(Mis)appropriations of Decolonization and the Right not to be Dispossessed

Abstract

This article examines the (mis)appropriation of decolonization within academic discourse and beyond it. It argues that decolonization loses its political force when it is reduced to a fashionable critique, separated from practice, or detached from land and Indigenous communities. The article first considers how academic debates can turn decolonization into a symbolic language of struggle while leaving the material conditions of colonialism untouched. It then examines the appropriation of Indigenous knowledge through patents, and development practices that extract knowledge from the relations and communities through which it is sustained. The discussion extends to environmental justice through the case of Kiribati, where the possible loss of inhabitable land exposes the limits of distribution as well as recognition. The article argues that environmental justice cannot be separated from land justice and that the right not to be dispossessed must remain central to decolonial practice. It concludes by proposing decolonization as an evolutionary process that develops through public institutional change and land return while remaining attentive to communities facing immediate dispossession.