"Living in Indigenous Sovereignty" As a Way of Being for Non-Indigenous Supporters of Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence Movements

This paper explores the question: How can non-Indigenous, or settler, peoples engage ethically and accountably with Indigenous resurgence, decolonization work, and anti-colonial activism? It advances the ontological orientation of Living in Indigenous sovereignty, which is defined as living in accordance with an awareness that we are on Indigenous lands containing their own protocols, stories, obligations, and opportunities which have been understood and practiced by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Understanding ourselves to be living in Indigenous sovereignty can reframe the ways settlers engage with Indigenous peoples, Indigenous lands, Indigenous knowledges, and Indigenous resurgence. Within this framework, settlers exercise self-restraint based on respect and acknowledgment of the First Peoples on whose lands we reside, and we become accountable to the natural laws of these lands as articulated and practiced by the peoples Indigenous to these lands. I argue that this orientation prepares us to work in more ethical and accountable ways that better complement Indigenous resistance and resurgence and respond to what Indigenous peoples are asking of us.