The rapid oil-fueled integration of the Trucial States/United Arab Emirates into the global capitalism in the mid-twentieth century resulted in the formation of new property regimes in the region. This paper considers two overlapping and competing nations of property and indigeneity in the northern UAE, especially Ras al-Khaimah. Prior to the emergence of the state in the mid-20th century, land and property in the UAE and Oman were governed by usufruct, Islamic inheritance laws, and communal identities based on location and extended kinship networks. The distribution of property was in turn linked to seasonal migrations between different ecological zones to ensure a constant supply of resources throughout the year. These patterns gave rise to what was called the dirah, literally the place where one (or one's kinship group) circulates. In this system, land was most often transferred through marriage and inheritance, and in some cases by purchase. When the seven Trucial States formed the United Arab Emirates in 1971, each emirate developed its own laws concerning the ownership of land and property. In some cases, as in oil-rich Abu Dhabi and much of Dubai, the state purchased all land from its owners in the decade after independence. However, this did not happen in Ras al-Khaimah, where three competing forms of ownership coexist: private, collective, and state. Each of these is linked to ideas of indigeneity. Only UAE citizens can privately own land, a reaction to 1960s and 1970s purchases of land by expatriate Arabs that UAE citizens criticized as exploitative and anti-development in late 1970s protests. Categories of "indigenous" and "foreign" developed in part in response to these purchases, resulting in a 1982 law that banned land sales to non-citizens. While land ownership was one means of asserting citizens' control over a key resource, more local notions of indigeneity are regularly invoked to contest the Ras al-Khaimah government's ownership of public lands. Many UAE citizens in the emirate claim collective ownership of land based on longstanding connections dating back to the dirah of the pre-state period. These claims result in extended contestations between the state and citizens (both individuals and extended groups) for control of development, including housing, roads, and industrial projects. In short, land is a key means by which UAE citizens assert their indigeneity against the state and foreigners alike.