Alternatives: Theorizing colonialism and Indigenous liberation: contemporary Indigenous scholarship from lands claimed by Canada

Abstract

This essay makes the case for historical materialist scholars in universities across lands claimed by Canada to have serious engagement with Indigenous scholarship. Diverse Indigenous scholars theorize material dispossession by the Canadian state, by capital, and by non-Indigenous peoples; deconstruct dehumanizing ideologies in popular Canadian media and academic writing; and describe and analyze Indigenous resilience (survival), resistance (decolonization), and resurgence (existential self-determination). The conclusions suggest potential new collaborations across historical materialist and Indigenous scholarship in the Canadian academy.

Keywords:

• Canada
• colonialism
• dispossession
• historical materialism
• indigenous scholarship

Notes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Gavin Fridell, SPE editor, for encouragement in the (long) process of writing this essay, and Mara Fridell for a detailed, critical review that led to some important revisions that make this version stronger (I hope). Finally, thank you to Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez for her review supporting the essay’s publication.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes on contributor

Elaine Coburn teaches in the International Studies program at Glendon Campus, York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is the former editor of the Socialist Studies journal and the editor of More Will Sing their Way to Freedom: Indigenous Resistance and Resurgence (Fernwood Press, 2015).

Notes

1 Coulthard, Red Skins, White Masks, 8.

2 The point in writing the Indigenous political membership of Indigenous scholars—here, the fact that Glen Coulthard is Dene—is neither to reposition them as ethnographic objects nor to imagine that this exhausts their social location. Rather, as Kovach observes, this is about refusing “pan-Indigenous” universals, while insisting on the ongoing existence of diverse Indigenous peoples across lands claimed by Canada. See Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies, prologue and 56.

3 For one of many responses by Indigenous scholars to Widdowson and Howard, see Simpson, Review of Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry. As Simpson observes, however, it is difficult to take the book seriously as a work of scholarship or of Marxism.

4 See, for instance, Bannerji’s Inventing Subjects, which uses a Marxist feminist approach to understand “hegemony, patriarchy and colonialism” in the social construction of “India.” My point is not that Bannerji should have explored colonialism across Canada. Rather, it is to observe, descriptively, that there is nothing automatic about historical materialist writing explicitly concerned with colonialism leading to intellectual engagement with scholarship about colonialism by Indigenous scholars on lands claimed by Canada.

5 See, for instance, Whiteside’s “Crisis of Capitalism,” which writes about “Dispossession in Canada” without a single explicit reference to the dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ lands. In fact, Whiteside suggests that dispossession policies have been important “for the last thirty years” (page 63), which would come as a surprise to Indigenous peoples who would argue that processes of dispossession by accumulation stretch back more than 500 years to the colonial invasion. My point is not that Whiteside is exceptional; rather, this is typical of much historical materialist theorizing, including theorizing explicitly about Canada.

6 Coburn, “New Canadian Political Economy.”

7 LaRocque, “Preface: Here are our Voices,” xviii. Of course, there could be other factors, too.

8 Battiste, “Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogy,” 2.

9 Dei, Critical Perspectives on Indigenous Research, is one example of “Third World” Indigenous theorizing from the Canadian university.

10 See, for instance, Eigenbrod, Travelling Knowledges; Morgensen, Spaces Between Us, and Tully, “A Just Relationship.”

11 Battiste, “Indigenous Knowledge and Pedagogy,” 2.

12 LaRocque, When the Other Is Me, 32.

13 Green, Indigenous Feminism, 18.

14 On the “relational work” that situating the researcher does from Indigenous perspectives, see Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies, especially the prologue.

15 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, especially chapter three. Importantly, Smith does not argue that non-Indigenous scholars should not engage with Indigenous research, but she is wary, given the weight of the historical record, of the colonizing tendencies of much non-Indigenous research.

16 Kuokkanen, “What is Hospitality in the Academy?”

17 In my experience, one striking aspect of reviewing papers about Indigenous struggles for scholarly journals is how often they ignore Indigenous scholarship—Indigenous experiences are interpreted through non-Indigenous theoretical perspectives and conceptual apparatus. Indigenous theorizing and concepts interpreting their own experiences and the world are made invisible, so that Indigenous actors appear as witnesses rather than as theorists.

18 In an evocative, helpful phrase, Indigenous scholar Marlene Brandt-Castellano suggests that meaningful critical engagement requires that “non-Indigenous people…suspend disbelief” in long-discredited Indigenous knowledges. See Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies, 156.

19 Maori scholar Brendan Hokowhitu recounts the experience of speaking before mostly White audience members who, he felt, were “ready to unflinchingly swallow any garbage the Native from New Zealand was ready to tell them.” The point is not naïve acceptance, but critical engagement with an open mind. See Andersen and Hokowhitu, “Whiteness,” 43.

20 Alfred, “Colonialism and State Dependency,” 44.

21 Alfred, “Colonialism and State Dependency,” 44.

22 Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, 170 − 173. Coulthard refers to himself as a Dene Communist on his twitter account.

23 Altamirano-Jiménez, Indigenous Encounters with Neoliberalism, 2.

24 Stewart-Harawira, “Challenging Knowledge Capitalism.”

25 Atleo Jr., “From Indigenous Nationhood to Aboriginal Neoliberalism.”

26 Green, “Decolonization and Recolonization,” 52; see full quote below.

27 Hunt and Holmes, “Everyday Decolonization.” 54.

28 Hunt and Holmes, “Everyday Decolonization.” 55.

29 Altamirano-Jiménez, Indigenous Encounters with Neoliberalism, 28.

30 Altamirano-Jimenez, Indigenous Encounters with Neoliberalism, 25.

31 Blackstock et al., Reconciliation in Child Welfare, 6.

32 Simpson, “On Ethnographic Refusal,” 67.

33 LaRocque, When the Other Is Me, 3.

34 Green, “Decolonization and Recolonization,” 52.

35 See, for instance, Green, “Decolonization and Recolonization”; Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks; and LaRoque, When the Other Is Me. LaRocque, like the others, emphasizes that loss of land is not only material, but at the same time “emotional and spiritual,” 88.

36 See Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks, for a deconstruction of “recognition” politics. Coulthard unmasks the formally unequal political relationship between colonial and Indigenous peoples behind such supposedly progressive rhetoric. See King, “The Problem with Indigenous Peoples” for a critique of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which unequivocally affirms Indigenous rights to self-determination, but, ironically, does so through the United Nations, an institutional body made of up colonial states.

37 On the murderous residential school system, see the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. On the “Sixties scoop,” when Indigenous children were massively placed “in care” outside of their own families and communities, as well as critiques of ongoing “child welfare” policies that assimilate Indigenous children into (White) non-Indigenous families and society, see, for instance, Sinclair “Identity Lost and Found.” For a useful literature review and bibliography on Indigenous child welfare, see Bennett, Blackstock, and De la Ronde, “A Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography.” For statistics on Indigenous youth in care, see Statistics Canada, “Aboriginal Peoples in Canada,” 5.

38 See, for instance, Native Women’s Association of Canada, “Gendering First Nations Education Reform,” 22 − 32, and Battiste, “Enabling the Autumn Seed.”

39 See, for instance, Wilson, “N'tacinowin inna nah,’” and Justice, “Notes Towards a Theory of an Anomaly,” concerned with the suppression of two spirit and queer Indigenous presence respectively, but also exploring the libratory possibilities of two spirit and queer Indigenous persons. On gender inequalities, see, for instance, Green’s edited book, Making Space for Indigenous Feminisms.

40 See, for instance, the Native Women’s Association of Canada, What their Stories Tell Us.

41 See, for instance, Durst and Coburn, “Who Will Listen?” and Demas, “Triple Jeopardy.” The latter is one of the very few scholarly articles written by an Indigenous person with a disability.

42 See, for instance, the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Aboriginal Women and the Legal Justice System in Canada and Perrault, The Incarceration of Aboriginal People for a statistical overview of the massive incarceration of Indigenous peoples, and Walsh and Aarrestad, Incarceration and Aboriginal Women in Canada.

43 See LaRocque, When the Other Is Me, but also, for instance, Adese, “Behaving Unexpectedly in Expected Places,” a text that explores how Indigenous artists challenge the idea that the contemporary Indigenous person is “out of place,” especially when off-reserve.

44 Although not written by an Indigenous person from a university in Canada, Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies is a critical text that lays bare how scholarly knowledge and universities have “named and claimed” Indigenous lands, knowledges, languages, and even body parts for the colonizer. For two recent insightful books, concerning qualitative and quantitative methods respectively, that shed light on the ways that “normal” scholarly institutional processes and social science methodologies marginalize and pathologize Indigenous peoples, see Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies, and Walter and Andersen, Indigenous Statistics. These books likewise develop diverse Indigenous methodologies that shed new light on Indigenous social realities.

45 I borrow the term abduction, which seems to me a factually accurate description, from Fournier and Crey’s, Stolen from Our Embrace.

46 LaRocque, When the Other Is Me.

47 Adese, “Behaving Unexpectedly in Expected Places,” 131.

48 LaRocque, “Preface: Here Are Our Voices,” xx.

49 LaRocque, “Preface: Here Are Our Voices,” xx.

50 LaRocque, “Teaching Aboriginal Literature,” 211.

51 Wilson, “N'tacinowin inna nah’,” 193.

52 Wilson, “N'tacinowin inna nah’,” 194–5.

53 Towle and Morgan, “Romancing the Transgender Native.”

54 Wilson, “N'tacinowin inna nah’,” 193.

55 Walters and Andersen, Indigenous Statistics.

56 Coulthard, Red Skins, White Masks, 105–9.

57 Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, “Media Release,” August 12, 2016.

58 The Guardian, “Racial Tensions Flare in Saskatchewan.”

59 Hunt and Holmes, “Everyday Decolonization,” 54.

60 Walsh and Aarrestad, “Incarceration and Aboriginal Women in Canada,” 70.

61 Walsh and Aarrestad, “Incarceration and Aboriginal Women in Canada,” 83–4.

62 Some recent books that consider Indigenous resistance, in a range of domains, include Alfred’s Wasáse; Coburn’s More Will Sing Their Way to Freedom; Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks; Episkenew’s Taking Back our Spirits; Green’s Making Space for Indigenous Feminisms; Hokowhitu et al’s Indigenous Identity and Resurgence; LaRocque’s When the Other is Me; Peters and Andersen’s Indigenous in the City; and Simpson’s Mohawk Interruptus, as an indicative but far from exhaustive sample.

63 The Kino-nda-niimi Collective, The Winter We Danced.

64 For an expanded consideration of Indigenous resurgence, see Alfred, Wasáse. For a shorter but useful treatment, see Corntassel, “Re-envisioning Resurgence.”

65 Peters and Lafond, “I Basically Mostly Stick with My Own Kind.”

66 LaRocque, When the Other Is Me, 11 − 16.

67 LaRocque, “Métis and Feminist,” 53.

68 Hokowhitu borrows the Nietzschean formulation of “beyond good and evil” several times, including in “Producing Indigeneity,” 368. For two useful formulations of his Indigenous existential project, see “A Genealogy of Indigenous Resistance,” and especially “Indigenous Existentialism.”

69 LaRocque, When the Other Is Me, 13.

70 See Andersen’s Métis; Innes and Andersen’s Indigenous Men and Masculinities; Atleo’s Tsawalk and Principles of Tsawalk; Green’s Making Space for Indigenous Feminisms; and Heath Justice’s “Notes towards a Theory of Anomaly.”

71 Kovach, “Treaties, Truths,” 118.

72 Kovach et al., 53, 68–9.

73 Sears, “Queer Anti-Capitalism.”

74 Kovach et al., chapter 8, quotes from 67–8.

75 Of course, there are risks that “indigenizing” the academy will result in the dilution, co-optation, and misappropriation of Indigenous demands, voices, and scholarship. See Heath Justice’s wonderfully titled “We’re Not There Yet, Kemosabe,” about the perils and potential for “indigenizing” the academy. Heath Justice is concerned with the curriculum in literary studies in the American university context, but his insights have broader application for transforming a university that remains “largely white, largely male, largely straight and largely dominated by Euro-American American ideals of individualism, capitalism, and conformity,” 256.