Enacting Lived Sovereignty Amid Epistemic and Ontological Violence in the Settler-Colonial Academy

This paper examines the tensions between Indigenous sovereignty and the structural and institutional logics of the settler-colonial academy. Critical scholarship suggests that higher education can regulate epistemic boundaries, discipline knowledge production, and shape the subjectivities of colonized students. In this context, the paper explores how colonized students enact individual and collective forms of sovereignty. Drawing on Fanon's reflections on the existential dimensions of colonial domination and Biko's contributions to Black Consciousness, the paper analyzes the formation of psycho-political, ethical, and ontological subjectivities among Palestinian-Jerusalemite students studying within Israeli academia while living amid conditions of heightened political violence. It suggests that students articulate forms of consciousness, futurity, and affective belonging as resources of resistance. Rather than treating sovereignty solely as a legal or political status, the paper conceptualizes it as an ontological orientation grounded in consciousness, relational being, lived experience, and collective memory. The analysis contributes to ongoing debates in decolonial and Indigenous studies by suggesting that sovereignty can be understood not only as a claim to recognition but as a situated, relational, and lived practice that interrupts institutional and state frameworks.