“The Big Tree where everything happens”: Can the Shattered Be Mended?

Abrahams and Øvernes write from within colonized contexts where connections to land reveal contested spaces. What was, no longer is. Then, what is now? Land as battleground, as loss, as provider through careful or exploitative occupations or as space to regain strength? Landscapes that extractive industries see as wasteland are by community members known as areas of life and meaning. There is pressure. Some take up action against exploitative obtrusion, other seek employment in the same industries while yet others continue to move in the landscapes with practices ensuring an intimate bond between them and the land being nurtured. What stories circulate here, and how do Abrahams and Øvernes narrate their own stories through reflections and cases? This chapter has an autoethnographic sting with authors as activists/ researchers/ academics being part of the Indigenous communities discussed. Abrahams is a historian and head of the San and Khoi Centre at University of Cape Town, and Øvernes (Sámi) is an anthropologist and part-time Associate Professor at UiT the Arctic University of Norway. They bring no conclusions but invite readers to engage in complex questions turning personal.