Indigenous urbanisation and the decolonial possibilities of internal diasporas

This article proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding Indigenous urbanisation through the concept of internal diaspora. While diaspora theory has expanded to include diverse forms of transnational mobility and identity, it often neglects the experiences of Indigenous peoples who migrate within national borders yet remain structurally displaced. Drawing on Indigenous scholarship and decolonial theory, the article reframes urban indigeneity not as cultural loss or assimilation, but as a dynamic process of identity (re)production, resistance and place-making in the city. It critiques classical and postcolonial diaspora paradigms for their limited applicability to Indigenous urban life and offers ‘internal diaspora’ as a more precise lens to examine how Indigenous identities are territorialised, politicised and transformed in urban spaces. Through empirical examples from around the world, the article shows how Indigenous urban communities engage in cultural resurgence, everyday relationality and political mobilisation that disrupt settler-colonial imaginaries of the city as non-Indigenous. Urban Indigenous diasporas emerge not as nostalgic echoes of a rural past, but as agents of decolonial futures, cultivating new constellations of belonging, resistance and world-building within the layered colonialities of contemporary urban life. The article claims that recognising these processes enriches both diaspora theory and decolonial urban studies, offering a relational and grounded perspective on how Indigenous peoples creatively navigate and remake urban worlds.