‘The Indigenous Body Signifies Our Title to Land’

The Indigenous body signifies our title to land, and our death reintegrates our body with that of our mother, the earth. However, the state’s legal regime privileges other practices… the body is theorized as being separate from the earth…

Because the ancestral spirits gave birth to humans, they share a common life force, which emphasizes the unity of humans with the earth rather than their separation… Indigenous women perceive the world as organic and populated by spirits, which connect places and people…

The legal regime of the nation-state places Indigenous people in a state of homelessness because our ontological relationship to the land, which is the way we hold title, is incommensurable with its own exclusive claims of sovereignty.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson, ‘The White Possessive’