Unsettling Territory: An Ethnography of the Indigenous Right to Land and Resource Access

Unsettling Territory centers Indigenous land and resource claims, focusing on how territory is lived, disputed, and administered in everyday life. It links legal and political questions about rights to land with on-the-ground practices, showing how boundaries and jurisdiction can become sites of conflict. The book situates Indigenous sovereignty within broader state and institutional systems, including the ways agreements, governance mechanisms, and bureaucratic categories reshape what land rights mean in practice. It emphasizes the gap between formal legal recognition and the lived realities of communities seeking durable control over land. By combining ethnographic attention with historical and policy context, the work highlights how struggles over territory affect community survival, cultural continuity, and possibilities for self-determination.