#Linda Tuhiwai Smith

[protoslacker]

Colonialism hasn’t destroyed us entirely, but we’ve got to find our Indigenous knowledges, our Indigenous cultures. That is what ultimately reimagines our humanity, rather than the project of dismantling colonialism. Actually, I did a lecture about this in London in 2019. I was talking to all these English people and I asked, if you dismantle colonialism in the English university, what will be left? What will actually be left of the university? And everyone looked at me surprised, and I said that I’m asking a serious question: If you dismantle colonialism, will you have anything left? Your world is built entirely on it. But if you ask us, if you dismantle colonialism, what will be left or what will replace it, we know exactly! Indigenous people have this culture, have this knowledge, and have ways of doing things. And it is the same around the world: there are other ways of imagining ourselves. And that is really important when we think about the contribution that Indigenous people and indigeneity can bring.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith in conversation with Bhakti Shringarpure in The Los Angeles Review of Books. Decolonizing Education: A Conversation with Linda Tuhiwai Smith

There are lots of videos of Linda Tuhiwai Smith online. She's quite engaging to listen to. This interview captures that quality. She is a rangatira.

[finalgirlfall]

There was a consciousness expressed in some [travel] accounts of the 'need' to record what was seen in the interests of expanding knowledge and of the need to write things down before too many changes occurred to the peoples being observed.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, "Chapter 4: Research Adventures on Indigenous Lands," in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2021), 92.

[wurenjieting]

Research ‘through imperial eyes’ describes an approach which assumes that Western ideas about the most fundamental things are the only ideas possible to hold, certainly the only rational ideas, and the only ideas which can make sense of the world, of reality, of social life and of human beings. It is an approach to Indigenous peoples which still conveys a sense of innate superiority and an overabundance of desire to bring progress into the lives of Indigenous peoples – spiritually, intellectually, socially and economically. It is research which from Indigenous perspectives ‘steals’ knowledge from others and then uses it to benefit the people who ‘stole’ it. Some Indigenous and minority group researchers would call this approach simply racist. It is research which is imbued with an ‘attitude’ and a ‘spirit’ which assumes a certain ownership of the entire world, and which has established systems and forms of governance which embed that attitude in institutional practices. These practices determine what counts as legitimate research and who count as legitimate researchers. Before assuming that such an attitude has long since disappeared, it is often worth reflecting on who would make such a claim, researchers or Indigenous peoples? A recent attempt (fortunately unsuccessful) to patent an Indigenous person in the New Guinea Highlands might suggest that there are many groups of Indigenous peoples who are still without protection when it comes to the activities of research. Although in this particular case the attempt was unsuccessful, what it demonstrated yet again is that there are people out there who in the name of science and progress still consider Indigenous peoples as specimens, not as humans.

—— Linda Tuhiwai Smith, "Research through Imperial Eyes", Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

[librarycards]

Hello! Your posts are very enlightening and I'm inspired by how much you read. Might be a weird question and I'm sorry if it is but do you have any good book recommendations for a USAmerican trying to expand their worldview? I.e., histories of other countries/global regions, imperialism, etc.

i have some, but also recommend looking through @metamatar / @fatehbaz / @lafemmemacabre / @killy / @sawasawako / @handweavers (these are the mutuals that stand out to me but just the tip of the iceberg) &other blogs that have a more robust collection of resources –– i have learned a lot from them over the years!

that said, here are some books and authors whose oeuvres/at least multiple books i strongly recommend. different genres, and i'm not delineating between them as i am ideologically opposed to Doing That/creating epistemic hierarchies. obviously, that is particularly true given the nature of this ask. but it should be pretty clear what is considered a standard 'political/historical nonfiction' book and what...isn't!

authors:

Lisa Lowe

Jasbir Puar

Laila Lalami

Sara Ahmed

Trinh T. Minh-ha

Jamaica Kincaid

b. binaohan

Larissa Lai

Edwidge Danticat

Harsha Walia

Bhanu Kapil

books:

Atef Abu Saif, The Drone Eats With Me: A Gaza Diary

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions

Pankaj Mishra, Bland Fanatics: Liberals, the West, and the Afterlives of Empire

Leila Khaled, My People Shall Live

Susan Williams, White Malice: The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa

Minae Mizumura, The Fall of Language in the Age of English

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Not a Nation of Immigrants

Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother

Mimi Sheller, Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes

Marwa Helal, Ante Body

Aviva Chomsky, Central America's Forgotten History (NB: forgotten by usamericans, that is)

Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape

Moraga, Anzaldúa, and Bambara, eds., This Bridge Called My Back

Poupeh Missaghi, trans(re)lating house one

Marisol de la Cadena, Earth Beings

Kathryn Joyce, The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption

Bonaventure Soh Beje Ndikung, Pidginization as Curatorial Method: Messing with Languages and Praxes of Curating

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

again, this appears as a long list, but is truly just a taste of what's out there. i hope it helps!

[carbon-cyanide]

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

I spent the day catching up with family, spending time with my dogs, and reading some foundational texts in Indigenous studies. Here is a short list of some wonderful Indigenous scholars & activists to read on this & every day!

• Trask, Haunani-Kay. From a Native Daughter : Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi. Rev. ed., University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824847029.

• Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. First edition., Milkweed Editions, 2013.

• Osorio, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani. Remembering Our Intimacies : Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻāina, and Ea. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021.

• Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies : Research and Indigenous Peoples. Second edition, Zed Books, 2012.

• Walter, Maggie, et al., editors. Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Policy. Routledge, 2021, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429273957.

• Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization : Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1–40.

• Whyte, Kyle. “Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene.” English Language Notes, vol. 55, no. 1–2, 2017, pp. 153–62, https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-55.1-2.153.

• TallBear, Kimberly. Native American DNA : Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

[words-and-coffee]

link to the first poll

[thedigital-witnesses]

Examples of decolonial research methodologies - Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s 25 Indigenous projects:

Claiming

“They teach both the non-indigenous audience and the new generations of Indigenous peoples an official account of their collective story” (p. 144)

Testimonies

“Indigenous testimonies are a way of talking about an extremely painful event or series of events” (p. 144)

Storytelling

“These new stories contribute to a collective story in which every Indigenous person has a place” (p. 144)

Celebrating Survival

“Celebrating survival accentuates not so much our demise but the degree to which Indigenous peoples and communities have successfully retained cultural and spiritual values and authenticity” (p. 145)

Remembering

“Both healing and transformation become crucial strategies in any approach which asks a community to remember what they may have decided unconsciously or consciously to forget” (p. 146)

Indigenizing

“The term centres a politics of Indigenous identity and indigenous cultural action” (p. 146)

Intervening

“Intervening takes action research to mean literally the process of being proactive and of becoming involved as an interested working for change” (p. 147)

Revitalizing

“Indigenous languages, their arts and their cultural practices are in various states of crisis” (p. 147)

Connecting

“Connecting is related to issues of identity and place, to spiritual relationships and community well-being” (p. 149)

Reading

“Critical rereading of Western History and the Indigenous presence in the making of that history has taken on a different impetus from what was once a school curriculum designed to assimilate Indigenous children” (p. 149)

Writing

“Biographies and autobiographies including those which are accounts ‘told to a non-Indigenous person’, are sought after by a new reading audience of Indigenous people” (p. 150)

Representing

“Indigenous communities have struggled since colonization to be able to exercise what is viewed as a fundamental right, that is to represent ourselves” (p. 150)

Gendering

“Gendering Indigenous debates…is concerned with issues related to the relations between Indigenous men and women” (p. 151)

Envisioning

“The confidence of knowing that we have survived and can only go forward provides some impetus to a process of envisioning” (p. 152)

Reframing

“Reframing is about taking much greater control over the ways in which Indigenous issues and social problems are discussed and handled” (p. 153)

Restoring

“Indigenous peoples across the world have disproportionately high rates of imprisonment, suicide and alcoholism” (p. 155)

Returning

“This project intersects with that of claiming. It involves the returning of lands, rivers, and mountains to their Indigenous owners” (p. 155).

Democratizing

“Democratizing in Indigenous terms is a process of extending participation outwards through reinstating principles of collectivity and public debates” (p. 156)

Networking

“Networking a process which Indigenous peoples have used effectively to build relationships and disseminate knowledge and information” (p. 157)

Naming

“This means renaming the world using the original Indigenous names” (p. 157)

Protecting

“This project is…concerned with protecting peoples, communities, languages, customs and beliefs, art ideas, natural resources and the things Indigenous peoples produce” (p. 158)

Creating

“The project of creating is about transcending the basic survival mode through using a resource or capability which every Indigenous community has retained throughout colonization – the ability to create and be creative” (p. 158)

Negotiating

“Negotiating is about thinking and acting strategically…the continued faith in the process of negotiating is about retaining a faith in the humanity of Indigenous beliefs, values and customary practices” (p. 160)

Discovering

“This project is about discovering Western science and technology and making science work for Indigenous development” (p. 160)

Sharing

“The final project discussed here is about sharing knowledge between Indigenous peoples, around networks and across the world of Indigenous peoples” (p. 160).

[lohkeminie]

Musings on Saami Poetry - Part Two

This essay was originally written by Johan Sandberg McGuinne and Anne Wuolab and published by Versopolis Review in March 2023. The original can be accessed here: Musings on Saami Poetry Part Two

TO TRANSLATE ONESELF IS AN ACT OF SURVIVAL

I.

You ought to survive, or you will die.

II.

Johka. Gáicarássi lieđđu. Ii mihkkege danne leat summal geavvan.

III.

How does a language heal?

IV.

The heteroglossia of contemporary Saami poetry is both a defining characteristic of a literature that defies preconceived, Western notions of what poetry is and should be in order to be valid, and a decolonial response to decades of fierce assimilation politics aimed at stripping the Saami of their languages.

In this essay, we posit that Saami writers, whether they want to or not, are forced constantly to consider what it means to be or not to be writing in an endangered indigenous language, and that this choice, in turn, has been implicitly linked to Western ideas of authenticity from the outset. In addition, Saami poets are constantly being told that their art is intrinsically political, and thus primarily gestural, but, to quote the Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, ‘problematizing the indigenous is a Western obsession’.

Since the early 1900s, Saami writers have repeatedly argued against stereotypical depictions of our people and, in a certain sense, of our autonomy which acknowledges our own worldview and languages. This is true both of poets and others. In 1920, the Ume Saami agitator Karin Stenberg stated that we, as Saami, ‘do not want to be seen as guinea pigs,’ echoing Elsa Laula, who sixteen years earlier pointed out that the Swedish state had gone so far as to deny the Saami ‘our right to exist.’

Despite a literary void in the wake of the 1920s, due to decades of fierce assimilation politics throughout S��pmi, these arguments found a new audience at the beginning of the 1970s, in particular through the newly founded ČSV movement which argued for Saami self-determination, clearly inspired by the Civil Rights Movement in the USA. ČSV started both as a political and as a literary movement that sought to revitalise not only our languages but our culture as well, ‘functioning as a process of awakening and of the formation of a common [Saami] identity.’

In 1972, one of the movement’s founders, Anders Guttormsen, said of ČSV, that the letters ‘mean nothing on their own […] they do not translate as ‘life’ in Saami, but they can give life to so many things if they’re being interpreted correctly.’

Čájet Sámi Vuoiŋŋa.

Show Saami Spirit.

Is it possible to show Saami spirit through the medium of a colonial language?

Čohkke Sámiid Vuitui.

Gather the Saami and lead them to victory.

Is this theorised victory problematic to a Western mindset because it gives the subaltern agency where the majority previously has afforded it none?

V.

Saami literature is far too often dismissed as peripheral, and Sápmi itself is either envisioned as stagnant, or peculiarly picturesque by the majority. This statement is easily backed up by the fact that ethnographic books about the Saami, written by self-appointed experts on our culture and well-meaning tourists alike, heavily outnumber actual books by Saami writers. Thankfully, contemporary Saami writers and poets have long fought against this, and they often redefine the very borders of our culture, by challenging preconceived notions of ‘Saaminess’ and what a Saami can or cannot write about.

While written Saami poetry in many ways can be said to function as a natural extension of yoiking, contemporary Saami poetry is at the same time characterised by an oftentimes postmodern approach to language and literature. Not only that; where Western poets may have been easily defined as belonging to a certain literary period or style, Saami poets have a tendency to fuse different styles and techniques in order to create something that is both uniquely Saami, and at the same time both global and local in its outlook.

Indeed, Saami poets like Inger-Mari Aikio, Sigbjørn Skåden, Rönn-Lisa Zakrisson and Timimie Märak try their hand today at haikus, free verse and strict metric lines, drawing upon the style of Shakespeare, Milton and Matsuo Bashō alike, in order to write about everything from miners’ protests and language loss to oral sex and stage fright.

Or, to quote Sigbjørn Skåden, ‘Lord, please, if I have to puke / keep my Saami clothes clean at least!’

VI.

To weave oneself back and forth between tongues is both a blessing and a curse.

To write in a language often predicted to disappear, long before your own bones have been laid to rest, does something to you.

VII.

Language is both art and identity.

It functions as a basic mode of communication as much as a powerful tool of subversion. To paraphrase the Saami poet Paulus Utsi; a language can both be ensnared and used to ensnare others.

Contemporary Saami poets approach the issue of language in a number of different ways. This is partly because of the symbolic value speaking a Saami language has earned in Sápmi, both as a way to assert and express a sense of Saaminess, and partly because the choice to write or not to write in a Saami language continues to be seen as a highly political one.

To some poets, like the North Saami artist, artivist and writer Niillas Holmberg, writing in a Saami language is the undisputed norm. To him, writing in North Saami constitutes an act of both self-love and resistance.

At the same time, Holmberg is acutely aware of the importance placed upon colonial majority languages, as tools of assimilation and as ways of reaching a wider audience. In Assimilašuvdna Blues, he questions this unequal relationship between a colonised people and its colonisers, by pointing out the ways in which the educational systems throughout Sápmi historically have functioned as willing and active perpetrators of a cultural and linguistic genocide, going as far as to ask ‘if school is really the solution / if you have the assimilation blues?’

Throughout his writing, Holmberg frequently returns to the issue of language, both as a mode of communication and as a way to assert his own Saami identity from within. On the one hand, he criticises the state policies that have rendered his and other Saami languages critically endangered – ‘what can I say / to you who tend gardens / making a flowerbed of my mouth / ready for the big sleep’. On the other, he does not shy away from uneasy questions of personal responsibility, asking if the writing of a piece called ‘assimilation blues’, by virtue of giving it an English name, would not also be a form of assimilation in itself, betraying his fidelity to his mother tongue.

To overcome these issues, Holmberg, alongside many other Saami writers, has turned to self-translations that border on rewriting and re-imagining Saami thoughts through the medium of the majority language.

Some poets, like Juvvá Pittja, even make us question the difference between a translation and an interpretation.

On the one hand, Juvvá Pittjá tends to offer fairly literal translations of his poems, produced in close relationship with his grandmother, the renowned poet Inghilda Tapio. Thus, when he asks ‘manne du álbmot oažžu duolbmut /mu álbmoga,’ the Swedish translation resists the urge to rephrase or explain, and instead comes across as rather plain. In many cases, however, such as in the Swedish translation of the poem ‘Beaivvaš vel rattis’, his verse-translations work just as much as poems in their own right, for instance through the clever use of rhyming schemes and alliteration, thereby transcending the limitations of one language to give voice to a similar, yet slightly different thought in another language.

VIII.

Translation, at its core, both entails and ultimately demands transformation. Not only that, a translation constitutes a series of biased, subjective choices, and as such nothing is ever truly objectively speaking translatable.

To many Saami writers, the loss of language within our own community, continues to be one of the key issues that affect their style of writing. In Iŋgos Máhte Iŋgá’s poem ‘Sáme nissonolbmot’, which functions both as a critique of colonialism, Western patriarchal definitions of womanhood, and lateral violence, this becomes clear when the Saami identity of several of the women described is questioned because they do ‘not have / the right accent’ or, even if they ‘want […] to be a Saami / [… they do] not speak the language.’

Today, the majority of Saami literature written in Saami languages remains untranslated. A precious few writers have managed to find an international audience, and most of them have chosen to write their prose in Swedish, Norwegian or Finnish, rather than in a Saami language. It may then come as a surprise that a large number of contemporary Saami poets actively oppose translation into a majority language. One of them is the poet Helga West, who has said that her poetry collection Gádden muohttaga vielgadin was too personal for her, too concerned with a Saami response to an intercultural divorce, to allow it to be translated into or rewritten in Finnish. To this day, the poems remain largely untranslated, and when translations have been produced, they have been made in close collaboration with the poet herself.

The choice not to translate oneself also speaks to a certain sense amongst contemporary poets that the Saami voice finds itself in a dangerous position where outsiders still try to co-opt and redefine what it means to be a Saami. Thus, by not translating oneself, these writers maintain a sense of power and control over their work, which has often been denied Saami artists, writers and musicians in the past.

Other poets have started a conscious shift from translating themselves into rewriting themselves. Rather than offering up a translation of a poem that was originally written in a Saami language, they write their own versions of the poem in the majority language instead. One could, of course, argue that this strips the reader of the potential to fully engage with a poem’s linguistic ambiguity, but as the majority of readers, whether Saami or not, do not read Saami, we argue that, at a time when more and more people want to engage with Saami stories for numerous different reasons, this decolonial approach to translation is a sound and, in many ways, necessary one.

Having said that, whether contemporary Saami poets continue to write and rewrite their own poems in different languages, or end up working with translators to reach a wider audience, one thing is certain – the future of Saami literature is bright.

[asg-stuff]

Without a conscious self-reflecting effort about your purpose and its relation to your positionality, it becomes really easy to fall into the hurtful “savior practices” of postcolonial researchers described by Linda Tuhiwai Smith. (via DECOLONIZING MYSELF: A journey to finding my own voice as an educational researcher. | Linkedin)

[protoslacker]

The Last Druid - Documentary on Ben McBrady of The Old Gaelic Order

Maoleachlain

I came across this video wondering how shamanic practices involving hallucinogenic fungi came to be so much a part of Christmastime mythology. The video has nothing on that topic, but gave me some threads to pull for understanding Druids a bit.

My brother mentioned that former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams is a White Druid. I had no idea. Reading about it I was impressed that William's response to Evangelical criticism of his honorific was essentially: Oh bugger off.

This Wikipedia article, Brehon, impressed me. I got to the article searching for Ben McBrady, and here's the link to an article citing McBrady from the Wikipedia article. Brehon is a system of judicial mediation which has quite ancient roots.

Something which is so powerful about prison Abolitionists is their cultivation of approaches and methods that make the kind of future they want. That approach opens up a wide world of possibilities. Reading the Turtle Talk blog has help me to see there are deep precedents in the indigenous cultures of the Americas.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a Maori scholar of decolonizing methods. She observes:

Indigenous people have this culture, have this knowledge, and have ways of doing things. And it is the same around the world: there are other ways of imagining ourselves. And that is really important when we think about the contribution that Indigenous people and indigeneity can bring.

I have enjoyed reading John Michael Greer, who is an American Druid. But I've read him mostly around topics of oil and post-carbon futures, heeding little the druid stuff. I am a bit shocked by how I've had my blinkers on. Not really surprised because I'm entrenched this culture, and I'm old. Still, I very much agree with Linda Tuhiwai Smith's point about the importance of Indigenous people and indigenous knowledge bring to responding to the predicaments we find ourselves.

[hussyknee]

Hi so because this post is ten years old none of the links work except the Hula Hands article. So I tracked them down and added them to my gdrive of decolonial academia.

The following are available in the Red Power folder:

Daniel M. Cobb (2016) Native Peoples of North America, The Teaching Company

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (2020) As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, Beacon Press

Glen Sean Coulthard (2014) Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, University of Minnesota Press

Jessica Hernandez (2022) Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science, North Atlantic Books

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (2017) As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance, University of Minnesota Press

Leonard Peltier (1999) Prison Writings: My Life is My Sun Dance, St. Martin's Publishing Group

Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, Zed Books

Mary Crow Dog (1991) Lakota Woman, Harper Perennial

Nancy J. Turner (2014) Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples, McGill-Queen's University Press

Nick Estes (2019) Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance, Verso Books

Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, Milkweed Editions

Robin Wall Kimmerer (2001) Gathering Moss; A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, Milkweed Editions

The Red Nation (2021) The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth, Common Notions

Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Sanna and Jarno Valkonen (eds) (2018) Knowing from the Indigenous North: Sámi Approaches to History, Politics and Belonging, Routledge

Vine Deloria Jr. (1988) Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, University of Oklahoma Press

Vine Deloria Jr. (1973) God Is Red: A Native View Of Religion, Fulcrum Publishing

Vine Deloria Jr. (1997) Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact, Fulcrum Publishing

Winona LaDuke (1999) All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, South End Press

Sub-folder Red History:

Troy R. Johnson, (2007) Red Power: The Native American Civil Rights Movement (Landmark Events in Native American History), Chelsea House Pub

David Treuer (2019) The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, Little, Brown Book Group

Dee Brown (2017) The Native American Experience (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee; Fetterman Massacre; Creek Mary’s Blood), Open Road Media

Dennis Banks, Richard Erdoes (2005) Ojibwa Warrior: Dennis Banks And The Rise Of The American Indian Movement, University of Oklahoma Press

K. Tsianina Lomawaima (1995) They Called It Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School, University of Nebraska Press

Patrick Wolfe (1999) Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology; The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell

Peter Matthiessen (1992) In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and FBI's War on the American Indian Movement, Penguin Books

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (2014) An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States, Beacon Press

Sarah Alisabeth Fox (2014) Downwind: A Peoples History of the Nuclear West, University of Nebraska Press

Ward Churchill (1997) A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present, City Lights Books

Ward Churchill, Jim Vander Wall (1988) Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, South End Press

Articles and Zines:

Colonization and Decolonization: A Manual for Indigenous Liberation in the 21st Century, Warrior Publications (zine)

Headdress (2010) (zine)

Sherman Alexie (1993) Indian Education (short story)

Native American Struggles: Leonard Peltier and Norma Jean Croy, Social Justice Vol. 20, No. 1-2, Rethinking Race (Spring-Summer 1993), pp 172–175

Conger Beasley Jr. (1998) Looking for Leonard Peltier, North American Review, Vol. 283, pg 64–71

Andrea Smith (2003) Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples, Hypatia, Vol. 18, No. 2, Indigenous Women in the Americas, pp 70–85

Patrick Wolfe (2006) Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native, Journal of Genocide Research, 8:4, 387–409

Troy R. Johnson (2009) Red Power and the American Indian Movement: Different Times, Different Places, Reviews in American History, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp 420–425

Danielle Endres (2011) American Indian Activism and Audience: Rhetorical Analysis of Leonard Peltier's Response to Denial of Clemency, Communication Reports, 24:1, pg 1–11

There are essential decolonial texts in the Decolonization folder, so look through them as well. I haven't read Guillaume Blanc and Hamza Hamouchene's books on Green Colonialism myself but the subject is a fascinating look at the ties between environmentalism and white supremacy and how Landback is tied to climate justice.

You can find The Schumacher Lectures here and buy The Ice Is Melting by Oren Lyons for USD 0.99.

As always, do try and support the authors if you have the resources to do so.

NATIVES READ TOO

NATIVES READ TOO

Browsing the internet, found some free PDFs to read:

Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples by Andrea Smith (article)«li

All Our Relations Native Struggles: Land and Life by Winona LaDuke

Lakote Woman by Mary Crow Dog

Lovely Hula Hands by Haunani Kay-Trask

Custer Died for Your Sins- An Indian Manifesto by Vine Deloria, Jr.

God Is Red: A Native View of Religion by Vine Deloria, Jr.

The Case of Leonard Peltier by Arthur J. Miller and Pio Celestino (zine)

Cultural Appropriation or Cultural Appreciation? (zine) 

Headdress (a small zine on native appropriation)

Colonization and Decolonization: A Manual for Indigenous Liberation in the 21st Century (zine)

Indian Education by Sherman Alexie

You have here, writings that detail Indigenous topics covering or in the style of: manifestos, creative writings, political, cultural, “feminist”, environment/ecosystems, and Natural Law. 

Enjoy the readings!

[finalgirlfall]

School knowledge systems, however, were informed by a much more comprehensive system of knowledge which linked universities, scholarly societies and imperial views of culture. Hierarchies of knowledge and theories which had rapidly developed to account for the discoveries of the new world were legitimated at the centre. Schools simply reproduced domesticated versions of that knowledge for uncritical consumption. Although colonial universities saw themselves as being part of an international community and inheritors of a legacy of Western knowledge, they were also part of the historical processes of imperialism. They were established as an essential part of the colonizing process, a bastion of civilization and a sign that a colony and its settlers had 'grown up'. Attempts to 'indigenize' colonial academic institutions and/or individual institutions within them have been fraught with major struggles over what counts as knowledge, as language, as literature, as curriculum and as the role of intellectuals, and over the critical function of the concept of academic freedom.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, "Chapter 3: Colonizing Knowledges," in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2021), 74.

[wurenjieting]

Western classifications of space include such notions as architectural space, physical space, psychological space, theoretical space and so forth. Foucault’s metaphor of the cultural archive is an architectural image. The archive not only contains artefacts of culture, but is itself an artefact and a construct of culture. For the Indigenous world, Western conceptions of space, of arrangements and display, of the relationship between people and the landscape, of culture as an object of study, have meant that not only has the Indigenous world been represented in particular ways back to the West, but the Indigenous world view, the land and the people, have been radically transformed in the spatial image of the West.

—— Linda Tuhiwai Smith, "Research through Imperial Eyes", Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

[scentedchildnacho]

INQ13 | Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Eve Tuck - "Decolonizing Methodologies"

[go-bac]

Critical Question :Decolonizing Methodologies

           While reading the article Decolonizing Methodologies paper by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, I was reminded of the mosquito nets incident in African villages. She spoke about instances when foreigners have entered, encountered, or infiltrated indigenous communities, along with the negative impacts that have risen from these encounters. The negative encounters arose because the outsiders did not research the culture before engaging with the community. The colonizers often weren't interested in the indigenous people's history or culture to best help them.  

           I am reminded of an article from the New York Times that enlightened the world about Bill Gates giving malaria mosquito nets to villagers in African countries. The act was a good deed to stop the villagers from being bitten by mosquitos. The problem was that the villagers were accustomed to sleeping without the nets and had become accepting of the mosquito bites. 

           The villagers decided to use the nets for fishing instead of protection from the mosquitos. The nets would not have been a problem except for the fact that the nets had been sprayed with mosquito repellent. Therefore, each time the nets were thrown into the water, the water became contaminated with mosquito pesticides. Not only did this change the ecology of the fishing waters, but it also changed the water the villagers had to consume. 

           Looking back on the issue, Gates and scientists realized they were not helping to stop the problem of malaria deaths; instead, they were contaminating the water sources, the fishing ecology, and the food supply. 

           By not realizing that fishing nets were expensive and that a person with no income would use the nets to make income instead of protecting themselves from mosquitos, they actually harmed the villagers, the water, and the fishing ecosystem.

           After these circumstances were made public, Gates and other foundations stopped providing mosquito nets to these villagers; however, the damage had already been done.

           This story is an example of what happens when outsiders don't survey or assess the community's needs before deciding or providing what they believe is a resolution to the communities’ problem. It is essential to understand the culture of a community before offering what an outsider believes to be the best solution. 

[kdnavarolihis]

HIS5067 - RMA Teaching Portfolio: Project Introduction & Checklist

Group 1:  Conner McGowan, Keidra Daniels Navaroli, Adaeze Nwigwe

Introduction

Portraits are rooted in the human experience of seeing and being seen. Portraits tell us about the values ascribed to the representation of people, the creativity of artists, and the desires of a wider public. However, what are the dynamics that influence how one is represented, and how can a portrait’s sitter – depicted from an often fixed, static, or unchanging point of view – communicate beyond the imposed boundaries of a frame or space?

Visual representations often shape, and are shaped by, the concept of power. Defined as the authority and ability to influence, direct, or exploit others – power rests on relationships – both person to person and person to society. Scholars argue that although the phenomenon is socially constructed, power is fundamental to how we establish taste, value, and status, making it an ideal lens for examining portraiture.[1]

Drawing from the breadth and strength of the Rollins Museum of Art’s digitized collection, this teaching portfolio brings students and educators “face-to-face” with diverse representations of humanity by challenging various systems of influence. “Portraits and Power” uses one of the most popular forms of artistic representation to make cross-cultural connections that enhance visual literacy and promote social awareness. Art is a platform shaped by various social, political, and economic factors with daily implications for the way we live and connect with one another. The following works represent expressions of resistance, remembrance, and commemoration, generating important questions about the interactions of artists, subjects, and communities.

Full checklist accessible here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1155-KMpzvW1bRoaqOwPBxJ27c5ndKSN4/edit?usp=share_link&ouid=116135117462093120397&rtpof=true&sd=true

[1] For the purposes of this project, power is defined through postcolonial and decolonial lenses. We draw from the critical theories of Michel Foucault and Edward Said in addressing power as a social construct; the decolonial theory of Linda Tuhiwai Smith for analyzing power from a specifically Indigenous standpoint; the speculative theories of Curtis Marez in centering the agency of subaltern groups; and sociologist Talcott Parsons’ examination of power as a galvanizing social phenomenon.