Editors: Elise Boxer (Dakota), University of South Dakota and Travis Franks, Utah State University, Department of English

In From the Skin: Defending Indigenous Nations Using Theory and Praxis, Jerome Jeffery Clark and Elise Boxer highlight contributors from diverse tribal nations across the continental United States who have graduated with a degree in American Indian Studies (AIS), whether at the undergraduate or graduate level. Of the Land continues this important work by focusing more intently on how the grounded knowledge that emerges from Indigenous peoples’ connections to land (in)forms their existence. As Simon Ortiz, respected Acoma Pueblo poet and intellectual, explains, “Land is crucial to our existence and identity. In fact, we have existence only in concert and partnership with land…without the land we do not have existence.”

In editing this volume, we use the term situatedness to encapsulate how Indigenous identity exists only in concert and partnership with the land. We hope to demonstrate through an edited collection of essays that Indigenous existence is not a universal experience–it is highly contextual and contingent. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson has explained, for example, that Michi Saagiig Nishnaabe epistemology tells how Kwezens, “little woman,” began mimicking a squirrel while observing the natural world, and, as a result, first encountered sap, which was to become a culturally significant staple for her community. Simpson articulates that Kwezens “learned both from the land and with the land” and that this learning “takes place in the context of family, community and relations.” Simpson continues, “The land, aki, is both context and process.”

Of the Land emphasizes that the power of land predates colonization, remains active while colonization is ongoing, and will persist after colonization is defeated. Settler colonialism continues to structure how we relate to place and whether we can even exist in our ancestral homelands. But at the same time, there is something to be said about how the power of land continues to inform Indigenous existence. This edited volume will illustrate the diverse ways in which Indigenous peoples’ work comes from a knowledge of the land that exists beyond the scope of formal disciplines while also working within and against settler colonial structures.

This volume is meant to be global in scope, but only in order to reiterate the very specific nature of situatedness, explaining the theoretical, philosophical, and practical aspects of Indigenous-specific connections to place. While these chapters are in conversation with ongoing scholarship in decolonization and Indigenous resurgence, Of the Land will also urge settlers to decenter the primacy of their connection to land and to acknowledge the breadth and depth of Indigenous relationships to place. This necessary intervention first acknowledges and affirms Indigenous connections to land that not only predate but survive in spite of settler colonialism.

This volume will feature scholars, activists, land defenders, chefs, artists, gardeners, language speakers, educators, and community members whose work is rooted in land-based practices. They act and think in accordance with culturally-specific beliefs and practices that originate from their grounded knowledge of place and the power it holds. Many of our stories demonstrate this intimate connection; indeed, our creation stories tell us we are of and from the land, which situates our place in and ways of knowing the world. The volume may feature individuals who still reside on their ancestral lands and those who were dispossessed and relocated to new places, compelling them to form new connections. We are interested in how Indigenous peoples’ situatedness, including the ways contemporary Indigenous peoples think, live, and exist, predates colonial constructs, as well as how Indigenous responses have been marked as decolonial projects. Of the Land is global in scope and will be organized thematically. We solicit contributions from people Indigenous to the Americas, Oceania, Asia, Africa, and Sápmi.

Depending on the submissions, potential themes could include returning (to) land, revitalization of cultural practices, establishing relationships to new lands, implementing land-based pedagogies, and cultivating food sovereignty. The volume will ask contributors to consider the following questions:

● How are people in the community thinking and acting from within their epistemologies?

● How do our relationships with the land reflect reciprocity? What do we give back to the land as it continues to sustain and teach us?

● How have Indigenous peoples who were removed from their homelands formed new practices and connections–including those who are considered refugees and asylum seekers?

● All occupied lands are Indigenous lands, but how are people reclaiming and reconnecting to place?

● How have the recent calls for #LandBack shaped decolonization struggles in and outside of the U.S.?

● What are the developments and future directions of the food sovereignty movement?

● How do artists maintain and recover practices rooted in the land?

● How do artists engage and apply the concept of Indigenuity in their creative work dealing with the land, ecology, and/or landscape?

● How are Indigenous epistemologies crucial to addressing climate change? What other forms of resiliency are necessarily rooted in Indigenous epistemologies?

● How do current and future land-based pedagogies shape the field of education?

● How are Indigenous connections to and stories of the land best documented?

● How do we ensure that “land” does not become an empty buzzword or abstraction, but remains grounded in lived, reciprocal, and accountable relationships?

● How do we prevent land-based scholarship and theory from becoming another form of extraction? How do we ensure that we create theories and practices that restore and sustain the land and our responsibilities to it?

Please submit a 250-word abstract or working draft by May 15, 2026, directly to the editors at ofthelandvolume@gmail.com. Invitations to submit a full chapter will be sent after a month. Potential contributors will be asked to submit a final polished draft of chapters from 8,000-12,000 words by October 1, 2026.

Questions? Please email the editors at ofthelandvolume@gmail.com