Westphalian Vs. Indigenous Sovereignty: Challenging Colonial Territorial Governance

Bauder, Harald; Mueller, Rebecca

doi:10.1080/14650045.2021.1920577

Cited by 27 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In other words, the current structure of the settler colonial liberal democratic state, existing distributions of power, and the ontologies and epistemologies with which they are linked, must be up for negotiation and rearrangement. This is an argument that has been repeatedly made by scholars in Indigenous studies, who consistently emphasize the importance of Indigenous sovereignty and of thinking critically about the sovereignty claims of settler-colonial states (Bauder & Mueller, 2023;Deloria, 1996;Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018;Moreton-Robinson, 2015;Tuck & Yang, 2012;Yellowhead Institute, 2019). From this perspective, valuing Indigenous and dominant knowledges equally requires the very rearrangement and redistribution of power that existing efforts at recognition seem to be designed to avoid.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

‘Consent’ as epistemic recognition: Indigenous knowledges, Canadian impact assessment, and the colonial liberal democratic order

2023

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This article unpacks the logic of the equivalence invoked by the Government of Canada between Indigenous consent and the inclusion of Indigenous peoples and knowledges in impact assessment. We situate the logic within the politics of recognition in Canada—a politics that aims to shore up national unity in the face of regular challenges to it. We use the Canadian results from a recent scoping review on conceptions of environmental justice in impact assessment to highlight the challenges of invoking recognition, and we provide a theoretical analysis of these challenges. To do this, we highlight the ways in which ‘we-making’ is ‘knowledge-making’ and ‘knowledge-making’ is ‘we-making’. In this sense, recognizing Indigenous knowledges is part of Canada’s answer to the challenge of constructing and stabilizing a political ‘we’: a community of political subjects with shared connection to a nation state via the institutional, social, and cultural apparatuses that generate the kind of publicly visible legal and technical knowledge upon which the state’s authority depends. We show how this project relies on actively obscuring the relationship between ‘we-making’ and ‘knowledge-making’ by treating ‘knowledge-making’ as neutral and un-situated, putting into practice a universalist logic. This logic shores up power because obscuring the situatedness of dominant knowledges also obscures the situatedness of the dominant political orders with which they are intertwined. We ultimately argue that Canada’s approach to recognizing Indigenous knowledges helps consolidate power by sidestepping ongoing jurisdictional struggles with Indigenous peoples.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

‘Consent’ as epistemic recognition: Indigenous knowledges, Canadian impact assessment, and the colonial liberal democratic order

2023

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“…A treaty has never been made between Indigenous people in Australia and the state, and so it is argued by Indigenous people that sovereignty has never been ceded. Indigenous people are asserting their sovereignty in the face of ongoing harms and injustices, while also taking issue with its definition and the terms of engagement (Bauder and Mueller, 2021;Koerner and Pillay, 2020;Lee et al, 2020;Moreton-Robinson, 2020). For example, Sheryl Lightfoot (2016) argues that Indigenous definitions of sovereignty are different from those conventionally conceived because they do not necessarily include defined territories or states with authority.…”

Section: Questioning Sovereigntymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within international relations, sovereignty is central to the relationship between territorial states and their different procedures of authority (Agnew, 1995; Barkin, 1998). But geographers have shown how more diverse form of power and articulations of territory are at play through focus on sovereign regimes, spatial metaphors, debates about power, the body and Indigenous sovereignty (Bauder and Mueller, 2021; Koerner and Pillay, 2020; Mountz, 2013; Shrinkhal, 2021; Wildcat and De Leon, 2020). A surge in interest in the concept of sovereignty has underscored that sovereignty and its relationship to territory has been and can be understood differently through culture and practice.…”

Section: Questioning Sovereigntymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Often in between’: Thinking through research methods and Indigenous sovereignty with Yuin Country

Arnold

Atchison

McKnight

2023

Environment and Planning F

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Indigenous scholars have been calling for renewed attention to the theorisation and practice of sovereignty, including within research. Their scholarship has drawn attention to the sovereignty of people within research processes, as well as diverse expressions of sovereignty. In this article we bring these two dimensions into conversation to consider how research methods might enable and enliven understandings and practices of sovereignty within geography. Illustrating Yuin approaches to research through poetry, observation and dreaming, we show how Country is a living enactment of sovereignty. It dynamically contributes to research processes and enables nonhuman entities to communicate within and beyond their territory as sovereign subjects. In particular, Yuin research methods acknowledge the significant contribution of plants in the theorisation~storying and practice of sovereign Country. Through plants, we come to develop a knowledge of sovereign Country as often in between things, including places and knowledges, vulnerability and protection, and removal and persistence. Such insights are respectfully offered here in the spirit of broadening disciplinary perspectives and capacities in order to revitalise research that addresses the relationships between territory and its people.

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“…The concept of "sovereignty" itself is a European construct that has served as a coercive tool to legitimize geopolitical control over states and their territories (Alfred, 2006). As states such as the United States and Canada came to "recognize" tribes as "sovereign nations," they did so within their liberal democratic structures where Indigenous peoples were seen as participants in the bounds of a nation state (Bauder and Mueller, 2023). This has given rise to a fundamental contradiction whereby tribal sovereignty can only be conceptualized within the terms out set by the settler colonial state.…”

Section: Jurisdictional Conflicts Between Federal Indian Law and Us L...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Oil extraction and Indigenous women: Examining the necropolitics of the settler state in the Bakken region

Chase

Johnson

2023

Human Geography

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Emerging research shows that the health and well-being of Indigenous women is increasingly jeopardized in areas close to oil extraction due to heightened violence and criminal behavior. Our empirical findings reveal how the oil industry has impacted one Indigenous reservation located in the Bakken region—an area experiencing a major “boom” in shale extraction activities. We find that sexual assault and violence against Indigenous women has increased due to three settler tactics: (1) gendered economic inequalities and tribal divisiveness entrenched by structural poverty and uneven oil-derived wealth distribution, (2) industrialized “man-camps” and “risky” behaviors associated with transient oil workers, and (3) confusing jurisdictional spatialities structured by overlapping tribal authority and federal law. Employing a Native feminist reading of Mbembé's necropolitics, we argue that the above tactics coalesce to form a spatial formation where Indigenous women are made vulnerable to death through the necropower of the settler state, and tribal governments are not able to criminally prosecute non-Native individuals involved in violent crimes on tribal lands. Multi-scalar pathways forward include support for Indigenous-led activism that enhances public awareness and efforts that protect the livelihoods and futures of all Indigenous peoples. The restoration of tribal sovereignty is also supported with the understanding that, unfortunately, this form of sovereignty continues to be highly circumscribed by the settler state.

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Westphalian Vs. Indigenous Sovereignty: Challenging Colonial Territorial Governance

Cited by 27 publications

References 49 publications

‘Consent’ as epistemic recognition: Indigenous knowledges, Canadian impact assessment, and the colonial liberal democratic order

‘Consent’ as epistemic recognition: Indigenous knowledges, Canadian impact assessment, and the colonial liberal democratic order

‘Often in between’: Thinking through research methods and Indigenous sovereignty with Yuin Country

Oil extraction and Indigenous women: Examining the necropolitics of the settler state in the Bakken region

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