ABSTRACT
In this chapter, tensions between Indigenous sovereignty and settler colonialism contextualise Indigenous resilience in the face of systems collapse and colonialism’s constantly evolving strategies of capture and incorporation. The chapter begins with a discussion of two modes of colonialisation: imperialist and settler colonialism, twinning development and market capitalism with the ratification of states and the re-casting of sovereign Indigenous nations as populations in the international world order. Of particular importance is the relationship between ideologies of development and the violences of settler colonialism. This is followed by an overview of the struggle for recognition of Indigenous rights, including the right to full, free, prior, and informed consent to any form of development on their traditional lands, and the evolving responses of settler states. As a strategy of extinguishment, settler colonialism’s impact is not only historical, its servitude to the imperatives of market capitalism and the engulfing of the lifeworld marks the present moment with a long footprint into the future. Indigenous peoples’ resilience may be seen as a bulwark against a dimming future. The chapter concludes by pointing towards possibilities for hope in the reframing of governance centred on the well-being of human and non-human species and interrelationships.
