Ellos Deatnu and Post-State Indigenous Feminist Sovereignty

The chapter considers an Indigenous resistance and resurgence movement, the Ellos Deatnu (Long Live Deatnu) camp and moratorium in Sápmi on the border of Norway and Finland. Employing Indigenous feminist analysis, it argues that rather than civil disobedience, Ellos Deatnu represents an endeavour to move beyond normative conceptions of nation-state, its colonial and patriarchal institutions, laws and practices and conventional Indigenous politics. The principles, values, and practice of Ellos Deatnu movement reflect what I call post-state Indigenous feminist sovereignty; a deliberate engagement in ‘alternative’ modes of organising beyond the state, and drawing on pre-existing governance practices and structures while questioning the violence of settler colonialism and its concomitant heteropatriarchy.