Visiting the mountain: how property gets in the way of Indigenous sovereignty

Yvonne P. Sherwood and Melodi Wynne

Chapter 20 in Handbook on Politics and Society, 2025, pp 365-383 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Settler property, including state lands and state parks, gets in the way of Indigenous sovereignty by disallowing Indigenous practices of visiting Lands and more-than-human relatives. For our Salish people, Land is not a possession – Land is central to who we are. Our word for human beings – sqélixʷ – translates to something like “flesh of the Land.” We emphasize the importance of fulfilling our responsibilities as sqélixʷ, which involves maintaining reciprocal relationships with Land through cultural practices and respectful visits. Our central assertion is that the burden of property is illustrated and illuminated by our visiting and that, despite the blockading of our ways of being and relating by settler colonial property, our existence as a sqélixʷ continues.

Keywords: Indigenous sovereignty; Settler colonialism; Property; State parks; Felt theory; Visiting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035301898
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