Indigenous Métissage: a decolonizing research sensibility

Abstract

This paper is a report on the theoretical origins of a decolonizing research sensibility called Indigenous Métissage. This research praxis emerged parallel to personal and ongoing inquiries into historic and current relations connecting Aboriginal peoples and Canadians in the place now called Canada. I frame the colonial frontier origins of these relations – and the logics that tend to inform them – as conceptual problems that require rethinking on more ethically relational terms. Although a postcolonial cultural theory called métissage offers helpful insights towards this challenge, I argue that the postcolonial emphasis on hybridity fails to acknowledge Indigenous subjectivity in ethical ways. Instead, I present an indigenized form of métissage focused on rereading and reframing Aboriginal and Canadian relations and informed by Indigenous notions of place. Doing Indigenous Métissage requires hermeneutic imagination directed towards the telling of a story that belies colonial frontier logics and fosters decolonizing.

Keywords:

• métissage
• colonial frontier logics
• ethical relationality
• braiding
• Indigenous
• decolonizing

Notes

1. This description was shared by Kainai Elder Andy Blackwater and is cited in Blood and Chambers (2009, 274).

2. Colonial frontier logics are those epistemological assumptions and presuppositions, derived from the colonial project of dividing the world according to racial and cultural categorizations (Willinsky 1998), which serve to naturalize assumed divides and thus contribute to their social and institutional perpetuation. Schools and curricula are predicated on these logics, and both have served to enforce epistemological and social conformity to Euro‐Western standards established and presumably held in common by their proponents.

3. The use of the term ‘emergence’ here is a purposeful reference to the research insights shared by Marlene Atleo (2008). Indigenous Métissage emerged as a research sensibility as the inquiry process continued on. Her title ‘Watching to see until it becomes clear to you’ resonates well with the Blackfoot concept of aokakio’ssin. aokakio’ssin is a pedagogic call to pay attention to what is going on around us, interpret these insights in relational ways, and attempt to bring the understandings gained from the interpretive process to expression through language and ceremony – to share them with others.

4. This reserve was located on land that is now a large section of south Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. For more on this history, see Donald (2004).

5. The Kainai people are members of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Their community, commonly referred to as the Blood Reserve, is located in southwestern Alberta. I taught at Kainai High School on the Blood Reserve for 10 years.

6. Transmodernity, as described by Dussel (1993), is a project of liberation founded on the principle of ‘incorporative solidarity’, which refers to the process through which established oppositional categorizations such as primitive/civilized, colonizer/colonized, center/periphery, settler/Indigenous, Aboriginal/Canadian, and insider/outsider are recognized as intimately and mutually co‐dependent, yet also ambiguous and contradictory, dualities that can be held in incommensurable and irresolvable tension (1993, 76).

7. Davis (2004) points out that the term ‘environment’ (derived from French en, to place inside, + viron, circle) describes the separation and enclosure of natural settings from each other and the organisms that inhabit them, not the relationships and interconnections they have (2004, 103). This tendency to conflate ecology with environmentalism likely stems with the extensive anthropocentric training we have received in schools to separate and differentiate ourselves as human beings from the natural systems that we depend upon for our survival and prosperity. Colonial frontier logics are a particularly virulent human form of this separation and differentiation that presents such divides as natural and necessary.

8. Note that métissage is consistently translated into English as cultural creolisation.

9. In Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith provides the following explanation of rereading:

The genealogy of colonialism is being mapped and used as a way to locate a different sort of origin story, the origins of imperial policies and practices, the origins of imperial visions, the origins of ideas and values. These origin stories are deconstructed accounts of the West, its history through the eyes of indigenous and colonized peoples. (1999, 149)

She has this to say about reframing:

Reframing is about taking control over the ways in which indigenous issues are discussed and handled … The framing of an issue is about making decisions about its parameters, about what is in the foreground, what is in the background, and what shadings or complexities exist within the frame. The project of reframing is related to defining the problem or issue and determining how best to solve that problem. (1999, 153)

10. Since I am advocating here for careful attentiveness to the particularities of colonial experience, it would be helpful to distinguish between invaded colonies and settler colonies (Weaver 2000, 223). Invaded colonies are those places in the world (such as those in Africa and Asia) which were occupied and controlled by a small elite group of colonizers for a long time. In this case, the colonizers eventually relinquished political control of the colony and most returned to their country of origin. Settler colonies are places, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where the Indigenous populations were displaced by settlers, who after many generations still remain in control of the colonized country. Settler colonies are considered examples of internal colonialism because the colonial condition of Indigenous peoples within these states remains largely unchanged. For more on this, consult Tully (2000a, 2000b).

11. This statement will be supported more fully in the paragraphs that follow. The main contention here is that ‘post’ theories – postcolonialism in this example – generally conceptualize hybridity as a liberatory cultural crossover event worthy of celebration. What are typically considered celebratory are the ways in which hybrid notions of culture subvert and bypass pre‐existing schemata for organizing people and ideas. Ironically, though, postcolonial hybridity can lead to an assimilation of tradition to suit an already determined purpose that arises regardless of the specific context under scrutiny. It is worthwhile to quote Smethurst at length on this point:

Today’s multicultural and post‐colonial societies are an integral part of postmodernity … In this context, traditional definitions of ‘authentic’ and ‘organic’ place rising out of tradition, lived experience and history, clearly will not do … Postmodern globalization will inevitably lead to a condition of placelessness where society loses that sense of belonging customarily found in traditional constructions of place. (2000, 222)

12. Indigenous wisdom traditions are those particular philosophies and practices unique to Indigenous peoples that result from their long‐term habitation of certain places in the world. This long‐term habitation has supported and perpetuated deeply rooted spiritual and metaphysical relationships with the land (and other entities) that thoroughly inform and infuse the specific cultural practices and linguistic conventions of the people. Indigenous communities are considered unique, in relation to other distinct communities, because these venerable connections to land and place have been maintained and continue to find expression in communities today. In this sense, then, Indigenous peoples, as descendants of the original inhabitants, are seen as the holders and practitioners of a sui generis sovereignty in their traditional lands that typically finds expression as wisdom tradition.

13. Certainly, the Canadian context has many strong similarities with other settler societies around the world, especially in terms of the conventions and institutions governing the ways in which people interact. However, this paper is not interested in such comparisons.

14. Pentimento: the phenomenon of earlier painting showing through the layer or layers of paint on a canvas (Canadian Oxford Dictionary).

15. ‘Historicism – and even the modern, European idea of history – one might say, came to non‐European peoples in the nineteenth century as somebody’s way of saying “not yet” to somebody else’ (Chakrabarty 2000, 8).

16. Although Indigenous Métissage has a different focus and purpose from that of my métissage mentors and friends, I wish to maintain affiliations with the aesthetic qualities of the research praxis.

17. The concept of the hermeneutic circle that informs Indigenous Métissage has also been heavily influenced by Kainai Elders. Bernard Tall Man once gave me the following advice:

Okki, amoyi ahkootsiitapiiyoop. We’ll use the circle. Here we’ll visualize. We’ll visualize what I’m gonna be doing in the future. I’m gonna think about how I’m gonna go about it. Then there’s gonna be movement. Then we’ll see it. That’s initiative. Sapataniip ni kiitsipoowasin iis sapahtaaniip. We didn’t just talk about it. We’re being initiative. I learned it from the elder. That’s why I use the circle. (Donald 2003, 140)

18. ‘An Indigenous standpoint … has to be produced. It is not a simple reflection of experience and it does not pre‐exist in the everyday waiting to be brought to light. It is not any sort of hidden wisdom that Indigenous people possess. It is a distinct form of analysis, and is itself both a discursive construction and an intellectual device to persuade others and elevate what might not have been a focus of attention of others. It is not deterministic of any truth but it lays open a basis from which to launch a range of possible arguments for a range of possible purposes’ (Nakata 2007, 214).

19. This statement is informed by Chambers (1998), who theorizes a topographical orientation for Canadian curriculum theory based on the question, ‘Where is here?’ It has also been influenced by Plains Cree and Blackfoot Elders and notions of place‐based citizenship.