From Acts of Dispossession to Practices of Commoning: Re-considering the Life-worlds of Property

With Brenna Bhandar

The historic and ongoing dispossession of land and resources from First Nations and indigenous communities throughout the Americas is both a site of intensive academic and scholarly investigation, and social mobilisation and resistance. Today, the threat posed by extractivist industries to the health and survival of First Nations and the environment have prompted coalitional and solidarity activism at sites such as Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the U.S., and the Unist’ot’en Camp in Northern British Columbia, Canada. These protests embody a resurgence of indigenous claims for sovereignty over their land, and a rejection of the colonial settler property relations and legal forms that are at the root of their dispossession.