Décoloniser le discours de l’authenticité culturelle

Introduction to Special Issue Colonialism, Law, and the City: The Politics of Urban Indigeneity

“…It is precisely when talking about something other than indigenous identity , but always as indigenous people , that they thereby show the degree to which identifying as indigenous and being recognized as such are inherently historical and plural social realities, and therefore constrained, malleable, changing, and, in particular, compatible with urban experiences. From this perspective, given that the rhetoric about “real” indigeneity as rural maintains the same spatial definition so central to the colonial stereotype of the “native” established by the settler state, it may be possible to understand the contemporary political mobilizations of urban‐based indigenous people as contributing to the decolonization of the discourse about identity (Trépied ). Everyday practices and mobilizations of urban‐based indigenous people also contribute to revealing the porousness of the rural/urban divide and the complex and changing relations between urban and rural milieus, by reason of, for example, frequent journeys between urban and rural sites, the increased mobility of indigenous people, friendship and family networks often extending across the country and even beyond state borders, connections with home away from the city that are kept alive in the city—making new places that allow for the existence and the flourishing of a great diversity of contemporary indigenous identities and lives.…”