Land back / cities back

Abstract

ABSTRACT This intervention highlights that Land Back – the demand for the return of lands and waters and the transformation of social relations based on Indigenous systems of law, governance, and care - also means Cities Back. It encourages an understanding of the myriad of Indigenous reclamations of urban space in conceptually, materially, and temporally expansive ways. Land Back names diverse movements that include urban movements. In addition to struggles to reclaim land and restore jurisdiction in cities, Indigenous practices and relationalities that normalise cities as land and that centre Indigenous infrastructures of care and futurity disrupt settler-colonial urbanisms.