A group of scholars including Justin Farrell (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Yale School of the Environment), Paul Burow (PhD candidate in Anthropology and School of the Environment, Yale University), Kathryn McConnell (PhD candidate at Yale School of the Environment and Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University), and colleagues from Colorado State University, have published a study in Science: “Effects of land dispossession and forced migration on Indigenous peoples in North America.”
The authors note: “To date, we lack precise estimates of the extent to which Indigenous peoples in parts of North America were dispossessed of their lands and forced to migrate by colonial settlers, as well as how the lands that they were moved into compare to their original lands. Farrell et al. constructed a new dataset within the boundaries of the current-day United States and found that Indigenous land density and spread in has been reduced by nearly 99% (see the Perspective by Fixico). The lands to which they were forcibly migrated are more vulnerable to climate change and contain fewer resources. Research and policy implications of these findings are discussed.”