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Indigenous land dispossession is the result of settler colonialism and the practice and application of the international legal principles of terra nullius and “right of discovery” and the simple occupation and use by settlers, in which peoples native to an area are dispossessed of territory by settlers and the native peoples are then removed or relocated to a new area. Dispossession is the act of depriving someone of land, property, or other possessions. During the period of settler colonialism, indigenous land dispossession took place worldwide. Indigenous land rights and claims to dispossessed land have been, and are being addressed, at the national and international level, including by the non-legally binding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP or DOTROIP) and by the legally binding International Labor Organization’s Convention no. 169 (ILO Convention no. 169). Ongoing efforts in land reclamation are complicated by 1) intersections of common law, international law, and historical precolonial land claims; 2) notions and expectations about what it means to be “indigenous.”

Regions
The regions covered in this article are specifically in reference to indigenous peoples who have been dispossessed of ancestral land but who retain strong cultural ties to those regions, or peoples whose ancestral lands were dispossessed through imperialism and settler colonial practices and which created borders not practiced by indigenous peoples. Indigenous land dispossession in the United States is covered in Native American Land Dispossession.

Impact
Indigenous land dispossession has resulted in the disruption of political authority, economic development, environmental sovereignty, and cultural practices of dispossessed indigenous peoples. The motives and impacts of dispossession were highly interconnected and interdependent, and there was no singular motive or impact in any region of the world.

Political impact
Political authority is largely derived from the recognition granted by organized political bodies on national and international levels. Dispossession contributed to indigenous peoples’ lack of political status, authority, and autonomy as national and international bodies only recognize official nation-states with land borders, which indigenous communities were deprived of during the settler colonial period.

Jeffery Herbst commented in States and Power in Africa, that the post-colonial understanding of statehood has shaped the political power available to indigenous people"'“...[T]he United Nations and its related organizations (including the World Bank and the World Health Organization) created an extraordinarily powerful template that moldered international society by recognizing only nation-states as legitimate actors in the international community. In particular, membership in the General Assembly, the essential gateway to sovereignty, was open to any nation-state that gained independence but was not available to any other form of organization.”'"

Borders as sovereignty
Henrik Spruyt hypothesizes that the sovereign state system was established when those who controlled states, preferred similar style units as it allowed those units to be economically and politically committed into larger organizations.This practice linked sovereignty with statehood and statehood with civilization and access to human rights, political authority, and global fellowship, thus reducing non-state actors’ ability to access these arenas. In doing so, indigenous peoples were not only dispossessed of land but dispossessed of political power as autonomous groups as this action prevented the right to self-determination. Historically, this combination of dispossession and political bias has led to significant struggles in present day self-determination as modern framing and systems are influenced by colonial values and reduced human rights as recognized nation-states retain the advantage of state sovereignty.

Anglo-Maasai Treaty (1904)
In 1904, the Maasai people, in what is now the Republic of Kenya, created an agreement that allowed Europeans to subsist on their land for seven years. In 1911, the Maasai were violently removed and the white settlers expanded their land use. In 2011, the East African Court of Appeal ruled that the Maasai were a sovereign entity and were capable of entering into a treaty, but did not retain enough sovereignty to make a civil contract about land. The end ruling was that the original 1904 agreement was a civil contract and that the Maasai land belonged to the state as a result.

Impact today
Today, this exclusion seeks to be addressed by the Unrepresented Nations and People Organization (UNPO) but this organization does not include many of the Native American or First Nations tribes from the United States and Canada or most of the indigenous tribes of South America, where nations who were admitted in the region have let their membership lapse. Instead these regions are largely represented by the autonomous Organization of American States. While the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights grants the right to self-determination in Article 3, the article has been largely agreed to mean self-governance rather than succession and reclamation of ancestral lands.

Economic impact
In the settler colonial era, land was the most important economic resource, and most settler communities had established practices for granting land tracts to settler colonists. Kaius Tuori's review European legal history covers the intersection between dispossession of land and indigenous loss of rights by capturing the four main phases in which land dispossession occurs:


 * 1) Extending state sovereignty over indigenous communities
 * 2) Declaring overall state ownership of land and making native title communal and non-alienable
 * 3) Separating and distributing vacant lands
 * 4) Privatization of tribal lands

Tuori concludes that indigenous dispossession was historically driven by economic motives and population expansion.

Land as an economic asset
Land became an economic asset as property rights developed in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the Atlantic trade market made land accessible to newly wealthy merchants who became landowners. The linkage between land and wealth in precolonial and colonial Europe also developed due to historic population densities, agricultural style, and land shortages. These factors made control of land and territory borders the basis for evaluating state authority and economic prosperity.

Land became legally codified as an asset, and over time, was also legally coded as capital in order to increase the wealth of the title holder and to pass that wealth onto the next generation. Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman demonstrated in "Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries 1700-2010," how rural land was the most important asset in the twentieth century. Countries with large land tracts that were obtained through dispossession were able to pair labor with land to accumulate wealth through agricultural practices and natural resources sales. Land became a vehicle by which settlers created initial endowments for their descendants. Though the land itself was not wealth, the intangible accumulation of wealth through land was denied to indigenous peoples which contributed to their sustained economic disadvantage as a group. Dispossession resulted in resettling indigenous communities on the least valuable, least desired parcels of land, or by reinterpreting legal codes which removed legally held land from indigenous peoples. When the land was purchased by state governments, indigenous peoples were rarely compensated fairly for the loss of the land. This relocation disrupted traditional practices in commerce and trade agreements, impeded ancestral practices in food and agriculture, and disturbed cultural connections with the land.

Impact today
The economic disadvantages remain today. There are approximately 370 million indigenous peoples in approximately 90 countries who have experienced discrimination and dispossession due to the effects of settler colonialism. The denial of land rights through dispossession has also prevented indigenous communities from accessing natural resources. Land rights, instead of just access rights, allow indigenous peoples to create and control profit, make economic decisions about natural resources, and increase independence from outside assistance groups by reducing systemic poverty. Land rights grant the autonomy to retain traditional agricultural and food practices and assist in building intergenerational wealth.

This prevention of intergenerational wealth accumulation has led to further inequality by preventing indigenous groups from participating in political arenas where laws were designed by the “landed elite” and by sovereign nation-states. The design of these laws and institutions had long-term impacts on generational wealth that far outstrips the original loss of land endowments by forcing indigenous communities to become reliant on the state as result of “policy-induced poverty.” This dependence provided the state additional leverage in forcing cultural assimilation or compliance in later land dispossession.

Environmental impact
Indigenous communities are generally acknowledged to be the communal keepers of traditional knowledge, conservators of the local ecosystem, and the preservers of environmental biodiversity. The notions of self and personhood in indigenous communities are tied to the ancestral lands. Indigenous communities continue to struggle with the ecological impacts of dispossession. Indigenous peoples are expected to be responsible ecological stewards simply because of an indigenous identity, and in that role as an indigenous person, to compensate for damage done by members of settler societies. Sustainability practices are inherent to the indigenous identity.

Environmental racism
As a result of settler colonialism, indigenous communities face significant challenges in passing on traditional knowledge and responsible environmental stewardship practices. While indigenous peoples may hold access rights to water and land, they rarely hold land rights or natural resource rights as a result of colonial and post-colonial dispossession. As a result of reduced political autonomy, limited access to intergenerational wealth, and endangered cultural knowledge, indigenous communities have few structural resources. Corporate lobbyists, local governments, and nations hold an advantage while shaping environmental policy and laws that privilege settler colonial legacies and societies. Because the lands held by indigenous peoples have been historically viewed as unused or poorly utilized, and because these lands are usually not legally secure, both governments and developers select them for fortress conservation projects, the extraction of natural resources, or for development projects. As a result, the biodiversity preservation and land stewardship are compromised. As businesses seek to modernize agriculture and use environmentally damaging pesticides and fertilizers, and developers utilize unsafe practices in their business ventures the ecological landscape is changed. These all pose health risks to the indigenous communities who still live nearby. With a focus on corporate profit, those who extract natural resources in dangerous fashions do so without consideration for finite resources or the long-term, broad-impact ecological damage.

Fortress Conservation
A modern form of dispossession is fortress conservation which creates a protected area from which the local people must be excluded or displaced, and is enforced by paid patrols who may enact violence to ensure compliance with boundaries. Fortress conservation only permits the protected area to be used for tourism, safari hunting, and scientific research. In this sense, modern settler societies and their access to the land and its ecology is privileged over the native indigenous peoples.

Mi'kmaw of Nova Scotia, Canada
Even when communities hold access rights, settler communities try to prevent that access, as was exemplified in Nova Scotia, Canada with the Mi’kmaw community. The ancestral lands of the Mi’kmaw lands were licensed to settlers in 1783. Centuries later in the 1950s, the non-indigenous community made its living off a paper and pulp mill. Despite knowing the waste discharge was toxic and would likely affect the surrounding ecosystem, the mills piped the discharge over land and underwater, into the lagoon where the Mi’kmaw still practiced traditional activities. The discharge changed the ecology of the lagoon which was central to Mi’kmaw identity and spiritual being.

In 2020, non-indigenous commercial fishers threatened and enacted violence against Mi’kmaw fishers. The dispute is ongoing based around the court-affirmed and treaty-backed indigenous rights to fish outside the federally regulated season. The dispute is more than a rights-based discussion, but a debate about how the use of those rights are used to secure “necessities” or a “moderate livelihood.”

Cultural impact
"“In the precolonial era, population distributions yielded boundaries. In the modern era, boundaries define a people.”"

- Jeffrey Herbst

Modern consensus holds that a facet of indigenous identity is a powerful and long-term attachment to very particular land and place. Land is central to indigenous cultural identity. Legal dispossession frequently framed indigenous-held lands as unused, underused, or unneeded and emphasized settler purchase or possession of these lands as beneficial for both the land and the indigenous community by emphasizing the use of the land and its future productivity. This explanation does not account for the difference in cultural uses between communities. Dispossession led to an ongoing cultural genocide by preventing and obstructing a way of life that was shaped by and dependent on the land. Once removed from the land, the culture of a peoples was altered.

Land that was legally held by indigenous peoples was seized due to new interpretations of the law based on the arguments made by settlers as a result of expansionism. These arguments were made by using a cultural framework and value system that indigenous people did not live by or participate in. Land that was considered unused or underutilized by settlers was instead being cultivated by indigenous peoples in ways that had no purpose in settler agriculture or economy. Historical legal arguments were made that indigeous peoples did not have the same concept of private land ownership, and thus all land must be state land. This legal argument was used to seize lands from indigenous peoples and transfer them to state control.

Aoife Duffy argues that most precolonial indigenous communities historically held land in collective ownership, in contrast to the settler colonial land titles which were held by individuals. This style of ownership contributed to collective attachment to particular lands and places, and prevented land from developing solely economic value. Instead, the land was the source of shelter and sustenance for the entire community and could not be valued monetarily since it was a collective asset necessary for group survival.

Forced assimilation in Canada
In Canada, the Act to Encourage the Gradual Civilization of Indian Tribes in this Province, and to Amend the Laws Relating to Indians of 1857, forced assimilation on idigenous communities who were made to learn English, convert to Christianity, and become farmers. When there was conflict between settlers (white Europeans who lived with land titles), indigenous peoples, and squatters (settlers who occupied and used the land with no title), the local governments did not act to remove squatters from indigenous land. While civil settler governments held a responsibility to protect indigenous lands and indigenous residents, squatters on the land meant hunting, fishing, and other traditional practices were disrupted. If the civil government felt squatters were productively utilizing indigenous land, the claims were legitimized by selling the land titles, and using the sale proceeds were used to fund schools, churches, and other civilizing infracture for “Indian welfare” which further eroded indigenous cultural identity and practices. Dispossession led directly to loss of cultural identity and the drive to destroy of indigenous identity  directly contributed to dispossession.

Saami dispossession in the late nineteenth century
Kaius Tuori’s article "The theory and practice of indigenous dispossession in the late nineteenth century," discusses the structures and motives behind dispossesion of the Saami people of Northern Europe — in what is now Sweden, Norway, Finland. Originally, the Saami held land and then were later dispossessed as the legal definition of land titles was shifted and changed to the advantage of non-Saami citizens.

Historically, the land held by the indigenous Saami was legally owned by the Crown, though it was widely assumed that the Saami had ownership of the lands. Once the Crown began to grant land titles, the Saami — who participated in civic duties by paying taxes, partaking in contacts, and utilizing local court systems for land disputes — gained the titles to this land. This changed in the mid-nineteenth century, when the state argued that the Saami were a nomadic people with no understanding of ownership and Norway took Crown ownership over Saami lands, with Sweden and Finland following suit.

After the Saami lands were seized by the state, grazing rights for reindeer were revoked, which dramatically affected the culture as reindeer are foundational to Saami culture. After the broad land seizure acts, Saami only had land usage rights to ancestral lands while settlers were able to hold full titles.This practice not only uprooted generational Saami homes, but fundamentally altered the semi nomadic cultural practices as access to the land was either diminished or outright blocked. The Saami also experienced a shift in external cultural identity, where fellow citizens perceived them as different and lesser.

International Law
International human rights lawyer Jeremie Gilbert states, “land rights have been at the heart of indigenous peoples’ claims under international law." These cases have developed a jurisprudence of common law doctrine commonly referred to as aboriginal and/or native title doctrine. This doctrine recognizes historic land ownership customs that preceded settler colonialism and common law, and which should have entitled indigenous people to recognized land titles, but which are overall complicated and limited by the legal status of indigenous groups and the intersections of law.

Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989
Commonly known International Labour Organization Convention 169 or as ILO 169 Convention, ILO Convention no. 169, or C169, this is currently the only binding international doctrine aimed at protecting indigenous rights and was adopted on 27 June 1989. Part II addresses land specifically.

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
The United Nations Declaration on the of Rights of Indigenous People is a non-legal resolution that sets forth the standards for human rights and freedoms specifically endowed to indigenous people and states that the indigenous people are to be equal to other people and be free of discrimination. The Declaration summarizes the minimum standards for survival and dignity for the human rights of indigenous people.

Indigenous Land Rights in International Law
Indigenous land claims only came to international prominence at the end of the twentieth century. There are now additional committees and councils under international law which advocate for the protection of indigenous rights, such as The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD, which supports and assists in monitoring indigenous issues, interpreting human rights standards, and promiting the collective element of indigenous rights), and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESC, which protects the rights of indigenous people to have control over health services and medical care, and protects vital biodiversity on ancestral lands).

Tsilhqotʼin of British Columbia, Canada
Indigenous land rights and ownership has been an issue for indigenious people since settler colonialism. The Tsilhqotʼin nation, in what is now British Columbia, is one example of ongoing land rights violations experienced with Canada’s government. The Canadian government provided lumber licenses to a non-indigenous commercial company to harvest timber resources and develop logging infractures on the Tsilhqot’s nation land. The license was granted without indigenous approval under the premise that the Chilcotin Valley forest was under provincial government management. Conflicts between these two parties escalated in regards to land ownership and rights and eventually went to the Supreme Court of Canada in Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia (2014).

In 2011, the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) was established to improve land governance and land rights for national government and other business corporations operating on indigenous ancestral land. The articles in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights discuss the state of duty to protect of human rights, corporate responsibility to human rights, and access to remedy.

Indigenous as a political identity
Indigenous identity is a complex definition. Academic scholars have not yet agreed on how to define indigenous identity, if it requires continuity with a territory that has been threatened by outside forces or not, and how identity is differentiated from the dominant culture after a period of subjugation and how resistance is qualified. Historically, indigenous identity was defined as those who were the first or who were the original inhabitants who lived on land and experienced land dispossession by European settlers. A current modern, academic definition is Aoife Duffy’s found in Indigenous Peoples' Land Rights: Developing a "Sui Generis" Approach to Ownership and Restitution: 1. Indigenous peoples are the original inhabitants of territories subsequently invaded by external forces, who retain some kind of connection to their homeland, whether it is physical, cultural or metaphysical.

2. Indigenous peoples self-identify as peoples or tribes distinct from other societies.

3. Indigenous peoples are culturally (economically, politically, socially or linguistically) different from the dominant culture that prevails in the same territory or nearby territories.

4. Indigenous peoples' efforts to preserve culture, a connection to land and identity are contested as a result of impinging material and economic interests of states and others. Today, the act of claiming an indigenous identity is the act of expressing an experience of injustice, and the act of taking on a politicized identity. The definition of indigenous is fraught as cultural notions of what “indigenous” means continues to impact indigenous groups who may be seen as not indigenous enough or may be seen as backwards or naive or against modernization. It is also argued that lineage, bloodline, or family connection to the original land inhabitants is not important, and that those who adopt the culture and practice the lifestyle are considered members of the indigenous culture. The adoption of an “indigenous” identity is also sought by disenfranchised communities, or encouraged by advocates, in order to receive recognition and restitution under international law. The competing notions from both community insiders and non-community members can complicate expectations for those who live the daily realities of an indigenous identity and for those who elect to represent their communities publicly.