Reflections through land and property on settler-Indigenous urban relations

Abstract

Indigenous lands have been turned into homes and sources of capital accumulation in western settler cities. Land has been subjugated into property. Indigenous urbanism creates spaces that are invited by settlers, in some cases, and in others, they are invented by Indigenous peoples and seen as threatening to settler colonial socio-spatiality. Our commentary argues that the settler colonial state has an obligation to use its capitalist tools to return land, and its proceeds, to Indigenous nations, and to better manage the co-existing systems of Indigenous and settler land use. We do this with the help of examples from urban areas across Canada. Economic reparations will depend on reversing some of the extraordinary intergenerational transfer of wealth to settlers from Indigenous lands turned private property.