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Abstract
This article contributes to understanding multi-plexed Indigenous resistance through examining spatial tags. As symbolic, moving critiques, spatial tagging intervenes normative structures of settler colonialism and provides the space through which radical decolonial love can emerge. This discussion of the production of spatial glyphs has implications for new ways of thinking about the processes of solidarity building, social activism and the generation of new pedagogical practices of resistance. An analysis of Christi Belcourt's walking with our sisters commemorative art installation (2013–2019) and the urban flash mob round dance at the intersection of Yonge and Dundas streets in downtown Toronto, reveals how spatial tagging formulates Indigenous acts of creative solidarity. This article contributes to an analysis of Indigenous resistance strategies through focusing on the interstitial passageways as generative sites of knowledge production and possibilities for new ways of being in the world.
Notes
1. Founded in December 2012, Idle No More has been a sustained, coordinated, strategic national-now global movement originally led by Sheelah McLean, Jessica Gordon, and Slyvia McAdam in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Idle No More began as a voice to oppose Bill C-45, omnibus legislation, which would significantly impact water and land rights under the Canadian Indian Act.
2. The hash tag formulates an Indigenized digital spatial glyph, and informs a significant mobilizing force within contemporary Indigenous solidarity movements. Within the Idle No More movement, the hashtag has been an integral component of what has been described as a #RoundDanceRevolution. According to spoken word artist, performer, and radio producer Jamaias DaCosta, “Social media networks, prove that Indigenous resistance and resurgence is alive and well, and continues to flourish and express itself in dynamic ways, most of which can be followed via a hashtag revolution” (#HASHTAG #REVOLUTION, Muskrat Magazine, March 14, 2014).
3. The Kanien'kehaka resistance involving a 78-day armed standoff between the Mohawk nation of Kanesatake Quebec, the Quebec provincial police (SQ) and the Canadian armed forces near the town of Oka, Quebec. This standoff, informing the shape and form of Indigenous resistance, was an effort to defend Indigenous sacred lands from resource development on land that the Mohawk nation had been struggling to have recognized for almost 300 years. The land, known as the pines, was slated for the expansion of a golf course. This act was part of a decade of Indigenous resistance leading to the federally sanctioned Royal Commission on Aboriginal People (RCAP), which produced 440 recommendations calling for a renewed relationship based on the core principles of “mutual recognition, mutual respect, sharing and mutual responsibility.” RCAP was the most expensive public inquiry in the nation's history intended to pacify the decade of Indigenous protest. For brief descriptions of these Indigenous acts of resistance, and a how they fit within a contextual history of IdleNoMore please see Glen Coulthard's (Citation2012) #IdleNoMore in Historical Context (http://decolonization.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/idlenomore-in-historical-context/).
4. I would like to extend this conversation through future research to include the context of visual tagging through graffiti and mural creation on urban street spaces as part of this larger decolonization project of spatially tagging Indigenous resistance.
5. A 2014 R.C.M.P (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) report on missing and murdered Aboriginal women in Canada reported that 1,181 Indigenous women and girls have gone missing over the past 30 years.
6. Participants of urban flash mob round dances represent a variety of perspectives and interests that may include those embracing an Indigenous feminist, and/or environmental justice, reproductive justice ethic, non-governmental organizations and those who oppose legislation threatening resources and livelihoods, as well as community allies and people of color advocating for social justice for Indigenous peoples.
7. Previous to the 1793 British occupation at York (which was to become the city of Toronto in 1847), for instance, the Mississauga (Anishinaabek/ Ojibway) of the New Credit River, and the Wendat Haudenosaunee nations had territorial jurisdiction within the area. The Toronto Purchase expropriated approximately 250,880 acres of land from the Mississauga's in 1805.
8. Herein, I utilize the term white settler in its function as it “evokes a nexus of racial and colonial power” (Morgenson, 2014; see also Razack, Citation2002).
9. We need a careful consideration of the historical context of colonization and the tensions in settler –Indigenous relations that contribute to practices of state-sanctioned racialized and gendered violences. Additionally, please see Hunt and Kaye's (Citation2014, Sept. 24) discussion of the misunderstood stigmatisms towards sex work that are cast in the broad category of trafficking.
10. Description provided by Cree storyteller, musician, language speaker Joseph Naytowhow (Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Saskatchewan).
11. Translation provided by Cree musician, language speaker Jason Chamakese (Chitek Lake First Nation, Saskatchewan) in conversation with a knowledge holder from Ocean Man First Nation, Saskatchewan.
12. Coulthard (Citation2012) strategically claims, “if history has shown us anything, it is this: if you want those in power to respond swiftly to Indigenous peoples' political efforts, start by placing Native bodies (with a few logs and tires thrown in for good measure) between settlers and their money, which in colonial contexts is generated by the ongoing theft and exploitation of our land and resource base. If this is true, then the long term efficacy of the #IdleNoMore movement would appear to hinge on its protest actions being distributed more evenly between the malls and front lawns of legislatures on the one hand, and the logging roads, thoroughfares, and railways that control to the accumulation of colonial capitol on the other.”
13. Anzaldúa (Citation1987/2012) conceptualization of the borderlands is quite meaningful to this exploration of the temporality of the space between the break beats.
14. A focus on similarities rather than difference could stifle an otherwise emergent critique of the conditions of oppression. Is it possible that some of these problematic positionings of Indigeneity get reaffirmed as settler peoples bask in the glow- and peer through the hand drums to connect with other settlers-holding hands in circuitous motions, as if, in solidarity.
15. In preparation for the Yonge & Dundas urban flash mob round dance Anishinaabe artist, activist, and curator Wanda Nanabush, and Cree/Métis coordinator for Idle No More Toronto Charm Logan sought permission to host round dances within Idle No More demonstrations. In consultation, Cree elders supported the dance as a public performance, given that it was not intended to be ceremonial. Outside of it's ceremonial context, this urban flash mob round dance was understood as a public performance of political unity, maintaining its meanings of unity and mourning towards missing and murdered Indigenous women (W. Nanabush & C. Logan, personal communication, 2014).
16. New spatial geographies created out of radical decolonial love are also expressed through the aural/visual/narrative glyph manifest in Leanne Simpson's Islands of decolonial love (Citation2013).
17. The Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) is an organization by and for Indigenous youth that works across issues of sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice throughout Canada and the United States.
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Notes on contributors
Karyn Recollet
Karyn Recollet is an assistant professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto. Recollet's research explores Indigenous performance, youth studies, Indigenous hip hop feminism and gender studies.