In this episode of The Urban Lives of Property, Markus Kip and Hanna Hilbrandt speak with Heather Dorries, about the intersections of settler colonialism and racial capitalism in urban property regimes. Drawing on Dorries’ recent publications and her wider expertise on property, Indigeneity, and urbanism the episode centers the ways in which planning practices contribute to Indigenous dispossession while also serving as a site of resistance and assertions of sovereignty. We foreground three themes: First, the conversation addresses planning’s complicity in processes of dispossession, examining how legal frameworks and land sales have historically undermined Indigenous political authority. This discussion delves into Dorries research on Brantford on how nuisance bylaws work as mechanisms that uphold white privilege. Second and more conceptually, we discuss tensions between and productive conversations emerging from combining the analytical lenses of settler colonialism and the lens of racial capitalism. Finally, Dorries reflects on Indigenous conceptions of property and alternative terminologies that better capture Indigenous relationships to land, emphasizing co-dependence and collective stewardship.
Additional note: Heather Dorries misspoke and referred to Glen Coulthard’s concept of grounded normativity as grounded authority.
In case you are interested in learning more, this is the article:
Coulthard, G., & Simpson, L. B. (2016). Grounded normativity/place-based solidarity. American Quarterly, 68(2), 249-255.
Guest:
Heather Dorries
Heather Dorries is an Assistant Professor jointly appointed to the Department of Geography and Planning and the Centre for Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto. She is of Anishinaabe and settler ancestry and a member of Sagkeeng First Nation in Treaty 1. Her research focuses on the relationship between urban planning and settler colonialism and examines how Indigenous intellectual traditions—including Indigenous environmental knowledge, legal orders, and cultural production—can serve as the foundation for justice-oriented approaches to planning.
She is the co-editor of the collections _Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West_ and _Land Back: Relational Landscapes of Indigenous Resistance Across the Americas_.
Hosts:
Markus Kip
After studying philosophy and theology in Munich and San Salvador, he continued with sociology in Berlin and New York, and obtained his PhD in Sociology from York University in Toronto in 2016. He is the author of “The Ends of Union Solidarity: Undocumented Labor and German Trade Unions” (2017) and co-editor of “Urban Commons: Moving beyond State and Market” (2015).
Together with Ross Beveridge, he is the co-founder of the Urban Political Podcast.
Hanna Hilbrandt
Hanna serves as an Associate Professor in Social Geography and Urban Studies at the University of Zurich (UZH) Department of Geography. Her research aims to advance a global, comparative research agenda on processes of marginalization in housing and urban development in the context of globalizing financial markets and heightened climate crisis.
In this way, it links the negotiation of global regulatory changes to its imprints on urban life, incorporating different regional foci (e.g. Mexico City and Berlin) and theoretical approaches (including post- and decolonial, feminist, legal and critical urban theories).