INDIGENOUS URBANISM AS AN ANALYTIC: Towards Indigenous Urban Theory

Abstract In Canada, the terms Indigeneity and urbanity have been configured by colonialism and are often understood as antithetical. Given the baggage these terms carry, conceptualizing Indigenous urbanism in a manner that does not replicate the same problems these categories suggest is an important intellectual task for both urban and Indigenous studies. In this essay, I propose that Indigenous urbanism might be best understood as an analytic that highlights a dialectical relationship between Indigeneity and urbanism, marking both concepts as constantly in flux and open to contestation. Indigenous urbanism marks urban space as potentially both liberatory and oppressive, and as the basis for a liberatory research agenda.