Andrew Canessa

Increasing numbers of Indigenous peoples are living in cities, yet the vast majority of studies focus solely on rural Indigenous populations. This is the first book to look at urban Indigenous peoples globally and present the urban Indigenous experience—not as the exception but as the norm. Dismissing the false idea that indigeneity is only “authentic” when it is practiced in remote rural areas, these wide-ranging essays show that a vigorous, vibrant, and meaningful indigeneity can be created in urban spaces too and offers perspectives and tools to understand a contemporary Indigenous urban reality.

This work takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced. By tracing indigeneity from European philosophers conceptualizing sovereignty during the Enlightenment to Indigenous President Evo Morales in Bolivia, this volume offers new analytical tools to explore indigeneity in contemporary world politics.