Contested Lands, Contested Identities: Revisiting the Historical Geographies of North America’s Indigenous Peoples
Author(s)
Deur, Douglas E.
Abstract
Introduces a special issue on indigenous peoples, emphasizing the geographical dimensions of the history of colonialism in North America. For native peoples, the European conquest entailed territorial dispossession and displacement, geographical marginalization, and the usurpation of resources. Related to the physical removal and containment of aboriginal peoples was their textual and rhetorical erasure. The ideological linkage in Western legal, religious, and epistemological traditions between the modification of land and its ownership or tenure licensed the dispossession of aboriginals, who were seen to be living in a state of nature. The idea of North America as an empty land or wilderness denied the distinct histories and cultural practices of its original inhabitants. This legacy of cultural and military oppression continued to affect both aboriginal identity and the dominant culture’s understanding of native history and contemporary life at the turn of the 21st century.
