates’ and in local parlance as ‘countries’. For many Aboriginal people into the […]

Abstract: The Two Row Wampum is the first treaty between Europeans and Indigenous Nations on Anowarakowa Kawennote/Great Turtle Island/North America. The 2013 Two Row Wampum Renewal Campaign culminated in a 14-day paddle on the Mahicantuck/Hudson River. This article draws on the author’s experience as a participant and interviews conducted with full trip paddlers and organizers […]

Abstract: In this paper, I ask two questions of ideas of ‘North’ in Canadian national–cultural imaginaries. How does ‘North’ operate as a phantasm in these imaginaries? And what spaces of potentiality open up when the ghosts that haunt this phantasm come into view and are granted the due they demand? Drawing on ethnographic research conducted […]

Abstract: Indigeneity and diaspora are deeply related but deeply divided. Although they share the hazards of displacement, usually through settler colonial and/or capitalist expropriation of ancestral lands, the differences between their histories of displacement have resulted in very different political and cultural projects. Rather than trying to bridge these differences, this article deploys a kind […]

Sam Haselby offers a new and persuasive account of the role of religion in the formation of American nationality, showing how a contest within Protestantism reshaped American political culture and led to the creation of an enduring religious nationalism. Following U.S. independence, the new republic faced vital challenges, including a vast and unique continental colonization […]

Abstract: In 1858 Governor James Douglas proclaimed British Columbia a colony at Fort Langley before an audience of Hudson’s Bay Company officials, workers, and Indigenous leaders. The Proclamation dissolved the Hudson’s Bay Company trading monopoly and, while claiming to protect Indigenous lands, actually asserted British ownership of their territory. In the present, Fort Langley National […]