‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing’: settler voting rights and the elimination of the Indigenous demos in US Pacific territories

Settler colonialism eliminates Indigenous sovereignty, enthrones itself, and thereby makes Indigenous land ‘ours’. It may do this meta-politically, by absorbing ‘them’ into ‘us’. This article explores three recent lawsuits brought by settlers against Indigenous demoi in US Pacific territories. I show that in each lawsuit, settlers brandished a novel ‘tool of elimination’: individual voting rights. I trace how settlers wielded this tool to deliver a ‘one-two punch’, first condemning as ‘illiberal’ restrictive voting laws flowing from Indigenous sovereignty and then championing race-neutral laws that would in effect enthrone settlers. I show that courts hearing these cases were faced with choosing the appropriate ‘framing of justice’ – with whether the relevant rights-bearer was the universal individual voter or the ‘constitutionally prior’ Indigenous demos. Finally, I show that, because the courts ultimately framed these disputes as individual-rights cases, settlers extended control of meta-politics on the US Pacific frontier.     

Indigenous peoples,local communities,and Payments for Ecosystem Services

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs are reshaping the governance of ecosystems and natural resources around the world. These programs often occur in spaces that are unceded, contested, or otherwise not legally recognized as Indigenous homelands, customary areas, and territories. Building on the discourses of Indigenous self‐determination, nationhood, and cultural responsibilities, this paper examines how PES programs produce unique outcomes for Indigenous peoples as ecosystem services providers. Our findings demonstrate and substantiate three themes that impact Indigenous ecosystem services providers uniquely: (1) the internationally recognized right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent for Indigenous peoples; (2) the reinforcement of settler colonial jurisdiction; and (3) mismatches between Indigenous knowledges and PES‐type approaches. The ways that PES programs run the risk of reifying and reducing Indigenous knowledges have not yet been adequately considered within current PES approaches. Our findings enable a conceptualization of PES as a new conservation tool within ongoing histories of land management and dispossession by settler colonial governments. We assess the strengths and challenges of PES programs as a departure from previous conservation modalities.     

State Discourses of Indigenous “Inclusion”: Identity and Representation in the Arctic

Arctic decision‐making processes are often praised for including Indigenous peoples. Yet, state practices of “inclusion” may also inadvertently delimit what can be meaningfully said from a stage already set for a highly specific role as “Arctic voices”. This paper draws on reflections offered by Norwegian and Icelandic state personnel on the meanings of Arctic statehood and identity, showing how often well‐meaning attempts to “include” may serve the includer more than the included—indeed, may serve to uphold the same power structures they seemingly seek to improve. In so doing, the paper contributes both to understandings of Arctic statecraft and to work seeking the “peopling” of geopolitical concepts such as the state. By focusing on the operation of dominant discourses, the paper argues that current prescribed performances of “inclusion” are not enough in a region marked by histories of dispossession, assimilation, and colonisation.     

Long-term trends in health status and determinants of health among the off-reserve Indigenous population in Canada, 1991–2012

The Indigenous population in Canada totals approximately 1.6 million individuals, representing about 5% of the total population. The off-reserve Indigenous population represents the fastest growing segment of the Indigenous population, with over 50% living in urban settings. Despite the size of the off-reserve population, research on the health of Indigenous peoples tends to remain focused on reserve-based populations. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of health and social determinants of health among off-reserve Indigenous peoples in Canada. Using data from the 1991 and 2012 Aboriginal Peoples Surveys this paper examines changes in health status and the social determinants of health over a 20-year time span. Results show a decline in health care use and self-reported health status in the period between 1991 and 2012. The results may be related to urbanization, aging, and increased prevalence of some chronic conditions. The findings may also be tied to barriers to achieving adequate off-reserve health care—jurisdictional disputes, disjointed program coverage, systemic racism, and a lack of equity-oriented health services. There remains a pressing need for Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments, researchers, and policymakers to build new relationships that bridge these gaps in health and access to timely care.     

Fixing the territory,a turning point: The paradoxes of the Wichí maps of the Argentine Chaco

Indigenous mapping is a powerful political tool for long-marginalized populations to create visibility and establish land claims. In the case of Argentina, a country that was built on a denial of the presence of Indigenous peoples in the national territory, the emergence of these maps stemming from participatory processes coincided with the recognition of these communities' territorial rights in 1994. However, this mapping of Indigenous territories freezes extremely dynamic and complex socio-spatial realities just as it inflects their representations. In this paper, I reassess the weight and the role that Indigenous cartographic representations play in the evolution of these populations' spatial capital. Paradoxically, they give rise to more contradictions than they clarify. These paradoxes demonstrate the varied relationships different generations maintain with their territory, just as they concern its structure and its cartographic form. Therefore, based on the case of the Wichí of the Argentinian Chaco, this paper contributes to the understanding of contemporary issues of indigeneity by adopting a critical approach to Indigenous cartography. Whereas in Argentina cartographic knowledge is undergoing a process of decolonization, this does not apply to the legal system or to society as a whole.     

De la carte au territoire: Portée et usages des outils cartographiques au sein de la Première Nation des Pekuakamiulnuatsh Entrevue avec Michel Nepton,membre de la Première Nation des Pekuakamiulnuatsh et conseiller en aménagement du territoire

From map to territory: Scope and uses of mapping tools within the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation Interview with Michel Nepton, member of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation and land use and planning advisor While the mapping of Indigenous territories has long been at the heart of land-grabbing strategies orchestrated by the colonial powers, these tools are now largely mobilized by Indigenous communities through the processes of claiming, negotiation, and affirmation. The specific context of land claiming in Canada has also contributed in a significant way to the increasing use of these tools by communities seeking to demonstrate their historical occupation of land. In any case, the translation of Indigenous knowledge into exogenous geographical language remains subject to criticism and caution, particularly by the tenants of critical mapping. In order to shed new light on these issues, the following interview was conducted with the land use and planning advisor Michel Nepton, working in the Pekuakamiulnuatsh Takuhikan Land rights and protection board (Council of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation, Mashteuiatsh). Bringing forward his experience and use of mapping tools within his professional practice, his thoughts reveal the role and scope they have in the specific context of his community.     

Analyzing entangled territorialities and Indigenous use of maps: Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok (Quebec,Canada) dynamics of territorial negotiations,frictions, and creativity

This paper highlights the relevance of analyzing entangled territorialities and Indigenous use of maps in order to better understand what Lévy describes in terms of “spatial capital”—the socio-economic dynamics and power relationships maintained and negotiated between the stakeholders interacting within the Indigenous forestland. More specifically, it discusses the entanglement dynamics of land tenures coexisting today within Nitaskinan, the ancestral territory claimed by the Atikamekw Nehirowisiwok. Within Nitaskinan, members of the First Nation negotiate the continuity of their practices, occupation, and use of ancestral hunting territories with state institutions, logging companies, and non-Indigenous members of civil society who have interests in the land resources. All these stakeholders implement different territorial regimes that interact and sometimes conflict. Based on concrete ethnographic examples, the analysis presented here focuses on the compromises, frictions, resistance, and creativity that are part of territorial coexistence between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.     

Protected Areas,Country and Value: The Nature–Culture Tyranny of the IUCN's Protected Area Guidelines for Indigenous Australians

“Protected areas” is the formal definition for the global network of conservation places, including marine and terrestrial reserves, which are overseen by the IUCN through instruments such as the Guidelines for Applying Protected Area Management Categories (Guidelines). In the long‐term conservation of nature, the Guidelines embed a nature–culture dualism, upon which the values of each are ascribed and weighted. This binary does not recognise relational values of Indigenous peoples to land or encompass worldviews beyond the restricted choice of the dualism. Through two Australian Aboriginal case studies, I reveal tensions in classifying cultural values for protected areas under the limited Guidelines offerings and provide an alternative engagement, through reassessing the means and scope by which values are assigned, for greater equity to Indigenous peoples.     

Tourists as colonizers in Quintana Roo,Mexico

Spatial appropriation is an age‐old strategy for domination by one group over another. In the context of national states, territorial expansion is a common manifestation of this. Spain's colonization process began in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico in the sixteenth century but remained incomplete in this area. Independent Mexico's struggle for control over the Mayan landscape of the Yucatan continued through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is my contention that the assault has continued in recent times. Today, it is not the conventional notion of nation state colonialism but a much more subtle invasion brought about by the ability of tourists from richer nations to travel south. Using the paradigm of settler colonization, this article proposes that relationships of power underlying this new infiltration parallel those of conventional colonialism, and that the tourist is, in fact, an unwitting colonizer. The case of Quintana Roo, Mexico illustrates how the tourist can be seen as a pawn in a larger political project. Exposure of this predatory nature of tourism reveals processes that have implications for other Native regions of the Americas and beyond that are suffering similar “invasions.”     

Becoming the State in Northern Australia: Urbanisation,Intra‐Indigenous Relatedness,and the State Effect

In Australia's Northern Territory, the Larrakia have been involved in a decades‐long effort to gain recognition as traditional owners through Land Rights and Native Title legislation. From one perspective, their claims have failed to achieve the entitlement and recognition grounded in these governmental regimes (Scambary 2007; Povinelli 2002). However, over the past decade the Larrakia Nation Aboriginal Corporation (LNAC) and the Larrakia Development Corporation (LDC) have emerged as locally powerful corporate bodies that pursue programs and exercise forms of power on behalf of the Larrakia that can be understood in terms of state and governmental practice. Through suburban development, a night patrol, educational and vocational training, a radio station, and through forms of policy research and statistical enumeration, the Larrakia nation have emerged in the eyes of many as a de facto Aboriginal ‘state’ in the Darwin region. This paper explores the intra‐Indigenous relations through which these practices have emerged, and analyses the extent to which the LNAC might be understood as a kind of ‘state’ within a state, responsible for world‐shaping activities of knowledge production, housing and health outreach, vocational training and education, and policing. Focussing on the forms of ‘stateness’ that accrue to the Larrakia Nation in Darwin through its policing, knowledge production, and outreach programs for Aboriginal campers, the article explores the differential articulation of Aboriginal groups with the state. It concludes by asking how such differences matter in contexts of planned urbanisation in the Northern Territory.