Kenyan scholar, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, wrote that colonization was accomplished through the control of colonized peoples’ “tools of definitions in relationship to others”, a process that consciously elevated the “language of the colonizer” by undermining all that comprises a people. It seems that many Indigenous peoples are caught in a powerful and violent colonial web of language deriving from blood quantum and biological descent, and the conflation of identity with citizenship. How do we move beyond this morass to reclaim and redefine Indigenous citizenship with its riot of power and beauty? Let’s take this step into a new conversation.

Val Napoleon (IPC, LLB, PhD) is a professor and Law Foundation Chair of Indigenous Justice and Governance at UVic’s Faculty of Law, and former acting dean. She co-founded the JID/JD dual degree in Indigenous legal orders and Canadian common law, and founded the Indigenous Law Research Unit. Cree from Saulteau First Nation and adopted into the Gitanyow, her areas of research include Indigenous legal traditions, methodologies, Indigenous legal theories, Indigenous feminisms, Indigenous democracy, legal pluralism, and Indigenous intellectual property. She teaches property law and Indigenous intellectual property transsystemically in the JID.

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