Contesting the Settler City: Indigenous Self‐Determination, New Urban Reserves, and the Neoliberalization of Colonialism

Abstract In settler colonial contexts the historical and ongoing dispossession and displacement of Indigenous peoples is foundational to understanding the production of urban space. What does it mean that cities in what is now known as Canada are Indigenous places and premised on the ongoing disposs...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Antipode
Main Author: Tomiak, Julie
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/anti.12308
https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fanti.12308
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/anti.12308
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Summary:Abstract In settler colonial contexts the historical and ongoing dispossession and displacement of Indigenous peoples is foundational to understanding the production of urban space. What does it mean that cities in what is now known as Canada are Indigenous places and premised on the ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples? What roles do new urban reserves play in subverting or reinforcing the colonial‐capitalist sociospatial order? This paper examines these questions in relation to new urban reserves in Canada. Most common in the Prairie provinces, new urban reserves are satellite land holdings of First Nation communities located outside of the city. While the settler state narrowly confines new urban reserves to neoliberal agendas, First Nations are successfully advancing reserve creation to generate economic self‐sufficiency, exercise self‐determination, and subvert settler state boundaries. I argue that new urban reserves are contradictory spaces, as products and vehicles of settler‐colonial state power and Indigenous resistance and place‐making.