Wrangling Settler Colonialism in the Urban U.S. West: Indigenous and Mexican American Struggles for Social Justice

This article contributes to geographical scholarship on settler colonialism by exploring its urban valences in the U.S. West. Urban development in the U.S. West has long been guided by ideologies of the cowboy and frontier, which seek to explain and justify settler occupation of indigenous and Mexican land. Produced overwhelmingly in cities, frontier narratives have shaped urban landscapes and organized urban industries in powerful ways. As a result, indigenous and migrant populations in the urban U.S. West must wrestle with frontier myths—and the institutions that produce them—in their struggles for social justice. In this article, I examine two recent struggles over urban land use, economic development, and public space in the U.S. West that engaged settler myths of the frontier. These include the purchase, relocation, and operation of Rawhide Wild West Town in Phoenix, Arizona, by the Gila River Indian Community and failed efforts by charros (Mexican cowboys) to use a major sports facility in Las Vegas, Nevada. Together, these cases show that U.S. settler colonialism is far from settled but that settler nostalgia for the frontier—and the urban institutions that produce it—imposes real limits on the abilities of indigenous and marginalized peoples to pursue and achieve their visions of social justice.