Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group
Sponsored Session
2008 Annual Meeting
Association of American Geographers
Boston, Massachusettes, April 15-19 2008

Title:

The Colonial Present V: Post-Coloniality and Indigenous Geography

Description:

Despite the recent wave of scholarship in Geography that has addressed post-colonialism, there appears to be little in the way of real decolonization within the discipline. Indeed, within Geography's so-called post-colonial scholarship, emphasis has rested largely on critiques of the colonial past (studies on colonial discourse, representation, sexuality, and so on) or on contemporary North-South relationships, and the neo-colonialism inherent in the global capitalist system. Much of this work has been done by scholars from the United Kingdom and focuses on Britain's former colonies in Africa and Asia, rather than on the colonial present in Britain's former settler societies.

Work on present-day colonialism in settler societies, however, has been conducted in particular by a growing group of indigenous and non-indigenous scholars from the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, some of it under the banner of "Indigenous Geography." Whereas much existing work in post-coloniality waxes repentant about the colonial past and the post-independence present, it fails by and large to address the ongoing issues raised by "fourth-world" nations in settler countries. More disturbingly, it ignores calls from indigenous scholars to decolonize discourse and methodologies in Geography, and thereby perpetuates colonial practices and relationships in the discipline. This unwillingness to engage with indigenous peoples who do not have their own states, and consequently for whom colonialism is a very real and present issue, represents a failure on the part of postcolonial scholarship--a failure to decolonize. Thus Geography's relationship to indigenous peoples constitutes its "colonial present."

Anticipated Attendance:

100

Organizers:

Chairs:

Participants:

Sponsorships:

Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group
Political Geography Specialty Group
Geographic Perspectives on Women Specialty Group