Abstract: Wergin presents original material drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a conflict situation over the construction of a AUD $45 billion liquefied natural gas facility on top of an Indigenous heritage site: Walmadany/James Price Point, at the Indian Ocean coast of Northwest Australia. It discusses, from an emic point of view, the inadequacy of western science terminology to represent Indigenous knowledge about the environment in question. To overcome related shortcomings in assessment processes of natural and cultural values, Wergin argues for ways in which western law und science can be better equipped first to recognise Indigenous knowledge as ontologically different but equal, and second to overcome the impossible task of expressing Indigenous world(view)s in modernist terms.

Abstract: Mira Jacob`s 2014 debut novel, The Sleepwalker`s Guide to Dancing, spans several decades piecing together the story of the Eapens` immigration from India to America as Syrian Christian Indians (St. Thomas Christians from India, also known as the Suriani). Throughout the novel, Thomas and Kamala Eapens use the word “American” in a vaguely racialized manner to indicate people other than Suriani “Indians,” usually white, yet the novel constantly uses “Indian” to refer to both Indian Americans and American Indians without distinction. The central locations of the novel, Albuquerque and Seattle, sites of historical dislocation of indigenous peoples and ongoing settler colonialism, renders this slippage as doubly problematic. The conflation of “Indian” is further complicated through Amina, the Eapens` daughter, who has to exorcise the ghosts of Bobby McCloud, a leader of the Puyallup tribe of Tacoma Indians whose suicide in a garish “Cherokee male” costume from Sally`s Party Supply she happened to capture on film, and of Akhil, her brother, “the Indian James Dean,” who committed suicide as a teenager and who once told Amina that “Indians don`t leave” because “they`re into the whole live forever-in-misery thing” before she can move on with her life and claim American belonging for herself. As Amina negotiates what it means to be American as a non-white immigrant dislocated herself by the legacy of colonialism participating in the settler colonialism that dislocated the indigenous population, she realizes that she has to exorcise the ghosts of both Indians, Bobby and Akhil, in order to become American. Thus, Amina`s narrative, as an extension and continuation of her parents, the Eapens`, demonstrates how non-white and non-Western European immigrants can also choose active participation in settler colonialism and its logic of elimination as an expedited path to belonging in America.

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Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and critically review the new tenure arrangements that have been established to recognise Maori relationship with land (Te Urewera) and river (Whanganui River), to ascribe them their own legal personality. Design/methodology/approach: The paper describes the development of the legal arrangements in Aotearoa New Zealand for Treaty settlements with Maori, and documents the various forms of rights and divisions of space that are changing the face of property institutions. Findings: The paper finds that the acknowledgement of land and nature as having their own legal status and therefore owned by themselves is bold and innovative, but is still not a full recognition of customary tenure. The recognition of rivers as indivisible entities is stated but not clearly implemented. Practical implications: Maori interests and authority are now more clearly articulated, and Maori may expect to be able to engage in customary practices and restore their traditional relationships with their land more explicitly. Originality/value: This is an innovative development in tenure arrangements seen by some as providing for the rights of nature, but actually responding to the rights of the indigenous people. This article may inform others about possible models for more diverse tenure arrangements elsewhere.

Excerpt: A river in New Zealand has become the first in the world to be granted the same legal rights as a person. The New Zealand parliament passed the bill recognising the Whanganui River, in North Island, as a living entity. Long revered by New Zealand’s Maori people, the river’s interests will now be represented by two people. The Maori had been fighting for over 160 years to get this recognition for their river, a minister said.

Abstract: Data about Indigenous populations in the United States are inconsistent and irrelevant. Federal and state governments and researchers direct most collection, analysis, and use of data about U.S. Indigenous populations. Indigenous Peoples’ justified mistrust further complicates the collection and use of these data. Nonetheless, tribal leaders and communities depend on these data to inform decision making. Reliance on data that do not reflect tribal needs, priorities, and self-conceptions threatens tribal self-determination. Tribal data sovereignty through governance of data on Indigenous populations is long overdue. This article provides two case studies of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and their demographic and socioeconomic data initiatives to create locally and culturally relevant data for decision making.

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Abstract: This article critiques the settler colonial politics of recognition in relation to Canadian museological practice. Despite a strong intellectual legacy critiquing asymmetric power relations and the problems of representing “otherness,” there have been few sustained examinations of the ways in which museums are implicated in settler colonial regimes of power. Dene scholar Glen Coulthard has written extensively on the manner in which the “politics of recognition” perpetuates settler colonialism in Canada. I argue that the normative shifts in Canadian museum practice post-1988 exemplify institutionalized shifts toward the colonial politics of recognition within Canadian museums. Further, I find that this is part of ongoing settler colonial practices of domination. I argue that current museological practice, particularly as it relates to Indigenous pieces within museums, must include a critique of the settler colonial politics of recognition as part of both critical analysis and normative orientation.

Abstract: This paper analyzes the policing of settler colonialism in Canada through two specific land reclamations, Ipperwash (1995) and Caledonia (2006), and the Ipperwash Inquiry (2003-2007) that links them together. While these cases are often contrasted, Ipperwash as an instance of “escalated force” and Caledonia a progressive example of “measured response,” I argue that this dichotomy disguises the continuous and underlying function of the police. As an embodiment of Canada’s legal architecture, the police use violence to maintain social order and reproduce the geography of settlement. Processes of inquiry are limited by their inability to critique the constitutive violence of the law. By placing justice within Canada’s existing legal structures, the Ipperwash Inquiry naturalizes the spatial order that land reclamations intend to decolonize.