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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.

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Abstract: In this article, I take the recent mobilities and moralities “turns” in tourism studies to an autoethnographic contemplation of a site most dominantly known as Sun Peaks Resort in British Columbia, Canada. In so doing, I examine what the intersections of mobilities and moralities do on this settler colonial terrain. By thinking with mobilities for the moral structures they anchor in place, the ground under settler colonial feet (and skis) is unsettled. The result is that conversations about Indigenous-settler land relations become a shared responsibility to a practice of decolonization that is grounded, sustained, and meaningful.