Sovereign Bodies, Sovereign Spaces: Urban Indigenous Health Activism in the United States and Australia

Statistics indicate that Indigenous people worldwide suffer disproportionately poor health outcomes. Since the mid-twentieth century, health activism has become increasingly central to expressions of Indigenous sovereignty and survivance. In this innovative comparative study, Maria John assesses the histories of urban Indigenous health activism in the United States and Australia and how it has sought to counter the medical mistreatment and neglect that Indigenous people have historically faced in these nations. From the crisis of health care access in the 1970s to the strength of Indigenous community responses to COVID-19, John shows how the creation of Indigenous community-controlled health clinics has been a vital response to settler colonial structures of neglect in medical care. John illustrates that these clinics have also created a new kind of political space where Indigenous people from different tribal nations and geographies can develop and practice new ideas of nonterritorial sovereignty and pan-Indigenous solidarities across regions and nations.

John’s arguments expand our understanding of the ways urban places and spaces foster possibilities for Indigenous communities, and her focus on health reveals how Indigenous people strategize, struggle, and work against systems they were never meant to survive.

Maria John is assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.