Abstract
This article proposes a new theoretical framework for understanding Indigenous urbanisation through the concept of internal diaspora. While diaspora theory has expanded to include diverse forms of transnational mobility and identity, it often neglects the experiences of Indigenous peoples who migrate within national borders yet remain structurally displaced. Drawing on Indigenous scholarship and decolonial theory, the article reframes urban indigeneity not as cultural loss or assimilation, but as a dynamic process of identity (re)production, resistance and place-making in the city. It critiques classical and postcolonial diaspora paradigms for their limited applicability to Indigenous urban life and offers ‘internal diaspora’ as a more precise lens to examine how Indigenous identities are territorialised, politicised and transformed in urban spaces. Through empirical examples from around the world, the article shows how Indigenous urban communities engage in cultural resurgence, everyday relationality and political mobilisation that disrupt settler-colonial imaginaries of the city as non-Indigenous. Urban Indigenous diasporas emerge not as nostalgic echoes of a rural past, but as agents of decolonial futures, cultivating new constellations of belonging, resistance and world-building within the layered colonialities of contemporary urban life. The article claims that recognising these processes enriches both diaspora theory and decolonial urban studies, offering a relational and grounded perspective on how Indigenous peoples creatively navigate and remake urban worlds.
Introduction
Over the past decade, a growing body of research has shed light on the experiences of Indigenous individuals navigating urban life across diverse global contexts. Whether situated in the Global South or Global North, these accounts frequently revolve around recurring themes: the complexities of migration, the layered meanings of home and host lands, the tension between permanence and the contemplation of return, and – perhaps most crucially – a sustained resistance to the coloniality of urban space. This resistance often manifests through practices of cultural continuity and (re)construction in the city. Such expressions underscore a broader diasporic condition – one that is not reducible to conventional notions of migration, but instead rooted in a collective sense of dislocation and resurgence. These narratives, when taken together, offer a grassroots perspective on the diasporic nature of Indigenous resistance in contemporary urban contexts.
The concept of diaspora has ancient roots, originally tied to the dispersal of Jewish populations in the classical era. Over time, the term has evolved, undergoing significant revisions and expansions, leading to two main scholarly approaches. First, scholars like Cohen (1997), Tölölyan (1996) and Safran (1991), among others, have delineated common characteristics of diasporas, which typically include dispersion from an ancestral homeland, a collective memory and mythology of that homeland, the maintenance of distinct cultural boundaries in the new environment, and the idea of a possible return. These traits are thought to contribute to the resilience of diasporic communities, enabling them to navigate the complexities of living between their homeland and their new environment. A second group of researchers, including Bhabha (1994), Hall (2007), Gilroy (1994) and Clifford (1994), focus on hybridity and in-betweenness. This postcolonial approach argues that diasporic identities are not fixed; instead, they emerge through ongoing interaction between home and host cultures. Individuals are not entirely rooted in the past nor fully absorbed into the present, but instead inhabit a dynamic space of cultural negotiation. As Demir (2022) notes, a key strength of this tradition lies in its attention to the interwoven dynamics of empire, ethnicity, race and culture as modes of cultural production.
More recent developments in diaspora studies have moved beyond postcolonial frameworks to emphasise fluidity, intersectionality and new mobilities. Increasingly, scholars understand diaspora as a dynamic process shaped by racial capitalism, queer and feminist critiques, and challenges to Eurocentric models of forced displacement (Gopinath, 2018; Hossein et al., 2023). For instance, the rise of digital diasporas has redefined transnational belonging (Madianou & Miller, 2012), while research on South–South migrations has expanded the field beyond traditional Atlantic-centred narratives (Pirovino & Papyrakis, 2023). These shifts reflect a broader decolonial turn, highlighting how diasporic lives are embedded in histories of coloniality, resistance and global racial formations. However, the broadening of the concept has led scholars such as Brubaker (2005) to urge caution. He proposes treating diaspora not as a fixed identity but as an idiom, a posture or a claim. Brubaker warns of the risk of conceptual dilution – what he refers to as the ‘diaspora of diasporas’. Despite the field’s expansion to encompass diverse populations, the urbanisation of Indigenous communities remains largely overlooked. There is limited engagement with how diaspora frameworks, both classical and contemporary, can account for rural-to-urban Indigenous migration, especially when such movements do not cross international borders.
This article addresses this gap by examining the relevance of both classical and contemporary diaspora theories and proposes a novel framework for understanding Indigenous urbanisation on a global scale. The urgency of this task is underscored by demographic shifts. For example, in 2020, over 60% of American Indians and Alaska Natives lived in US cities (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, 2022), while 84% of Māori resided in towns or cities in 2013 (Meredith, 2015), and in Chile, 35% of the Mapuche population is concentrated in Santiago (Censo, 2017). This article is built on two central premises – one theoretical and one heuristic. Theoretically, this article argues for the recognition of ‘internal diasporas’, conceptualising rural-to-urban Indigenous movements as trans-territorial experiences that constitute a form of diaspora beyond the narrow confines of international border crossings. Heuristically, and drawing on Indigenous scholarship, it affirms that Indigenous peoples can sustain and reproduce their identities even when physically separated from their ancestral territories, often through innovative forms of community building. Both premises carry significant practical implications. By linking Indigenous urbanisation to global diasporic movements of resistance, and by adopting a decolonial lens, the article reframes urban indigeneity as a site for decolonising identity and belonging. Diasporic urban spaces emerge not as places of loss, but as platforms for resistance, reclamation and solidarity. This proposed framework offers a multifaceted tool for understanding the complex dynamics of Indigenous urbanisation. It highlights how cultural, historical and political forces shape Indigenous experiences in cities and posits urban spaces as arenas for Indigenous politics, visibility and transformation.
Rather than attempting a comprehensive review of diaspora theory or urban Indigenous experiences, the article engages with an ‘internal diaspora’ framework to capture key trends in Indigenous urbanisation. To achieve this, the article critically examines existing diaspora theories, challenging perspectives that limit diaspora to the politics of international border crossings or reduce diasporic identities to the notion of hybridity and in-betweenness. By addressing these constraints, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of urban Indigenous identities as relational, rooted and resistant. It also positions urban Indigenous communities as agents of decolonisation, who actively resist the inequalities and hierarchies perpetuated by state and neo-colonial urban regimes. These communities navigate and reshape urban landscapes, confronting multicultural complexities and striving toward equity and inclusion. By emphasising this theoretical shift, the article illuminates the lived realities and transformative potential of Indigenous urban life, offering new insights into how identities are constructed, contested and mobilised in urban contexts.
The article is structured as follows. It begins by outlining key conceptual debates in diaspora studies to contextualise their relevance to Indigenous identities. It then examines the global landscape of Indigenous rural-to-urban migration, arguing that Indigenous identity can be (re)produced even when physically separated from ancestral land – a core definitional element of indigeneity. Next, it introduces the concept of internal diaspora, framing Indigenous urbanisation as a form of trans-territorial migration shaped by enduring colonial legacies. Finally, the article envisions decolonial futures for Indigenous populations by exploring the intersections of diaspora, identity and the (de)colonial city.
Roots, rootedness and routes: Diaspora as theory and a new call for precision
From the notion of ‘cultural diasporas’ (e.g. Stuart Hall) to ‘virtual diasporas’ (e.g. Néstor García Canclini), the concept of diaspora has been widely employed to explore transnational dispersions and global demographic shifts. This proliferation of usage has led to diaspora becoming a catch-all term to describe the movement of individuals and groups across borders. Yet scholars such as Shuval (2000), Anteby-Yemini and Berthomière (2005) and Brubaker (2005) have warned that this analytical breadth has come at the cost of conceptual precision. When dispersion alone is taken as sufficient for defining a diaspora, the term risks losing analytical power – resulting in conceptual confusion, misdirected research agendas, the flattening of identity distinctions and inadequate policy responses.
A common site of conceptual slippage is the interchangeable use of migration and diaspora. While migration refers to individual or collective movements – temporary or permanent – motivated by social, political or economic factors, diaspora suggests a particular kind of displacement tied to affective, cultural and often political connections to a place of origin. Migration studies have increasingly emphasised transnational practices, the role of globalisation and the technological mediation of mobility (Castles et al., 2014) while Mamattah (2006) highlights how such developments enrich transnationalism theory. Indeed, globalisation intensifies cross-border flows of people, capital and ideas, producing new forms of mobility and interdependence among nation-states. Appadurai’s (1990, 1996) influential framework of ‘scapes’ articulates this dynamic, where ethnoscapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes disrupt spatial fixity and challenge national containers of culture.
However, these same global processes complicate the analytical distinction between diasporas and other transnational or migrant communities. Scholars such as Van Hear (1998) propose transnational communities as a broader category that may encompass diasporas but also includes more spatially concentrated migrant populations. Whereas migrant communities may integrate into new national spaces, diasporas are often defined by their enduring dispersal and sustained cross-border political, cultural or economic ties. Contemporary political developments, such as the rise of far-right populism and anti-immigration policies, have prompted further reflection on these distinctions. Researchers have turned to the effects of exclusionary state discourses and securitised borders on migrants and refugees (Campani et al., 2022; Indelicato & Magalhães Lopes, 2024; Kokkonen & Linde, 2024). These studies raise important questions around citizenship, belonging and the rights associated with host-state membership, all of which intersect differently in migration and diaspora frameworks.
Shuval (2000) offers a useful distinction by arguing that diasporas, unlike migrants, often claim a ‘natural right’ to return to a historic homeland, usually legitimised through ethnic, linguistic or religious ties. This right is not merely symbolic; it may be tied to claims for citizenship, political participation or material restitution. Thus, diasporas are not only defined by dispersion but by a persistent affective and political relationship to the homeland. Still, the theoretical elasticity of diaspora has limits. As diaspora is increasingly used to describe phenomena ranging from racism and globalisation to urban cultural politics, its capacity to illuminate specific historical and social conditions becomes diluted. The emotional and symbolic charge attached to the ‘homeland’ further complicates its use as a stable analytical category.
Demir (2022) identifies two dominant tendencies in diaspora theory. The first, the ‘ideal type’ approach (Cohen, 1997; Safran, 1991; Sheffer, 1986), attempts to outline core characteristics that define a typical diaspora. The second, the ‘hybridity’ approach (Bhabha, 1994; Brah, 1996; Gilroy, 1994), foregrounds fluidity, multiplicity and critique of essentialist roots. While the ‘ideal type’ concerns itself with being – a fixed diaspora identity – the ‘hybridity’ model is concerned with becoming, emphasising identity as always in flux. Demir (2022) notes that although both perspectives have enriched diaspora studies, they often remain tethered to ontological debates rather than interrogating the structural and political dimensions of diasporic life.
Within the ‘ideal type’ paradigm, key features typically include: dispersion across multiple host countries; preservation of cultural distinctiveness within the host society; and enduring ties to the homeland (Brubaker, 2005; Cohen, 1997; Safran, 1991). Subtypes have emerged within this framework. For example, Sheffer (2003) classifies diasporas as stateless (e.g. Kurds, Palestinians) or state-based (e.g. Irish, Chinese), depending on whether their ancestral homeland has sovereign statehood. Cohen (1997) offers a more expansive typology, including victim, imperial, trade, cultural and incipient diasporas. His 2022 revision further incorporates refugees and displaced peoples, expanding the concept’s reach (Cohen, 2022).
Cultural diasporas, such as the Afro-Caribbean, have become especially influential in hybrid models. Hall (1994) argues that diasporic identities are not fixed but produced through continuous negotiation between the homeland and host society. Similarly, Gilroy (1994) explores how diasporic cultures engage in political resistance against racism and imperialism by drawing upon collective memory and transnational solidarities. These hybrid perspectives underscore the constructed, contested nature of diasporic identity, which resonates with current debates on Indigenous urban experiences. Indeed, hybrid frameworks inform a growing field of urban indigeneity, where Indigenous identities are reconstructed in cities, often distant from traditional territories. Yet unlike many diasporas theorised in transnational contexts, urban Indigenous communities remain within the borders of their nation-states. This condition challenges conventional diaspora frameworks, which often assume transborder movement and external dispersal.
As Wade (2005) points out, the concept of hybridity helps destabilise essentialist understandings of culture and identity. Hall (1989) describes identities as shaped by two vectors: one that maintains continuity with the past and another that reflects rupture in the present. However, he cautions that notions of hybridity can inadvertently reproduce binary distinctions between ‘pure’ and ‘mixed’ cultures. Bhabha (1994) conceptualises hybridity as a productive ‘third space’ where new identities emerge, while Ewing (2006) finds hybridity useful for theorising in-between spaces of belonging. The homeland, often mythologised, remains central to many diasporic imaginaries, anchoring identity even across vast distances (Oxfeld & Long, 2004). In contrast, migration and transnationalism literature tends to downplay symbolic attachments to homeland, privileging mobility and pragmatic ties. Brown (2011) and Safran (1991) highlight how diasporas often engage in the affective and collective recreation of homeland through ritual and cultural practices. Brubaker (2005) affirms that the homeland remains a key referent for many diasporic groups.
By building on these conceptualisations, this article proposes to expand the scope of diaspora theory by exploring internal diasporas – particularly urban Indigenous populations who, while geographically displaced from their ancestral territories, remain within the borders of their state. Rather than viewing diasporas as either fixed entities or merely fluid experiences, this article examines the contributions of urban Indigenous communities as ‘internal diasporas’, highlighting their active political and cultural engagements with both urban spaces and their places of origin. This formulation brings a crucial political dimension to the fore, one that foregrounds the agency and resilience of these groups rather than framing them solely in terms of loss, hybridity or in-betweenness. While the diaspora concept, particularly its cultural variant, can illuminate important dynamics of displacement, memory and identity among Indigenous peoples in cities, it also carries analytical limitations. Diaspora studies still tend to privilege transnational dispersion, often assuming a relationship to a homeland located outside the territorial boundaries of the host state. This focus risks obscuring forms of mobility and identity-making that occur within national borders, particularly for Indigenous peoples whose claims to land, culture and community are anchored in ongoing struggles for recognition and sovereignty within settler-colonial nation-states. Moreover, diaspora frameworks frequently emphasise the tension between belonging and unbelonging in relation to host societies and ancestral homelands, sometimes downplaying the complex ways in which Indigenous urban dwellers assert continuity, territoriality and community-building within cities themselves. As such, while diaspora can offer valuable insights into the cultural and political negotiations of displacement, it may fall short in accounting for the ways Indigenous identities are reproduced, politicised and territorialised in urban contexts without the need for transnational dispersion or fixed notions of a return to an external homeland.
The next section shifts focus from diaspora debates – whether structured around the ‘ideal type’ or postmodern critiques of hybridity – to explore the global landscape of Indigenous rural-to-urban migration. It argues that Indigenous identity can be (re)produced even when physically separated from ancestral land, challenging conventional definitions of indigeneity that hinge on geographic proximity to territory. By foregrounding Indigenous practices of place-making, memory and community formation in urban spaces, this section offers a framework for understanding Indigenous urbanisation not as a break from indigeneity, but as a transformation of it.
Urban indigeneity beyond the rural homeland: (Re)creating identity in the city
The dominant narratives surrounding indigeneity continue to rely heavily on its association with rootedness in land – understood as geographically bounded, rural and ancestral (Furlan, 2017; Howard & Proulx, 2011). This spatial essentialism persists in settler imaginaries and even in well-intentioned academic frameworks, where cities are framed as sites of cultural erosion and Indigenous disappearance. However, Indigenous scholars and communities across the globe are rearticulating this logic, asserting that cities are not cemeteries of Indigenous identities but vital terrains of continuity, creativity and resistance. Indigeneity survives and transforms the urban; and the urban, in turn, is transformed by Indigenous presence and relationality (Brablec & Canessa, 2023).
The persistence of Indigenous identities in urban settings is not merely symbolic or residual. It is active and often strategic – constituted through networks of kinship, ceremonial practices, language and memory. As Brablec (2021) notes, urban Mapuche women in Santiago de Chile have reconfigured urban space through identity claims grounded in memory and practice, not necessarily in spatial continuity, such as language workshops and hip-hop music that integrate urban rhythms with Mapuzungun language lyrics. Uzawa (2023) claims that Ainu indigeneity in Tokyo is asserted through everyday practices of identity nurturing, such as eating Ainu food in a restaurant, experiencing particular aromas that evoke a sense of home, and producing contemporary expressions of culture anchored in traditional songs and dance. These examples of everyday politics of identity assertion resist assimilation not through nostalgic appeals to lost homelands but through living relationships that reassert togetherness. Their presence unsettles the modernist separation of Indigenous identity from urban life, contesting state multiculturalism that has strived for decades to fix indigeneity in rural, touristy or folkloric pasts.
A growing body of Indigenous scholarship affirms this ontological shift. G. S. Coulthard (2014) critiques recognition politics and underscores how urban Indigenous communities assert their self-determination outside state-sanctioned frameworks, refusing settler terms of belonging. On the other hand, L. B. Simpson (2017) reframes place not as a fixed location but as a set of reciprocal responsibilities – carried into the city through storytelling, care and cultural resurgence. Similarly, Moreton-Robinson (2015) critiques the white possessive logic of urban space, showing how Indigenous sovereignty is not erased by urbanisation but reasserted through embodied epistemologies, often led by Indigenous women. These interventions shift the question from Can indigeneity survive the city? to How does indigeneity reconfigure itself within the city?
Empirical cases across continents echo these theoretical insights. In Australia, Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations and cultural centres function as nodes of political and cultural resurgence, defying the idea that indigeneity is incompatible with modern infrastructure (Pearson et al., 2020). In Canada, urban Inuit in Ottawa maintain language networks and land-based pedagogies while navigating structural political barriers (Patrick & Budach, 2014). Māori in Aotearoa, New Zealand, have been engaged in environmental guardianship, especially in light of the speed and scale of Māori urbanisation, which is constantly reshaping societal structures and narratives, as well as connections with nature (Walker et al., 2019). These are not stories of identity stagnation, but of transformation – of what L. B. Simpson (2017, p. 9) would call ‘constellations of co-resistance’ that bind communities through practice and resistance rather than a particular emplacement. What connects these diverse experiences is a shared political reality: postcolonial states continue to rely on spatial strategies of dispossession, in which the rural Indigenous subject is tolerated as long as it remains outside the modern city. The Bolivian Indigenous sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui (2015) called this the ‘permissible Indian’ or indio permitido: one who assumes an ornamental role according to state parameters, mostly confined to essentialist imaginations of a frozen past. By asserting presence within urban space, not only demographically but also through political, cultural and ontological claims, Indigenous communities disrupt the colonial fantasy of the city as alien to indigeneity and reclaim it as Indigenous territory. This is not merely symbolic; it is a practice of re-territorialisation, in which urban neighbourhoods become sites of governance, education, ritual and resistance.
Importantly, these practices defy the expectations of both ideal-type diaspora theorists and postmodern hybridity frameworks. They are not simply about cultural adaptation or longing for a lost homeland. Rather, they are enactments of what A. Simpson (2014, p. 11) calls ‘nested sovereignties’ – insistent on the political legitimacy of Indigenous presence in spaces where it is rendered invisible. They are also illustrative of what Brablec (2023a) theorises as ‘critical urban indigeneities’: insurgent forms of belonging that refuse assimilation while navigating the exclusions of neoliberal multiculturalism.
In sum, the experience of Indigenous urban communities globally reveals the inadequacy of diaspora frameworks that treat indigeneity as territorially fixed or inherently incompatible with urban life. Rather than sites of identity loss, cities can be recast as platforms of Indigenous continuity and transformation – where kinship, belonging and resurgence are rearticulated under new conditions. This understanding challenges both the ruralist and culturalist bias of state recognition regimes and the transnational focus of diaspora theory. The following section proposes the concept of ‘internal diasporas’ as a theoretical lens through which to understand these urban Indigenous experiences. Unlike diasporas defined by international dispersion, internal diasporas describe intra-state dislocations that produce new yet politically grounded Indigenous configurations, anchored not solely in ancestral territory but in ongoing relationships of resistance, care and cultural reproduction.
Beyond a transnational understanding of border crossing: Urban indigeneity as trans-homeland traversing
The concept of internal diaspora offers a critical reconceptualisation of Indigenous urbanisation, moving beyond conventional binaries such as rural–urban, homeland–diaspora or centre–periphery. It addresses the condition of Indigenous peoples who, while remaining within the borders of their ancestral territories, experience dislocation that is simultaneously spatial, cultural, political and ontological. This dislocation is not merely the outcome of geographic migration but emerges from coloniality – the enduring matrices of power, knowledge and being established under colonial rule and perpetuated into the postcolonial present. Internal diaspora captures a relational and situated condition: Indigenous peoples navigating urban life as both citizens and outsiders, as natives and migrants within their own homelands.
Unlike classical diasporas formed through transnational dispersal (e.g. Jewish, Armenian or African diasporas), internal diasporas arise from forced estrangement from Indigenous lifeworlds and territorial epistemologies, even when mobility unfolds entirely within national borders. It is not geographic distance from homeland that defines the diasporic condition here, but rather a structural alienation from Indigenous modes of being and belonging – an alienation intensified in cities built upon, and through, processes of Indigenous erasure. This framework draws inspiration from, and extends, foundational diaspora theorists such as Hall (1994), who emphasised hybridity and rupture, and Clifford (1994), who theorised diaspora as rooted in movement and political positioning rather than fixed origins. Yet it also departs from their Euro-Atlantic orientation by centring Indigenous epistemologies and grounding analysis in coloniality rather than modernity alone. In this regard, Quijano’s (2000) concept of coloniality, and the broader decolonial turn it catalysed, enables a re-reading of Indigenous urbanisation as shaped not by assimilation into modern life, but by the persistent hierarchies of race, knowledge and spatial control embedded in postcolonial urban formations.
Indigenous urbanisation has often been framed either as a tragic erosion of cultural authenticity or as evidence of successful assimilation into mainstream society. The ‘internal diaspora’ framework resists both narratives. Rather than viewing urbanisation as a rupture from Indigenous identity, it recognises it as a dynamic arena for the (re)articulation, (re)invention and politicisation of Indigenous belonging. Urban Indigenous individuals are not merely acculturated or deracinated; they are political agents engaged in place-making, resistance and knowledge production that unsettle the colonial infrastructures of the city. By naming these processes as an ‘internal diaspora’, this article theorises Indigenous urbanisation as a tensioned process unfolding within the shifting spatialities of modern coloniality. While diasporas are conventionally imagined as transnational or overseas, the experiences of Indigenous peoples reveal how diasporic displacement can also occur in place – within the nation-states that have historically dispossessed and continue to marginalise them. Here, the ‘internal’ in internal diaspora does not suggest mere containment within national borders, but speaks to the paradox of being structurally and symbolically excluded from full belonging while residing within one’s own ancestral lands.
This contradiction becomes particularly evident in global contexts shaped by colonial modernity. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, Māori migration to cities in the mid-twentieth century led to the creation of pan-tribal urban organisations and novel forms of cultural affirmation amid assimilationist pressures (Kukutai, 2013). In Canada, First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples have established friendship centres, housing cooperatives and advocacy groups that resist state neglect while cultivating a distinct urban indigeneity (Peters & Andersen, 2013). In Brazil, Indigenous migrants from the Amazon Basin who settle in São Paulo and other major cities assert their identities through intercultural education, ceremonial practices and political mobilisation, often in the absence of formal state recognition (Poets, 2024). In Bolivia, Indigenous migrants from Aymara and Quechua communities have reshaped cities like El Alto and La Paz, forging new urban Indigenous identities through grassroots markets, neighbourhood councils and cultural associations that challenge entrenched class and ethnic hierarchies (Maclean, 2018). In Taiwan, urban Indigenous movements among Amis and other groups have reclaimed visibility in cities such as Taipei, contesting their historical erasure through cultural celebrations and demands for political recognition in urban governance (Sugimoto, 2019).
What unites these diverse cases is not a universal Indigenous experience, but a shared structural condition: the experience of being displaced in place. The ‘internal diaspora’ reflects a spatialised form of coloniality where cities function simultaneously as sites of dispossession and arenas for cultural reassembly. Urban mobility is often propelled by slow violence – environmental degradation, extractivism, militarisation and systemic impoverishment – that severs communities from ancestral territories. Yet once in the city, Indigenous peoples encounter renewed exclusions: from housing and labour markets, from urban planning processes, and from dominant imaginaries of national and urban identity.
At the same time, they mobilise diasporic strategies – social networks, cultural performance, intergenerational knowledge transmission – to resist erasure and reimagine urban spaces. These practices produce what might be called a vernacular cosmopolitanism (Bhabha, 2017) grounded in Indigenous ontologies: a mode of inhabiting the city that neither replicates dominant logics of development nor retreats into essentialist traditions, but forges new collective futures under conditions of constraint. Crucially, the ‘internal diaspora’ is not a purely metaphorical or symbolic condition. It involves material negotiations with the state, with urban infrastructures and with other marginalised groups. It invites us to theorise the city not as a neutral space of modernity, but as a palimpsest of layered colonialities where Indigenous presence is both contested and creative.
While the concept of internal diaspora is not new, its application to Indigenous urbanisation offers a distinct analytical perspective. This article develops the concept further by foregrounding how urban Indigenous communities experience and contest dislocation as part of the ongoing colonialities of power embedded within the state. As Demir (2022) argues, diasporas possess decolonising potential through their capacity to speak back to dominant structures, epistemologies and spatial imaginaries. Building on this, the article turns such insight inward – proposing that Indigenous urban communities enact decolonisation from within the settler-colonial state through their urban presence, cultural praxis and collective autonomy. Recognising this not only adds theoretical precision to the internal diaspora lens, but also situates it within broader genealogies of decolonial diaspora thought. It further supports the possibility of solidarities between Indigenous urban communities and other structurally displaced populations, while maintaining attention to their distinct historical experiences and claims.
Thus, reframing urban indigeneity through the lens of ‘internal diaspora’ dismantles entrenched dichotomies – rural/urban, modern/traditional, national/diasporic – that obscure the lived realities of Indigenous urban life. ‘Internal diaspora’, far from being a condition to be mourned, becomes a framework to be mobilised: a lens that reveals how Indigenous peoples navigate and rework the contradictions of urban existence, enacting alternative ways of being that resist the totalising logics of state recognition, market assimilation and developmentalism. It enables us to envision cities not as endpoints of indigeneity, but as crucibles where Indigenous identity is remembered, reshaped and reclaimed under the enduring shadow of coloniality.
Creating home away from home by resisting the neocolonial city
Urban Indigenous diasporas are not merely the result of displacement or forced migration but are dynamic and creative formations that actively reconfigure Indigenous identity, community and place-making in the city. These diasporas are deeply shaped by colonial histories and ongoing systems of marginalisation, but they also open pathways for envisioning decolonial futures; that is, futures grounded in Indigenous agency, cultural continuity and political presence within urban landscapes.
Rather than viewing diaspora as a narrative of rupture and loss, this article positions it as a site of potential renewal and transformation. Urban Indigenous peoples across the globe are forging collective futures not despite displacement but through their movement and settlement in cities. Diaspora, in this sense, is both a condition and a strategy: a condition shaped by historical displacements and structural inequalities, and a strategy that mobilises memory, identity and relationality across space and time. These urban Indigenous diasporas are not reducible to nostalgia for a lost homeland; instead, they are deeply engaged with the present, negotiating complex relationships between ancestral territories, national contexts, host cities and future generations. Following Māori scholar Tuhiwai Smith (2012), decolonial futures require not just deconstructing colonial knowledge but also centring Indigenous modes of knowing, remembering and imagining. Urban diasporas serve as key sites for this process. They are where Indigenous peoples experiment with new forms of life while sustaining older ones – not as a contradiction, but as continuity in constant transformation. For example, Mapuche women in Santiago lead Mapudungun language workshops in working-class neighbourhoods, creating spaces where cultural reclamation is tied to daily urban survival (Brablec, 2022). These workshops embody what G. Coulthard and Simpson (2016) and L. B. Simpson (2017) call ‘grounded normativity’ – place-based practices that express Indigenous values even within non-Indigenous landscapes. Here, the city is not a site of imminent loss, but of Indigenous reconfigured life.
Similarly, creative practices challenge dominant spatial and cultural imaginaries. In Bolivia, Aymara hip-hop artists articulate resistance to racism and marginalisation while affirming an urban Indigenous subjectivity that is confident, mobile and relational (Hornberger & Swinehart, 2012). In Japan, young Ainu musicians blend traditional instruments with modern sounds to make their presence known in a country that has long denied their existence (Uzawa, 2023). Building on Māori scholar Hokowhitu (2009), these artistic expressions can be understood as a form of Indigenous existentialism – a means of reclaiming voice, disrupting invisibility and expressing cultural continuities through embodied, creative acts. Through music, dance and poetry, Indigenous urban youth resist both state erasure and romanticised authenticity. Architecture and the built environment offer another space of intervention and resistance to the ongoing legacies of colonisation. In New Zealand, Indigenous architects have used tikanga Māori (customary protocols) and spatial cosmologies to reshape urban infrastructure, from public buildings to green spaces. Such projects reflect not merely a call to exist in colonial cities but to actively reshape them through Indigenous spatial imaginaries (Ratana, 2021). Similarly, Cree scholar Donald (2016) encourages an ‘ethical relationality’ – a way of being in relationship that acknowledges difference without erasing it, and is grounded in respect, reciprocity, and an understanding of our interdependence across histories, cultures and knowledges. All these perspectives challenge Western urban planning norms and foreground Indigenous relationships to land – even when that land has been asphalted, zoned and commodified.
Political agency also flourishes within these diasporas. Sámi organisations in Oslo and Tromsø, for instance, challenge the nation-state’s territorial logic by asserting Indigenous governance over urban spaces that were previously considered alien to indigeneity (Berg-Nordlie, 2018). In Chile, urban Mapuche networks mobilise around issues such as land restitution, spatial claims and educational self-determination – demands that unsettle state discourses confining indigeneity to a rural past (Brablec, 2023b). These actions broadly echo the concept of ‘resurgence’ developed by Taiaiake Alfred (2005); that is, decolonisation must be grounded in Indigenous resistance through acts of cultural revitalisation, self-governance and collective refusal of colonial systems. Urban Indigenous diasporas often produce knowledge collectively in universities, community centres and cultural spaces, challenging the colonial separation between thought and territory. They generate urban epistemologies that are neither detached from homelands nor fully assimilated into dominant worldviews. These are evident in initiatives such as political resistance within higher education institutions in Chile (Webb & Sepúlveda, 2020) or intergenerational digital storytelling projects in Canada (Hausknecht et al., 2021) – each offering decolonial narratives grounded in specific urban contexts.
Consequently, this article argues that diaspora for Indigenous peoples is not merely about loss or assimilation but about identity reconstitution. The city becomes a space where indigeneity is reimagined, not abandoned. Urban Indigenous identities are not fixed but evolving, shaped by solidarity with other racialised groups, ecological relationships with urban land, and new kinship formations. As G. S. Coulthard (2014) reminds us, decolonisation is not about recognition by the state but about reclaiming self-determined futures. ‘Internal diaspora’ becomes a lens to see how those futures are being built – not in distant utopias, but in everyday life, neighbourhoods and urban resistance. In this framework, ‘internal diaspora’ challenges both the national order of things and the colonial notion that Indigenous life is incompatible with urban modernity. It reveals that diaspora is not always external: it can also unfold within national borders, shaped by histories of racialised displacement and denied territorial claims. But unlike more static theories of diaspora, this framework emphasises dynamism, regeneration and the potential for future-oriented belonging. It affirms that, despite the violence of displacement, Indigenous peoples continue to assert their presence, reconfigure their identities and transform urban spaces into sites of Indigenous life, even beyond what are typically recognised as their ancestral territories.
Conclusion
Examining urban indigeneity through the lens of diaspora theory adds a critical analytical layer to understanding evolving dynamics of identity, belonging and socio-political presence amidst displacement, continuity and adaptation in cities. While classic diaspora frameworks, such as those of the ‘ideal type’ models, have provided a foundational vocabulary for analysing dispersed transnational communities, they often fall short in capturing the relational, place-making and future-oriented practices of Indigenous peoples who remain within nation-state borders yet cross into new urban contexts governed by the logics of modernity. That is, these traditional frameworks tend to prioritise notions of exile, homeland and return – concepts that, while important, are frequently grounded in Eurocentric and nation-bound imaginaries that do not reflect the lived experiences of the growing number of Indigenous urban residents worldwide.
In contrast, when Indigenous experiences are read through a decolonial lens – enriched by the work of Indigenous scholars like Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Glen Coulthard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Taiaiake Alfred, among many others – diaspora emerges not simply as a legacy of loss but as a modality of endurance, resurgence and political possibility. Urban Indigenous communities exemplify a distinctive form of ‘internal diaspora’ – non-transnational but no less diasporic – that arises not only from historical displacement by colonial regimes, but also from the ongoing racialisation, marginalisation and spatial containment of Indigenous life within settler-dominated societies.
These diasporas are not inert or nostalgic. Instead, they mobilise memory, language, ceremony, art, kinship and land-based ethics in reconfiguring self, community and space. Urban Indigenous peoples are not displaced from indigeneity: they can remake it. They can assert their belonging not through a return to a distant rural homeland, but by transforming the city itself into a site of Indigenous resurgence and imagination. From Mapuche language workshops in Santiago to Sámi political mobilisation in Oslo, from Ainu musical resistance in Tokyo to Māori architectural interventions in Auckland, Indigenous peoples are claiming urban spaces as part of their territorial continuum, transforming them into distinctly Indigenous places (Brablec, 2020). They affirm that indigeneity is not bounded by geography, but is lived relationally, across networks of memory, practice and futurity. This relational urban indigeneity challenges the static and essentialist assumptions often embedded in both state multiculturalism and classical diaspora theory. It enacts grounded normativity by practising Indigenous values in situated, everyday contexts, even when far from ancestral territories or communities of origin (L. B. Simpson, 2017). Urban Indigenous communities do not merely survive in cities: they create, educate, organise and perform new forms of Indigenous presence that are politically assertive, culturally grounded, and often deeply creative. Such work also calls for an ‘ethical relationality’ that invites non-Indigenous city dwellers to reckon with the layered sovereignties and overlapping histories embedded in urban space (Donald, 2016).
Framing these communities as diasporic – though not in the transnational sense – allows for the articulation of a theory of ‘internal diaspora’ that is more attentive to the workings of colonialities of power that structure Indigenous urban life. This framing also aligns with recent calls to understand Global South and North diasporas as active agents of decolonisation (Demir, 2022), while extending that argument inward to account for the specific condition of Indigenous peoples displaced within their own national territories. It compels us to move beyond methodological nationalism and its boundaries, revealing how Indigenous peoples are simultaneously excluded from and foundational to the nation-state. This framing also aligns with decolonial scholarship that understands the city not only as a site of oppression, but also as a frontier of resistance, visibility and self-determination.
In this sense, diaspora is not a closed category but a generative one – open to reinterpretation through Indigenous epistemologies and lived realities. It is a condition of being in motion, of navigating in-between spaces, of cultivating roots in unfamiliar soils without abandoning ancestral connections. Much like spores carried by the wind, Indigenous communities take root in the cracks of the urban terrain, not as passive remnants of a precolonial past, but as agents of cultural renewal and political transformation. They make visible the multiple temporalities – ancestral, present and future – that coexist in the city, challenging us to imagine what indigeneity looks like in contemporary urban contexts shaped simultaneously by dispossession and possibility. Recognising urban Indigenous peoples as internal diasporas thus enriches both diaspora theory and decolonial urban studies. It reveals how power, identity and space intersect in complex and often contested ways, and it foregrounds Indigenous capacities for adaptation, resurgence and world-building. Far from being an analytical detour, this perspective is essential to understanding the plural and relational forms of indigeneity that are actively reshaping urban futures across the globe.
