What We Do

The Decolonizing Settler States project undertook multiple regional research engagements and workshops (Canada, Sápmi, and Aotearoa New Zealand) as part of the Global Indigenous Rights Research Network’s project funded through a Partnership Development Grant through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) between 2021 and 2025. 

The Decolonizing Settler States project emerged in direct response to several persistent structural gaps in the field of Indigenous rights research and advocacy.

1. Academic scholarship on Indigenous rights too often remains siloed from the lived experiences, priorities, and strategic work of Indigenous Peoples at the community level. This disconnect limits both the relevance and practical impact of academic research.

2. Practitioners, especially Indigenous advocates and community-based researchers, regularly produce valuable knowledge, tools, and policy innovations that remain invisible within traditional academic systems and citation indices, thereby reinforcing asymmetries in whose knowledge is recognized and legitimized.

3. While the field of Indigenous rights scholarship has grown in strength, it remains largely bounded by national or regional frameworks, with relatively few opportunities for transnational exchange and mutual learning across different settler-state and Indigenous governance contexts.

In recognition of these gaps, this project was designed to create new pathways for collaboration between Indigenous community partners, policy actors, and scholars across multiple jurisdictions, grounded in principles of mutual accountability, respect for Indigenous knowledge systems, and a commitment to transformative impact in both theory and practice.

The rationale for the project stems from the persistent gap between the recognition of Indigenous rights in international instruments such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (“the UN Declaration”) and the uneven implementation of these rights in practice. Despite growing international consensus on the importance of Indigenous self-determination, land rights, and free, prior, and informed consent, settler state institutions continue to impose systemic blockages that undermine Indigenous governance and limit the transformative potential of the UN Declaration.

At the same time, Indigenous Peoples themselves are innovating powerful approaches to rights implementation, drawing on their own laws, traditions, and political strategies. Yet these efforts are often under-documented, insufficiently shared across regions, or overlooked in academic and policy debates. The project therefore set out to bridge these gaps by bringing community-based experiences into conversation with academic research and international policy processes, ensuring that Indigenous voices guide both scholarship and practice.

Another central rationale was the recognition that decolonization requires both local and transnational strategies. Indigenous Peoples are rooted in specific territories and governance systems, but they are also connected through shared struggles and international networks. The project sought to create space where these levels could inform one another: learning directly from Indigenous Peoples at the community-level about their priorities and tools, while also facilitating transnational exchanges that share good practices as well as struggles. 

Finally, the project aimed to experiment with innovative methodologies for conducting research that are simultaneously transnational in scope and grounded in community-based practices. It sought to foster collaborative inquiry across academic institutions, Indigenous communities, and policy bodies in ways that are reciprocal, co-designed, and rooted in mutual accountability. This approach was intended to bridge the often-segregated domains of scholarly research and applied practice, testing mechanisms for translating Indigenous knowledge, priorities, and lived experiences into both rigorous academic outputs and actionable policy recommendations. In doing so, the project not only contributes to the practical implementation of Indigenous rights, but also challenges and reconfigures prevailing norms about how Indigenous rights research is conceptualized, organized, and operationalized. It offers a model for transdisciplinary, relational, and decolonial research practice that is oriented toward tangible outcomes for Indigenous peoples, while also advancing theoretical and methodological innovation within the academy.