10.2: Indigenous Worlds- Diversity, Survivance, and Decolonization

Learning Objectives

• Describe the cultural diversity among the Indigenous nations of North America.
• Examine the impacts of settler colonialism on the physical and cultural landscapes of North America.
• Analyze decolonization frameworks.

 

Cultural Diversity among Indigenous Peoples in North America

The Americas had long been settled before contemporary political borders were established. Various Indigenous groups lived in settled or semi-settled communities, moving as resources became limited, populations too large, or due to conflict. For example, before European contact, the people known as the Lakota lived in the prairies of what is now the state of Minnesota, part of the Northeast cultural-geographic area (Figure 10.2.1). Horses did not exist in the Americans until Europeans brought them. In 1680, many pueblos (communities) in the Southwest revolted against the Spanish who had attempted to colonize them. As a result of the revolt, many Spanish horses were freed. Eventually these horses, ancestors of the mustang, found their way to the Plains. In the meantime, European contact and forced relocation had pushed the Lakota onto the Plains. The Lakota soon came to depend on and revere the horse that helped them survive in their new environment. So should they be considered a society of the Northeast or the Plains? Ultimately, that is for the Lakota people to decide, if they want to frame their histories in this regional way at all. The story of migration and adaptation of the Lakota illustrates the complexities of regionalizing Indigenous civilizations. Thus, maps like the one below are too simplistic because they are static and do not depict the complex and mobile histories of indigenous groups. Figure 10.2.2, from Native-Land.ca, a Canadian Indigenous-led non-profit organization, provides a mapping platform for Indigenous peoples to represent themselves and their territories in their own terms.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Map of Indigenous Ethnic Regions (public domain; Nikater via Wikimedia Commons).

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Unofficial, crowdsourced map showing the complexity and diversity of Indigenous peoples, nations, and cultures (by permission; Native Land.ca).

 

The Politics of Indigeneity in Canada and the United States

In 2020, about 9.7 million people (2.9 percent of the population) identified as Native American and Alaska Native in the United States (alone or in a combination with another racial/ethnic group), which represents a large increase since the previous census. Canada’s 2021 census counted 1.8 million Indigenous people (5 percent of the population). Census numbers are based on self-identification, or the self-reported ethnoracial identities of individuals who responded to the survey. Indigenous identity, however, is subjected to governmental recognition in Canada and the United States (and other countries). Governments often stipulate which groups to recognize as indigenous in order to grant or recognize Indigenous land sovereigneity. In other words, governmental recognition matters because it may grant or deny rights to ancestral lands. How governments choose to recognize indigenity is what we call the politics of indigeneity.

In addition to the three office Indigenous groups recognized by the government of Canada (the Inuit, the First Nations, and the Métis), Canada defines a fourth group called “non-status Indians”. This refers to people who identify themselves as Indians but who are not entitled to registration on the Indian Register pursuant to the Indian Act. Some may, however, be members of a First Nation band. In alignment with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Canada’s Congress of Aboriginal Peoples uses the all-inclusive term “Indigenous” to refer to Indigenous peoples who are off-reserve, status and non-status Indians, Métis, and Southern Inuit. “The Congress arose as a representative for the “forgotten people” in response to the structural and systemic exclusion of Indigenous people in federal policy. The 2016 Census reported that of the 1.6 million Indigenous people in Canada, 51 percent, or 853,000, were not classified as Registered or Treaty Indians (i.e., Status Indians).^[1]

The video below provides insights to the politics of indigeneity in the United States. It refers to the blood quantum, which refers to the fraction of a person’s ancestors who are documented as Native Americans. “Throughout history, blood quantum was used to define a point at which responsibilities to tribes, entitlement programs, treaty rights, and reservations would end. The government hoped that using blood quantum would eventually eliminate Native peoples—that intermarriage would “dilute” the amount of ‘Indian blood’ in the population, causing descendants of Native peoples to become indistinguishable from the rest of the population”.^[2]

Because the external groupings of people with Indigenous heritage is fraught and Indigenous peoples are not a monolith, it is preferred to use the specific names of the Nations and communities when discussing history, territory, identity, or any other aspect of social life. There are many separate and unique nations.

 

Canada

Before there was Canada, there was Turtle Island—home to the first peoples of North America. Algonquin and Iroquoian peoples tell the story of a Sky woman falling toward the sea but finding refuge on Turtle, and of how a humble creature like Muskrat dove to the bottom of the sea to find the soil needed to build her a home on Turtle’s back. While this origin story is representative of only some of the Indigenous population of present-day Canada, there are some commonalities across most Indigenous communities. Traditionally, Indigenous cultures are inclusive. Lynda Gray, from the Tsimshian First Nation, writes: “Everyone had a place in the community despite their gender, physical or mental ability, sexual orientation, or age. Women, Elders, Two-spirit, children, and youth were an integral part of a healthy and vibrant community”.^[3]

Education differed from European-style education because children engage in hands-on learning with their families and immediate community. Also, education is seen as a lifelong process as people grow into different roles from child, youth, adult, and Elder. Elders are cherished and respected. An Elder is not simply an older or elderly person, but is usually someone who is very knowledgeable about the history, values, and teachings of his or her culture. He or she lives according to these values and teachings. Each Indigenous community determines who are respected Elders. First Nations pass along values and family and community histories through oral storytelling.

Each Indigenous culture, community, and even family has its own historical and traditional stories, songs, or dances. Different cultures have different rules about ownership. Some songs, names, symbols, and dances belong only to some people or families and cannot be used, retold, danced, or sung without permission. Sometimes they are given to someone in a ceremony. Other songs and dances are openly shared.

Today, the Canadian constitution recognizes three broad groups of Indigenous peoples: the Inuit, the First Nations, and the Métis.

The Inuit are descended from people living north of the tree-line, in the Arctic areas of present-day Canada prior to European contact (Figure 10.2.3). The word Inuit means "the people" in the Inuit language of Inuktitut. Inuit have lived and thrived in the Arctic for thousands of years. A present-day map of Inuit languages shows the vast lands inhabited by Inuit peoples (Figure 10.2.3). Traditionally they lived off the resources of the land, hunting whales, seals, caribou, fish, and birds, and many Inuit continue to harvest these resources today. Cultural and oral traditions are based on sharing, co-operation, and respect for the land, the animals, fish, and peoples.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Present-day Inuit language distribution map (by permission; Historica Canada).

 

The First Nations are descendants of people living south of the tree-line. Historically, First Nations managed their lands and resources with their own governments, laws, policies, and practices. Their societies were very complex and included systems for trade and commerce, building relationships, managing resources, and spirituality.

Today, there are more than 630 First Nation communities in Canada, which represent more than 50 Nations and 50 Indigenous languages. Figure 10.2.4 provides the official Canadian government’s map of Indigenous communities codified by the Indian Act of 1876 and the First Nations Land Management Act of 1999, which provided participating First Nations with the right to manage their own lands and set up land ownership rules.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): The Canadian Government’s Map of First Nations. Four statuses are shown: Indian Act (422) shown with green circles, First Nations Land Management Act - Operational (100) shown with brown squares, First Nations Land Managemetn Act - Developmental shown with orange circles, and Self-Government (39) shown with purple triangles. (public domain; Indigenous Services Canada via Geomatics Services).

 

The Métis are descendants of multi-generational, intermarrying communities of mixed-race individuals, with Algonquian and French heritages the most common. In the 17th and 18th centuries, many French and Scottish men migrated to Canada to work in the fur trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company, the North West Company, or as independent traders. Some had children with First Nations women and formed new communities. The red “voyageur sash” is recognized as a part of the distinct Métis culture (Figure 10.2.5). It was part of the clothing worn by Métis people every day and had many uses such as a holder, washcloth, bridle or saddle blanket. The sash is worn by Métis people today in celebration of their culture and identity.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Photo of Métis sashes with the Métis flag (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; Chris Corrigan via Flickr).

 

United States

A tremendous amount of diversity existed amongst the hundreds of Indigenous groups living in the present-day United States. The people of the West Coast had very little in common with the way that the peoples of the Southwest lived. However, groups within each region tended to have more commonalities. For instance, each region of the continent could be typified by the way in which peoples supported themselves, that is, their subsistence strategies. Other similarities might include kinship relations, political structure, and material culture, the objects and artifacts utilized by a people and having social significance to them. Language is also used as a key identifying characteristic.

The Pacific Northwest and California Peoples in the Pacific Northeast supported themselves largely through hunting, gathering, and fishing, relying most heavily on salmon fishing. Consequently, the salmon became an important figure in the cosmology of groups like the Tlingit and Haida. The Pacific Northwest region was densely populated and culturally diverse because of the rich natural resources that provided a relatively reliable and plentiful food source, which translated into a large population. Most groups lived in large, permanent towns in the winter. These towns formed the basis of the political structure for many Northwestern groups. People identified themselves by their town, and towns organized themselves into larger cultural and political groups through family and political alliances. Each town was led by a secular leader from one of the town’s important clans. Clans are groups of families that recognize a common ancestor and a greater familial relationship amongst the group. Clans were often identified by a symbolic figure or idea important to the region. In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, clans were named for important animals such as raven, salmon, eagle, and killer whale. Society in Pacific Northwest groups was generally highly stratified in a complex system of hierarchy that ranked individuals, families, clans, and towns.

Some of the earliest peoples of the Midwest/Great Plains region were agriculturalists, settling in the south and central areas. However, the reintroduction of the horse to North America at European contact transformed Plains life (the ancestor of modern horses was found throughout much of North America in the Pleistocene era, but died out and disappeared from the continent). Groups quickly adopted use of the horse in following and hunting the great bison herds, and many groups such as the Sioux, comprising the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota, were transformed from farmers to nomadic hunter/gatherers and emerged as one of the most important groups in the northern Plains region. Other important groups include the Crow in the north, the Cheyenne, Pawnee and Arapaho in the central plains area, and the Comanche in the south.

Northeastern groups were complex in many ways. Economically, they relied on both hunting/gathering and farming. Many participated in a system of exchange with shells as the medium. After the 1600s, groups began manufacturing wampum, made from white and purple shell beads, using them to record important events and to formalize agreements. Exact copies would be made for each party participating in an agreement. Politically, groups were led by men called sachems. Many towns organized themselves into tribes or nations; some tribes further allied to form political confederacies of affiliated nations. The Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee, made up of an association of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations, was the largest and most successful of these northeastern confederacies. Confederacies were governed by councils made up of leaders from each of the member tribes.

In the Southwest and northern Mexico, peoples combined farming with hunting and gathering. In arid regions, irrigation systems were built to water fields of corn, beans, and squash. A range of social structures were common from extended family groups to politically independent pueblos. The Pueblo, Navajo, Yuman, and Tohono O’odham peoples, among many others, all called this region home. Chaco Canyon in present-day New Mexico was a major center of ancestral Pueblo culture between 850 and 1250 (Figure 10.2.6). The highly organized large-scale structures, featuring multi-storey construction and sophisticated coursed masonry, illustrate the increasing complexity of Chaco social structure, which distinguished itself within the regional culture of the ancestral Pueblo and dominated the area for more than four centuries. The high incidence of storage areas indicate the probability that the Chacoans played a central economic role, and the great size and unusual features of the ceremonial kivas suggest that complex religious ceremony may have been significant in their lives.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon (GNU Free Documentation License; Circumspice via Wikimedia Commons).

 

Settler Colonialism

Settler colonialism is different from other forms of colonialism in that settlers come with the intention of making a new home on the land, a homemaking that insists on settler sovereignty over all things in their new domain. Settler colonialism incorporates components of external colonialism, the expropriation of fragments of Indigenous worlds, animals, plants and human beings, extracting them in order to transport them to —and build the wealth, the privilege, or feed the appetites of—the colonizers. It also incorporates internal colonialism, the biopolitical and geopolitical management of people, land, flora and fauna within the “domestic” borders of the imperial nation.

Within settler colonialism, the most important concern is land/water/air/subterranean earth. Land is what is most valuable, contested, and required. This is both because the settlers make Indigenous land their new home and source of capital, and also because the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound violence. This violence is not temporally contained in the arrival of the settler but is reasserted each day of occupation. This is why Patrick Wolfe (1999) emphasizes that settler colonialism is a structure and not an event. In the process of settler colonialism, land is remade into property and human relationships to land are restricted to the relationship of the owner to property. The settlers sees themselves as holding dominion over the earth and its flora and fauna.

Settler colonialism has functioned, in part, by deploying institutions of western education to undermine Indigenous intellectual development through cultural assimilation and the violent separation of Indigenous peoples from our sources of knowledge and strength – the land. If settler colonialism is fundamentally premised on removing Indigenous peoples from their land, one, if not the primary, impact on Indigenous education has been to impede the transmission of knowledge about the forms of governance, ethics, and philosophies that arise from relationships on the land.

European settler colonization completely changed the cultural landscape of North America. In 1492, Columbus made contact with what are now the Bahamas, Cuba, and the island of Hispaniola, spurring Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas. Early French and English settlements were not successful, but over time, they too gained control of territory and founded permanent colonies. The easternmost Indigenous groups were the first to experience the impacts of European invasion. Many were relocated, often forcibly, to the interior of North America to free up land for European settlement. Disease and war had a devastating effect on the Indigenous groups of the Americas. European settlers and explorers brought smallpox, measles, and cholera — diseases previously unknown to North America. In some areas, 90 percent of the Indigenous population died.

By the early 1700s, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain had established formal colonies in the Americas (Figure 10.2.7) and the population geography of North America today is largely rooted in the colonial developments during this time period. The British primarily set up settlements along the coast, including the thirteen colonies that would declare independence from the United Kingdom and form the basis of the United States. The French colonized much of Canada and the area surrounding the Mississippi River. Their primary objective was fur trading, and they founded a fur trading outpost at what would later become the city of Quebec. The Spanish colonized present-day Florida as well as much of Middle America, stretching into what is now the southwestern United States. They sought resources like gold, the expansion of trade, and opportunities to spread the Roman Catholic faith to Indigenous groups.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Map of European Colonization, 1750 (CC BY-NC-SA; Simeon Netchev via the World History Encyclopedia).

 

The early British colonies had highly specialized economies. The New England colonies, around the Massachusetts Bay area, were centers of commerce. The Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia and Maryland had a number of tobacco plantations. In the Middle Atlantic, around New York, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania, were a number of small, independent-farmer colonies. Further south, the Carolinas were home to large plantations cultivating crops like cotton.

These large plantations relied on slave labor, a tragic legacy that would last for 250 years in North America. Initially, colonists partnered with indentured servants. These laborers paid for their passage to North America by agreeing to work for an employer under contract for a set number of years. These indentured servants often worked on farms, and once their contract expired, they were free to work on their own. Over half of all European immigrants to the Americas before the American Revolution were indentured servants.

As indentured servants gradually earned their freedom, the system of indentured servitude was replaced with slavery. The Portuguese were the first to bring slaves from Africa to the Americas during the 1500s. England, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands would all later join in the transatlantic slave trade, with England dominating the slave trade by the late 17th century. The vast majority of slaves were destined for sugar colonies in the Caribbean and Brazil. Less than 10 percent would be brought to the North American colonies, but this number still represented hundreds of thousands of people. It is estimated that a total of 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World as slaves (discussed in Chapter 3 and Chapter 10).

During British colonization, slaves worked as house servants or laborers in the northern colonies and farm workers in the south. Britain formally abolished slavery in 1833, but slavery was so entrenched in the economies of the southern United States that it would take a civil war to end the practice. In their secession statement, Mississippi explained its reasoning for leaving the union: “In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course. Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth".^[4]

When we think about the Civil War, it is important to understand the geographical differences between the North and South and to remember that the northern states profited from the slavery in the south. Just as geographers can divide the world into core and peripheral countries today, the early United States can similarly be analyzed in terms of its core and periphery. The southern states were indeed peripheral in terms of their economic development. Slavery, essentially forced free labor, provided the southern states with the maximum profit for their commodities. Even after slavery was abolished in the United States in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, the legacy of slavery and racialization continued to confine African descendents. It would be another 100 years before laws were passed in the United States that would bar discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Even still, ethnoracial prejudice and discrimination continue to be a significant social issue.

 

Theorem \(\PageIndex{1}\) Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit in North America

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): Vigil on Parliament Hill, Ottawa, Canada for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; Obert Madondo via Flickr).

In North American, there has been a crisis—and what the Canadian National Inquiry called a genocide^[5]—of violence against Indigenous women and girls. In Canada, Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be murdered or missing than women and girls from different racial/ethnic backgrounds.^[5] In the United States, murder is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native girls and women who are 10 to 24 years old.^[6] The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S) social movement is working to raise awareness about this issue, support the families and communities affected by violence, and dismantle the underlying racist and settler colonial structures that limit the safety of Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people.

LGBTQ+ and Two-Spirited people are disproportionately impacted by violence due to colonial racism, homophobia, and transphobia.^[7] The term Two-Spirit is an identity related to some Indigenous groups in North America. It refers to people (male, female, or intersex) who identify as having both a masculine and feminine existence. With more than 1,000 tribes in Canada and the United States, there is tremendous diversity in perspectives and attitudes about sex and gender. In many tribes, Two-Spirit people were considered neither men nor women; they occupied a distinct, alternative gender status. Most Indigenous communities have specific terms in their own languages for the gender-variant members of their communities and the social and spiritual roles these individuals fulfill. The disruptions caused by conquest and disease, together with the efforts of missionaries, government agents, boarding schools, and white settlers resulted in the loss of many traditions in Native communities. Two-spirit roles, in particular, were singled out for condemnation, interference, and many times violence. As a result, Two-Spirit traditions and practices went underground or disappeared in many tribes. Today, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender native people throughout North America are reviving the Two-Spirit role and its traditions.

Learn more about the situation in the video below, which includes a short interview with Abigail Echo-Hawk, a co-author on a 2018 report on MMIWG.

 

Decolonization

Decolonization may mean different things to different people, some legitimate and some not—especially when used too broadly. At the least, “decolonizing” begins with an acknowledgment of the systemic inequalities spread by colonialism, empire, and wealth extraction related to characteristics such as race, gender, sexuality, class, disability, and nationalism. From there, understandings or interpretations of “decolonization” can vary by discipline or cultural context.

A person’s positionality, which refers to the how differences in social position and power shape identities and access in society, plays an important role here. This requires an individual to develop an acute awareness of the social and political context that shapes their identity, values, and encounters with the world around them. But it should also extend to developing an acute awareness of any limitations to a person's “expertise,” including their understanding of how expertise develops and what forms it can take.

Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things to do to improve our societies and schools. Decolonization can be seen as a way to address the destructive effects of settler colonialism. For some, the term survivance—combining survival and resistance—epitomizes decolonization efforts. But the methods of decolonization can be contradictory depending on the underlying motives of those who engage with the process. Table 10-2 provides a summary of different decolonization efforts in the context higher education.

 

Table 10-2. Decolonization Efforts in the Context Higher Education.

Framework	Meaning of Decolonization	Practices
“Everything is awesome”	No recognition of decolonization as a desirable project, but increased access or conditional inclusion into mainstream	None
Soft-reform	No recognition of decolonization as a desirable project, but increased access or conditional inclusion into mainstream	Providing additional resources to Indigenous, racialized, low-income, and first-generation students, so as to equip them with the knowledge, skills, and cultural capital to excel according to existing institutional standards
Radical-reform	Includes recognition and authentic representation of Indigenous peoples and their rights	Center and empower marginalized groups, and redistribute and reappropriate material resources
Beyond-reform	Dismantling of modernity’s systematic violences (capitalism, colonialism, racism, heteropatriarchy, nation-state formation)	Subversive educational use of spaces and resources

 

Land Back is a movement that seeks to return lands to the sovereign control of Indigenous groups, which is a goal of decolonization (Figure 10.2.9). Figure 10.2.10 highlights examples of lands returned to Indigenous care in the United States. In California, three case studies provide examples of what the return of lands to Indigenous peoples:

• In Los Angeles, a private landowner returned a parcel of land to the Tongva people.^[8]
• The City of Oakland will return the rights of a portion of the Joaquin Miller Park to the Ohlone people.^[9]
• In 2022, the Government of California’s Ocean Protection Council funding supported the purchase of coastal lands for the Wiyot Tribe.^[10]

For many Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, the matter of land back is not merely a matter of justice, rights or “reconciliation”; it is viewed that Indigenous jurisdiction can indeed help mitigate the loss of biodiversity and climate crisis.

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{9}\): Sketchbook of “Decolonization Tip #1”: Land Back Now! The text says that Canada is a settler colonial nation state founded and sustained through domination over Indigenous peoples and lands. Decolonizing Canada requires returning the land to its original inhabitants. (CC BY-NC-SA; Robyn Bourgeois via Sketchbook Project).

 

Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\): Map of lands returned to Indigenous care, 2020-2021. (Decolonial Media License 0.1; Jordan Engel via The Decolonial Atlas).

 

 

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References:

[1] Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. 2021. National Action Plan on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+.

[2] Harmon, Maya. 2021. Blood quantum and the white gatekeeping of Native American identity. California Law Review Online.

[3] Gray, Lynda. 2001. First Nations 101. Adaawx Publishing.

[4] The Avalon Project. 2008. Confederate States of America - Mississippi Secession.

[5] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. 2019. Reclaiming power and place: The final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

[6] Urban Indian Health Institute. 2018. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls: A Snapshot of Data from 71 Urban Cities in the United States.

[7] National Women’s Association of Canada. (n.d.) LGBTQ+ and Two-Spirit.

[8] Valdez, Jonah. (10 October 2022). After nearly 200 years, the Tongva community has land in Los Angeles County. LA Times.

[9] Madrigal, Alexis. (10 October 2022). Oakland will be the first city in California to give land back to Native Americans. KQED.

[10] Eckerle, Jenn, & Rodriguez, Maria. (22 August 2022). Wiyot tribe celebrates the return of coastal land. Ocean Protection Council.

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Attributions:

“Cultural Diversity among Indigenous Peoples in North America” is adapted from Economic Aspects of the Indigenous Experience in Canada by Anya Hageman (CC BY 4.0); First Nations by the Government of Canada (public domain); Pulling Together: Foundations Guide by Kory Wilson and Colleen Hodgson (CC BY-NC 4.0); Native Peoples of North America by Susan Stebbins (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0); United States History to 1877 by Catherine Locks et al. (CC BY-SA 4.0); and Chaco Culture by UNESCO (CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0).

“Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit in North America” is adapted from Two-Spirit by the Indian Health Service (public domain).

“Settler Colonialism” is adapted from Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (CC BY-NC 3.0); Learning from the land: Indigenous land based pedagogy and decolonization by Matthew Wildcat, Mandee McDonald, Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, and Glen Coulthard (CC BY-NC 3.0); and World Regional Geography by Caitlin Finlayson (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).

“Decolonization” is adapted from Decolonization and Indigenization by Andrea Wallace (CC BY 4.0); Mapping interpretations of decolonization in the context of higher education by Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Sharon Stein, Cash Ahenakew, and Dallas Hunt (CC BY-NC 3.0); and Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper by the Yellowhead Institute (CC BY-NC 2.5 Canada).