For Those Who Will Follow; Earth Marred and Renewing Relationships

Abstract

Wherever one is in North America, one is on Indigenous lands. Some Indigenous peoples may have been exterminated or removed to other locations, and their contemporary presence may not be highly visible, yet this remains Indigenous land. Nevertheless, rarely do non-Indigenous individuals and institutions consider the responsibilities that come with the fact of being on Indigenous lands (cf. Asch, 2014). To a large extent, this is because settlers regard the state they control as holding a legitimate claim to sovereign authority. Not only is this a claim that bars rightful relationships with Indigenous peoples, it also discloses contemporary settler societies’ disconnection from their Earthboundedness (Asch et al., 2018; Borrows, 2018) because it extends both over peoples and lands.

I propose to consider how, from the locality of some settler states such as Canada and the United States, an intimate connection between the settlers’ claim to sovereignty, mastery and possession, and Modernity/Coloniality, is disclosed, which is significant for understanding the Anthropocene and for envisioning ways of acting otherwise that may help to remedy it. My claims regarding the Anthropocene and Modernity/Coloniality are thus perspectival; they do not pretend to offer complete and universal accounts of either, but rather hope to diagnose distinctive features of both, as experienced and disclosed from the underside of Modernity.

I see the Anthropocene, or the Age of Man, as a symptom of contemporary settler societies’ view of themselves as floating free from the land, to use Brian Burkhart's formulation (2019) and of their associated idea of Man. Man, in this context, does not refer to humanity as a whole, but rather to the Western white cis-gendered heteropatriarchal agent of Modernity/Coloniality (Mignolo, 2007, 2011; Yusoff, 2018) who is driven by a will to mastery and possession (Schulz, 2017; Singh, 2018). This Modern/Colonial Man presents himself as the universal subject, and thereby erases and disqualifies alternative ways of being human (Singh, 2018, Chapter Introduction).

I engage with First Nation and Native American—hereafter Indigenous—political thought and movements to articulate an alternative to the un-earthbound political practices and associated subjectivity of the Man of the Anthropocene. I use Indigenous as a collective shorthand, but my focus is on the distinct political experiences, struggles, and traditions of some of the Indigenous peoples of the lands now claimed by Canada and the United States and the radical alternatives they disclose to dominant Modern/Colonial lifeways, the significance of which extends far beyond their respective contexts. Although I appeal to the distinction between Indigenous and Western thoughts, this is not to essentialize or deny the complexities of either, but in reference to the dynamics of erasure and destitution to which Indigenous lifeways in their diversity have been subjected to through Eurocentrism. In my argument, Indigenous thoughts offer a path, that has been destituted but which can be reconstituted (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), to renew relationships and responsibilities to one another and to the rest of creation and to deviate from the path of ecological ruin our species currently follows, and which has already marred the Earth.¹

I begin by explaining how the Anthropocene can be associated with Modern/Colonial Man. I then argue that the claimed perfected sovereignty of settler states, such as Canada, expresses—and buttresses—Man's pretension to mastery and possession of the world. I consider how Indigenous peoples question the legitimacy and validity of settler sovereignty and how, in contrast, some articulate alternative political relationships of stewardship and of hospitality between hosts and guests. These political alternatives can decolonize and indigenize political relationships by im-perfecting settler sovereignty and by transcending mastery and possession in favor of reciprocal relationships and responsibilities, as they arise from and within concrete ecological contexts. I point to the Land Back movement as a practical project to transcend Modernity/Coloniality, through the transformation of political practices and subjectivities, which contributes to the renewal of reciprocal relationships to one another and with the land. As such, this article articulates a localized theoretical analysis of the Anthropocene, and a concrete path² to renew relationships with the land, in light and in the service of the demand and mobilization of Indigenous peoples to get their land back.

Although this article shares basic theses about reason and the mastery of nature with the Dialectic of Enlightenment, the method adopted is distinct. Horkheimer and Adorno engage with the Odyssey, for instance, to elucidate the present by unearthing the deep entanglement of the Enlightenment with National Socialism in the Western tradition (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2002, p. 218). For my part, I engage with Indigenous political traditions as critical and transformative sources of knowledge and insights that have been silenced and disavowed by Modernity/Coloniality. I refer to this approach as disruptive conservatism in that it challenges the dominating forms and terms of knowledge while revitalizing and recentering traditional lifeways. It seeks to engage with Indigenous thoughts and practices in their own voices (Allard-Tremblay, 2019), not to preserve traditions but to ground critical reflections about disjunctive alternatives to currently dominating practices, in ways that may support Indigenous self-determination and freedom and harmony for all. Although it regards Indigenous traditions as having the required intellectual resources to negotiate contemporary problems, without having to be assisted by or reduced to Western voices, it does not preclude engagements and collaborations with other (decolonial) perspectives.

The concept of the Anthropocene first gained grounds in “geo- and environmental sciences” about 20 years ago (Randazzo & Richter, 2021, p. 2), but today the literature on the topic has diversified and increased multifold. This fruitfulness has led scholars familiar with the literature, such as Steve Mentz, to recognize that “readers and scholars may be forgiven for a certain befuddled or baffled attitude” to this multiplicity of discourses (2019, p. 1), especially if they expect a unified account of the Anthropocene. In response, Mentz (2019, pp. 1-13) suggests that the Anthropocene should be pluralized. Accordingly, I provide an account and interpretation of the Anthropocene which should not be taken as univocal and final, especially considering challenges to the concept that point to its role in disavowing Indigenous lifeways (Taylor, 2021). This being said, the Anthropocene remains relevant to refer to deeply changing ecological circumstances faced by our species that are associated with human conduct and that trigger shared, though differentiated, political responsibilities, even if these circumstances have differently distributed causes and consequences (Sharp, 2020).

I thus accept that humanity is on a path to ecological ruin, and I recognize the need to, individually and especially collectively, act in ways to prevent the collapse of ecosystems. Yet, I also recognize the need to think about human societies as embedded in broader natural contexts (Henderson, 2000; Ladner, 2003). This natural embeddedness informs how human agency should be conceptualized; specifically, the relationships in which human societies stand with the rest of Creation entail responsibilities (Asch et al., 2018; Sioui, 1992, p. 9). In that sense, I adopt elements of the “discontinuous-descriptive” perspective about the Anthropocene which sees it as “a radical break with the Holocene” with “potentially fatal” consequences that call for remedial human actions (Randazzo & Richter, 2021, pp. 4-5). Yet, I also adopt elements of the “continuous-ontological” perspective, according to which the Anthropocene offers “a theoretical opportunity to adopt a broader and more complex understanding of the shaping power that constitutes both human life and its environment as necessarily intertwined, and does not primarily reside in human reason” (Randazzo & Richter, 2021, pp. 5-6). Significantly, however, I refuse the positions associated with this last perspective, according to which recognizing our embeddedness in natural contexts diminishes the significance of human agency and that the point of the Anthropocene would not be “about deferring catastrophes but about enduring them, and building structures to address injustice as we do so” (Mentz, 2019, p. 10). Rather, and similar to the Indigenous perspective discussed by Elisa Randazzo and Hannah Richter, I remain “unapologetically insistent that directed human agency is possible” (2021, p. 11). Indeed, while Indigenous worldviews often recognize the precarious balance of ecosystems, they also assert the importance of acting responsibly to sustain this balance, precisely by thinking about human agency in relation to natural contexts; as James Tully reports, the Haida “have a mantra to remind themselves of the tipping-point feature inherent in all living systems. They say, ‘The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife’” (2018, p. 100). Accordingly, we need to act responsibly to avoid falling off the edge of the knife, not merely to learn to live with the falling off.

Furthermore, although I acknowledge that humanity stands on a path to ecological ruin, I recognize that the responsibility for the practices and lifeways that have produced the Anthropocene are not universally shared (Schulz, 2017, p. 49). Black peoples and Indigenous peoples have been severely oppressed and negatively impacted by the capitalist and colonial processes of enslavement, alienation, dispossession, and extraction that have fueled the growth of Western powers at the vanguard of the Anthropocene (Whyte, 2017, p. 159; Yusoff, 2018). As Yusoff (2018) writes: “The Anthropocene cannot dust itself clean from the inventory of which it was made: from the cut hands that bled the rubber, the slave children sold by weight of flesh, the sharp blades of sugar, all the lingering dislocation from geography, dusting through diasporic generations. The shift of grammar cannot keep the rawness out.” Accordingly, all of humanity may be threatened by the Anthropocene, but this threat and the responsibility for it are not born equally. To properly comprehend the Anthropocene, we need to see how it has been brought about by a specific, colonial, mode of relating to one another and to the world. As Yusoff puts it: “The ‘Age of Man’ is a dominant and dominating mode of subjectification—of nature, the non-Western world, ecologies, and the planet” (Yusoff, 2018). This mode of subjectification denies Earthboundedness as it strives for mastery and possession of others and of nature. The Anthropocene, as seen from Coloniality, is the consummation of Modernity: It is the work of Modern/Colonial Man.

In saying that the Anthropocene is the work of Modern/Colonial Man, I affirm, following Karsten Schulz, that the “capitalist world-ecological system,” whose role in having produced the current ecological predicament is clear (Moore, 2015; Parenti & Moore, 2016), needs to be understood as “inextricably linked to coloniality defined … as a racialised, androcentric, and class-based hierarchy of knowing and being which still marginalises non-western cultures and histories” (Schulz, 2017, p. 47). It is not merely the economic system that has produced the current ecological crisis, but the broader Modern/Colonial matrix of power of which it is an integral part.

As Walter Mignolo explains, Modernity has a “darker side, ‘coloniality’” which it hides, but which is nevertheless “constitutive of” it (2011, pp. 2−3).³ Coloniality refers to core ideas of Modernity—such as progress, civilization, and reason—that give rise to correlative ideas—such as traditionalism, savagery, and superstition—that disqualify the thoughts, practices and knowledges of colonized, oppressed, dominated, and excluded groups and justify their subordinated and dominated positions. This results from the creation of and control, by Europeans, over the “colonial matrix of power,” which refers to the capacity to enunciate with universal pretensions the terms that constitute and structure “the economy,” “authority,” “gender and sexuality,” and “knowledge and subjectivity” (Mignolo, 2007, p. 478; 2011, p. 8). Significantly, the control of Europeans over these four domains was legitimated through a “racial and patriarchal foundation of knowledge” (Mignolo, 2007, p. 478; 2011, p. 8) that excluded non-Europeans, non-white, and non-men from full right- and power-bearing humanity. Importantly, Mignolo explains that the control claimed through the colonial matrix of power also depends on a fundamental “separation from nature” that sets Man/Human apart from other-than-humans (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 160). It is this broader matrix of power and its underlying constitutive separations in terms of “racism,” “sexism,” “humanism,” and “Eurocentrism” (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018, p. 163) that constitute subjects as agents of Modernity; hence my claim that the Man of the Anthropocene is the white cis-gendered heteropatriarchal agent of Western Modernity.

In sum, in implicating Modernity/Coloniality and its associated matrix of power and mode of subjectification, I am pointing to “the principles of thought, speech, and action which provide the seemingly ‘natural’ foundations for the idea of unlimited human mastery over the earth” (Schulz, 2017, p. 58).

Modern/Colonial subjectivity is driven by a will to master and possess (Singh, 2018, p. 13). This drive of Modern/Colonial Man was clearly expressed by René Descartes, at the dawn of Modernity, for whom a rational method of inquiry had the potential to “make ourselves like the masters and possessors of nature” (2000, p. 99 my translation). In seeking and claiming to master others and other-than-humans, Man seeks to define, control, manage, and order them according to his wishes and judgments. In seeking and claiming to possess them, Man objectifies them by disavowing their agency; abstracts them by ignoring the concrete relationships in which they stand and replacing these with a relationship of ownership in which he is the determinant point of reference; and separates himself from nature and others by denying mutual responsibilities and accountability to those and that which he claims to possess. Mastery and possession allow Man to turn nature into an object, a good to be possessed, a resource to be used, extracted, exploited, and destroyed at will (Mentz, 2019, p. 16; Mignolo, 2011, pp. 11-13; Moore, 2015); racialized and colonial others into living tools to be enslaved and sources of labor to be violently alienated (Wolfe, 2016); and Indigenous peoples into inconveniences to be dispossessed through displacement and elimination to gain access to their lands (Nichols, 2020; Wolfe, 2006). Being central to the mode of subjectification of Modernity/Coloniality, mastery and possession fuel the matrix of colonial power by directing Man's relationship to nature and other humans, and thus drive the consolidation of the extractive, racial, and colonial features of capitalism.

In a world built by Modernity/Coloniality, mastery and possession find diverse expressions. As Julietta Singh (2018, p. 12) explains, Man's dominion over nature is one such expression, while sovereignty can be interpreted as an expression of this same logic at the political and state levels. Put differently, dominion and sovereignty, mastery and possession, and Modernity/Coloniality are all closely enmeshed, and they are part of the fabric of the Anthropocene. To unravel the Anthropocene, then, I turn to the idea of sovereignty to explore alternative, Indigenous, non-sovereign ways of being in the world that undermine mastery and possession and that may thus transcend Modernity/Coloniality.

Man's pretension to mastery and possession of both the human and other-than-human world is given concrete form in the practice of sovereignty, associated with the modern state. As Christopher Morris (2002, p. 178) explains: “Sovereignty is the highest, final, and supreme political and legal authority and power within the territorially defined domain of a system of direct rule.” Across most variants, sovereignty is marked by a hierarchical view of authority, where some entity is vested with the power to make a final binding decision for all those under its authority. When this power is seen as absolute, it is not bound by any restriction or to any field of application. In an idealized form, he who is sovereign is practically the master and possessor of his domain and all it contains—humans and other-than-humans.

Yet, in practice, claims to sovereignty are rarely absolute or uncontested and through these challenges the hegemony of Modern/Colonial Man may be confronted. Yet, it is possible for such challenges to reproduce that which they oppose, as is the case when violence and mastery are used to oppose violence and mastery (Alfred, 2005, p. 23; Singh, 2018, pp. 2, 24; Tully, 2014). Transformative and decolonial challenges to sovereignty need to enact a distinct mode of being together and of being in the world, not merely challenge sovereignty with a counterclaim of sovereignty. To explore such decolonial realities and practices that seek to transcend Modernity/Coloniality, and which allow us to perceive ways of being otherwise in the world, I begin to draw out how mastery manifests itself by engaging with the claims to a perfected sovereignty made by states in settler colonial contexts, with a focus on Canada, before engaging with Indigenous alternatives.

As Patrick Wolfe (2006) and Lorenzo Veracini (2010, 2015) explain, settler colonialism should be understood as a structure organized around the settler aim of acquiring land already occupied by Indigenous peoples. This gives rise to a logic of elimination whereby diverse policies have the effect of clearing land from Indigenous presence and thus of naturalizing settler presence. As Elizabeth Strakosch and Alissa Macoun (2012, p. 42) explain, the wished-for endpoint of settler colonialism, which may never be achieved, is “the moment of colonial completion. That is when the settler society will have fully replaced Indigenous societies on their land, and naturalized this replacement.” In that sense, the ideological structure of settler colonialism essentially requires the disavowal of Indigenous presence and thus masks challenges to the legitimate presence and authority of settlers on and over these lands. It is accordingly fully consistent with settler colonialism for one to ignore the responsibilities that come with being on Indigenous land and even the fact of being on Indigenous lands.

Thinking more specifically in political and legal terms, this process of settler naturalization requires the consolidation of settler authority. Settlers cannot be satisfied with their presence being authorized, as if they were sojourners, migrants, or guests (Veracini, 2015), because this makes their authority dependent on the good will of another. This is the case even if the authority of settlers was not, nor was it claimed to be, effectively sovereign from inception in most settler colonial contexts. It rather inserted and incorporated itself into existing legal and political orders, sometimes drawing on local practices (Hsueh, 2010), and depended on the agreement of already present Indigenous peoples, who authorized the presence of newcomers through treaties (Asch, 2014). Yet, as Lisa Ford explains, settlers progressively claimed and exerted supreme and final authority and extended the territorial reach of their authority to the whole of the lands they claimed. Through this process, settler sovereignty was perfected, notably “by subordinating indigenous jurisdiction” (Ford, 2010, p. 183), such that the effective authority of settlers came to match their normative pretensions.

The need and wish for a perfected settler sovereignty allow making sense of the fact that, although Canada recognizes inherent Aboriginal rights and treaty rights—and although these rights are to some extent binding on the Crown by virtue of their recognition in article 35 of the Constitution Act—the right of settlers to be here and the associated sovereignty of the Crown are never under question. Indeed, the Supreme Court of Canada made this clear: “It is worth recalling that while British policy towards the native population was based on respect for their right to occupy their traditional lands, … there was from the outset never any doubt that sovereignty and legislative power, and indeed the underlying title, to such lands vested in the Crown” (R. v. Sparrow, 1990). Indigenous rights and title are then not equivalent to a recognition of sovereignty; they are more like burdens on the constant and unquestionable underlying title of the Crown. The settler state cannot truly countenance Indigenous sovereignty and ownership of the land precisely because it undermines and denies its own perfected sovereignty. As Andrew Schaap (2009) puts it, in a settler colonial context, “aboriginal sovereignty” appears to be an “absurd proposition.”

The idea of a perfected sovereignty is also useful to make sense of the limited reach of the politics of reconciliation, as articulated, once again, by the Supreme Court of Canada. In 1997, in the Delgamuukw decision, it affirmed that “a basic purpose of s. 35(1) [that is the article in the constitution of Canada affirming aboriginal rights—was]—‘the reconciliation of the pre-existence of aboriginal societies with the sovereignty of the Crown.’ Let us face it, we are all here to stay” (Delgamuukw v. British Columbia, 1997). Such a formulation does not question the perfected sovereignty of the Crown because it is for Indigenous peoples to come to terms with the facts of settler presence and sovereignty.

Yet, if Indigenous peoples were here first, how did settlers—not as individuals, but as a society with distinct social, political, legal, and economic institutions—acquire the right to be on Indigenous lands and, more importantly, to claim sovereignty over these lands and over Indigenous peoples? In asking this question, my point is not to investigate possible answers, simply because none are convincing and conclusive, especially for Indigenous peoples. Indeed, a perfected settler sovereignty remains a contested issue (Asch, 2014; Vowel, 2016, Chapter 26). Even the doctrine of cession, according to which some Indigenous nations would have agreed through the numbered treaties to “…cede, release, surrender and yield up to the Government of the Dominion of Canada … for ever, all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever, to the lands…” (Vowel, 2016, p. 254) is denied by Indigenous peoples on the basis of their oral traditions. They hold that those treaties were not land transfer contracts, but compacts through which a durable relationship between settlers and Indigenous peoples would be established in order to share the land (Asch, 2014).

This is a question explored in detail by Michael Asch, with whom I agree when he writes that “the political rights of Indigenous peoples already existed at the time that Crown sovereignty was asserted and, therefore, it is the question of how the Crown gained sovereignty that requires reconciliation with the pre-existence of Indigenous societies and not the other way around” (2014, p. 11). Interestingly for our purposes, in asking this question we may explore ways to im-perfect settler sovereignty and thus undermine claims to mastery and possession.

In seeking to im-perfect sovereignty, I center Indigenous thoughts and practices that open relational alternatives to the Modern/Colonial mode of subjectification and of being in the world. This task is consistent with the calls to “turn toward evocations of subjectivities no longer wed to an uncritical politics of worldly mastery” (Singh, 2018, p. 19)⁴ as a way to decolonize the Anthropocene. I focus specifically on the idea that Indigenous peoples and settlers can engage in reciprocal relationships of hospitality that center on Indigenous stewardship of the land. This means that settlers must learn to be guests on the land and to Indigenous peoples.

Veracini explains that undoing settler colonialism requires undermining the claim of settlers to sovereignty. One way to do this is for settlers to “be compelled to reconsider themselves guests” (Veracini, 2015, pp. 106-107). Yet, such an option risks not being properly transformative and decolonial if it is understood as replacing one sovereign claim—that of the settlers—by another—that of the Indigenous groups.⁵ This issue can be avoided when we consider being a guest as referring, not to being authorized to enter the sovereign domain of a master-host, but to being in a distinctive relationship of reciprocal responsibilities and privileges, both on the part of the host and the guest, in which the host has a privileged relationship to place.

To make sense of this, we can turn to Ruth Kolezsar-Green's (2019) account of what it means to be a host, a guest, and a settler, which is informed by “teachings [that] originate from and span the land, from the east to the west coasts” and by her discussions with “Elders and Traditional Teachers from six different Nations” (2019, p. 166). Kolezsar-Green articulates the responsibilities of the host and of the guest, thus allowing one to understand what it means, according to Indigenous teachings and protocols regarding hospitality, for non-Indigenous peoples to behave in ways consistent with being on Indigenous lands and with the preexistence of Indigenous nations as nations. This makes it possible to envision ways in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can relate that do not sustain and perpetuate the settler order and thus Modernity/Coloniality.

Kolezsar-Green explains that a settler is someone who acknowledges that they are on Indigenous lands but who does not commit to “unsettle their privilege” (2019, p. 174) and to take the responsibilities that come with the fact of being on Indigenous lands. Settlers assert their rights in ways that make no space for reciprocal relationships with Indigenous nations and that deny Indigenous political differences and distinct relationships to the land. In other words, they assume their perfected sovereignty over the land and over Indigenous peoples.

In contrast, a guest is someone who acknowledges that they are on Indigenous lands and seeks to take responsibility for that fact.⁶ A guest is in relationship with Indigenous peoples in ways that sustain Indigenous political differences and lifeways. It is also someone who recognizes and respects the distinct and special relationship of Indigenous peoples to their land. Put differently, a guest integrates an existing relationship to the land, it is not someone who disrupts, displaces, or disavows that relationship: This is why it can be said that a guest is “in relationship to the Land in a way that supports stewardship and not ownership” (Koleszar-Green, 2019, p. 175). A guest is then both a guest to Indigenous peoples and on the land: Being a guest to Indigenous peoples is not abstracted from the land where that relationship is enacted and from the responsibilities that come with the fact of being on this land and that inform Indigenous governance. Correlatively, being a host is not equivalent to being master and possessor of the land—it is about having a privileged relationship of responsibilities and respect to and with the land where others are welcomed.

In general, settlers have been socialized precisely as settlers. This means that conscious efforts to think and behave differently, in everyday practices, must be made to become guests. Such a relationship is not enacted by legislating specific rights and duties, it must be learned through a transformative process whereby reclaimed and revitalized political relationships and responsibilities are enacted and embraced. Importantly, in learning to be a guest, not only is one learning to relate to others in non-sovereign ways, one is also supporting and enabling Indigenous governance and relationships to the land, which is a key strategy to undermine the Modern/Colonial logic and subjectivity that fuel the Anthropocene. This is because whereas Modern/Colonial governance is marked by mastery and possession and by a clear distinction between the natural and the human realms, Indigenous governance is typically marked by relationality and respect for humans and other-than-humans (Watts, 2013). As Kiera Ladner explains, politics according to this view of governance is about “learning how to govern or how to live together in the best way possible within an ecological context” (2003, p. 130). Put differently, governance is about conduct that respects and takes responsibility for the diverse life-sustaining relationships in which we stand (Kimmerer, 2013; Mohawk, 2010, pp. 7-13): Indigenous governance is about stewardship, not ownership.

Indigenous governance deeply reframes governance away from mastery and possession toward relationships of reciprocity, responsibility, and stewardship that are embedded in concrete ecological contexts—becoming a respectful guest thus allows settlers to embed themselves in a broader system of mutual governance that extends to and is incorporated into the land. Learning to be guests requires a change of perspective about where and how one stands in the world: It is a transformation of dominant Modern/Colonial subjectivities associated with the decolonization and indigenization of political relationships. Such an evocation of decolonial subjectivities challenges mastery and possession and articulates a transformative modality of human agency to move through and out of the Anthropocene.

As Mignolo (2007, p. 458) writes, “if the colonizer needs to be decolonized, the colonizer may not be the proper agent of decolonization without the intellectual guidance of the damnés.” In this context, the significance of Indigenous governance and ways of being in the world is that they offer transformative alternatives that do not depend on or reproduce the subjectivities of mastery and possession associated with Modernity/Coloniality. However, for these Indigenous transformative alternatives to truly provide guidance, sovereignty needs to be practically im-perfected and Modern/Colonial subjectivities concretely transformed. This means that the guidance of Indigenous peoples must take the form of concrete political projects that reconstitute and recenter Indigenous jurisdictions and stewardship, so that mastery and possession may be forsaken, and relationships to one another and to the other-than-human world renewed. The Land Back movement is such a concrete political project; it has the potential to transform subjectivities through the transformation of political relationships.

Over the past few years, Canada has witnessed various mobilizations of Indigenous peoples around questions of land. Right before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, railroads were blocked by various Indigenous groups in support of members of the Wet'suwet'en nation who were present on their land to stop the construction of a pipeline. The Wet'suwet'en land protectors were eventually arrested and removed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Unist'ot'en Camp, 2020). More recently, the Algonquins of Barriere Lake in Québec sought to stop moose hunting to protect their relative/kin the moose, and Mi'kmaw fishers in Nova Scotia acted on their constitutionally protected and inherent right to fish despite the opposition and attacks of non-Indigenous fishers. In Ontario, members of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve mobilized around the “1492 Land Back Lane” to stop a housing development on claimed land (Manuel & Klein, 2020). Though these various movements take different forms, have different immediate objectives, and are not coherently organized into a single movement, they remain united by the demand to respect or restore Indigenous authority and jurisdictions over land. They can be seen as diverse manifestations of the Land Back movement.

One of the minimal—albeit often criticized—ways in which we can concretely envision the process of giving the land back to Indigenous peoples is through the implementation of a robust form of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC). FPIC is associated with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations, 2007) and is required for any decision or policy that would affect the rights and interests of Indigenous peoples or their land. For reasons of space, I cannot go into the detail of what FPIC requires to be understood as giving Indigenous peoples control of land, but this has been developed in the ‘Land Back Red Paper’ of the Yellowhead Institute (2019). Of concern here is the fact that institutionalizing Indigenous control over land in response to the Land Back movement would not merely be a way to address a demand for rights; it is more broadly a project of Indigenous resurgence and revitalization.

As Nickita Longman, Emily Riddle, Alex Wilson, and Saima Desai write in “Land Back is more than the sum of its part” (2020): “when we say ‘Land Back’ we aren't asking for just the ground, or for a piece of paper that allows us to tear up and pollute the earth. We want the system that is land to be alive so that it can perpetuate itself, and perpetuate us as an extension of itself. That's what we want back: our place in keeping land alive and spiritually connected.” The Land Back movement is a demand for Indigenous knowledge and jurisdiction to guide relationships to the land—it should be understood as properly meaning “relations back” (Gouldhawke, 2020). It is thus a concrete path that can be followed in the Canadian context to renew relationships with one another and to the land, following Indigenous terms.⁷

Although we should not romanticize Indigenous governance, the relational understanding of the land that informs Indigenous epistemologies, governance, and laws holds the promise that the reciprocal life-sustaining relationships embodied in the land and in which we always stand may be better protected than by Modern/Colonial governance. The scepter of sovereign authority held by Modern/Colonial Man has allowed him to conduct all of us into the Anthropocene. Although a significant portion of humanity may now live in relative abundance and comfort, the world is dying. Giving the land back may not be sufficient to address our ecological predicament, but it would be a way, for settlers and Modern/Colonial Man, of casting away their hubristic claim to mastery and possession of nature and of becoming, as Robin Kimmerer (2013, p. 112) puts it, “member[s] of the democracy of species.”

Giving the land back is not a utopian fantasy—as shown by the Yellowhead Institute's proposal—and although it may be highly discomforting for settlers to countenance, decolonization and learning to be guests are expectedly unsettling. Although this project is distinctive of settler colonial contexts like Canada and the United States, it is a significant refusal of widely shared Modern/Colonial political practices and associated subjectivities seen as bankrupt. The alternative political practices and subjectivities this refusal generates⁸ would be disruptive of the current globalized economy and would beckon all to learn to act otherwise, wherever they are in the world: It calls Indigenous peoples to support the resurgence and revitalization of Indigenous lifeways, settlers on Indigenous lands to learn to be guests, and individuals embedded in the Modern/Colonial matrix of power to find concrete ways in which relationships to one another and to other-than-humans can be renewed in their specific contexts. Land Back thus offers a clear and concrete path for settlers and for Modern/Colonial Man to learn to be guests, to acknowledge their land-based responsibility to act in earthbound ways, and for all of us to try to mend the world for those who will follow.

This paper draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.