From rights to relations with the rural

Lessons from Indigenous studies

Bibliographic Data

ID13007222
AuthorsLaura Barraclough (0000-0003-0884-8797, Yale University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-05-29
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDialogues in Human Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2043-8206 • E-ISSN: 2043-8214
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/20438206251345564
OpenAlexW4410841707
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited14

This commentary responds to Van Sant and Fairbairn's invitation to consider the meanings, potentials, and pitfalls of land access struggles in settler colonial contexts. Drawing on teachings from the field of critical Indigenous studies, I suggest that the developing idea of a right to the rural may be incommensurable with movements for Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and decolonization. I chart three sources of potential incommensurability between these projects: the colonial blind spots of Lefebvre's rights to the city, which risk being imported into a right to the rural; the limits of rights for Indigenous peoples living under settler colonialism; and the coloniality of urban and rural scalar divisions. I propose we move away from a nascent right to the rural in favor of an Indigenous-led commitment to nurturing and sustaining relations with the rural. A focus on relations, rather than rights alone, has potential to build more meaningful solidarities between settler movements for rural social justice and Indigenous nations and to heal relations between people, more-than-humans, and the Land

Geography · Indigenous · Political science · Sociology · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Mining and Resource Management · Ecology

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