Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Dispossession
Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Dispossession
Settler colonialism is a form of colonial expansion in which outside populations establish permanent societies on Indigenous lands while seeking long-term political, legal, and economic control over territory. Unlike extractive colonial systems focused primarily on resource exploitation, settler colonial projects generally involve the displacement, marginalization, assimilation, or elimination of Indigenous peoples in order to secure land for settlement and state-building.
The scholarship collected on this page examines theoretical foundations, historical case studies, legal doctrines, environmental change, Indigenous resistance, and contemporary debates surrounding settler colonialism across multiple regions of the world.
Foundational Concepts
The collected works introduce settler colonialism as a continuing political and social structure rather than a single historical event. They explore themes including land acquisition, sovereignty, territorial expansion, racial hierarchy, state formation, assimilation, genocide studies, comparative colonial history, and Indigenous political survival.
Indigenous Land, Sovereignty, and Law
Many sources examine how colonial governments employed treaties, legislation, courts, property systems, and legal doctrines—including the Doctrine of Discovery, terra nullius, allotment policies, and reservation systems—to redefine Indigenous relationships to land. They also discuss the evolution of Indigenous land rights, treaty interpretation, self-determination, and international legal protections.
Regional Histories
The bibliography surveys settler colonial experiences across numerous regions, including:
- United States
- Canada
- Australia
- Aotearoa New Zealand
- Hawaiʻi and the Pacific
- Palestine
- Southern Africa
- Kenya
- Namibia
- Zimbabwe
- Latin America
These regional studies examine differing colonial strategies while highlighting recurring themes of territorial expansion, Indigenous displacement, resource extraction, military conquest, treaty making, assimilation, and resistance.
Indigenous Resistance
Many works document Indigenous responses to colonial expansion, including diplomacy, armed resistance, legal challenges, treaty negotiations, cultural preservation, political organizing, land rights campaigns, environmental activism, and contemporary movements advocating sovereignty and self-government.
Environmental and Economic Dimensions
The sources explore how settler colonialism transformed landscapes through agriculture, mining, forestry, ranching, conservation policies, infrastructure development, and resource extraction. Several works also examine how Indigenous lands contributed to national economic growth while Indigenous communities experienced dispossession, restricted access to resources, and environmental degradation.
Residential Schools, Assimilation, and Cultural Suppression
Numerous publications examine institutions designed to assimilate Indigenous peoples, including residential schools, child removal policies, protection acts, reservation systems, pass systems, and other forms of state intervention intended to weaken Indigenous languages, cultures, governance, and social structures.
Comparative Perspectives
Several works compare settler colonialism across continents, emphasizing recurring patterns while recognizing important regional differences. Comparative scholarship investigates relationships among colonialism, nationalism, empire, racial classification, citizenship, labor systems, military occupation, environmental change, and state development.
Contemporary Issues
Recent scholarship considers the continuing legacy of settler colonialism through debates surrounding land restitution, reconciliation, Indigenous sovereignty, constitutional reform, resource development, conservation policy, reparations, international human rights, and decolonization. Many authors argue that historical processes continue to influence modern political institutions, legal systems, and social inequalities.
Conclusion
Together, these sources provide an extensive overview of settler colonialism as a historical and contemporary phenomenon. They encompass theoretical analyses, legal studies, historical research, Indigenous perspectives, and regional case studies from around the world. Collectively, they illustrate how questions of land, sovereignty, identity, governance, and Indigenous rights remain central to understanding both colonial history and its enduring global consequences.
Foundational Concepts and Comparative Frameworks
Settler Colonialism
| Eliga Gould | Cambridge University Press | 2024
Examines settler colonialism, Indigenous dispossession, territorial expansion, and the American Revolution as a struggle over access to Native lands.
The Settler Colonial Present
| Lorenzo Veracini | Polity | 2024
Argues that settler colonial relations continue to shape sovereignty, borders, citizenship, landholding, and global politics.
Settler Colonialism and the Production of Hierarchical Sovereignties
| Federica Caso | Review of International Studies | 2024
Examines how settler states establish unequal forms of sovereignty through Indigenous dispossession, assimilation, and territorial control.
The Centrality of Dispossession
| A. Dirk Moses | Cambridge University Press | 2023
Explains why territorial dispossession is central to understanding settler colonialism, mass violence, forced removal, and genocide.
Empire, Settler Colonialism, and Grounded Solidarities
| Inés Valdez | Cambridge University Press | 2023
Connects Indigenous land theft with slavery, migration, racial capitalism, gendered exploitation, and possibilities for anticolonial solidarity.
Thinking with and Beyond Settler Colonial Studies
| Jane Carey and Ben Silverstein | Postcolonial Studies | 2020
Assesses the achievements and limitations of settler-colonial theory while calling for more historically specific forms of analysis.
Theorizing Race and Settler Colonialism within U.S. Sociology
| Dwanna L. McKay, Kirsten Vinyeta and Kari Marie Norgaard | Sociology Compass | 2020
Shows how sociology can better analyze the relationship between racial hierarchy, Indigenous dispossession, land, and settler power.
Settler Colonialism Then and Now
| Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini | Fernwood Publishing | 2017
Surveys historical and contemporary forms of settlement, land seizure, Indigenous displacement, and colonial state formation.
The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism
| Edward Cavanagh and Lorenzo Veracini | Routledge | 2017
Provides comparative studies of settler colonial projects across the Americas, Africa, Oceania, Europe, and the Middle East.
Settler Colonialism
| Lorenzo Veracini | Oxford Bibliographies | 2017
Surveys major scholarship on settlement, replacement, Indigenous resistance, comparative colonial history, and decolonization.
Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Peoples
| Margaret D. Jacobs | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History | 2017
Reviews the historical development of settler colonialism and its effects on Indigenous peoples, families, land, and sovereignty.
Settler Colonialism, Race, and the Law
| Nikhil Pal Singh | New York University Press | 2017
Connects racial governance and warfare to the longer history of conquest, Native dispossession, slavery, and United States expansion.
Native Studies Keywords: Settler Colonialism
| J. Kēhaulani Kauanui | University of Arizona Press | 2015
Defines settler colonialism within Indigenous studies and connects it to land, sovereignty, race, occupation, and political resistance.
Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor
| Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang | Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society | 2012
Argues that decolonization must involve the restoration of Indigenous land rather than functioning only as a metaphor for social reform.
Colonialism and the Objectivity of Property
| Allan Greer | American Historical Review | 2012
Examines how European property concepts were used to reinterpret, diminish, and ultimately dispossess Indigenous systems of landholding.
Settler Colonial Studies and the Australian Context
| Lorenzo Veracini | Settler Colonial Studies | 2011
Introduces settler colonial studies as a field concerned with invasion, replacement, sovereignty, and Indigenous resistance.
The Transit of Empire
| Jodi A. Byrd | University of Minnesota Press | 2011
Examines how United States imperial power repeatedly applies ideas developed through the conquest and governance of Indigenous nations.
Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview
| Lorenzo Veracini | Palgrave Macmillan | 2010
Develops a comparative framework for distinguishing settler colonialism from other forms of colonial domination.
Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native
| Patrick Wolfe | Journal of Genocide Research | 2006
Presents the influential argument that settler colonialism is an enduring structure organized around obtaining Indigenous land.
Settler Colonialism and the Logic of Elimination
| Patrick Wolfe | Journal of Genocide Research | 2006
Explores the mechanisms through which settler societies attempt to remove, absorb, relocate, or politically erase Indigenous populations.
Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology
| Patrick Wolfe | Cassell | 1999
Connects settler colonial expansion with anthropology, racial classification, assimilation, and the attempted elimination of Indigenous societies.
Settler Colonialism as Structure
| Global Social Theory | Global Social Theory | n.d.
Introduces settler colonialism as an ongoing political structure rather than a closed period of migration or frontier settlement.
Settler Colonialism
| Haverford College | Global Solidarity and Local Action | n.d.
Explains the relationship between settlement, Indigenous land seizure, elimination, assimilation, and colonial sovereignty.
Settler Colonialism Primer
| Yellowhead Institute | Yellowhead Institute | n.d.
Offers an Indigenous-centered introduction to the institutions, laws, narratives, and territorial objectives of settler colonialism.
Settler Colonialism and Native Studies
| Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen | Duke University Press | n.d.
Places Native studies and comparative settler-colonial scholarship within broader histories of empire and territorial conquest.
United States: Expansion, Removal, and Allotment
Native Americans and the Homestead Act
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2024
Explains how homestead settlement transferred millions of acres of traditional and treaty lands to non-Indigenous claimants.
The Trail of Tears and the Forced Relocation of the Cherokee Nation
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2023
Documents the expulsion of the Cherokee and other southeastern nations from homelands coveted by settlers and state governments.
The Expedition’s Impact on Indigenous Americans
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2023
Explains how western exploration encouraged settlement, military intervention, removal, reservations, and the seizure of Indigenous resources.
The Rediscovery of America
| Ned Blackhawk | Yale University Press | 2023
Places Native nations, settler invasion, warfare, diplomacy, and dispossession at the center of United States history.
Native Nations Face the Loss of Land and Traditions
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Describes how territorial loss disrupted Indigenous cultural identities, sacred places, burial grounds, subsistence systems, and political autonomy.
Indigenous Nations and the Development of the U.S. Economy
| Ann M. Carlos, Donna L. Feir and Angela Redish | Journal of Economic History | 2022
Analyzes how the transfer of Indigenous lands and resources contributed to United States economic development while impoverishing Native nations.
Land, Resources, and Dispossession
| Ann M. Carlos, Donna L. Feir and Angela Redish | Journal of Economic History | 2022
Quantifies the central role of Indigenous territory and resource appropriation in the expansion of the United States economy.
The Dawes Act
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2021
Describes how allotment divided collectively held tribal lands and opened so-called surplus territory to settler ownership.
Settler Colonialism and the American Revolution
| Alan Taylor | Cambridge University Press | 2021
Explains how colonial independence accelerated United States pressure for Native land cessions and western settlement.
Unworthy Republic
| Claudio Saunt | W. W. Norton | 2020
Investigates the political, economic, racial, and humanitarian dimensions of the mass expulsion of southeastern Native nations.
Surviving Genocide
| Jeffrey Ostler | Yale University Press | 2019
Examines warfare, removal, disease, confinement, and destructive federal policies directed against Native nations from the Revolution to Kansas.
Our History Is the Future
Links the resistance at Standing Rock with centuries of Indigenous opposition to settlement, treaty violations, resource extraction, and dispossession.
This Land Is Their Land
| David J. Silverman | Bloomsbury | 2019
Challenges celebratory Thanksgiving narratives by documenting Wampanoag diplomacy, colonial expansion, warfare, and the seizure of Native lands.
The Colonial Origins of Conservation
| Dina Gilio-Whitaker | Society and Natural Resources | 2019
Shows how conservation programs frequently displaced Native communities and restricted their access to ancestral environments.
As Long as Grass Grows
| Dina Gilio-Whitaker | Beacon Press | 2019
Connects environmental injustice with treaty violations, settler land use, conservation, extraction, and Indigenous resistance.
American Expansion Turns to Indian Removal
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2017
Connects military expansion after the War of 1812 with forced migration, land cessions, and the growth of settler agriculture.
The Other Slavery
| Andrés Reséndez | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 2016
Documents Indigenous enslavement as a major instrument of conquest, labor extraction, depopulation, and territorial dispossession in the Americas.
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
| Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz | Beacon Press | 2014
Interprets United States history as a continuing process of settler warfare, land acquisition, Indigenous resistance, and colonial occupation.
Facing East from Indian Country
| Daniel K. Richter | Harvard University Press | 2001
Reconstructs colonial North American history from Indigenous geographical and political perspectives rather than the settlers’ westward viewpoint.
American Holocaust
| David E. Stannard | Oxford University Press | 1992
Surveys the catastrophic demographic and territorial consequences of European conquest and settlement in the Americas.
The Middle Ground
| Richard White | Cambridge University Press | 1991
Explores Native-European relations in the Great Lakes before United States expansion destroyed an earlier intercultural political accommodation.
The Legacy of Conquest
| Patricia Nelson Limerick | W. W. Norton | 1987
Reframes the American West as a contested region shaped by conquest, Indigenous dispossession, racial conflict, and competition for resources.
The Invasion of America
| Francis Jennings | University of North Carolina Press | 1975
Reinterprets early American colonization as an invasion involving warfare, ideological justification, settlement, and Native dispossession.
Indian Land Cessions in the United States
| Charles C. Royce | Library of Congress | 1899
Maps hundreds of land cessions through which the United States progressively acquired the territories of Indigenous nations.
Removing Native Americans from Their Land
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | n.d.
Traces United States policies that used treaties, reservations, warfare, removal, and assimilation to obtain Indigenous territories.
Canada: Treaties, Reserves, and Resource Extraction
Dispossession by Treaty, Dispossession by Statute
| Kent McNeil | Cambridge University Press | 2024
Compares land loss produced through colonial treaties with dispossession imposed unilaterally through settler legislation.
Cash Back
| Yellowhead Institute | Yellowhead Institute | 2021
Examines how governments and corporations extract wealth from Indigenous lands while limiting Indigenous economic jurisdiction.
The Indian Act
| William B. Henderson | The Canadian Encyclopedia | 2020
Explains the federal law that imposed colonial governance, controlled reserve land, restricted mobility, and promoted Indigenous assimilation.
Numbered Treaties
| Michelle Filice | The Canadian Encyclopedia | 2020
Reviews treaties through which Canada gained access to vast Indigenous territories for settlement, railways, agriculture, and extraction.
The Northwest Is Our Mother
| Jean Teillet | McGill-Queen’s University Press | 2019
Recounts Métis resistance to Canadian expansion, land surveying, settler migration, and the suppression of Indigenous political authority.
No Surrender
| Sheldon Krasowski | University of Regina Press | 2019
Argues that First Nations did not understand the numbered treaties as unconditional surrender of their territories.
Idle No More
| Tabitha Marshall | The Canadian Encyclopedia | 2019
Reviews an Indigenous-led movement opposing legislation that weakened environmental protections and expanded settler control over land and water.
The Doctrine of Discovery
| Assembly of First Nations | Assembly of First Nations | 2018
Explains how European legal doctrines continue to influence Crown claims to Indigenous territory and sovereignty in Canada.
Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future
Summarizes the history and continuing consequences of residential schools and calls for structural changes in Indigenous-settler relations.
Colonialism of the Curve
| Sarah Hunt | Settler Colonial Studies | 2014
Examines how colonial governance regulates Indigenous bodies, territories, gender systems, and forms of resistance in Canada.
Clearing the Plains
| James Daschuk | University of Regina Press | 2013
Documents how starvation, disease, treaty policy, and the destruction of the bison facilitated settler occupation of the Canadian Prairies.
Compact, Contract, Covenant
| J.R. Miller | University of Toronto Press | 2009
Surveys the history of treaty making between Indigenous nations, colonial governments, and the Canadian state.
Indigenous Foundations: Land and Rights
| University of British Columbia | Indigenous Foundations | 2009
Introduces Aboriginal title, treaty rights, reserve creation, colonial land policy, and continuing Indigenous struggles over territory.
Aboriginal Title
| University of British Columbia | Indigenous Foundations | 2009
Explains the legal recognition of Indigenous land rights arising from occupation before the assertion of Crown sovereignty.
The White Paper 1969
| University of British Columbia | Indigenous Foundations | 2009
Describes a Canadian proposal to eliminate distinct Indigenous legal status and convert reserve lands into private property.
Our Box Was Full
| Richard Daly | UBC Press | 2005
Presents an ethnographic account of Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en land relations and their struggle for recognition in the Delgamuukw case.
Making Native Space
| Cole Harris | UBC Press | 2002
Explains how reserves were imposed in British Columbia to confine Indigenous peoples and free most of the province for settlers.
A National Crime
| John S. Milloy | University of Manitoba Press | 1999
Examines the residential-school system as a state-supported effort to separate Indigenous children from their lands, families, languages, and nations.
The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7
| Treaty 7 Elders and Tribal Council | McGill-Queen’s University Press | 1996
Presents Indigenous oral histories that challenge government interpretations of Treaty 7 as a complete transfer of land and sovereignty.
Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
| Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples | Government of Canada | 1996
Provides a comprehensive analysis of colonial dispossession, treaties, reserves, governance, assimilation, and Indigenous-state relations.
A Colonial History of the Indigenous Peoples of British Columbia
| Robin Fisher | UBC Press | 1992
Traces the transition from relatively balanced trade relations to settler domination, land appropriation, reserves, and political marginalization.
The Great Land Grab
| John Leonard Taylor | University of Manitoba Press | 1991
Examines how Treaty 3 negotiations were interpreted differently by the Anishinaabe and Canadian authorities seeking territorial control.
The Pass System in Canada
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
Describes an extralegal system used to confine First Nations people to reserves and limit political, economic, and social movement.
Indigenous Land Law, Environment, and Decolonization
The Economics of Cultural Loss
| Mukesh Eswaran | Open Book Publishers | 2025
Examines how land dispossession, assimilation, historical trauma, and cultural destruction affect Indigenous economic and social wellbeing.
The Opportunity Framework
| Rights and Resources Initiative | Rights and Resources Initiative | 2023
Evaluates countries’ readiness to recognize Indigenous and community land rights and correct longstanding territorial dispossession.
Indigenous Peoples’ Land and Forest Rights
| World Resources Institute | World Resources Institute | 2023
Explains how legally recognized Indigenous territories support biodiversity, climate mitigation, cultural survival, and resistance to land grabbing.
Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper
| Yellowhead Institute | Yellowhead Institute | 2019
Calls for the restoration of Indigenous land and jurisdiction rather than reforms that leave settler ownership and authority unchanged.
Property and Dispossession
| Allan Greer | Cambridge University Press | 2018
Compares Indigenous and European land systems and explains how colonial property formation enabled dispossession in North America.
The Colonial Commons
| Allan Greer | Cambridge University Press | 2017
Explores how competing Indigenous and colonial ideas of shared land and resources contributed to dispossession.
Introduction to Property and Dispossession
| Allan Greer | Cambridge University Press | 2017
Introduces a comparative history of European property formation and the seizure of Indigenous territories in early North America.
Who Owns the World’s Land?
| Rights and Resources Initiative | Rights and Resources Initiative | 2015
Measures the gap between customary community ownership and the much smaller area formally recognized by national governments.
The Doctrine of Discovery
| United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues | United Nations | 2012
Explains the legal doctrine used by colonial powers to claim Indigenous lands and subordinate preexisting sovereignty.
Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Development
| Gillette Hall and Harry Anthony Patrinos | Cambridge University Press | 2012
Studies the economic consequences of historic exclusion, territorial loss, discrimination, and weak recognition of Indigenous rights.
Indigenous Resurgence
| Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | University of Minnesota Press | 2011
Presents Indigenous resurgence as the rebuilding of land-based relationships, governance, knowledge, and collective political autonomy.
Conservation Refugees
| Mark Dowie | MIT Press | 2009
Documents Indigenous communities displaced from ancestral territories to create parks and protected wilderness areas.
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
| United Nations General Assembly | United Nations | 2007
Establishes international standards concerning Indigenous self-determination, land, resources, culture, consent, and protection from forced removal.
Dispossessing the Wilderness
| Mark David Spence | University of California Press | 1999
Shows how United States national parks were created through the removal and exclusion of Native peoples.
Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States
| United States Supreme Court | Justia | 1955
Held that some Indigenous land could be taken without compensation when Native title had not been formally recognized by Congress.
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock
| United States Supreme Court | Justia | 1903
Affirmed broad congressional power to break treaties and dispose of Native lands without tribal consent.
Johnson v. M’Intosh
| United States Supreme Court | Justia | 1823
Established a foundational United States doctrine limiting Indigenous land-transfer rights and privileging federal title based on discovery.
Doctrine of Discovery and Domination
| Indigenous Values Initiative | Doctrine of Discovery Project | n.d.
Provides historical and contemporary resources on religious and legal doctrines supporting Indigenous land dispossession.
Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Lands, Territories and Resources
| Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights | United Nations | n.d.
Summarizes international protections for Indigenous ownership, use, control, restitution, and development of traditional territories.
Free, Prior and Informed Consent
| Food and Agriculture Organization | United Nations | n.d.
Explains the principle requiring meaningful Indigenous consent before projects affect communities, lands, territories, or resources.
Indigenous Peoples and Conservation
| International Union for Conservation of Nature | IUCN | n.d.
Examines Indigenous conservation leadership and the need to prevent protected areas from reproducing colonial displacement.
American Indians and National Parks
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | n.d.
Explores the relationships between parks and Native nations whose ancestral lands were incorporated into federal protected areas.
Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change
| United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs | United Nations | n.d.
Explains how climate change compounds colonial land loss while Indigenous communities protect many of the world’s remaining ecosystems.
Indigenous Resistance to Extractive Industries
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
Documents mining, oil, logging, infrastructure, and energy projects imposed on Indigenous territories without adequate consent.
Land Rights Now
| International Land Coalition and partners | Land Rights Now | n.d.
Supports Indigenous and community campaigns seeking recognition, protection, restitution, and control of customary territories.
Australia: Terra Nullius and Aboriginal Dispossession
Wave Hill Walk-Off
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2023
Describes Gurindji workers’ struggle against exploitative labor and for the return of their traditional lands.
The Yirrkala Bark Petitions
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2023
Documents Yolŋu opposition to mining imposed on their lands without consultation or recognition of Indigenous ownership.
Settlement and Dispossession
| Lisa Ford | Cambridge University Press | 2022
Examines the legal history through which British settlement displaced Aboriginal law and converted Indigenous country into colonial property.
The Australian Wars
Documents military and paramilitary conflicts through which settlers occupied Aboriginal land across the Australian continent.
The Mabo Case
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2022
Describes the landmark judgment that overturned the legal fiction that Australia belonged to no one before British occupation.
Aboriginal Land Rights Act
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2022
Reviews legislation recognizing some Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territory after generations of dispossession.
Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia
| University of Newcastle | Centre for 21st Century Humanities | 2022
Maps documented frontier massacres associated with settler expansion and the occupation of Aboriginal territories.
Freedom Ride 1965
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2022
Describes Aboriginal activism against segregation and inequality created by the longer structures of settler colonial rule.
The Barunga Statement
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2022
Presents Indigenous demands for land rights, self-determination, compensation, cultural protection, and a negotiated treaty.
The Stolen Generations
| Australian Museum | Australian Museum | 2021
Explains policies that removed Indigenous children to weaken Aboriginal families, cultures, identities, and claims to country.
The Original Australians
| Josephine Flood | Allen and Unwin | 2019
Surveys Aboriginal history from ancient occupation through invasion, land loss, assimilation, activism, and cultural survival.
Dark Emu
| Bruce Pascoe | Magabala Books | 2014
Challenges settler claims that Aboriginal peoples lacked agriculture, permanent settlements, or sophisticated systems of land management.
Forgotten War
| Henry Reynolds | NewSouth Publishing | 2013
Argues that violent conflict between settlers and Aboriginal peoples should be recognized as a central Australian war.
The Biggest Estate on Earth
| Bill Gammage | Allen and Unwin | 2011
Demonstrates that Aboriginal peoples actively managed Australian environments that settlers falsely represented as empty wilderness.
Genocide in Tasmania
| Ann Curthoys | Journal of Genocide Research | 2004
Evaluates debates over genocide, extermination, forced removal, and settler colonialism in nineteenth-century Tasmania.
Why Weren’t We Told?
| Henry Reynolds | Penguin Australia | 1999
Examines the national silences that concealed frontier violence, Aboriginal resistance, and the dispossession underlying Australian settlement.
Bringing Them Home
| Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission | Australian Human Rights Commission | 1997
Investigates the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from families, communities, cultures, and country.
The Law of the Land
| Henry Reynolds | Penguin Australia | 1987
Explores the legal and moral foundations of British claims to Australia and the denial of Aboriginal land ownership.
The Other Side of the Frontier
| Henry Reynolds | UNSW Press | 1981
Reconstructs Aboriginal resistance to invasion, occupation, pastoral expansion, and the destruction of Indigenous economies.
Mabo and Native Title
| Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies | AIATSIS | n.d.
Explains the legal case that rejected terra nullius and recognized the survival of Indigenous land rights under Australian law.
Terra Nullius
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | n.d.
Explains how the doctrine of terra nullius was used to deny Aboriginal sovereignty and legitimize colonial occupation.
The Black War
| Lyndall Ryan | University of Tasmania | n.d.
Examines frontier warfare and settler efforts to remove Aboriginal Tasmanians from lands desired for colonial settlement.
Aboriginal Protection Acts
| AIATSIS | Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies | n.d.
Reviews colonial laws controlling where Aboriginal people lived, worked, traveled, married, and maintained connections to land.
Aboriginal Sovereignty
| AIATSIS | Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies | n.d.
Explains Indigenous assertions that sovereignty was never ceded despite British occupation and the creation of the Australian state.
Dispossession, Dreams and Diversity
| National Library of Australia | Digital Classroom | n.d.
Introduces the consequences of colonial settlement for Aboriginal communities, including displacement, violence, labor exploitation, and resistance.
Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific
The Treaty of Waitangi
| New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | 2023
Explains the treaty’s differing Māori and English texts and the conflicts over sovereignty, governance, and land alienation.
The New Zealand Wars
| New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | 2023
Surveys armed conflicts caused by settler demands for land and Māori resistance to expanding colonial sovereignty.
The Invasion of the Waikato
| New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | 2023
Documents the colonial invasion of Waikato, the defeat of the Kīngitanga, and the confiscation of Māori land.
Parihaka
| New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | 2023
Describes the destruction of a Māori community that used nonviolent resistance to oppose settler surveys and land occupation.
Possessing Polynesians
| Maile Arvin | Duke University Press | 2019
Connects settler colonialism in Hawaiʻi and Polynesia with race, gender, possession, scientific classification, and United States imperialism.
Tangata Whenua
| Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney and Aroha Harris | Bridget Williams Books | 2014
Presents a comprehensive Māori history emphasizing land, political authority, colonial pressure, resilience, and cultural renewal.
Militarized Currents
| Setsu Shigematsu and Keith L. Camacho | University of Minnesota Press | 2010
Examines how United States militarization appropriates Indigenous Pacific lands and exposes communities to displacement and environmental harm.
Conquest by Contract
| Richard Boast | Victoria University of Wellington Law Review | 2008
Examines how legal agreements and land-purchase mechanisms enabled extensive Māori dispossession without constant military conquest.
Hawaiian Blood
| J. Kēhaulani Kauanui | Duke University Press | 2008
Shows how blood-quantum rules narrowed Native Hawaiian identity and restricted access to land under settler-colonial governance.
Aloha Betrayed
| Noenoe K. Silva | Duke University Press | 2004
Recovers Native Hawaiian political resistance to annexation and challenges narratives portraying United States rule as consensual.
Dismembering Lāhui
| Jonathan Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio | University of Minnesota Press | 2002
Examines how law, Christianity, capitalism, and foreign settlement transformed Hawaiian landholding and political life.
From a Native Daughter
| Haunani-Kay Trask | University of Hawaiʻi Press | 1999
Critiques United States colonialism, tourism, militarization, land occupation, and the denial of Native Hawaiian sovereignty.
Ngāi Tahu Land Report
| Waitangi Tribunal | New Zealand Ministry of Justice | 1991
Investigates land purchases and Crown actions that left Ngāi Tahu with insufficient territory and resources.
The Great New Zealand Myth
| David F. Ausubel | Bridget Williams Books | 1960
Challenges the national narrative that Māori-Pākehā relations were uniquely peaceful or free from colonial injustice.
Māori Land Loss
| Richard Boast | Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand | n.d.
Examines how legislation, purchases, confiscations, and the Native Land Court transferred Māori land to settlers.
Land Confiscation Law Passed
| New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | n.d.
Describes legislation authorizing the confiscation of Māori land from communities labeled as being in rebellion.
The Native Land Court
| Richard Boast | Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand | n.d.
Explains how converting collective Māori tenure into individual titles accelerated land sales and settler acquisition.
Raupatu: Confiscation of Māori Land
| Richard Boast | Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand | n.d.
Reviews the confiscation of Māori territories following the New Zealand Wars and its long-term community consequences.
Bastion Point Occupation
| New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | n.d.
Recounts Ngāti Whātua resistance to the alienation and proposed development of ancestral land in Auckland.
The Waitangi Tribunal
| Waitangi Tribunal | New Zealand Ministry of Justice | n.d.
Explains the institution created to investigate Crown breaches involving Māori land, resources, sovereignty, and treaty guarantees.
He Whakaputanga
| New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | n.d.
Examines the 1835 Māori declaration of independence and its significance for later disputes over sovereignty.
Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Māori Society
| Claudia Orange | Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand | n.d.
Surveys Māori-Pākehā relations through treaty making, warfare, demographic change, land loss, assimilation, and political revival.
Hawaiian Land Tenure and the Māhele
| Hawaiian Kingdom | Hawaiian Kingdom Resources | n.d.
Explains changes in Hawaiian land tenure that facilitated private ownership, foreign acquisition, plantation expansion, and Native land loss.
The Great Māhele
| Hawaiian Historical Society | Hawaiian Historical Society | n.d.
Reviews the nineteenth-century division of Hawaiian lands and its role in increasing foreign control over property.
The Chamorro Land Trust
| Guampedia | University of Guam | n.d.
Explains efforts to protect and restore Chamorro land in Guam after colonial acquisition, military occupation, and outside settlement.
Palestine and Contested Settler-Colonial Analysis
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
| Rashid Khalidi | Metropolitan Books | 2020
Interprets modern Palestinian history as a prolonged colonial struggle involving settlement, displacement, military occupation, and resistance.
Justice for Some
| Noura Erakat | Stanford University Press | 2019
Analyzes how international law has been interpreted and deployed within the unequal political struggle over Palestinian land and sovereignty.
Land Expropriation and Settlements
| Amnesty International | Amnesty International | 2019
Examines the human-rights consequences and international legal status of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.
The Palestinians in Israel
| Nadim N. Rouhana and Areej Sabbagh-Khoury | Cambridge University Press | 2017
Examines the political status of Palestinian citizens living within a state structured by displacement and settler sovereignty.
The Biggest Prison on Earth
| Ilan Pappé | Oneworld Publications | 2017
Examines the history of occupation and the administrative systems used to control Palestinian land, movement, economy, and political life.
Settler Colonialism in Palestine
| Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky | Pluto Press | 2015
Discusses settlement, displacement, occupation, international politics, and the prospects for Palestinian liberation.
Citizen Strangers
| Shira Robinson | Stanford University Press | 2013
Documents the military governance, land confiscation, displacement, and unequal citizenship experienced by Palestinians inside Israel.
Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native: Palestine
| Patrick Wolfe | Jadaliyya | 2012
Applies settler-colonial analysis to Palestine while emphasizing territorial acquisition, demographic transformation, and Indigenous resistance.
Settler Colonial Citizenship
| Shira Robinson | Settler Colonial Studies | 2012
Explores how citizenship can incorporate Indigenous people individually while preserving collective settler domination over land and sovereignty.
The Invention of the Land of Israel
Critically examines nationalist constructions of territory, ancestral belonging, exile, and exclusive claims to land.
Hollow Land
Studies the spatial technologies, roads, walls, settlements, legal zones, and military architecture of Israeli control in the occupied territories.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
| Ilan Pappé | Oneworld Publications | 2006
Argues that the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 was a planned process of territorial conquest and population removal.
The Iron Cage
| Rashid Khalidi | Beacon Press | 2006
Analyzes Palestinian political fragmentation and the structures that prevented the development of effective sovereignty.
The Colonial Present
| Derek Gregory | Blackwell | 2004
Connects occupation in Palestine with wider colonial geographies, military power, spatial control, and imperial representation.
The Politics of Denial
| Nur Masalha | Pluto Press | 2003
Analyzes Israeli historical memory, refugee exclusion, village destruction, and resistance to acknowledging Palestinian displacement.
Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return
| Naseer Aruri | Pluto Press | 2001
Reviews the origins of Palestinian displacement and the legal, political, and moral arguments concerning refugee return.
Sacred Landscape
| Meron Benvenisti | University of California Press | 2000
Investigates how Palestinian place names, villages, landscapes, and histories were transformed or erased after 1948.
Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
| Gershon Shafir | University of California Press | 1996
Examines the role of land purchase, labor exclusion, settlement, and competing national projects in the early conflict.
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development
| Sara Roy | Institute for Palestine Studies | 1995
Explains how occupation and territorial controls weakened Gaza’s economy and increased Palestinian dependency and displacement.
All That Remains
| Walid Khalidi | Institute for Palestine Studies | 1992
Documents hundreds of Palestinian villages depopulated during the 1948 war and describes their lands, populations, and later condition.
Expulsion of the Palestinians
| Nur Masalha | Institute for Palestine Studies | 1992
Examines transfer proposals and political plans for removing Palestinians from territories desired for Jewish settlement.
The Question of Palestine
| Edward W. Said | Vintage | 1979
Examines Palestinian dispossession, exile, representation, nationalism, and the political structures sustaining Israeli territorial control.
Zionism and Settler Colonialism
| Maxime Rodinson | Journal of Palestine Studies | 1973
Presents an early analysis of Zionism as a colonial settlement movement embedded in European imperial conditions.
Settlements and the Occupied Palestinian Territory
| United Nations Human Rights Office | OHCHR | n.d.
Summarizes international human-rights concerns involving settlement expansion, land confiscation, displacement, and unequal legal systems.
Israeli Settlements
Documents settlement construction, land appropriation, movement restrictions, settler violence, and the fragmentation of Palestinian territory.
Southern Africa and African Settler Colonialisms
Land, Chiefs, Mining
| Gavin Capps | Wits University Press | 2022
Examines how colonial institutions and mining interests transformed customary authority and access to land in South Africa.
The Land Is Ours
| Tembeka Ngcukaitobi | Penguin Random House South Africa | 2018
Reconstructs Black legal and political resistance to colonial conquest and the systematic seizure of African land.
A History of Namibia
| Marion Wallace | Jacana Media | 2011
Examines German and South African colonial rule, genocide, land seizure, forced labor, apartheid, and Namibian resistance.
Zimbabwe’s Land Reform
| Ian Scoones and others | James Currey | 2010
Studies land redistribution after a long history of white settler landownership and African dispossession in Zimbabwe.
The Kaiser’s Holocaust
| David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen | Faber and Faber | 2010
Documents German conquest, genocide, concentration camps, and the transfer of Herero and Nama lands to settlers in Namibia.
Becoming Zimbabwe
| Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo | Weaver Press | 2009
Surveys colonial conquest, settler rule, African nationalism, land inequality, independence, and postcolonial political conflict.
Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya
| Daniel Branch | Cambridge University Press | 2009
Analyzes the colonial war, loyalism, land disputes, detention, and the construction of Kenya’s postcolonial political order.
Genocide in German South-West Africa
| Jürgen Zimmerer | Journal of Southern African Studies | 2005
Connects the Herero and Nama genocide with settler expansion, racial warfare, forced labor, and colonial territorial policy.
Settler Colonialism in Kenya
| David Anderson | Cambridge University Press | 2005
Examines colonial land seizure, detention, emergency rule, and violence during Britain’s suppression of the Mau Mau uprising.
Britain’s Gulag
| Caroline Elkins | Penguin | 2005
Documents detention, forced labor, torture, and village confinement during Kenya’s anticolonial war.
Imperial Reckoning
| Caroline Elkins | Henry Holt | 2005
Connects British settler interests in Kenya with land alienation and the violent suppression of African demands for restoration.
The Seed Is Mine
| Charles van Onselen | Cambridge University Press | 1996
Uses one family’s history to examine Black labor, tenancy, landlessness, and survival within South Africa’s settler agricultural economy.
The Land Question in Zimbabwe
| Sam Moyo | Review of African Political Economy | 1995
Analyzes unequal land distribution created by settler colonialism and the political pressures for redistribution after independence.
Land and Class in Kenya
| John Lonsdale | Journal of African History | 1992
Explores how colonial land alienation and settler agriculture transformed African class relations and political resistance.
The Scramble for Africa
| A. Adu Boahen | Routledge | 1990
Surveys European conquest and African resistance, including the appropriation of land for settler agriculture and colonial states.
The Story of an African Famine
| Megan Vaughan | Cambridge University Press | 1987
Shows how colonial economic transformation and land policy increased vulnerability to famine in Nyasaland.
Let Us Die Fighting
| Horst Drechsler | Zed Press | 1980
Provides a historical account of Herero and Nama resistance to German colonial conquest and settler dispossession.
The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry
| Colin Bundy | University of California Press | 1979
Explains how colonial land laws and capitalist development displaced successful African farmers and created a dependent labor force.
The White Highlands
| W.T.W. Morgan | Cambridge University Press | 1963
Examines the region reserved for European settlement after African communities were displaced or restricted to reserves.
The Colonisation of South Africa
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Surveys Dutch and British settlement, warfare, slavery, land seizure, African resistance, and the creation of racial rule.
The Natives Land Act of 1913
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Explains the law that restricted Black land ownership and reserved most South African territory for the white minority.
The Glen Grey Act
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Describes legislation that undermined African communal landholding and encouraged labor migration to settler-controlled industries.
The Group Areas Act
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Examines apartheid legislation that forcibly removed communities and allocated valuable urban land according to racial classification.
Forced Removals in South Africa
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Documents the displacement of millions of Black, Coloured, and Indian South Africans under segregation and apartheid.
The Empty Land Myth
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Challenges settler narratives claiming that Europeans entered unoccupied land rather than territories governed and used by African societies.
Latin America and Indigenous Territorial Dispossession
Violence Against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
| Indigenous Missionary Council | CIMI | 2023
Documents land invasions, killings, displacement, resource extraction, and attacks on Indigenous communities and territorial rights.
Red Skin, White Masks
| Glen Sean Coulthard | University of Minnesota Press | 2014
Although focused on Canada, provides a widely applicable critique of recognition politics that leave colonial land relations intact.
Indigenous Peoples in Colonial Spanish American Society
| Robert W. Patch | Cambridge University Press | 2013
Studies tribute, labor, landholding, markets, and the colonial pressures placed on Indigenous Central American communities.
The Mapuche in Modern Chile
| Joanna Crow | University of New Mexico Press | 2013
Examines Mapuche dispossession, assimilation, cultural politics, and resistance within the Chilean settler state.
1493
| Charles C. Mann | Vintage | 2011
Explores the global ecological and economic transformations that followed conquest, settlement, plantation expansion, and Indigenous depopulation.
The Limits of Racial Domination
| Karen D. Caplan | Duke University Press | 2010
Examines Indigenous communities, colonial law, local power, and racial governance in eighteenth-century Oaxaca.
1491
| Charles C. Mann | Vintage | 2005
Describes the populous and environmentally sophisticated Indigenous societies that existed before European invasion and dispossession.
Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest
| Matthew Restall | Oxford University Press | 2003
Challenges narratives of effortless European conquest and highlights Indigenous alliances, resistance, survival, and colonial transformation.
Born in Blood and Fire
| John Charles Chasteen | W. W. Norton | 2001
Surveys Latin American history through conquest, colonial landholding, racial hierarchy, Indigenous resistance, and postcolonial inequality.
Indigenous Mestizos
| Marisol de la Cadena | Duke University Press | 2000
Explores how race, culture, class, and colonial hierarchy shaped Indigenous identity and political participation in Peru.
Harvest of Empire
| Juan González | Penguin | 2000
Connects colonialism, land seizure, foreign intervention, migration, and inequality across Latin America and the United States.
Guatemala: Memory of Silence
| Commission for Historical Clarification | United Nations | 1999
Concludes that state forces committed acts of genocide against Maya peoples amid campaigns of territorial control and forced displacement.
Guatemala: Never Again
| Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala | REMHI Project | 1998
Documents massacres, displacement, village destruction, and military violence directed heavily against Maya communities.
The Maya World
| Matthew Restall | University of California Press | 1997
Examines Maya social and political continuity under colonial rule rather than portraying conquest as total Indigenous disappearance.
The Conquest of America
| Tzvetan Todorov | Harper and Row | 1984
Examines communication, violence, ideology, and the destruction of Indigenous political worlds during the Spanish conquest.
I, Rigoberta Menchú
| Rigoberta Menchú | Verso | 1984
Recounts Indigenous land struggles, plantation exploitation, state repression, cultural survival, and resistance in Guatemala.
The Chilean Frontier
| Sergio Villalobos | Cambridge University Press | 1982
Studies the military, commercial, and political frontier between Spanish colonists and Mapuche territories.
Open Veins of Latin America
| Eduardo Galeano | Monthly Review Press | 1971
Surveys conquest, mining, plantations, land concentration, foreign intervention, and the extraction of Indigenous territories and labor.
The Broken Spears
| Miguel León-Portilla | Beacon Press | 1962
Presents Nahua accounts of the Spanish conquest and the destruction of Tenochtitlan from Indigenous perspectives.
The Occupation of Araucanía
| Biblioteca Nacional de Chile | Memoria Chilena | n.d.
Documents Chile’s military conquest of Mapuche territory and its conversion into land for settlers and commercial agriculture.
Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
| Instituto Socioambiental | Indigenous Peoples in Brazil | n.d.
Provides information on Indigenous territories, invasions, deforestation, mining, land rights, and community resistance throughout Brazil.
Amazonia for Sale
| Survival International | Survival International | n.d.
Examines threats to Amazonian peoples from ranching, logging, mining, dams, settlement, and illegal occupation of Indigenous territories.
The Yanomami
| Survival International | Survival International | n.d.
Describes how mining and outside settlement have brought violence, disease, pollution, and territorial invasion to Yanomami communities.
The Guarani
| Survival International | Survival International | n.d.
Documents the loss of Guarani land to ranches and plantations and the severe social consequences of territorial confinement.
The Ayoreo
| Survival International | Survival International | n.d.
Examines deforestation and settler expansion threatening Ayoreo communities, including groups living in voluntary isolation.
Comparative Theory, Law, and Political Economy
Settler Colonialism and the Politics of Colonialism
| Oxford Academic | Oxford University Press | 2025
Defines settler colonialism as the creation of permanent political orders on territories taken from Indigenous peoples.
Labour, Settler Colonialism, and Economies of Extraction
| Shiri Pasternak | Oxford University Press | 2025
Examines how settler labor and resource industries depend on Indigenous dispossession and the replacement of Indigenous economies.
Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Americans
| Oxford Academic | Oxford University Press | 2025
Surveys the theory that settler states seek Indigenous territory and therefore pursue removal, absorption, or political elimination.
Contesting Colonial Beachheads
| Liam Midzain-Gobin and Heather Smith | Security Dialogue | 2024
Examines how infrastructure regulation reproduces Canadian sovereignty and Indigenous dispossession.
Settler Migrations
| Lorenzo Veracini | Cambridge University Press | 2023
Explores how mass migration enabled permanent colonial occupation and implicated ordinary migrants in Indigenous dispossession.
Indigenous Dispossession and Settler Colonial Art Galleries
| Kate Nichols | Art History | 2023
Shows how colonial art institutions benefited materially and symbolically from Indigenous dispossession.
Settlement
| Kris Manjapra | Cambridge University Press | 2020
Places settler replacement and Indigenous removal within a connected global history of colonialism.
Theft Is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory
| Robert Nichols | Duke University Press | 2020
Reconstructs dispossession as a political concept through Indigenous struggles against colonial property systems.
Indigenous Peoples, Settler Colonialism, and Global Justice in Anglo-America
| Robert Nichols | Cambridge University Press | 2019
Examines how Indigenous dispossession helped constitute Anglo-American political institutions and ideas of justice.
Unsettling the Land: Indigeneity, Ontology, and Hybridity in Settler Colonialism
| Paul Berne Burow, Samara Brock and Michael R. Dove | Environment and Society | 2018
Examines conflicting Indigenous and settler understandings of land and their implications for decolonization and environmental justice.
Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice
| Kyle Powys Whyte | Environment and Society | 2018
Explains how settler colonialism disrupts Indigenous ecological relationships and creates continuing environmental injustice.
Damaging Environments: Land, Settler Colonialism, and Security for Indigenous Peoples
| Wilfrid Greaves | Environment and Society | 2018
Connects Indigenous territorial dispossession with environmentally destructive settler economies and colonial definitions of security.
These Are Indigenous Lands
| Chris Hiller and others | Canadian Geographies | 2018
Compares frameworks for recognizing Indigenous sovereignty, dispossession, treaty relationships, and responsibilities to land.
Colonial Lives of Property
| Brenna Bhandar | Duke University Press | 2018
Explains how modern property law developed through colonial racial classification, land appropriation, and dispossession.
Settler-Colonial Violence, Primitive Accumulation and State Crime
| Michael Grewcock | State Crime Journal | 2018
Applies state-crime theory to the violent appropriation of Indigenous territory in settler societies.
Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity
| J. Kēhaulani Kauanui | Lateral | 2016
Emphasizes that settler colonialism remains active because Indigenous peoples continue to survive, resist, and assert territorial sovereignty.
Dispossession and the Environment
| Paige West | Columbia University Press | 2016
Shows how conservation and development programs can commodify Indigenous cultures while restricting territorial control.
Settler Colonialism and the Policing of Idle No More
| Andrew Crosby and Jeffrey Monaghan | Social Justice | 2016
Examines state surveillance and policing of Indigenous activism challenging Canadian territorial authority.
Unsettling Ottawa
| Julie Tomiak | Canadian Journal of Urban Research | 2016
Analyzes Indigenous resistance and settler-colonial governance in Canada’s national capital region.
Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism: Where Do Laws Meet?
| Shiri Pasternak | Canadian Journal of Law and Society | 2014
Questions the legitimacy of Canadian jurisdiction over territories acquired through colonial settlement.
Dispossession: The Performative in the Political
| Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou | Polity | 2013
Examines the political and bodily consequences of losing land, rights, belonging, and collective control.
Property, Territory, Globalization
| William D. Coleman | UBC Press | 2011
Investigates how territorial authority and property regimes reorganize Indigenous land within global economic systems.
Accumulation by Dispossession
| David Harvey | Socialist Register | 2004
Describes the continuing conversion of communal land and public resources into privately controlled capital.
Empire of Capital
| Ellen Meiksins Wood | Verso | 2003
Analyzes how capitalist expansion uses market power, states, and property law to reproduce colonial domination.
The New Imperialism
| David Harvey | Oxford University Press | 2003
Connects contemporary capitalism with territorial control, privatization, resource seizure, and accumulation by dispossession.
United States: Land, Treaties, and Territorial Expansion
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
| Kathleen DuVal | Random House | 2024
Centers Indigenous political systems, territorial authority, diplomacy, and resistance across a thousand years of history.
Creek Indian Removal
| Christopher D. Haveman | Encyclopedia of Alabama | 2023
Documents coercive treaties, warfare, detention, and removal that opened Creek territory to settlers.
Camp Grant Massacre
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2023
Recounts a settler-led attack on Apache people in Arizona and the colonial violence surrounding territorial occupation.
This Land Was Saved for You and Me
| Jeffrey H. Ryan | Yale University Press | 2022
Explores how public-land creation frequently depended on Native removal and settler ideas about wilderness.
Indigenous Continent
| Pekka Hämäläinen | Liveright | 2022
Reframes North American history around powerful Indigenous nations that resisted centuries of settler expansion.
The Bear River Massacre
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2021
Examines the United States military attack on Northwestern Shoshone people during western settlement.
The Cherokee Removal
| Sarah H. Hill | New Georgia Encyclopedia | 2020
Examines Georgia’s seizure of Cherokee lands and the federal removal that produced the Trail of Tears.
Lakota America
| Pekka Hämäläinen | Yale University Press | 2019
Presents the Lakota as a major continental power confronting colonial traders, settlers, armies, and rival nations.
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
| David Treuer | Riverhead Books | 2019
Challenges disappearance narratives by documenting Native survival and adaptation after military conquest and land loss.
California Indian Genocide and Resilience
| Office of Governor Gavin Newsom | State of California | 2019
Acknowledges California’s role in violence, dispossession, forced labor, and attempted destruction of Native communities.
An American Genocide
| Benjamin Madley | Yale University Press | 2016
Documents state-supported killing, forced labor, removal, and land seizure targeting California Indigenous peoples.
Nation to Nation
| Suzan Shown Harjo | Smithsonian Institution | 2014
Examines treaty diplomacy, federal expansion, Native sovereignty, and the consequences of broken agreements.
Murder State
| Brendan C. Lindsay | University of Nebraska Press | 2012
Examines California’s financing and encouragement of campaigns against Native peoples during the Gold Rush.
The Comanche Empire
| Pekka Hämäläinen | Yale University Press | 2008
Examines Comanche power and Indigenous control of territory before United States and Mexican settler expansion.
Gold, Greed and Genocide
| Marcia E. Salkin | Illinois Press | 1999
Explores the destructive effects of gold mining and settler invasion on California Native communities.
The Earth Shall Weep
| James Wilson | Grove Press | 1998
Surveys the conquest, displacement, resistance, and survival of Native peoples across North America.
The Conquest of a Continent
| John R. Wunder | University of Nebraska Press | 1996
Surveys legal mechanisms through which the United States asserted jurisdiction over Native peoples and lands.
Facing West
| Richard Drinnon | University of Oklahoma Press | 1980
Connects American expansion with recurring ideologies used to justify Indigenous elimination and territorial conquest.
Indian Reorganization Act
| United States Congress | U.S. Government Publishing Office | 1934
Ended further allotment while leaving many earlier land losses and federal controls unresolved.
The Burke Act
| United States Congress | U.S. Government Publishing Office | 1906
Extended allotment policy and allowed federal officials to remove restrictions protecting Native land from sale.
Broken Promises on Display
| National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | n.d.
Provides primary documents showing how federal treaties and statutes facilitated Native land cessions.
Indian Treaties and the Removal Act of 1830
| Office of the Historian | U.S. Department of State | n.d.
Explains how treaties and federal removal policy opened southeastern Indigenous homelands to white settlement.
Indian Removal Act
| United States Senate | Senate Historical Office | n.d.
Reviews the federal law authorizing the forced relocation of Native nations west of the Mississippi River.
Indian Removal
| Smithsonian Institution | Smithsonian Learning Lab | n.d.
Provides educational materials on forced migration, land seizure, and Native resistance to removal.
Chickasaw Removal
| Chickasaw Nation | Chickasaw Nation | n.d.
Explains how treaty pressure and settler expansion forced Chickasaw people from their homeland.
Seminole Wars
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | n.d.
Reviews wars fought to remove Seminole communities and secure Florida for American settlement.
Black Hawk War
| Wisconsin Historical Society | Wisconsin Historical Society | n.d.
Examines the military campaign that expelled Sauk and Meskwaki people from contested homelands.
Dakota War of 1862
| Minnesota Historical Society | U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 | n.d.
Explores treaty violations, hunger, warfare, execution, imprisonment, and the expulsion of Dakota communities.
The Dakota Exile
| Minnesota Historical Society | Minnesota Historical Society | n.d.
Documents the forced removal and confinement of Dakota people after the U.S.-Dakota War.
Sand Creek Massacre
| National Park Service | Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site | n.d.
Documents the killing of Cheyenne and Arapaho people amid settler demands for Colorado territory.
The Modoc War
| National Park Service | Lava Beds National Monument | n.d.
Examines Modoc resistance to removal from ancestral territory and confinement on a reservation.
The Nez Perce Flight of 1877
| National Park Service | Nez Perce National Historical Park | n.d.
Traces the Nez Perce attempt to escape forced removal and military confinement.
The Long Walk of the Navajo
| National Park Service | Bosque Redondo Memorial | n.d.
Documents the forced march and incarceration of Diné people at Bosque Redondo.
Bosque Redondo
| New Mexico Historic Sites | New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs | n.d.
Examines the military effort to remove Diné and Mescalero Apache peoples from their homelands.
California Indian History
| California Native American Heritage Commission | State of California | n.d.
Surveys missionization, settler invasion, violence, land loss, and state-sponsored oppression of California Indians.
Exterminate Them
| Savages and Scoundrels | University of Washington | n.d.
Examines government and settler rhetoric promoting the destruction of Native peoples in the American West.
The Mining Frontier
| National Museum of the American Indian | Native Knowledge 360° | n.d.
Explains how mining, settlement, and treaty violations transformed Indigenous lands in the Pacific Northwest.
The Taking of Indian Lands
| PBS American Experience | PBS | n.d.
Reviews federal policies that transferred Native land to railroads, settlers, speculators, and corporations.
The Allotment Era
| Bureau of Indian Affairs | U.S. Department of the Interior | n.d.
Provides historical context for allotment and the fragmentation of communally held tribal lands.
Indian Land Tenure History
| Indian Land Tenure Foundation | Indian Land Tenure Foundation | n.d.
Explains how treaties, allotment, federal administration, and taxation caused massive Native land loss.
Fractionated Ownership
| Bureau of Indian Affairs | U.S. Department of the Interior | n.d.
Describes the fragmented ownership produced by allotment and its continuing effects on tribal land use.
Termination Policy
| National Library of Medicine | Native Voices | n.d.
Explains the federal effort to terminate tribal recognition and transfer reservation lands into non-Native ownership.
Public Law 280
| Tribal Court Clearinghouse | Tribal Law and Policy Institute | n.d.
Examines the transfer of jurisdiction over tribal territories to selected states without adequate Native consent.
Relocation Program
| National Library of Medicine | Native Voices | n.d.
Describes federal programs encouraging Native people to leave reservations and assimilate into urban communities.
Cobell v. Salazar
| U.S. Department of the Interior | Department of the Interior | n.d.
Documents litigation over federal mismanagement of income derived from Native trust lands and resources.
Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations
| U.S. Department of the Interior | Department of the Interior | n.d.
Explains efforts to restore fractionated allotment interests to tribal ownership.
The Southeast, Removal, and Indigenous Survival
The Second Seminole War
| John K. Mahon | Army University Press | 2020
Examines the lengthy United States war to remove Seminole communities from Florida.
Trail of Tears
| Mary Stockwell | Smithsonian Magazine | 2015
Reviews the forced expulsion and deadly westward journey of southeastern Native nations.
The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears
| Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green | Penguin Books | 2007
Explains how state pressure, federal policy, and settler demand produced Cherokee removal.
The Mississippi Choctaws
| Clara Sue Kidwell | Mississippi History Now | 2002
Examines Choctaw people who remained in Mississippi despite removal and settler encroachment.
The Road to Disappearance
| Angie Debo | University of Nebraska Press | 1941
Traces Muscogee political history, land loss, removal, and rebuilding in Indian Territory.
The Treaty of New Echota
| National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | 1835
Presents the disputed agreement used by the United States to justify Cherokee removal.
Worcester v. Georgia
| United States Supreme Court | Justia | 1832
Held that Georgia law had no force within Cherokee territory, though removal proceeded regardless.
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia
| United States Supreme Court | Justia | 1831
Defined tribes as domestic dependent nations while denying the Cherokee Nation access to federal jurisdiction.
The Cherokee Phoenix
| Cherokee Nation | Library of Congress | 1828
Provides a Native newspaper record of Cherokee politics, sovereignty, land pressure, and removal.
Treaty of Fort Jackson
| National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | 1814
Documents the cession of millions of acres of Muscogee land after the Creek War.
The Choctaw Trail of Tears
| Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma | Choctaw Nation | n.d.
Describes the Choctaw removal from Mississippi and the suffering experienced during migration.
Cherokee Removal: A Brief History
| Cherokee Nation | Cherokee Nation | n.d.
Presents the Cherokee Nation’s history of treaty pressure, removal, survival, and rebuilding.
The Cherokee Cases
| Federal Judicial Center | Federal Judicial Center | n.d.
Examines Supreme Court cases addressing Cherokee sovereignty and Georgia’s attempt to control Cherokee land.
The Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek
| Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma | Choctaw Nation | n.d.
Reviews the treaty through which the Choctaw ceded their Mississippi homeland.
The Creek War and Removal
| National Park Service | Horseshoe Bend National Military Park | n.d.
Connects the Creek War with massive land cessions and American settlement in the Southeast.
The Seminole Struggle
| National Park Service | Big Cypress National Preserve | n.d.
Describes Seminole resistance to removal and survival within the Florida Everglades.
Osceola and the Great Seminole War
| Library of Congress | Library of Congress | n.d.
Provides historical material on Seminole resistance leader Osceola and the removal conflict.
The Chickasaw Cession
| Chickasaw Nation | Chickasaw Nation | n.d.
Reviews treaties through which Chickasaw territory was gradually transferred to the United States.
Indian Territory
| Oklahoma Historical Society | Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture | n.d.
Explains how removed nations were assigned lands that were later opened to additional settlement.
The Unassigned Lands
| Stan Hoig | Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture | n.d.
Examines the federal designation and settler opening of lands previously assigned to Native nations.
The Oklahoma Land Runs
| Oklahoma Historical Society | Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture | n.d.
Describes settler occupations that accelerated the breakup of Indian Territory.
The Curtis Act
| Kent Carter | Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture | n.d.
Explains legislation dismantling tribal governments and communal landholding in Indian Territory.
Five Tribes Allotment
| National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | n.d.
Provides records of the enrollment and allotment process that divided tribal territories in Oklahoma.
The Dawes Commission
| Kent Carter | Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture | n.d.
Examines the commission responsible for determining tribal citizenship and allocating collectively held lands.
Oklahoma Statehood and Tribal Dispossession
| Oklahoma Historical Society | Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture | n.d.
Connects Oklahoma statehood with the weakening of Indigenous landholding and political authority.
Canada: Colonial Administration and Land Resistance
The Oka Crisis
| Tabitha Marshall | The Canadian Encyclopedia | 2020
Examines Mohawk resistance to a development project on sacred and disputed territory.
Peace and Good Order
| Harold R. Johnson | University of Toronto Press | 2019
Critiques Canadian law and policing from a Cree perspective shaped by treaty and colonial relations.
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
| Alicia Elliott | Doubleday Canada | 2019
Connects contemporary Indigenous experiences with colonial violence, poverty, family separation, and territorial loss.
Canada’s First Nations
| Olive Patricia Dickason and David T. McNab | Oxford University Press | 2019
Provides a broad history of First Nations diplomacy, colonialism, dispossession, resistance, and political renewal.
21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act
| Bob Joseph | Indigenous Relations Press | 2018
Explains how the Indian Act controlled land, identity, governance, movement, education, and cultural life.
The Clay We Are Made Of
| Susan M. Hill | University of Manitoba Press | 2017
Presents Haudenosaunee land, history, and sovereignty from within Haudenosaunee intellectual traditions.
Mercury Contamination at Grassy Narrows
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | 2017
Connects industrial pollution with treaty violations, displacement, illness, and loss of traditional livelihoods.
Indigenous Writes
| Chelsea Vowel | HighWater Press | 2016
Clarifies treaties, reserves, cultural appropriation, identity, and settler-colonial misconceptions in Canada.
The Colonial Problem
| Lisa Monchalin | UBC Press | 2016
Examines how colonial institutions contribute to violence, criminalization, and inequality affecting Indigenous peoples.
Site C Dam and Indigenous Rights
| Amnesty International Canada | Amnesty International | 2016
Explores the effects of hydroelectric development on Treaty 8 lands and Indigenous ways of life.
Mohawk Interruptus
| Audra Simpson | Duke University Press | 2014
Examines Mohawk refusal of settler sovereignty, imposed borders, and state definitions of citizenship.
On Being Here to Stay
| Michael Asch | University of Toronto Press | 2014
Argues that treaty relationships challenge Canada’s claim to unilateral sovereignty over Indigenous territories.
We Share Our Matters
| Rick Monture | University of Manitoba Press | 2014
Connects Haudenosaunee oral history, political traditions, land, and cultural survival under colonialism.
Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia
| Supreme Court of Canada | Supreme Court Judgments | 2014
Issued Canada’s first declaration of Aboriginal title over a specific territorial area.
Grassy Narrows First Nation v. Ontario
| Supreme Court of Canada | Supreme Court Judgments | 2014
Considered provincial authority over treaty territory and duties owed to Indigenous harvesters.
The Inconvenient Indian
| Thomas King | University of Minnesota Press | 2013
Examines the stories and policies through which North American settler societies have justified Indigenous dispossession.
Mikisew Cree First Nation v. Canada
| Supreme Court of Canada | Supreme Court Judgments | 2005
Examined consultation obligations where road development threatened treaty rights and traditional land use.
Haida Nation v. British Columbia
| Supreme Court of Canada | Supreme Court Judgments | 2004
Confirmed that governments must consult Indigenous nations before decisions may harm claimed rights or title.
The Truth About Stories
| Thomas King | CBC Massey Lectures | 2003
Shows how colonial stories normalize land seizure and shape relations between Indigenous and settler societies.
Treaty Promises, Indian Reality
| Harold Cardinal | McGill-Queen’s University Press | 2001
Examines the gap between Indigenous treaty understandings and Canadian administration.
Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens
| J.R. Miller | University of Toronto Press | 2000
Surveys Indigenous-settler relations in Canada from early alliances through land seizure and assimilation.
Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan
| Harold Cardinal and Walter Hildebrandt | University of Calgary Press | 2000
Records elders’ understandings of treaties as sacred relationships rather than absolute land surrender.
Delgamuukw v. British Columbia
| Supreme Court of Canada | Supreme Court Judgments | 1997
Clarified Aboriginal title and recognized the importance of Indigenous oral histories in land litigation.
R. v. Sparrow
| Supreme Court of Canada | Supreme Court Judgments | 1990
Established a legal framework governing federal infringement of constitutionally protected Aboriginal rights.
Guerin v. The Queen
| Supreme Court of Canada | Supreme Court Judgments | 1984
Established that the Crown owes fiduciary obligations when administering surrendered reserve lands.
Calder v. British Columbia
| Supreme Court of Canada | Supreme Court Judgments | 1973
Recognized that Aboriginal title existed before colonial law even though the plaintiffs did not win their claim.
The Invasion of Canada
| CBC | Canadian Broadcasting Corporation | n.d.
Explores the continuing effects of colonial land occupation and Indigenous struggles for sovereignty.
Treaty No. 9
| Erin Hanson | The Canadian Encyclopedia | n.d.
Reviews the agreement used to extend Canadian control over a vast area of northern Ontario.
Treaty 8
| Michelle Filice | The Canadian Encyclopedia | n.d.
Explains how resource development and settlement shaped negotiations over northern Indigenous territories.
Douglas Treaties
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
Examines treaties concluded as British settlement expanded on Vancouver Island.
Robinson Treaties
| Karl S. Hele | The Canadian Encyclopedia | n.d.
Reviews agreements that opened Anishinaabe territories around Lakes Huron and Superior to settlement and mining.
Williams Treaties
| Crown-Indigenous Relations | Government of Canada | n.d.
Explains treaties covering large areas of southern Ontario and the later settlement of associated claims.
Ipperwash Crisis
| Anthony Wilson-Smith | The Canadian Encyclopedia | n.d.
Reviews the occupation of expropriated Anishinaabe land and the police killing of Dudley George.
Gustafsen Lake Standoff
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
Examines a confrontation over unceded Secwépemc territory in British Columbia.
Elsipogtog Protests
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
Describes Mi’kmaq opposition to shale-gas exploration on traditional territory.
Wet’suwet’en Coastal GasLink Conflict
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
Examines disputes over pipeline construction, hereditary governance, consent, and unceded territory.
Muskrat Falls
| Amnesty International Canada | Amnesty International | n.d.
Documents Indigenous concerns about flooding, contamination, food security, and consent surrounding a Labrador dam.
The Sixties Scoop
| University of British Columbia | Indigenous Foundations | n.d.
Explains the large-scale removal of Indigenous children into non-Indigenous foster and adoptive homes.
Jordan’s Principle
| First Nations Child and Family Caring Society | Caring Society | n.d.
Examines efforts to prevent jurisdictional disputes from denying services to First Nations children.
The First Nations Child Welfare Case
| First Nations Child and Family Caring Society | Caring Society | n.d.
Documents findings that Canada discriminated against First Nations children through underfunded family services.
Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand
The Myall Creek Massacre
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2023
Documents the massacre of Wirrayaraay people and the unusual prosecution of some perpetrators.
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2023
Traces Indigenous demands for land rights, sovereignty, and political recognition.
Mapping the Massacres
| University of Newcastle | Colonial Frontier Massacres Project | 2022
Provides an interactive map of documented frontier massacres across colonial Australia.
Batman’s Treaty
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | 2022
Examines a purported land agreement used by settlers attempting to occupy Kulin territory.
Ihumātao
| Radio New Zealand | RNZ | 2020
Reviews Māori resistance to housing development on confiscated and culturally significant land.
Uluru Statement from the Heart
| First Nations National Constitutional Convention | Uluru Statement | 2017
Calls for constitutional recognition, an Indigenous voice, treaty making, and truth telling.
Te Urewera Act
| New Zealand Parliament | New Zealand Legislation | 2014
Removed Te Urewera from conventional Crown ownership and recognized its distinctive legal identity.
Akiba v. Commonwealth
| High Court of Australia | Australasian Legal Information Institute | 2013
Recognized Torres Strait Islander commercial rights associated with traditional marine territory.
Northern Territory Emergency Response
| Parliament of Australia | Parliamentary Library | 2011
Examines federal intervention in Aboriginal communities and restrictions imposed on land and local authority.
Marine and Coastal Area Act
| New Zealand Parliament | New Zealand Legislation | 2011
Establishes legal procedures for recognizing customary rights in marine and coastal territory.
Frontier Justice
| Tony Roberts | University of Queensland Press | 2005
Examines violent settler expansion and Aboriginal resistance in the Gulf Country.
Blood on the Wattle
| Bruce Elder | New Holland Publishers | 2003
Documents killings and massacres associated with the expansion of Australian settlement.
Ngāti Apa v. Attorney-General
| Court of Appeal of New Zealand | Courts of New Zealand | 2003
Held that Māori customary title to foreshore and seabed had not necessarily been extinguished.
Yorta Yorta v. Victoria
| High Court of Australia | Australasian Legal Information Institute | 2002
Demonstrates the strict continuity requirements imposed on Indigenous claimants under native-title law.
The Whispering in Our Hearts
| Henry Reynolds | Allen and Unwin | 1998
Recovers historical settler criticism of violence and injustice against Aboriginal peoples.
Wik Peoples v. Queensland
| High Court of Australia | Australasian Legal Information Institute | 1996
Held that native title could coexist with some pastoral leases.
The Taranaki Report
| Waitangi Tribunal | New Zealand Ministry of Justice | 1996
Examines warfare, confiscation, forced acquisition, and continuing Crown breaches in Taranaki.
Native Title Act 1993
| Parliament of Australia | Federal Register of Legislation | 1993
Established a statutory system for recognizing and regulating surviving Indigenous title.
The Aboriginal Land Rights Commission
| Edward Woodward | Australian Government | 1974
Recommended legal recognition of Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territory.
The Australian Frontier Wars
| Australian War Memorial | Australian War Memorial | n.d.
Reviews conflict over land as British settlement expanded into Aboriginal territories.
The Native Mounted Police
| Queensland Government | Queensland Government | n.d.
Explains the use of armed Indigenous police under white officers to suppress Aboriginal resistance.
Why McMillan?
| Monash University | Monash Indigenous Studies Centre | n.d.
Examines historical debates surrounding Angus McMillan and frontier violence in Gippsland.
The Coniston Massacre
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | n.d.
Examines a 1928 police-led killing campaign against Aboriginal people in Central Australia.
The Pinjarra Massacre
| National Museum of Australia | National Museum of Australia | n.d.
Reviews colonial violence against Binjareb Noongar people during Western Australian settlement.
The Gurindji Strike
| AIATSIS | Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies | n.d.
Presents the Gurindji struggle for fair labor conditions and the return of ancestral land.
Makarrata
| Uluru Dialogue | Uluru Statement | n.d.
Explains an Indigenous framework for agreement making and reckoning with colonial dispossession.
Closing the Gap
| Australian Government and Coalition of Peaks | Closing the Gap | n.d.
Tracks efforts to address inequalities rooted in colonization and Indigenous exclusion.
The Northern War
| Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | n.d.
Examines early armed conflict over British authority, trade, land, and rangatiratanga.
The Taranaki Wars
| Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | n.d.
Documents warfare triggered by contested land purchases and Māori resistance to colonial expansion.
The Battle of Ōrākau
| Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | n.d.
Examines Māori resistance during the invasion and confiscation of Waikato territory.
The Foreshore and Seabed Controversy
| Ministry for Culture and Heritage | New Zealand History | n.d.
Reviews disputes over Māori customary interests in coastal and marine areas.
Waitangi Tribunal Reports
| Waitangi Tribunal | New Zealand Ministry of Justice | n.d.
Provides findings on Crown actions affecting Māori lands, waters, resources, language, and political authority.
The Waikato Raupatu Claim
| New Zealand Government | Treaty Settlements | n.d.
Summarizes the settlement addressing invasion and confiscation of Waikato-Tainui lands.
Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement
| New Zealand Government | Treaty Settlements | n.d.
Reviews redress for Crown land purchases and policies that impoverished Ngāi Tahu communities.
Whanganui River Settlement
| New Zealand Government | Treaty Settlements | n.d.
Explains recognition of the Whanganui River as a legal person grounded in Māori relationships with the river.
Indigenous Dispossession, Extraction, and Environmental Conflict
No Spiritual Surrender
| Klee Benally | OR Books | 2023
Connects Diné resistance with uranium mining, ski development, sacred-land protection, and colonial occupation.
Ring of Fire Mining
| Amnesty International Canada | Amnesty International | 2023
Examines proposed mining and infrastructure development in northern Ontario Indigenous territories.
Illegal Mining in Yanomami Territory
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | 2023
Documents violence, disease, hunger, and pollution linked to illegal mining on Yanomami land.
Indigenous Environmental Justice
| Karen Jarratt-Snider and Marianne O. Nielsen | University of Arizona Press | 2020
Examines environmental inequality through Indigenous sovereignty, land rights, health, and resistance.
Our Ancestors’ Dystopia Now
| Kyle Powys Whyte | Routledge | 2019
Argues that Indigenous peoples have already experienced catastrophic environmental change through settler colonialism.
The Dakota Access Pipeline: Environmental Injustice and Settler Colonialism
| Kyle Powys Whyte | Annals of the American Association of Geographers | 2017
Situates pipeline conflict within a longer history of Indigenous displacement and imposed environmental risk.
Indigenous Climate Change Studies
| Kyle Powys Whyte | English Language Notes | 2017
Explains climate injustice through histories of colonial displacement and damage to Indigenous ecological relationships.
Standing Rock and the Dakota Access Pipeline
| United Nations Human Rights Office | OHCHR | 2016
Examines Indigenous concerns about consent, sacred sites, water, policing, and pipeline development.
The Munduruku and Tapajós Dams
| Survival International | Survival International | 2016
Describes Munduruku opposition to dam construction and state encroachment on their territory.
Colonial Déjà Vu
| Kyle Powys Whyte | Humanities for the Environment | 2016
Connects contemporary climate vulnerability with repeated colonial disruptions of Indigenous homelands.
Forced Relocation at Black Mesa
| United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues | United Nations | 2012
Reviews the displacement of Diné families under the Navajo-Hopi land-settlement process.
Church Rock Uranium Mill Spill
| United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission | NRC | 1980
Provides documentation of radioactive contamination affecting Navajo communities and waterways.
Uranium Mining and the Navajo Nation
| Environmental Protection Agency | U.S. EPA | n.d.
Documents abandoned mines, radioactive contamination, and federal cleanup efforts on Diné lands.
Black Mesa and Peabody Coal
| Cultural Survival | Cultural Survival Quarterly | n.d.
Examines coal extraction, water depletion, relocation, and land disputes affecting Hopi and Diné communities.
Oak Flat
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | n.d.
Examines Apache connections to Oak Flat and threats posed by a proposed copper mine.
Save Oak Flat
| Native American Rights Fund | NARF | n.d.
Documents legal efforts to protect an Apache sacred site from transfer to a mining company.
Bears Ears National Monument
| Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition | Bears Ears Coalition | n.d.
Presents an Indigenous-led campaign to protect ancestral landscapes and establish collaborative management.
Grand Staircase and Bears Ears Reductions
| Native American Rights Fund | NARF | n.d.
Examines litigation challenging reductions to protections for culturally important Indigenous landscapes.
Chaco Canyon and Oil Development
| National Park Service | Chaco Culture National Historical Park | n.d.
Reviews threats posed by energy development near ancestral Pueblo sites and cultural landscapes.
Line 3 Pipeline
| Indigenous Environmental Network and partners | Stop Line 3 | n.d.
Documents Indigenous opposition to a pipeline crossing treaty territories, wetlands, and wild-rice habitats.
Enbridge Line 5
| Bay Mills Indian Community | Bay Mills Indian Community | n.d.
Presents tribal concerns about pipeline risks to treaty-protected waters and fishing rights.
Keystone XL and Indigenous Rights
| Indigenous Environmental Network | IEN | n.d.
Connects pipeline opposition with treaty violations, climate justice, land defense, and Indigenous sovereignty.
Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion
| Tsleil-Waututh Nation | Sacred Trust Initiative | n.d.
Presents Indigenous legal and scientific opposition to pipeline expansion through unceded territory.
Coastal GasLink
| Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders | Yintah Access | n.d.
Documents Wet’suwet’en hereditary leadership’s resistance to pipeline construction on unceded land.
Tar Sands and First Nations
| Indigenous Environmental Network | IEN | n.d.
Documents land disturbance, pollution, health concerns, and treaty-rights conflicts associated with bitumen extraction.
Mount Polley Mine Disaster
| First Nations Health Authority | FNHA | n.d.
Reviews the effects of a tailings-dam failure on Secwépemc waters, fisheries, and communities.
Voices from the Bay
| Canadian Geographic | Canadian Geographic | n.d.
Examines Inuit and Cree knowledge of environmental change and development around Hudson and James Bay.
James Bay Hydroelectric Project
| The Canadian Encyclopedia | Historica Canada | n.d.
Reviews flooding, displacement, treaty negotiations, and environmental transformation in Cree and Inuit territories.
The Great Whale Project
| Cultural Survival | Cultural Survival Quarterly | n.d.
Documents Indigenous resistance to a proposed hydroelectric project in northern Quebec.
The Belo Monte Dam
| International Rivers | International Rivers | n.d.
Examines displacement, ecological destruction, and threats to Indigenous peoples caused by a major Amazonian dam.
Environmental Justice in Indian Country
| Native American Rights Fund | NARF | n.d.
Surveys environmental threats and legal strategies affecting tribal lands and natural resources.
Indigenous Resurgence, Land Back, and Decolonization
Reconciliation Is Dead
| Pam Palmater | Fernwood Publishing | 2024
Argues that symbolic reconciliation cannot replace restoration of Indigenous land, jurisdiction, and political power.
Arctic Revolutions
| Kira Van Deusen | Fernwood Publishing | 2024
Examines Indigenous political movements and struggles over land and development across the circumpolar North.
Tribal Co-Stewardship of Public Lands
| U.S. Department of the Interior | Department of the Interior | 2022
Describes federal initiatives for shared stewardship of public lands with tribal nations.
The Return of the National Bison Range
| U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | Department of the Interior | 2022
Describes restoration of the Bison Range to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.
A Short History of the Blockade
| Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | University of Alberta Press | 2021
Connects Indigenous blockades with longer histories of territorial defense and resistance to settler authority.
Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy
| Maggie Walter and others | Routledge | 2021
Examines Indigenous authority over data relating to communities, territories, cultures, and resources.
Returning National Parks to Tribes
| David Treuer | The Atlantic | 2021
Argues for transferring national parks created on dispossessed Native lands to Indigenous ownership.
Mashpee Wampanoag Reservation Reaffirmed
| Bureau of Indian Affairs | U.S. Department of the Interior | 2021
Reviews federal action restoring recognition of Mashpee Wampanoag reservation lands.
Warrior Life
| Pam Palmater | Fernwood Publishing | 2020
Presents Indigenous legal and political struggles over land, treaty rights, child welfare, and colonial violence.
Law’s Indigenous Ethics
| John Borrows | University of Toronto Press | 2019
Presents land-centered Indigenous legal principles as foundations for ethical governance.
Braiding Legal Orders
| Centre for International Governance Innovation | CIGI | 2019
Explores how Canadian and Indigenous legal systems might interact without subordinating Indigenous authority.
Unsettling Truths
| Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah | InterVarsity Press | 2019
Connects Christian doctrine and United States history with conquest, racial hierarchy, and Native land loss.
Land Acknowledgements
| Native Governance Center | Native Governance Center | 2019
Explains how acknowledgements can become meaningful only when paired with relationships, resources, and action.
Beyond Territorial Acknowledgments
| Selena Mills | Yellowhead Institute | 2019
Critiques symbolic acknowledgements that do not challenge settler control of Indigenous territory.
Resurgence and Reconciliation
| Michael Asch, John Borrows and James Tully | University of Toronto Press | 2018
Brings Indigenous resurgence into conversation with treaty relationships and possibilities for decolonization.
On Decoloniality
| Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh | Duke University Press | 2018
Examines decolonial thought, resistance, knowledge, and alternatives to colonial modernity.
The Indigenous Circle of Experts Report
| Indigenous Circle of Experts | Government of Canada | 2018
Recommends Indigenous protected areas as a pathway toward conservation and reconciliation.
As We Have Always Done
| Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | University of Minnesota Press | 2017
Presents Indigenous resistance as everyday resurgence grounded in land, kinship, refusal, and collective life.
Freedom and Indigenous Constitutionalism
| John Borrows | University of Toronto Press | 2016
Explores freedom, responsibility, and political renewal through Indigenous constitutional traditions.
Indigenous Data Sovereignty
| Tahu Kukutai and John Taylor | ANU Press | 2016
Connects control over Indigenous information with self-determination, governance, and resistance to colonial administration.
Red Pedagogy
| Sandy Grande | Rowman and Littlefield | 2015
Connects Indigenous education with struggles against settler colonialism, capitalism, and cultural domination.
Possessions
| Aileen Moreton-Robinson | Duke University Press | 2015
Argues that white settler sovereignty depends on possessive claims to Indigenous lands and bodies.
The White Possessive
| Aileen Moreton-Robinson | University of Minnesota Press | 2015
Examines how property, race, sovereignty, and national identity reproduce Indigenous dispossession.
Decolonizing Methodologies
| Linda Tuhiwai Smith | Zed Books | 2012
Critiques research practices that served colonial dispossession and offers Indigenous-centered approaches to knowledge.
Savage Anxieties
| Robert A. Williams Jr. | University of Minnesota Press | 2012
Examines legal narratives portraying Indigenous peoples as threats to civilization and settler social order.
Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back
| Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | ARP Books | 2011
Calls for rebuilding Indigenous nations through relationships with land, language, governance, and community.
Native Acts
| Joanne Barker | Duke University Press | 2011
Explores law, gender, recognition, and the limitations of settler-state approaches to Indigenous rights.
Canada’s Indigenous Constitution
| John Borrows | University of Toronto Press | 2010
Argues that Indigenous legal orders remain living sources of law despite colonial suppression.
Drawing Out Law
| John Borrows | University of Toronto Press | 2010
Uses Anishinaabe stories to explain Indigenous law and challenge settler legal domination.
Unsettling the Settler Within
| Paulette Regan | UBC Press | 2010
Examines how settlers can confront denial and take responsibility for colonial violence and dispossession.
Discovering Indigenous Lands
| Robert J. Miller and others | Oxford University Press | 2010
Compares the Doctrine of Discovery and Indigenous dispossession in the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
Peace, Power, Righteousness
| Taiaiake Alfred | Oxford University Press | 2009
Calls for Indigenous political resurgence outside the institutions and assumptions of settler government.
Indigenous Methodologies
| Margaret Kovach | SAGE Publications | 2009
Develops research methods grounded in Indigenous knowledge, relationships, ethics, and self-determination.
Research Is Ceremony
| Shawn Wilson | Fernwood Publishing | 2008
Presents an Indigenous research methodology based on relationships, accountability, and community knowledge.
Pagans in the Promised Land
| Steven T. Newcomb | Fulcrum Publishing | 2008
Traces how Christian discovery doctrines provided language for domination and Indigenous territorial dispossession.
Native America, Discovered and Conquered
| Robert J. Miller | University of Nebraska Press | 2006
Examines the Doctrine of Discovery in United States law and its consequences for Native sovereignty and property.
Wasáse
| Taiaiake Alfred | University of Toronto Press | 2005
Advocates Indigenous regeneration, land-based action, and resistance to colonial dependency.
Like a Loaded Weapon
| Robert A. Williams Jr. | University of Minnesota Press | 2005
Shows how racial stereotypes continue to influence United States Indian law and Supreme Court decisions.
Sovereignty Matters
| Joanne Barker | University of Nebraska Press | 2005
Examines Indigenous sovereignty as a contested political, legal, cultural, and intellectual concept.
Recovering Canada
| John Borrows | University of Toronto Press | 2002
Demonstrates how Indigenous legal traditions can challenge colonial assumptions within Canadian constitutional law.
Talkin’ Up to the White Woman
| Aileen Moreton-Robinson | University of Queensland Press | 2000
Critiques Australian feminism for overlooking Indigenous sovereignty and the privileges produced by settler possession.
The American Indian in Western Legal Thought
| Robert A. Williams Jr. | Oxford University Press | 1990
Traces legal and religious ideas used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and lands.
Indigenous Legal Traditions
| British Columbia Law Institute | BCLI | n.d.
Provides resources supporting the recognition and revitalization of Indigenous systems of law.
The Land Back Movement
| NDN Collective | NDN Collective | n.d.
Calls for restoration of Indigenous lands, governance, languages, ceremonies, and collective relationships.
LANDBACK Manifesto
| NDN Collective | LANDBACK | n.d.
Defines land return as a political project for dismantling settler-colonial systems.
Honor Native Land Tax
| Sogorea Te’ Land Trust | Sogorea Te’ Land Trust | n.d.
Describes a voluntary contribution supporting Ohlone women’s efforts to rematriate land in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dish With One Spoon
| Native Land Digital | Native Land Digital | n.d.
Introduces Indigenous territorial relationships and responsibilities that predate settler borders and ownership.
Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas
| Conservation Through Reconciliation Partnership | CRP | n.d.
Explains Indigenous-led conservation based on territorial authority, cultural responsibility, and community governance.
Tribal Nations and Public Lands
| National Wildlife Federation | NWF | n.d.
Examines tribal stewardship and the need to respect treaty rights on public lands.
Rematriation
| Sogorea Te’ Land Trust | Sogorea Te’ Land Trust | n.d.
Defines land return through Indigenous women’s leadership, cultural renewal, and ecological restoration.
The Return of Blue Lake
| Taos Pueblo | Taos Pueblo | n.d.
Recounts the return of sacred Blue Lake lands to Taos Pueblo after decades of advocacy.
The Restoration of Mount Adams
| Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation | Yakama Nation | n.d.
Reviews treaty history and continuing Yakama claims to sacred landscapes and resources.
Tribal Land Recovery
| Indian Land Tenure Foundation | Indian Land Tenure Foundation | n.d.
Describes strategies for returning alienated lands to Native nations and strengthening territorial control.
Comparative Settler-Colonial Theory and History
Indigenous Reparations and Settler Colonial Reckoning
| William A. Schabas | University of Minnesota Press | 2025
Examines reparations for Indigenous nations whose territories and legal orders remain subordinated within settler states.
The War on Illahee
| Jeffrey Ostler | Yale University Press | 2025
Examines how settlers and later historians obscured violent Indigenous dispossession in the Pacific Northwest.
A Bounded Land
| John G. Reid | Ethnohistory | 2023
Evaluates how settlers claimed, organized, and adapted to occupied Indigenous territory.
Fugitive Religion
| Tiffany Hale | Yale University Press | 2023
Studies Indigenous religious practices as resistance to federal repression, colonialism, and white supremacy.
Empty Spaces
| Jordan Abel | Yale University Press | 2023
Reflects on land, Indigenous identity, absence, and healing from settler-colonial violence.
Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Dispossession
| Margaret Kohn and Kavita Reddy | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy | 2023
Introduces philosophical debates about colonial domination, settlement, sovereignty, property, and Indigenous resistance.
Becoming Indigenous Again
| Laura Nichols | Environmental Humanities | 2022
Critiques settler attempts to claim Indigenous identity through environmental belonging or long-term residence.
Settler Colonial City
| David Hugill | University of Minnesota Press | 2021
Examines how urban planning, policing, research, and redevelopment reproduced settler colonialism in Minneapolis.
Settler Colonial Studies and the Transnational Western
| Alex Trimble Young | History of the Present | 2021
Examines representations of Indigenous resistance in transnational histories of western settlement.
The Whitman Monument and Landscapes of Western Memory
| Coll Thrush | Yale University Press | 2021
Shows how settler monuments displaced Indigenous memory and concealed violence against the Cayuse.
Assimilation and Partition
| Robert Nichols | South Atlantic Quarterly | 2020
Examines how settler colonialism and racial capitalism shaped Indigenous economic rights in Canada.
Connecting Indigenous Rights to Human Rights
| Roland Burke | Cambridge University Press | 2020
Traces how Indigenous activists connected treaty, land, and sovereignty claims to international human-rights politics.
Indigenous Peoples and Settler Colonialism to 1900
| R. Scott Sheffield and Noah Riseman | Cambridge University Press | 2019
Compares the colonial histories of Indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Protection and the Ends of Colonial Governance
| Amanda Nettelbeck | Cambridge University Press | 2019
Shows how colonial protection policies regulated Indigenous peoples while claiming to safeguard them.
Adventure Capitalism and the Frontier Question
| Raymond B. Craib | Yale University Press | 2019
Connects private investment, railroads, colonization schemes, and Native removal in frontier expansion.
How Many Trails of Tears Were There?
| Jeffrey Ostler | Yale University Press | 2019
Explains that forced Indigenous removals continued long after the better-known Cherokee Trail of Tears.
Colonial Lives of Property
| Brenna Bhandar | Duke University Press | 2018
Connects modern property law with racial classification, colonial land seizure, and the creation of settler sovereignty.
Settler Modernity, Debt Imperialism, and the Necropolitics of Credit
| Iyko Day | Social Text | 2018
Shows how colonial lending and debt facilitated the seizure of Indigenous land.
Variations Under Domestication
| Zakiyyah Iman Jackson | Social Text | 2018
Connects settler colonialism, racial biology, domestication, and the political classification of Indigenous life.
Settler Common Sense
| Mark Rifkin | University of Minnesota Press | 2014
Shows how American literature normalizes settler jurisdiction and treats Indigenous dispossession as an unquestioned political reality.
Spaces Between Us
| Scott Lauria Morgensen | University of Minnesota Press | 2011
Explores how Native and non-Native identities are formed through unequal relationships within settler societies.
Disrupting a Settler-Colonial Grammar of Place
| Scott Lauria Morgensen | Duke University Press | 2011
Examines how visual culture can challenge colonial assumptions about land, place, and Indigenous absence.
Possessing the Pacific
| Stuart Banner | Harvard University Press | 2007
Examines how empires and settlers converted Pacific islands and Indigenous territories into legally owned property.
Northeastern North America and Early Colonial Expansion
King Philip’s War
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2023
Reviews the devastating conflict produced by English settlement and loss of Native territory.
Kieft’s War
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2023
Examines Dutch colonial attacks on Lenape communities in the lower Hudson Valley.
The Susquehannocks
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2023
Reviews the history of a powerful Indigenous nation transformed by disease, warfare, and colonial settlement.
The Walking Purchase
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Explains how Pennsylvania colonists used a fraudulent agreement to seize Lenape territory.
The Mohawk Valley and the American Revolution
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Describes warfare and destruction in Haudenosaunee homelands during the Revolution.
The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Documents the American military destruction of Haudenosaunee villages, crops, and food supplies.
Our Beloved Kin
| Lisa Brooks | Yale University Press | 2018
Reinterprets King Philip’s War through Indigenous kinship, geography, diplomacy, and resistance.
Memory Lands
| Christine M. DeLucia | University of North Carolina Press | 2018
Examines Indigenous remembrance of colonial warfare and the landscapes transformed by settler memorialization.
New England Bound
| Wendy Warren | Liveright | 2016
Places Indigenous and African slavery at the center of early New England settlement.
The Saltwater Frontier
| Andrew Lipman | Yale University Press | 2015
Reconstructs Indigenous-European conflict and exchange along the contested northeastern coast.
Brethren by Nature
| Margaret Ellen Newell | Cornell University Press | 2015
Documents the enslavement of Indigenous people during New England’s colonial wars.
The Edge of the Woods
| Jon Parmenter | Michigan State University Press | 2010
Reconstructs Haudenosaunee mobility and territorial power in colonial northeastern North America.
Manahatta to Manhattan
| Eric W. Sanderson | Abrams | 2009
Reconstructs Manhattan’s Indigenous ecology before colonial settlement radically transformed the island.
The Common Pot
| Lisa Brooks | University of Pennsylvania Press | 2008
Uses Indigenous geography and writing to recover Native connections across colonial New England.
Mayflower
| Nathaniel Philbrick | Viking | 2006
Traces relations between Plymouth settlers and Wampanoag peoples from alliance to destructive warfare.
The Divided Ground
| Alan Taylor | Hill and Wang | 2006
Shows how the American Revolution divided Native homelands between the United States and British Canada.
The Island at the Center of the World
| Russell Shorto | Vintage | 2004
Describes Dutch colonization of Manhattan and its interactions with surrounding Indigenous nations.
The Great Narragansett War
| James D. Drake | University of Massachusetts Press | 1999
Examines how colonial settlement, land pressure, and political conflict led to war in New England.
The Name of War
| Jill Lepore | Vintage | 1998
Explores violence, memory, and cultural conflict during King Philip’s War.
At the Wood’s Edge
| José António Brandão | Pennsylvania State University Press | 1997
Examines Haudenosaunee warfare, diplomacy, and survival amid European colonial competition.
Changes in the Land
| William Cronon | Hill and Wang | 1983
Examines how colonial property, markets, agriculture, and settlement transformed Native New England environments.
The Covenant Chain
| Daniel K. Richter | Pennsylvania State University Press | 1982
Examines diplomatic relationships between the Haudenosaunee and English colonies.
Dutch and Munsee Encounters
| New Netherland Institute | New Netherland Institute | n.d.
Describes trade, warfare, land transactions, and dispossession in New Netherland.
Penn’s Treaty with the Indians
| Pennsylvania Center for the Book | Pennsylvania State University | n.d.
Examines the contrast between Pennsylvania’s peaceful founding narrative and later Lenape dispossession.
Conestoga Massacre
| Jack Brubaker | Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia | n.d.
Documents the killing of Conestoga people by the Paxton Boys amid settler expansion.
The Great Plains and Western United States
The Black Hills
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Explains the sacred significance of the Black Hills and their seizure after the discovery of gold.
The Bozeman Trail
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Explains how a settler route through Lakota territory triggered warfare and treaty negotiations.
Red Cloud’s War
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Describes successful Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho resistance to military forts in their territory.
The Northern Cheyenne Exodus
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Recounts the Northern Cheyenne attempt to return home after forced removal to Indian Territory.
The Ponca Trail of Tears
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Explains the mistaken and coercive removal of the Ponca from their Nebraska homeland.
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2021
Examines an agreement defining tribal territories before accelerating settler migration undermined its guarantees.
The Ghost Dance
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2021
Describes an Indigenous religious movement responding to land loss, hunger, confinement, and colonial violence.
The Red River War
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2021
Examines the military defeat and reservation confinement of southern Plains nations.
Dull Knife Battlefield
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2021
Examines a military attack that helped force Northern Cheyenne people onto reservations.
Standing Bear v. Crook
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2021
Examines the legal struggle establishing that Native people were persons entitled to habeas corpus.
The Destruction of the Bison
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2020
Explains how commercial hunting and federal policy destroyed a central Plains Indigenous resource.
American Buffalo
| Steven Rinella | Spiegel and Grau | 2008
Explores the bison’s destruction and its importance to Indigenous societies of the Great Plains.
The Great Sioux Reservation
| South Dakota Historical Society | South Dakota History | 1982
Examines the creation and later fragmentation of treaty-guaranteed Lakota territory.
United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians
| United States Supreme Court | Justia | 1980
Confirmed that the United States unlawfully took the Black Hills while awarding money instead of land restoration.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
| Dee Brown | Henry Holt | 1970
Narrates western expansion through Native experiences of warfare, broken treaties, and forced removal.
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868
| National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | 1868
Guaranteed Lakota territory including the Black Hills before the United States violated the agreement.
The Homestead Act and Indigenous Land
| National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | 1862
Presents the law that distributed Indigenous territory to individual settlers.
The Great Sioux War
| National Park Service | Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument | n.d.
Reviews warfare produced by United States invasion of treaty-protected Lakota territory.
Wounded Knee Massacre
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | n.d.
Documents the 1890 killing of Lakota men, women, and children by United States troops.
The Southern Plains Indian Wars
| National Park Service | Fort Davis National Historic Site | n.d.
Reviews United States campaigns to confine Plains nations and open their territories to settlement.
The Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | n.d.
Provides a detailed account of the attack on a Cheyenne and Arapaho encampment.
Remembering Sand Creek
| University of Colorado Boulder | Center of the American West | n.d.
Examines historical memory surrounding settler violence against Cheyenne and Arapaho people.
The Washita Massacre
| National Park Service | Washita Battlefield National Historic Site | n.d.
Documents the United States Army attack on Black Kettle’s Cheyenne village.
The Pawnee and the United States
| Nebraska Studies | Nebraska Department of Education | n.d.
Describes treaty cessions and removal that displaced the Pawnee from Nebraska.
Pawnee Removal
| History Nebraska | Nebraska State Historical Society | n.d.
Documents settler pressure and federal policies behind the Pawnee Nation’s relocation.
California, Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest
The Boldt Decision
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2024
Explains the ruling affirming treaty fishing rights after decades of settler interference.
The Yakama War
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Reviews Indigenous resistance to mining and settlement in treaty-protected Pacific Northwest territories.
The Puget Sound War
| HistoryLink | HistoryLink.org | 2003
Examines warfare arising from disputed treaties and expanding American settlement in Washington Territory.
The Treaty of Medicine Creek
| HistoryLink | HistoryLink.org | 2003
Examines a treaty that assigned small reservations and generated widespread Indigenous resistance.
The Treaty of Point Elliott
| HistoryLink | HistoryLink.org | 2001
Reviews the treaty through which Coast Salish nations ceded much of present-day northwestern Washington.
Seattle’s Indigenous History
| HistoryLink | HistoryLink.org | 1999
Examines how the city developed within Duwamish territory while excluding its Indigenous inhabitants.
Genocide and the Indians of California
| Margaret A. Field | American Indian Culture and Research Journal | 1993
Examines demographic destruction, forced labor, violence, and land loss in nineteenth-century California.
Act for the Government and Protection of Indians
| California Legislature | Library of Congress | 1850
Presents the statute that enabled forced Indigenous labor, child removal, and settler control.
California Indian Treaties
| National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | n.d.
Provides records of treaties negotiated with California tribes but never ratified by the Senate.
California’s State-Sponsored Militias
| California 100 | California 100 Initiative | n.d.
Examines public financing of settler campaigns against Native California communities.
The Gold Rush and Native Peoples
| PBS American Experience | PBS | n.d.
Describes how mining caused displacement, starvation, disease, forced labor, and mass killing.
The Modoc War Collection
| National Park Service | Lava Beds National Monument | n.d.
Provides historical material on Modoc resistance to removal and settler occupation.
Captain Jack’s Stronghold
| National Park Service | Lava Beds National Monument | n.d.
Explains how Modoc defenders used their homeland’s landscape during resistance to the United States Army.
The Rogue River Wars
| David G. Lewis | Oregon Encyclopedia | n.d.
Examines wars that removed Native peoples from southwestern Oregon to distant reservations.
The Table Rock Treaties
| David G. Lewis | Oregon Encyclopedia | n.d.
Reviews treaties that enabled settler occupation and removal of Indigenous communities in southern Oregon.
The Grand Ronde Reservation
| David G. Lewis | Oregon Encyclopedia | n.d.
Explains the forced consolidation of numerous western Oregon nations onto one reservation.
The Coast Reservation
| David G. Lewis | Oregon Encyclopedia | n.d.
Describes the creation and later reduction of an Oregon reservation formed through forced removal.
The Donation Land Claim Act
| William G. Robbins | Oregon Encyclopedia | n.d.
Examines federal land grants that encouraged settlers to occupy Indigenous Oregon territories.
The Whitman Massacre
| National Park Service | Whitman Mission National Historic Site | n.d.
Places the deaths at Whitman Mission within disease, settlement, cultural conflict, and Cayuse dispossession.
The Cayuse Five
| Jennifer O’Neal | Oregon Encyclopedia | n.d.
Examines the execution of five Cayuse men and its place in settler narratives of Oregon history.
The Fish Wars
| National Museum of the American Indian | Smithsonian Institution | n.d.
Documents Native activism defending treaty-guaranteed fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest.
The Lower Elwha Klallam and Tse-whit-zen
| Burke Museum | University of Washington | n.d.
Examines the rediscovery of a major Klallam village disrupted by industrial development.
The Elwha River Restoration
| National Park Service | Olympic National Park | n.d.
Describes dam removal and ecological restoration within Lower Elwha Klallam ancestral territory.
The Duwamish River and Dispossession
| Duwamish Tribe | Duwamish Tribal Services | n.d.
Presents Duwamish history, land relationships, displacement, and the struggle for federal recognition.
Alaska, the Arctic, and Northern Colonization
World War II Aleut Relocation Camps
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2022
Examines the deadly conditions imposed on displaced Unangax̂ people during wartime internment.
Nuutauniq
| Qikiqtani Inuit Association | Qikiqtani Truth Commission | 2013
Examines forced changes imposed on Inuit life across the Qikiqtani region.
The Inuit Circumpolar Council Declaration on Sovereignty
| Inuit Circumpolar Council | ICC | 2009
Asserts Inuit rights to participate in decisions governing Arctic lands, waters, and resources.
Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement
| Nunatsiavut Government | Nunatsiavut Government | 2005
Created Inuit self-government and recognized land and resource rights in northern Labrador.
The Venetie Decision
| United States Supreme Court | Justia | 1998
Restricted the definition of Indian country for lands held by Alaska Native corporations.
Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie
| U.S. Department of Justice | Office of the Solicitor General | 1997
Presents legal arguments concerning tribal jurisdiction and land status after ANCSA.
Nunavut Land Claims Agreement
| Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated | NTI | 1993
Establishes Inuit rights, land ownership, resource participation, and political institutions in Nunavut.
Inuvialuit Final Agreement
| Inuvialuit Regional Corporation | IRC | 1984
Recognized Inuvialuit ownership and participation in managing western Arctic lands and resources.
James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement
| Cree Nation Government | Cree Nation Government | 1975
Addresses Cree and Inuit rights amid massive hydroelectric development in northern Quebec.
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
| United States Congress | Bureau of Land Management | 1971
Resolved Aboriginal land claims through Native corporations while extinguishing many forms of Indigenous title.
ANCSA at 50
| University of Alaska Anchorage | Alaskool | n.d.
Provides documents and analysis concerning Alaska Native land claims and corporate settlement.
Alaska Native Land Claims
| University of Alaska Fairbanks | Alaska Native Language Center | n.d.
Reviews the history and consequences of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
The Alaska Native Allotment Act
| Bureau of Land Management | U.S. Department of the Interior | n.d.
Explains the allotment process through which Alaska Natives could claim limited portions of ancestral land.
The Aleut Evacuation
| National Park Service | Aleutian World War II National Historic Area | n.d.
Documents the wartime removal and confinement of Unangax̂ communities from their islands.
The Taking of Attu
| National Park Service | Aleutian World War II National Historic Area | n.d.
Reviews Japanese occupation, United States military action, and the permanent displacement of Attu villagers.
Project Chariot
| National Park Service | Cape Krusenstern National Monument | n.d.
Describes Indigenous opposition to a proposal to detonate nuclear devices near Iñupiat communities.
The Inupiat and Arctic Development
| North Slope Borough | Iñupiat History, Language and Culture | n.d.
Presents Iñupiat relationships with land and responses to colonial government and resource development.
The Gwich’in and the Arctic Refuge
| Gwich’in Steering Committee | Gwich’in Steering Committee | n.d.
Documents Gwich’in resistance to oil development in the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd.
Protect the Sacred Place Where Life Begins
| Gwich’in Steering Committee | Gwich’in Steering Committee | n.d.
Connects protection of the Arctic Refuge with Gwich’in food security, culture, and territorial rights.
The Inuit Circumpolar Council
| Inuit Circumpolar Council | ICC | n.d.
Supports Inuit sovereignty, environmental protection, and political cooperation across colonial state borders.
The High Arctic Relocations
| René Dussault | The Canadian Encyclopedia | n.d.
Examines Canada’s forced relocation of Inuit families to establish sovereignty in the High Arctic.
The High Arctic Relocatees
| Crown-Indigenous Relations | Government of Canada | n.d.
Presents official information on relocation, hardship, and later governmental apology.
The Qikiqtani Truth Commission
| Qikiqtani Inuit Association | Qikiqtani Truth Commission | n.d.
Documents colonial policies including relocations, sled-dog killings, medical evacuations, and settlement centralization.
Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami
| Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami | ITK | n.d.
Provides Inuit-led research and policy concerning land claims, housing, health, and self-determination.
Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement
| Makivvik Corporation | Makivvik | n.d.
Recognizes Inuit rights in offshore areas and islands surrounding Nunavik.
Hawaiʻi, Guam, and Pacific Island Dispossession
Nuclear Colonialism in the Marshall Islands
| Holly M. Barker | Seattle Journal for Social Justice | 2003
Examines displacement, radiation exposure, and unequal compensation resulting from United States nuclear testing.
The Apology Resolution
| United States Congress | Congress.gov | 1993
Acknowledges United States participation in overthrowing the Hawaiian Kingdom and depriving Native Hawaiians of self-determination.
Northern Mariana Islands Land Alienation
| United States and Northern Mariana Islands | Commonwealth Law Revision Commission | 1975
Includes protections intended to prevent permanent alienation of Indigenous island land.
The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act
| United States Congress | U.S. Department of the Interior | 1920
Established a limited land program for Native Hawaiians defined through blood quantum.
The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom
| National Archives | National Archives and Records Administration | 1897
Provides Native Hawaiian petitions opposing United States annexation after the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani.
The Blount Report
| James H. Blount | University of Hawaiʻi Library | 1893
Investigates United States involvement in the overthrow of the Hawaiian government.
The Kūʻē Petitions
| University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library | University of Hawaiʻi | n.d.
Documents widespread Native Hawaiian opposition to annexation by the United States.
Department of Hawaiian Home Lands
| State of Hawaiʻi | Department of Hawaiian Home Lands | n.d.
Describes administration of lands designated for Native Hawaiian homesteading.
The Crown and Government Lands of Hawaiʻi
| Hawaiian Kingdom | Hawaiian Kingdom Resources | n.d.
Explains the history of lands transferred after the overthrow and annexation of Hawaiʻi.
The Hawaiian Land Commission Awards
| Waihona ʻAina Corporation | Waihona ʻAina | n.d.
Provides records of nineteenth-century Hawaiian land claims and awards.
Kahoʻolawe Island
| Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve Commission | State of Hawaiʻi | n.d.
Reviews military bombing, Native Hawaiian activism, land return, and environmental restoration.
Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana
| Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana | PKO | n.d.
Presents the history of Native Hawaiian occupation and resistance that ended military bombing.
Mauna Kea and the Thirty Meter Telescope
| Office of Hawaiian Affairs | OHA | n.d.
Examines Native Hawaiian cultural rights and conflicts over astronomical development on a sacred mountain.
Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu
| Kiaʻi Mauna | Puʻuhonua o Puʻuhuluhulu | n.d.
Documents Native Hawaiian resistance to construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.
Red Hill Fuel Facility
| Environmental Protection Agency | U.S. EPA | n.d.
Reviews fuel contamination threatening Oʻahu’s water and Native Hawaiian environmental interests.
The Navy at Red Hill
| Honolulu Civil Beat | Civil Beat | n.d.
Provides reporting on military land use, fuel leaks, water contamination, and community resistance.
Militarization and Hawaiʻi
| Hawaiian Kingdom | Hawaiian Kingdom Resources | n.d.
Examines continuing United States military occupation from a Hawaiian sovereignty perspective.
Chamorro Land Dispossession
| Guampedia | University of Guam | n.d.
Explains how Spanish, American, Japanese, and military rule transformed Chamorro landholding.
Military Land Takings on Guam
| Guampedia | University of Guam | n.d.
Documents large-scale United States acquisition of Chamorro land after World War II.
The Organic Act of Guam
| Guampedia | University of Guam | n.d.
Examines the extension of United States civil government without full Chamorro self-determination.
The Chamorro Land Trust Act
| Guampedia | University of Guam | n.d.
Reviews legislation intended to restore land access to Indigenous Chamorro residents.
Pågat Village and Military Expansion
| Guampedia | University of Guam | n.d.
Describes a culturally significant Chamorro site threatened by proposed military development.
Bikini Atoll Nuclear Testing
| UNESCO World Heritage Centre | UNESCO | n.d.
Documents forced relocation and environmental devastation caused by United States nuclear testing.
The People of Bikini Atoll
| Bikini Atoll Local Government | Bikini Atoll | n.d.
Presents community history of displacement, nuclear contamination, and the struggle to return home.
Enewetak Atoll
| Atomic Archive | National Science Digital Library | n.d.
Reviews nuclear testing and the displacement of Marshallese communities from Enewetak.
Southern Africa and East African Land Dispossession
Germany Recognizes Colonial Genocide
| German Federal Foreign Office | Government of Germany | 2021
Describes an agreement acknowledging genocide while addressing reconstruction and reconciliation.
The 1913 Land Act Legacy
| Government of South Africa | South African Government | 2013
Reviews the long-term consequences of reserving most South African land for white ownership.
Kenya’s Mau Mau Veterans
| United Kingdom Government | Foreign and Commonwealth Office | 2013
Addresses compensation for torture and abuse during Britain’s suppression of anticolonial resistance.
The End of Britain’s Gulag
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | 2013
Reviews compensation for Kenyan survivors of colonial detention and torture.
The Restitution of Land Rights Act
| Parliament of South Africa | South African Government | 1994
Established a process for claims involving racially motivated land dispossession after 1913.
The Swynnerton Plan
| R. J. M. Swynnerton | Government of Kenya | 1954
Proposed individualized land tenure and commercial agriculture during the late colonial period.
The Crown Lands Ordinance in Kenya
| Kenya Land Commission | South African History Online | 1934
Documents colonial legal arrangements that categorized African territory as Crown land.
Sol Plaatje and Native Life in South Africa
| Sol Plaatje | South African History Online | 1916
Records the devastating effects of the 1913 Natives Land Act on Black South Africans.
Native Life in South Africa
| Sol T. Plaatje | Project Gutenberg | 1916
Documents forced eviction, tenancy loss, and rural hardship after racial land segregation.
The Native Land Act and Segregation
| Nelson Mandela Foundation | O’Malley Archives | n.d.
Provides historical documents on the law restricting African land ownership in South Africa.
District Six Forced Removals
| District Six Museum | District Six Museum | n.d.
Documents the destruction of a multiracial Cape Town community under apartheid land policy.
Sophiatown Removals
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Examines the forced removal of Black residents and destruction of Sophiatown.
The Destruction of District Six
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Describes racial zoning, eviction, demolition, and community resistance in Cape Town.
The Bantustans
| South African History Online | South African History Online | n.d.
Explains how apartheid confined Black South Africans to fragmented and economically marginalized territories.
South African Land Claims Commission
| Government of South Africa | Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development | n.d.
Provides information on restitution claims arising from colonial and apartheid removals.
Land Reform in South Africa
| Parliament of South Africa | Parliament of South Africa | n.d.
Reviews redistribution, restitution, and tenure reform following centuries of racial dispossession.
The Khoisan and Land Rights
| South African Human Rights Commission | SAHRC | n.d.
Examines the exclusion of Khoisan communities from many formal restitution processes.
The Herero Genocide
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | Holocaust Encyclopedia | n.d.
Documents German colonial warfare, concentration camps, mass killing, and land seizure in Namibia.
The Nama Genocide
| United States Holocaust Memorial Museum | USHMM | n.d.
Examines Germany’s destruction and dispossession of Nama and Herero communities.
Namibian Land Reform
| Food and Agriculture Organization | United Nations | n.d.
Examines post-independence attempts to address highly unequal settler-colonial land distribution.
Land Dispossession in Kenya
| Kenya Human Rights Commission | KHRC | n.d.
Examines historical land injustices originating in colonial seizure and continuing after independence.
The Kenya Land Commission
| British Empire Project | British Empire | n.d.
Reviews colonial investigations into African land alienation and European settlement.
The White Highlands of Kenya
| Oxford Reference | Oxford University Press | n.d.
Defines the fertile Kenyan region reserved largely for European settler farming.
The Mau Mau Land and Freedom Army
| Imperial War Museums | IWM | n.d.
Connects the Kenyan uprising with land alienation, labor exploitation, and settler domination.
Endorois Land Rights
| Minority Rights Group International | MRG | n.d.
Documents the Endorois community’s displacement from ancestral land around Lake Bogoria.
Latin America, the Caribbean, and Indigenous Territory
Ayoreo Land Invasion
| Survival International | Survival International | 2023
Examines ranching and deforestation threatening Ayoreo people living in voluntary isolation.
The Pueblo Revolt
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2021
Describes the successful 1680 Indigenous uprising against Spanish colonial domination.
Maya Leaders Alliance v. Belize
| Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide | ELAW | 2015
Examines a Caribbean Court judgment recognizing Maya customary land tenure.
Kichwa People of Sarayaku v. Ecuador
| Inter-American Court of Human Rights | IACHR | 2012
Held Ecuador responsible for allowing oil exploration on Indigenous territory without adequate consultation.
Xákmok Kásek v. Paraguay
| Inter-American Court of Human Rights | IACHR | 2010
Found rights violations arising from denial of an Indigenous community’s territorial claim.
Saramaka People v. Suriname
| Inter-American Court of Human Rights | IACHR | 2007
Recognized collective territorial and consultation rights of a Maroon community threatened by development.
Sawhoyamaxa v. Paraguay
| Inter-American Court of Human Rights | IACHR | 2006
Ordered measures supporting the restoration of ancestral territory to a displaced Indigenous community.
Yakye Axa v. Paraguay
| Inter-American Court of Human Rights | IACHR | 2005
Addressed the displacement and severe deprivation of an Indigenous community seeking return of ancestral land.
Awas Tingni v. Nicaragua
| Inter-American Court of Human Rights | IACHR | 2001
Established international recognition of Indigenous communal property without formal state title.
The Reducciones
| Cambridge University Press | Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas | 2000
Examines forced Indigenous resettlement into colonial towns for labor, taxation, and religious conversion.
Visión de los Vencidos
| Miguel León-Portilla | National Autonomous University of Mexico | 1959
Presents Indigenous-language accounts of the Spanish invasion and destruction of Tenochtitlan.
The Florentine Codex
| Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua Scholars | Library of Congress | 1577
Preserves Nahua accounts of society, conquest, epidemic disease, and Spanish colonial rule.
The Conquest of Mexico
| Library of Congress | Exploring the Early Americas | n.d.
Provides Indigenous and European materials concerning conquest, colonization, and territorial transformation.
The Encomienda System
| Encyclopaedia Britannica | Britannica | n.d.
Explains the colonial labor and tribute institution imposed on Indigenous communities.
The Repartimiento
| Encyclopaedia Britannica | Britannica | n.d.
Describes the forced-labor system that followed the encomienda in Spanish America.
Revolt of the Pueblo Indians
| Pedro de Rivera | Library of Congress | n.d.
Provides historical material on Pueblo resistance and Spanish attempts to regain New Mexico.
The Mapuche Nation and Chile
| Minority Rights Group International | MRG | n.d.
Reviews Mapuche land loss, state repression, cultural rights, and territorial activism.
Mapuche Territorial Rights
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
Documents contemporary land conflicts and Indigenous-rights issues affecting Mapuche communities.
Pacification of Araucanía
| Biblioteca Nacional de Chile | Memoria Chilena | n.d.
Examines Chile’s military occupation and settlement of Mapuche territory.
The Desert Campaign
| Encyclopaedia Britannica | Britannica | n.d.
Reviews Argentina’s military conquest of Indigenous territories in Patagonia and the Pampas.
The Conquest of the Desert
| Cambridge University Press | Journal of Latin American Studies | n.d.
Examines military expansion, Indigenous displacement, and territorial state formation in Argentina.
Indigenous Peoples in Argentina
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
Reviews territorial claims, evictions, extractive projects, and Indigenous political organization.
Indigenous Peoples in Paraguay
| International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs | IWGIA | n.d.
Documents land concentration, ranching expansion, and threats to Indigenous peoples of the Chaco.
The Aché of Paraguay
| Survival International | Survival International | n.d.
Documents forced removal, killings, enslavement, and loss of forest territory.
The Maya and Land Rights in Belize
| Minority Rights Group International | MRG | n.d.
Reviews Maya territorial claims and conflicts with logging, agriculture, and state land policy.
Palestine, Land, Settlement, and Displacement
Israel’s Land Regime
| Human Rights Watch | Human Rights Watch | 2021
Examines discriminatory land, residency, planning, and movement policies affecting Palestinians.
Sheikh Jarrah
| United Nations Human Rights Office | OHCHR | 2021
Examines threatened evictions of Palestinian families from homes in occupied East Jerusalem.
The Palestine Nakba
| Nur Masalha | Institute for Palestine Studies | 2012
Examines the destruction and displacement of Palestinian society in 1948 and its continuing consequences.
Al-Araqib
| Amnesty International | Amnesty International | 2010
Examines repeated demolitions of an unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin village.
Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory
| Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod | Columbia University Press | 2007
Explores Palestinian memories of dispossession, village destruction, exile, and national loss.
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited
| Benny Morris | Cambridge University Press | 2004
Examines military operations, expulsions, flight, and policies that produced the Palestinian refugee crisis.
The Separation Barrier
| International Court of Justice | ICJ | 2004
Provides the advisory opinion concerning the barrier, land seizure, settlements, and Palestinian rights.
Legal Consequences of the Wall
| United Nations | UNISPAL | 2004
Summarizes the international legal findings concerning construction of the barrier in occupied territory.
The Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem
| United Nations | UNISPAL | 1990
Surveys the historical development of the conflict, partition, displacement, occupation, and settlement.
The Land Acquisition Law
Documents legislation legalizing state acquisition of extensive Palestinian land after 1948.
The Absentees’ Property Law
Presents legislation used to transfer property belonging to displaced Palestinians to state control.
Palestinian Refugees
| United Nations Relief and Works Agency | UNRWA | n.d.
Provides information on Palestinians displaced in 1948 and their descendants.
Present Absentees
| BADIL Resource Center | Al-Majdal | n.d.
Examines internally displaced Palestinians whose properties were treated as absentee land.
The Jewish National Fund and Palestinian Land
Reviews legal disputes concerning land controlled for the benefit of Jewish citizens.
Land Planning and Palestinian Communities
Documents inequalities in planning, zoning, construction permits, and municipal boundaries.
The Bedouin in the Naqab
| Minority Rights Group International | MRG | n.d.
Reviews village nonrecognition, demolition, relocation, and land claims affecting Palestinian Bedouin communities.
The Prawer Plan
Examines a proposal to relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens from unrecognized villages.
Umm al-Hiran
Documents demolition and displacement plans affecting a Bedouin village in the Naqab.
Settler Violence in the West Bank
| United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs | OCHA | n.d.
Documents attacks, displacement, property damage, and access restrictions affecting Palestinian communities.
Settlement Expansion and Displacement
| United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs | OCHA | n.d.
Examines the humanitarian consequences of settlements and related infrastructure in the West Bank.
The E1 Settlement Plan
| Peace Now | Peace Now | n.d.
Explains how proposed construction could fragment Palestinian territory around East Jerusalem.
Silwan Displacement
Documents settler organizations, archaeological projects, demolitions, and displacement in Silwan.
Masafer Yatta
Examines efforts to remove Palestinian communities from an area designated as an Israeli military firing zone.
The Jordan Valley
Documents land appropriation, settlement, home demolition, and restrictions on Palestinian development.
Firing Zones and Palestinian Displacement
| United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs | OCHA | n.d.
Reviews the use of military zones and demolition orders affecting Palestinian herding communities.
Museums, Education, Memory, and Decolonization
Decolonizing Museums
| Amy Lonetree | Liverpool University Press | 2024
Examines how museums can address colonial violence, Indigenous dispossession, and community authority.
Lessons in Legitimacy
| Justin B. Richland | University of Minnesota Press | 2023
Examines how settler institutions claim legitimate authority over Native nations and land.
Unsettling Settler Colonial Education
| Cornel Pewewardy, Anna Lees and Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn | Teachers College Press | 2022
Offers Indigenous approaches to transforming education within settler-colonial institutions.
The Whole Picture
| Alice Procter | Cassell | 2020
Examines how museums and galleries display objects acquired through conquest, slavery, and colonial dispossession.
The Return of Indigenous Ancestors
| Chip Colwell | SAPIENS | 2020
Examines the continuing struggle to repatriate Indigenous human remains held by institutions.
Unlearning the Colonial Cultures of Planning
| Libby Porter | Planning Theory and Practice | 2018
Examines how planning institutions continue to assume settler authority over Indigenous lands.
Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits
| Chip Colwell | University of Chicago Press | 2017
Documents the collection and repatriation of Native ancestors and sacred objects.
Land Education
| Eve Tuck, Marcia McKenzie and Kate McCoy | Environmental Education Research | 2014
Calls for education that recognizes colonization, Indigenous presence, and land-based relationships.
Land as Pedagogy
| Leanne Betasamosake Simpson | Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society | 2014
Presents Indigenous land as a source of knowledge, political resurgence, and collective responsibility.
Settler Colonialism and Education
| Leigh Patel | Harvard Educational Review | 2014
Examines how schools normalize settler territorial authority and Indigenous disappearance.
Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America
| Amy Lonetree | University of North Carolina Press | 2012
Shows how Indigenous-centered exhibitions can confront histories of genocide, removal, and cultural survival.
Decolonizing Education
| Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang | Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society | 2012
Warns against treating decolonization as a general metaphor detached from Indigenous land restoration.
Planning on the Edge
| Libby Porter | Routledge | 2010
Shows how land-use planning can reproduce dispossession while appearing administratively neutral.
Indigenous Planning
| Ted Jojola | McGill University | 2008
Introduces planning approaches grounded in Indigenous sovereignty, culture, and community priorities.
Museums and Source Communities
| Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown | Routledge | 2003
Explores collaboration between museums and Indigenous communities whose belongings were collected under colonialism.
Skull Wars
| David Hurst Thomas | Basic Books | 2000
Examines conflicts between archaeologists and Native nations over remains, heritage, and scientific authority.
Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
| United States Congress | Congress.gov | 1990
Presents the federal statute recognizing tribal claims to ancestors and culturally important objects.
NAGPRA
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | n.d.
Explains the law governing repatriation of Native human remains, funerary objects, and sacred belongings.
National NAGPRA Program
| National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | n.d.
Provides guidance and data concerning repatriation from museums and federal agencies.
Repatriation at the Smithsonian
| Smithsonian Institution | National Museum of Natural History | n.d.
Describes the return of Indigenous ancestors and cultural belongings from federal collections.
The National Museum of the American Indian Act
| Smithsonian Institution | National Museum of the American Indian | n.d.
Explains Smithsonian repatriation responsibilities toward Native nations and Native Hawaiian organizations.
What Is Indigenous Planning?
| Indigenous Planning Division | American Planning Association | n.d.
Explains how planning can support tribal self-determination and relationships with ancestral land.
Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark
| National Museum of the American Indian | Native Knowledge 360° | n.d.
Reframes the expedition through Indigenous sovereignty, diplomacy, and the consequences of western expansion.
The Doctrine of Discovery Curriculum
| Upstander Project | First Light Learning Resources | n.d.
Provides educational materials on legal and religious doctrines used to justify Indigenous dispossession.
