ABSTRACT
What isn’t Indigenous Studies? A question such as this, its grammatical irregularity notwithstanding, tends to bedevil most new or emerging fields, especially those that seek the lofty status of discipline. More than fifty years of thinking, writing, presenting and publishing by committed scholars on Indigenous Studies have tended to focus not so much on what it is or is not, but rather on what it should aspire to be. Emerging from the social and intellectual flux of the 1960s, early Indigenous Studies scholarship initially ruminated on the importance of new theoretical or methodological frameworks and Indigenous Studies’ relationship to Indigenous sovereignty. Despite the formulation of journals purporting to speak to Indigenous Studies that began to publish scholarship under its aegis, little sustained effort has been exerted to reflect on the field’s origins, boundaries or current trajectories.
