Settler Political Negations

How Sovereignty-Blind Policies Discipline Indigenous Sovereignty Movements

Bibliographic Data

ID24240341
AuthorsKevin Lujan Lee (0000-0003-0403-3216), Josh Campbell
Year2026
Volume125
Issue4
Pages761-781
Publication date2026-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth Atlantic Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-2876 • E-ISSN: 1527-8026
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00382876-12620004
OpenAlexW7224619723
LanguageEN
References cited30

Under the status quo of liberal settler-colonialism, Indigenous nationhood is domesticated within settler-colonial political orders, and Indigenous sovereignty claims are neutralized as radical political challenges to the legitimacy of settler territorial claims. Given the profound limitations of domestic Indigenous rights as mechanisms of colonial redress, Indigenous sovereignty activists often seek recourse in a range of sovereignty-blind policies (e.g., environmental regulations), which are uncoupled from domestic Indigenous rights but offer patchwork tools to protect Indigenous lands and waters from unfavorable settler-colonial encroachments. Such sovereignty-blind policies discipline Indigenous sovereignty movements via settler political negations, wherein they (1) produce untenable trade-offs between different inextricable aspects of Indigenous sovereignty, which negates the viability of sovereignty-blind policies as dependable bulwarks against settler-colonial encroachments; and (2) distort and reformulate the ethico-political commitments underpinning Indigenous sovereignty, which then discursively and politically align Indigenous activists with a host of strange right-wing political bedfellows precisely at odds with the central tenets of Indigenous nationhood. To demonstrate how settler political negations operate in practice, the authors consider the recent curious case of Indigenous Chamoru sovereignty activists in Guåhan (Guam) opposing the listing of giant clams as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

Indigenous Cultures and History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Indigenous Peoples' Rights and Law