Vocabulary: Indigenous Territories and Resistance

Long before European settlers arrived, indigenous peoples already lived across North America, Australasia and the Pacific, organised into distinct nations with their own governance and relationship to the land.

Colonisation by settlers, meaning colonisation aimed at permanently occupying and farming the land rather than simply trading with it, dispossessed many of these peoples of their territory over the following centuries.

In response, indigenous peoples have developed sustained forms of resistance, from armed conflict to legal and political campaigns that continue today.

Settler Colonisation

indigenous / First Nations peoples : les peuples autochtones/premiers
settler colonisation : la colonisation de peuplement
land rights : les droits fonciers
a massacre : un massacre
a treaty : un traité

Concrete example: in 1890, United States cavalry troops killed several hundred Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, one of the deadliest incidents in the long conflict between the US government and Native American nations. In 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand established a very different, though equally contested, relationship between the British Crown and Maori chiefs.

Resisting and Being Heard

to resist / resistance : résister / la résistance
a sacred site : un site sacré
to mobilise for land rights : se mobiliser pour les droits fonciers
an unfinished struggle : une lutte inachevée

Concrete example: the sacred rock of Uluru in Australia draws millions of visitors and remains central to Aboriginal spirituality. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a protest camp set up outside Australia's Parliament House in Canberra in 1972 to demand land rights, is still active today and symbolises an indigenous struggle that remains unresolved.

Key takeaways

Settler colonisation: colonisation aimed at permanently occupying land, key notion for understanding indigenous territories.
Wounded Knee (1890) / Treaty of Waitangi (1840): two major, contrasting historical milestones.
Uluru / Aboriginal Tent Embassy: contemporary symbols of indigenous memory and resistance.

Places of Memory and Indigenous Lands