INDG 200

Concepts, political and legal relationships

Colonialism (types), colonialism, resurgence, and reconciliation

Introduction to questions of identity

Continuity
Pre existence to the settler state
Indigeneity related to colonialism
Tells us who qualifies as Indigenous, not Indigenous peoples identity

What constitutes peoplehood

Legal, Data, Indigenous peoples definition, and hist facts

What Indigenous peoples tell us about who they are

Recognizing that identities can be contested and can transform
Stories and the oral tradition as good basis to appreciate what is distinctive of Indigenous identifiers

Creation Stories and learning

Traditional narratives that explain 'the order of things' and how human society related to the rest of Creation
Stories for pleasure
Teachings
Tell us about
Visions of the world
Values and obligations
Consequences
Stories explain the relationship to the land

Peoplehood, colonialism and aboriginality

Pre-existence of the settler state and focus on the original settle of North America
In the colonial context: settler states need to justify their presence and aboriginality is understood as 'prior occupation'
Concern for authenticity to warrant claims of aboriginality
Identity, for Indigenous peoples, are often tied to colonial concerns

Categories, self-identification, and recognition

Identity as emerging from social interactions (Self-identifying or Being recognized, or by others outside group)
Identity as plural (dynamic)

Symbolic identity

Attached to a group

Behavioral identity

Reproducing culture NOT self-identification(outward expression)

Core aspects of Indigenous identity in Canada

The impact of colonialism on identity formation:
A psychiatric/psychoanalytic perspective (alienation)
Internalized racism
Common identity of Indigenous peoples in Canada
Collective values and trauma
NOT from nation state from relationship to Creator and pre-existence to settler state

Avoiding essentialism and romanticism

Assessing claims to Indigenous identity and avoiding exclusion
Idigenous identities are diverse and group together a multiplicity of peoples with distinct experiences
People not fixed in the past
No 'essense' to Indigenous identity
Need temporal and physical mobility for Inidgneous people
Because it ignores the agency of Indigenous peoples
Hilary Weaver argues that assessing the validity of claims to Indigenous identity can turn into forms of policing of descent and cultural practices that are destructive

Self-conscious traditionalism

Indigenous identity beyond descent, being "incidentally Indigenous" (Alfred and Corntassel p. 599), and objectively 'authentic': → resistance and self-determination (renew with core aspects of Indigenous peoplehood)
Everyday acts of resurgence

Settler colonialism as a structure

(Not the whole story and not the most important aspect of Indigenous peoples' lives, but unavoidable and highly significant and Settler colonialism is something shared by Indigenous peoples in Canada)

Settler colonialism

(positive and negative not evaluation)

Event v.s. structure

Wolfe: Ongoing organizing logic of society not moment in time

Land organizing logic

acquisition of land by the settlers
Settlers are not immigrants joining another society
They bring their sovereignty with them
access to land: who owns and controls it

Elimination

Wolfe: The land needs to be cleared from Indigenous presence: the elimination of the natives
Conquest, genocide, assimilation, and extinguishment

The Vanishing end-point
Ongoing

(Distinct Indigenous presence is ongoing so is settler colonialism )
The logic of settler colonialism is relevar to understand our contemporary settler societies
The same vanishing end-point is pursued: the full legitimation of settler occupation

Population economy

Control over land is exercised in part by who can join the population
Settler societies are divided in various population and settler authority takes the form of control over the population economic
Control over the population economy allows control over who may or may not access lands claims by the settlers

Naturalization of settler authority

Dual process of legitimation and naturalization: settler authority is represented as inevitable and appropriate
The cooptation of Indigeneity: adopting aspects of Indigenous presence to both deby distinct Indigenous presence and affirm difference from the mother country

The settler colonial present

Focus on our settler colonial present to appreciate how these laws and institutions may lead to systemic discrimination

Worldviews

Getting a sense of the difference being considered
Related to culture
Distinct ways of being, doing
One way to express the 'colonial difference'
Not something to Indigenous peoples
Useful to contrast different ways of understanding the world and to explain these differences
Making sense of what the world is and of how things relate

Their utility and limitations

Abstract and idealized constructions
Construction: human made theoretical object
Abstract: focus on broad outlines
Idealized: highlight and downplay certain aspects
We gain explanatory power
Risk of masking diversity and of essentializing culture
Worldviews as heuristic tools: they help us learn but they are not the complete account of the subject

Eurocentric worldviews

Linear
Constitution/destitution
Not a judgment: emphasizes that some of the ideas at the heart of this world view all have a Europe referent
Anthropocentric
Present Centered
Coercive order

Eurocentric?

Western: associated with Western civilizations
Center themselves with the right way of thinking
See themselves as more advanced and Indigenous people as less advance

Linear

Directedness of reality towards an end -goal:
The end goal is desirable and justificatory
Linear view of time leads to 'better' and 'worse' and more or less advanced
Knowledge is alsop conceived in a linear manner

Anthropocentric and present centered

The world is an external, material physical, object that be known objectivity
Centers individuals
Objective knowledge is achieved by postulating a separation between the world and humans and between each things within the world
Humans are not merely 'external' to the world, theta are also considered to be in a position to use the world as they see fit
The future is uncertain

Coercive order

Coercive force to achieve compliance and order
Authority is associated with one's position in the social-political order:
Decisions by majorities

The implicate order and the Great Mystery

Empirical relationship with an ecological context
World is in a start of flux, constant change and cycles of renewal
There is an (implicate) order to the world
The Creation comes from spirit of creation the creator (spiritual NOT religion)
The order is perfect
The implicate order means that all things have an element of sacred in them
Creation refers to the spiritual and dactual relatedness of all things
Learning life-sustaining relationships from the three-sisters (mutually beneficial)

Interconnectedness and equality

Human are part of Creation, not outside of it
Indigenous languages often reflect this view of other-than-humans:

Life-sustaining relationships: responsibilities

Our concern should be to act in ways that recognize and celebrate the life-sustaining relationships in which we find ourselves:
Balance, harmony, and continuity
To act correctly is to act in ways not disrupt or undermine life-sustaining relationships

Community (broadly understood)

Communal values
The Earth is our mother: the earth sustains us all and we owe her respect

7 generations

Actions should be considered in light of their consequences for the next 7 generations but also in light of what our ancestors taught us

Consensus

Consequences of this worldview on knowledge and social orders:
A social order envisioned as favoring voluntary compliance over coercion

Matricentric societies

A worldview with high regard for women
The social organization of indigneous societies were diverse but often
Matrilineal: decision follows the mother's line (inheritance)
Matrilocal: the family centers around women (man join family of mother)
The position of women in the Western world had for along time been considered to be inferior to that of men
Possible to interpret gender differentiated roles as complementary rather than as oppressive:
Women seen as closer to the Great Mystery

indigenous worldview Land

Is the context of our existence, the source of our learning and the ground of our responsibilities
Land not as space/location but a place to experience relationships

Dispossession and displacement

Limiting Indigneous peoples' relationship to the land through dispossession and displacement
Settler colonialism concerned with the acquisition of Indigenous land by settler
Replacing the Aboriginal title to the land by the title of the crown
Indigenous people were moved to reserves
Original relationship of Indigenous peoples to the land disavowed by a legal regime imposed by and under the control of the settler state

Epistemic limitations

Epistemic limitations as disqualification of alternative worldways
Hegemonic conception of the land
Broadening our conception of the land: learning to think differently
Land without property
Indigenous views of the land are not defective
Indigenous ways of relating to the land not perceived and understood in light of their worldview

Struggles for lands

Political struggle
Land as the basis of peoplehood
Fundamental to the resurgence to Indigenous lifeways

Land as territory

The vital delimitated space in which a specific people or nation develops itself

Land as context and process

Land as an environment
The land, the people, the stories, and the norms and values of a people all relate
Laws of Canada cannot supercede Creators

Grounded normativity

The land structures laws and governance
The norms and values to which Indigenous nation are committed are 'grounded': they come from the land and they are learned from the land
rooted constitutionalism, Earth-bound ways:

Land and Indigenous Knowledges

Indigneous knowledge is not reducible to propositional Western knowledge
Land of space of relationship
No separation between knowledge and ecosystem

The Three Sisters

Corn, beans, and squash
Science of growing them together in a mutually beneficial relationship
Bring together the land and Indigenous knowledge

The Honorable Harvest

Change behavior when we see ourselves in relationship with land
We should act in ways to show gratitude and reciprocity to ensure continuity of relationship
Empirical understanding of world
Not independent dictates of what you should do
More demanding than sustainable development
Learn responsibilities, gratitude, and reciprocity from land

René Descartes and the Corn People

Kimmerer differentiated between the practice of science (method of knowing the world through rational empirical inquiry) and the scientific worldview
A Maya Creation Story about the people that made corn
Indigenous knowledge and science could work together

Land as pedagogy

The land should occupy a more central place in teaching and learning
Required for Indigneous education: land based, culturally appropriate, and makes place for elders and community, and Indigenous languages, and that does not separate culture, science, and philosophy
Informed and structured by the land to the production of Indigenous knowledge and the resurgence and continuity of Indigenous peoples as distinct peoples

Settler occupation and its ideologies

Set of ideas and beliefs that hold an defended by individuals that serve to justify, naturalize and thus reinforce some existing power structures and power relations
Can sustain oppression and domination
Naturalize and justify this lack of control and limitations

The discourses of conquest

Various justifications to legitimate and naturalize settler authority
Settler colonialism requires justification: 'structurally genocidal' and unequal power relations
Settler colonialism is ongoing

Race

European Ideology: priority of oppression and domination based on biological features but race is produced to legitimized modes of colonial domination → Wolfe
Race as a construct: no natural grounding (human creation), reflect unequal social dynamics (reinforced by race)
Wolfe: race as a function of social, political, and economic dynamics

Races as traces of history

Still with us today but arose from process of co opting populations
Wolfe: Not about what people look like constructed through the process of their enactments

Racialization

Race as a function of other forms of oppression and domination
Race shares features across contexts
Race dehumanizes
Race relies on sensory cues → no prolonged reflections
Race demarcates and justifies
Race identity is defined differently depending on the goals of the colonizers

Progress and civilization

Progress: broad desirable and necessary direction to human history towards improvement
Civilization: human societies increase in complexity, refinement, culture, and productivity (over time)
Advanced societies → better
Indigenous qualities are the opposite of European ones
Europeans bring all the luxuries but Indigenous peoples recede (vanishing race) from natural force that cannot be stopped

The Vanishing Race and Terra nullius

Darwanist logic that Indigenous people are racially or culturally primitives doomed to be overtaken by more advances white societies
Indigenous people have or will disappear(ed)
Settlers arrives to empty land or lands were occupying the land in the "right" way (ex: seasonal occupation)

The claimed sovereignty of the state

The status of Inidgenosu people sas distinct sovereignty and self-determining peoples progressively subsumed under the claims sovereignty of the Crown
Final authority: cannot be appealed
Sovereignty erases Indigenous difference and makes them subject to the authority of the state

The faces of elimination

Many forms: Genocide and assimilation

Civilization

The 'civ/sav' dichotomy: progress, civilization, race, and siperipty combines in a complex justification for colonialism and assimilation

Residential schools and the 60's scoop

The residential school emerged as a civilization project
Dickason and McNab: not just about teaching to Indigenous people but eliminating their presence
Break the transmission of indigenous cultures, languages, basically indigenous identity
Stripping the children of their culture, language and ways of life:
Learned 'industrial

skills but often to sub-standard levels
Children had to engage in manual labor to sustain the underfunded schools
Children were underfed, the schools were overcrowded and had poor sanitation, many cases of tuberculosis
Physical, psychological and sexual violence
Historical and transgenerational trauma:

Settlement and relocations

From a nomatic to a sedentary mode of life
Settling down as farmers:
Relocating Inuit families

Other policies not clearly geared towards assimilation

If we look at it with the lens of settler colonial studies, we can see assimilation as part of the same continuum
Reference to systemic genocide, cultural genocide and genocide:

The Royal Proclamation

The Crown claimed the lands of North America to be under its 'sovereignty, protection, and dominion'
Indigenous peoples no longer sovereign self-determining nation
Land is reserved for Indiegnosu peoples
Indigenous epopels need to exclusively deal with the Crown

The Canadian Constitution

Responsibilities for 'Indian Affairs' transferred to the colonias in 1860

The Indian Act

Enacted in 1876
Combined and consolidated carious pre-confederation legislation about Indigenous peoples
Various regulations
Not to protect Indigenous people but a tool to manage and control them
Assault Indigenous people and made it unattractive to retain Indigan status

True, justified beliefs

A true belief: one way of understanding this is a belief that corresponds with facts
Justified: Must have sound and valid reasons to hold a proposition to be true

The method of science

Objective and impartiality
Results that can be reproduced

Objective, impartial, apolitical

We stand outside the world, to observe it, and to form true justified beliefs about it
Knowledge also appears as context-free and neutral: knowledge would be apolitical
The underlying worldview - separation of humans and material world and time as profess is given and 'natural'

Efficiency and control

Eurocentric knowledge reinforces the idea that world is an external object to be understood and controlled
Commodification and exploitation (no sacred)
Battiste and Henderson → Indigenous cultures are endangered as teachings are open to pillage

Diffusionism and cognitive imperialism

Eurocentric knowledge claims universality all other societies should conform to it
Larocque
The "European Miracle"
Diffusionism
Eurocentric knowledge, through diffusionism, reinforces settler colonialism
Indigenous knowledge have been are a sidelined/disqualified
Indigenous knowledge have been and are distorted
Western society sets humans outside nature

Decolonization

Deconstruction various intellectual forms of oppression and domination
Identifying
Deconstructing the canon

Indigenization

Reconstructing Indigenous ways of being, doing and knowing

The Ethical demands of Indigenous studies

difficult to remain neutral
Larocque → Cannot study colonization through stereotypes, invasion of land, sexism, and racism without addressing ethical social and political ramifications

Relationships

Pay attention to our identities, our personal and cultural ties to others and our relationships and social positions
What informs our perspective
Relationships in terms of power, privilege and disadvantage

Motivation

Reflecting on your identities and relationships, leads to better idea of perspectives and motivations
Purpose statement is required and it is not just about what conclusions we want to achieve

Guest v.s. settler

You are always in relationship and situated
We cannot escape the history of settlement and dispossession
Not about attributing guilt or responsibility but understanding the nature of the relationship
How to respectfully stand on Indigenouys peoples' land
The Host needs to help the Guests become patriot of the local circle of relationship
Wampum

Guests

Relationship to land
Relationship to Indigenous people and communities
Supports reciprocal relationships
Guests travel in their own vessel
Guests can be any non-Indigenous scholars or students who on a biases of self-location understand their situation and responsibilities and who can speak of their motivation in a manner accountable to their relationships

Settler

Superficial engagement
A settler can be a non-Indigekousn scholar or student who fails to appreciate cognitive imperialism and fails to recognize thaya sin which their actions relations and impact indigenous people

Ignorant and hostile

People who are ignorant of their position
They don't pay attention to the fact that they are on Indigenous lands or know the history of colonization
Hostile people:
Intolerant people
Denial of Indgineous people

Racial purity

The logic of elimination and the specific racialization of Indigenous peoples
Romanticism and the idea of authentic Inidhenous person as something from the past or before contact
Lead to 'blood quantum' logic
Racial authentic indigeneity demarcated by phenotypes

Cultural purity

Authentic Indigenous cultures and the denial of coevalness:
Indigneous cultures do not belong in the same time and space as contemporary society
Adoptions of European elements are seen as steps on the path to assimilation
Romanticization of authenticity

Public representation

Romanticism and the denial of coevalness in public representation:
Hollywood
The romanticized and racialized view of Indigneous people and stereotypical representations in mainstream movies

Racism as a lived experience

Race and racism relevant to understand modes of interactions between individuals and groups
Allow us to see various prejudices that have supported policies of assimilation
Often still present today

Racism as dehumanization

Racism is relationship
Following negative attitudes some have toward the members of another racialized group
Racism is demeaning and hurtful
Reinforces the dominance of one group over another
Through the assertion of inferiority and the denial of equal humanity
Harms those subjected to it
Dehumanization removes from the circle of relationship and care

Myths and stereotypes

Stereotypes are self-confirming generalization (double standard)
When people act in accordance with the stereotypes they confirm it
When they act differently they are not perceived or are expectation
Behavior may also be interpreted based on stereotypes (bus)
'The invisible nations' (swap no but all rights)

Direct discrimination

Understanding how race and racism can affect interpersonal relationships
Quick demeaning judgements
Racial profiling: proactivaly criminilizing the behavious members of a racialized group
All recent exanokes that accumulate to support the claim that race and racism are relevant for understanding contemporary society

Systemic discrimination

imbedded within institutions (SYSTEM of discrimination)
combining of direct, indirect , and institutional discrimination
Hard for Indigenous people to access resources
Broader corn with: schools, the justice system, employment, etc

Stereotypes and representations

Unequal relationships of settler colonialism supported by race, myths and stereotypes
Visual imperialism: the visual representation of Indigenous peoples not under their control (ROMANTICISM )

Visual sovereignty

Affirming Indigenous peoplehood and sovereignty by deconstructing the stereotypes associated with settler colonialism and by taking back control over their visual representation
Challenging imperialism
Control over self-representations

The role of artists

Pursuing visual sovereignty through art and visual representations
Behaving unexpectedly
Public signs of continued and contemporary existence of Indigenous peoples as signs of resilience

of visual soverienty Examples

Nadya Kwandibens and Red Works

Resisting settler colonialism

Resisting and surmounting policies of assimilation '
Confronting the colonial Eurocentric worldview
Affirming Indigenous political difference and relationship to the land
Regaining visual sovereignty
Resistance to it will mean a reinforcement of aspects of Indigenous peoplehood (reinforcing lifeways)

Resilience

How can groups can stay true to themselves despite the circumstances
Improve positive social networks between groups

Resurgence, Revitalization and decolonization

Resurgence and revitalization refer to practices by which individuals and groups seek to reaffirm their identity, worldviews,ways of being, doing, and knowing
By recentering aspects of Infigenous peoplehood in the daily lives of members
Resurgence and revitalization as prefigurative practices
Daily acts of resurgence
Resurgence → Way of like, not a single action
Revitalization
Traditional diets and traditional agriculture
Walking
"A process of Indigenous regeneration includes collective community efforts to achieve the following four objectives:
The restoration of indigenous presence(s) on the land and the revitalization of land-based practice

The Claimed sovereignty of the state

Final and supreme authority
Exercised equally over the territory it claims
Denying the distinct political existence of Indigenous peoples:
Indigenous nations must derive their authority from the state

Indigenous political difference

Resisting sovereignty: Reject the claim that they are subjected to the final and supreme authority of the state
Not that of a cultural minority
Not that of a delegated authority
Not created by the state but independent from it
Typically affirms the need for 'nation to nation' relationships
Sui generis means of its own king or unique
Indigenous peoplehood based on Indigenous peoples' own stories, worldviews and relationship to the land
Indigoensous people as distinct peoples or nations with their own source of authority and distinct responsibilities and obligations

Reconciling Sovereignties

recognizes rights of first occupancy
Indigenous nations with sui generis political authority, typically in a close relationship with the state
Article 35 (recognizing and affirms Aboriginal rights)
Settler sovereignty and Indigenous sovereignty understood as coexisting only if Indigenous sovereignty is limited by spatial or temporal boundaries

The Third Space of Sovereignty

Resistance and mobilization are neither completely outside of the state nor inside the state
Examples:
Refusing uniform citizenship
Affirming contemporary rights to fishing and hunting and to preserve the resources

Indigenous sovereignty

Sovereignty is a Western concept (supreme absolute power)
Thinking about Indigneous sovereignty by 'talking Indigenous traditions seriously' (beyond Western system of thoughts of sovereignty)
Stark → Anishinaabe def is to act in a way that recognizes those who I am responsible for (tribal sovereignty white recognizing accountability

Indigenous sovereignty: How is a gender lens essential to decolonization and how to take more account of Indigenous feminism?

A need to pay greater attention to the ways in which settler colonialism is enacted on the ground in different ways for different people
Violence against the land is violence against women
Dispossession of Indigenous people and access to Indigenosu peoples' land are processes that make indigenosu women vulnerable to various forms of violence

Diverse Indigenous traditions gender

Social organization where women occupy a central position
Non-hierarchical gender differentiated role
Fluid gender system:
Sexual mores that should be assumed to be the same as those of the Eu