Case Studies in Returning Land

View a video introduction to the Land Relationships Super Collective Archive

Co-PIs Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang

Years active

4 years (2020-2024)

Abstract

In this research project, we will conduct extended case method studies of three different community organizations in different parts of North America: Edmonton, Alberta; Oakland, California; and Saugerties, New York. Each of these organizations is facilitating the return of land to Indigenous communities: the first through fundraising to purchase land; the second through return of land through municipal decree, and the third through gifting of land and the creation of 99-year leases. Our research objectives are to 1). Tell the story of each organization, and how each approach to returning land emerged. Learn about anticipated and unanticipated considerations and consequences and how organizations have navigated them. 2). Learn about the aspects of the approach and consequences that are only relevant to this context, and which can be generalized to other contexts. We propose an adapted case method approach (Yin, 1997; Johnston, 2013) aligned with an Indigenous methodologies of storywork and storytelling (Archibald, 2008; Lomawaima, 2017; Kovach, 2009).

Methods

Case study method
Archival research

Interviews and focus groups

Participant observation

Storywork and storytelling

Ethical Framework

As a research team led by an Indigenous researcher and that includes three Indigenous graduate students, our approach to case studies is informed by Indigenous understandings of the importance of stories (Archibald, 2008; Lomawaima, 2017; Kovach, 2009) and visiting (Morrill et. al. 2016; Tuck & Recollet, 2018; Kimmerer, 2013; Windchief & San Pedro, 2019). In the preliminary stages of this research (2015-2019), we built relationships with each of the community organizations by developing a research practice of visiting, rooted in Indigenous feminist theory (Tuck & Recollet, 2018).

Theories of Change

Settler colonialism in North America has been driven by the purposeful settlement of Indigenous lands by people from Europe through genocide, forced removals, the reservation system, residential schools and forced assimilation programs, land theft, and false narratives that disavow all of the violence that has gone into the creation and maintenance of the settler nation-state (Corntassel & Gaudry, 2014; Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006; Tuck & Yang, 2012; Grande, 2015; Day, 2015; Speed, 2017; Ansloos, 2017). Scholarship exploring these issues involves one important maxim: the idea that settler colonialism is ongoing, rather than a past event that Indigenous people should have ‘gotten over’ by now (Trask, 1991; Wolfe, 1999; Kauanui, 2016; Morgensen, 2011; O’Brien, 2017). In our earlier research (Tuck & Yang, 2012), we built on the work of theorist Frantz Fanon (1963), to argue that colonization and decolonization are always specific to place and time. This led us to conclude that decolonization in places like Canada and the United states must involve the return of land to Indigenous communities. We also found that there is a need to centre Indigenous theorizations of decolonization within approaches to social justice (Tuck & Yang, 2012; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2013; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015).

Kinds of Evidence