Mobilize: The Analytics and Politics of Indigenous Movement

Abstract

Indigenous scholars have extensively theorized the centrality of place-making and land relations in examining the workings of colonialism and the underpinnings of Indigenous futurities. In this essay, I examine the analytics and politics of Indigenous mobilities and how this expands on conceptions of Indigeneity while affirming that movement does not preclude belongings and claims to their ancestral lands. Drawing on works from critical Indigenous Studies and mobilities scholarship, I build a dialogue with Anishinaabe/French artist Caroline Monnet's work to examine how Indigenous (im)mobilities are entangled with coloniality, but more importantly, how agentive movement refuses essentialist conceptions of Indigeneity and opens possibilities for envisioning alternative futurities. I conclude by considering what Monnet calls the double meaning of movement as a call to political movement building. Specifically, I consider how mobilities elucidate connection across Indigenous peoples, as well as affinities with other colonized peoples, and how movement offers conceptual and methodological tools to conceive of Indigenous futurities in relational modes.