'I carry my people with me': Contrasting the discourses of indigeneity and immigrancy to further secure peoples' mobile personhood.

This article examines the contrasting frameworks of indigeneity and immigrancy to explore how Indigenous peoples' personhood and mobility are recognized or denied within settler-colonial contexts, particularly in the United States. It highlights that indigeneity is often legally and culturally fixed to a specific land and past, rendering Indigenous identity vulnerable to erasure when individuals relocate, whereas immigrancy involves a recognized, often obligatory, mobility with an expectation of assimilation into citizenship. The analysis reveals settler-colonialism's refusal to fully humanize Indigenous and enslaved peoples—termed "inimmigrants" who never migrated—contrasted with its relative openness to immigrant assimilation, exposing limits in human rights discourses for Indigenous recognition beyond prescribed spatial and temporal confines. The article advocates for embracing Indigenous personhood as relational and mobile, supported by transnational connections and decolonized solidarities, to better secure Indigenous self-determination and cultural preservation amid ongoing settler-colonial challenges.