The introduction sets up the book’s central argument, which examines how erosion narratives are almost always about who claims the material earth to what ends and whether or not those claims are recognized. Drawing from methodologies in Indigenous studies and environmental humanities, the introduction examines how many non-Indigenous narratives of ecological crises simultaneously draw from and erase the Indigenous dimensions of the story or subsume Indigenous loss into white pathos. Conversely, many Indigenous-authored texts about erosion disrupt previous discussions of land loss that are tied to anxieties about the disappearance of whiteness and white supremacy. Via critical regional studies, the introduction attaches these analyses to the humanities’ geological turn to illuminate moments when historical and agricultural contingencies quickly calcify into naturalized narratives of place. Thus, these erosion narratives become “sense of place” formulations within regional studies that produce troubling affinities with settler colonial practices.