Robert B. Nichols

Political Science
College of Liberal Arts
Twin Cities

Award Year
2017
University Award
McKnight Land-Grant Professorship
No Monument Location

Land, Conflict, and Indigenous Dispossession in North America

In recent decades, conflicts over land-use in North America have accelerated and intensified. These disputes bring together a complex set of concerns regarding energy, the environment, labor and security, but perhaps most interestingly, have also sparked a new wave of Native American political mobilization. Robert Nichols investigates these conflicts by situating them in a longer historical lineage, asking: “How has the historical development of Anglo-American property relations come to inflect and inform contemporary struggles over land? How has a history of colonization shaped understandings of such key concepts as property, expropriation, eminent domain, and dispossession? How can the recovery of a more complex and plural set of histories offer resources for reframing and resolving current conflicts?”