#kim tallbear

[demiatrixdemiatrix]

started writing 100s today, 100 word poems or prose. format introduced to me from the work of Kim Tallbear (Critical Poly 100s), who iIrecently got to hear reading a selection of 100s at 'Ecosex & the City: Ecosexuality Symposium' in June 2023.

be a good girl for me go write the poem by emma lambiase, 6.28.23

[secondwhisper]

It is this world built out of our apocalypse that is now at risk. Dakota people grieve what this world still celebrates. [...] I think that there is not a novel sense of despair among Indigenous communities that I come from and work with. [...] But it is striking to observe a new psychic grappling by settlers with end times. They seem surprised by events that disrupt their mythological narratives of progress.

Consider this. What if one has not inhabited to the same degree a settler-colonial narrative? Then the material suffering of climate crisis, of the Anthropocene, of the sharp decline of the US empire, is not an unknown or new order of material deprivation. Rather, it might be what Dominican-American writer Junot Diaz refers to as "a sharpening of the already present." [...]

In this moment we have an opportunity for a sharpening of moral clarity across the land. The apocalypses that Indigenous and Black peoples have suffered for half a millenium are blossoming into settler state reckonings.

[Junot] Diaz explained two entangled ideas: 1) misalignment with the mainstream "emotional baseline" and, 2) "radical hope." [...] This applies as much to climate crisis as it does our foreboding and entangled electoral politics.

The emotional baseline with which I suggest being misaligned is the incessant dreaming, in whatever political tone, of a successful settler state. We do not only face in this moment risk from Anthropogenic change, climate crisis, and the implosion of the western colonial project. We can also constitute hope in the implosion of the progressive colonial narrative. [...] This moment offers an opportunity to cease cultivating love for the state no matter the parties in power. [... W]e can take this opening to move into relational frameworks and care for one another as relations. [...] We see them arise from "the collective genius of all of the people who have survived these wicked systems."

[batmanego]

i've been thinking a lot about the racial politics in RDR2 lately, as the racial politics of that time in america have always compelled me (and were directly relevant to my family) and i like RDR2 and i've been toying with the idea of a larger essay on it but i'm worried that i'll never finish it. so if i don't i'm making this post just so i can get my basic thoughts on the wapiti tribe down on paper.

the wapiti tribe is uniquely frustrating to me as it's clear that RDR2 was trying to make up for their godawful treatment of natives in RDR1 and be at least somewhat conscious of the state of things for natives at the time, but it's just.. so... lukewarm.

i'm always going to have issues with the usage of fictionalized tribes. i have issues with the miagani in batman. i have issues with the red star tribe of red dead revolver, the precursor to the red dead redemption games we have now. and i have issues with the wapiti of rdr2. the wapiti are a fictional tribe, yes, but they pull heavily from the real-world lakota people. they speak lakȟótiyapi (despite 'wapiti' being a shawnee word???? i suppose it could be an exonym, but i digress). their existence is based around the lakota people, but the lakota themselves are absent from the game. why? why make a fictionalized tribe and then pull from a real one? so you don't have to worry about getting sued? that's cheap. that's lazy. work with the tribe. it can be done. native people are not ephemeral or uncontactable.

when i think about the wapiti tribe i can't help but contemplate the fictional native (or, more accurately, the fictional native tribe as opposed to the individual), and the comfort it brings to the colonizers. the fictional native and the dead native go hand in hand. the dead, extinct native is suffering in perpetuity, immortalized in time as a martyr to the indigenous cause. being killed by the white man forever.

the fictional native, too, often falls into this trap, particularly in games like RDR2. people love to cry over the dead native (and the fictional native) and mourn "what could have been". this is in part because the dead native (and the fictional native) require no more work on the part of the colonizer. the dead native (and the fictional native) do not call for land back. they do not call for reparations. they do not live among you as people, and so you are not required to see them as such. they allow you to confront your history, but gently. they give you the opportunity to turn away when you are uncomfortable. the dead native (and the fictional native) does not intrude on the workings of everyday life for the colonizer. the alive native (the real-life native), on the other hand, inconveniences the colonizer with demands of monetary assistance, land back, and forces the colonizer to continually acknowledge and live with the fact that they are living the way they are in no small part due to the suffering of the native.

i think often of kim tallbear, a professor of native studies at the university of alberta and author of native american DNA: tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science's quote: “i think what people are scrambling for is this ancient noble savage or noble indian in their bloodline. they’re not very interested in contemporary indigenous people who are alive, who are living in a still very colonial society at a severe income and class disadvantage, people living with multiple generations of trauma from residential schools, from other forms of discrimination and systematic exclusion” (emphasis mine).

this isn't to say that depictions of the real life suffering that people went through should be ignored or written out of the narrative. i'm grateful that RDR2 acknowledged (in their own lukewarm way) the suffering of the time. but with the rest of the racial politics of RDR2 (see: arthur saying he understands the wapiti because hes an outlaw?????? see: arthur's general unawareness of racism as a structure of society) it feels often to me while playing that the devs, while making a historical game, are uncomfortable with actually engaging with history in any meaningful way.

in any case, i'm one person and i'm by no means an expert on the native experience (being racially white and raised away from the culture and only beginning to try to reconnect some 7 or 8 years ago) and i would genuinely like to hear other people's thoughts on this, particularly lakota people.

[transmutationisms]

it’s only recently (after seeing ted lasso discourse on the dashboard actually lol) that i’ve been introduced to the idea of challenging the family structure through an explicitly leftist lens, and i was wondering if you have any resources/readings you’d recommend on looking into this further? i’ve only really seen discussion of like, gentle parenting so far so i’m interested in looking at what a different point of view has to offer

.....wtf happened on ted lasso wkjfjwkfhsjkhw

uh, but, this isn't really an area of expertise for me, but some places to start considering these ideas are aleksandra kollontai's 'communism and the family', some of michael bronski's work, kim tallbear's work on the origins of the family and indigenous relationality, jules joanne gleeson on marx and engels's 'infamous proposal' and on trans feminism and the family (pt 1, pt 2). me o'brien has a book coming out about family abolition, like, imminently, and i've also read and liked some of sophie lewis's work on this topic.

[heartistolovewith]

“I have multiple human loves, but the prairies and their rivers and skies are the most enduring loves of my heart.”

Kim TallBear

[disenografia]

Tema del Día Internacional del Diseño: ¿Es amable?

Por el Consejo Internacional de Diseño ICoD.

¿Y si los diseñadores se preguntaran primero si es amable? ¿Y si el diseño se midiera por la atención que presta a las personas y a sus relaciones, en lugar de por su rentabilidad? El tema del Día Internacional del Diseño de 2024, "¿Es amable?", trata de incorporar la amabilidad a la práctica del diseño.

El tema "¿es amable?" propone una nueva métrica de la amabilidad en el diseño: el estándar de amabilidad. Y define qué es el diseño amable. Este año preguntamos a los miembros cómo están diseñando para transformar los sistemas actuales en posibilidades de diseñar con amabilidad, para garantizar un futuro más amable para todos.

EL ESTÁNDAR DE AMABILIDAD (desarrollo de métricas para la amabilidad)

¿Y si el diseño se midiera por lo amable que es con el mundo? En qué medida se preocupa no sólo por las personas que utilizan el diseño, sino también por las que extraen las materias primas, fabrican los productos, por las personas que viven cerca de las fábricas, por el medio ambiente en el que las personas necesitan vivir. ¿Qué pasaría si el diseño se considerara en términos de si es ético y bueno y mejora el mundo de alguna manera o si es cruel en pequeñas o grandes formas? ¿Es compasivo con el sufrimiento de las personas implicadas en la cadena de valor que lo crea?

Desarrollar una métrica de la bondad e incorporar la bondad a la práctica del diseño significa:

Reconfigurar el valor y la métrica del diseño. Si tu métrica es el dinero y estás creando cosas que van en detrimento del bienestar de las personas, eso no es diseño valioso. ¿Qué tal inventar una medida del diseño basada en qué tipo de relaciones y ética genera? La cantidad y la calidad de la atención que da forma al diseño cambian el modelo económico de crear deseo (y hacer más "cosas" y dinero) para considerar en su lugar cuestiones apremiantes de equidad: ¿A quién se tiene en cuenta y a quién se deja fuera? ¿El futuro de quién se verá afectado y cómo? ¿Cuánta armonía genera este diseño ahora y en el futuro? ¿Qué tipo de mundo defiende/imagina de nuevo este diseño?

En el Día Internacional del Diseño queremos ir un paso más allá. No basta con cumplir los criterios para no ser "malo", queremos ver un mundo en el que el diseño se esfuerce por ser amable, generoso y solidario. Con normas que superen las reglamentarias, introduciendo el asombro y la belleza en la experiencia del usuario y mostrando atención no sólo a los consumidores de nuestros productos, sino también a todos los que forman parte de la cadena de valor y se ven afectados por el diseño.

¿Y si diseñar con cuidado y compasión fuera emocionante, significativo y deseable?

DEFINIR EL DISEÑO AMABLE

Cuando nos preguntamos si es amable, ¿cómo definimos la amabilidad en el diseño? ¿Cómo incorporamos la amabilidad a nuestra práctica del diseño?

Definir el diseño amable e incorporar la amabilidad a la práctica del diseño significa:

Centrarse en la humanidad. Esto significa centrarse en el bien de los usuarios, de los afectados por el diseño y también de la sociedad que los rodea.

Construir la pluralidad. El diseño amable puede ser participativo, socialmente orientado y abierto. En este modelo plural, podría pensarse en el diseñador como un facilitador que abre espacio para que las prácticas etnográficas, participativas y colaborativas se crucen.

"Estar en buena relación" es un concepto propuesto por la académica dakota Kim Tallbear (2019) que implica comprender la interdependencia de todos los seres vivos, incluidos todos los mundos humanos y no humanos. Todos los seres humanos comparten diferencias y similitudes en relación con sus entornos, la tierra, el agua, los animales y sus comunidades humanas y realidades materiales. Como parte de su proceso, los diseñadores pueden estar atentos a estas relaciones como una especie de vasta red de efectos enredados.

Inspirarse en el modelo jurídico del deber de diligencia. En terminología jurídica, un deber de diligencia es una obligación legal que exige a las personas atenerse a una norma de cuidado razonable para evitar actos descuidados que causen daños (ya sean visibles ahora, en el presente, o en el futuro, como herencia material).

Diseñar con amabilidad como medida de valor sirve para cuestionar los sistemas existentes y las presiones para diseñar con ánimo de lucro. Y transformarlos en posibilidades para construir nuevos tipos de relaciones y una nueva medida de diseño que garantice un futuro socialmente equitativo, medioambientalmente sostenible, culturalmente diverso y económicamente viable.

El diseño con amabilidad en su núcleo -¿es amable? - sigue esta ética y estos principios.

__

Queremos agradecer a Egle Zvirblyte el diseño del cartel temático de este año. Puede descargar el cartel en alta resolución aquí. Utilícelo para celebrar el Día Internacional del Diseño en sus comunidades.

El tema de este año para el Día Internacional del Diseño (DID 2024) es en honor al legado del diseñador humanitario Rob L. Peters, que una vez dijo: "¿Y si todos decidiéramos ser un poco más amables de lo necesario? Qué regalo para transmitir". Las actividades de este año estarán dirigidas por la Asociación Lituana de Diseño (LDA), miembro del ICoD.

ACCIONES 2024

¿Busca ideas para celebrar el Día Internacional del Diseño 2023? Descárguese el kit de herramientas con un foro en línea dirigido por la Asociación Lituana de Diseño y preguntas para participar. El consejo también proveerá de talleres relacionados al tema.

Info via https://www.theicod.org/en/resources/news-archive/icod-international-design-day-2024-theme-announcement-it-kind

[flimsy-roost]

I'm too scatterbrained right now to do proper run on reviews but here are rapid fire comments on shit I've read so far this year:

Native American DNA by Kim Tallbear: okay technically I read 98% before xmas but I finally got it together to finish it a few days ago so technically counts, I thought it was super interesting, cool read if you're both a genetics nerd and Extremely Aware of its limitations and potential for shitty applications, it's approximately one degree away from what you think it's about and it's really cool, not heavy on scientific jargon but background knowledge would probably make it an easier read

reread/read the first 12 volumes of guilty pleasure manga The Ancient Magus' Bride by Kore Yamazaki fueled by ritalin and taxis towards comfort, I'd never finished the first arc and I liked it a lot, I would like to live in Josef's fuck off let me sleep for a thousand years hole, the second arc is a super contrived premise but I don't blame yamazaki for wanting to hang out with these characters more and I like the new characters so I'm still on board, may or may not have requested the remaining seven volumes from the library

just today in one day read Paul Takes The Form Of A Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor cover to cover, I'm finding it harder and harder to get into longform fiction but this hooked me from paragraph one, I am feeling far too many hyperspecific feels to be coherent rn but A+

[misschanandlerbong-3]

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I really appreciate that this is a time of year designated to spend time with family and engage in family traditions of meals shared together and community.

However. At the same time, and not discounting that. This is your annual reminder that the Thanksgiving origin stories we tell play a significant role in the propagandizing narrative of American innocence with regards to indigenous peoples.

This time of year, we often, in addition to spending time with family, do the ritual retelling of the "origin story" of Thanksgiving, whether this be kids learning in school about the first Thanksgiving between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag/Wôpanâak peoples, watching the Charlie Brown special retelling this, or dressing up as pilgrims and Indians. This narrative, regardless of its veracity or attention to the surrounding context, is often one of the only narratives we tell about American colonies and indigenous peoples. Its dominance in our collective imagination is reinforced by our ritual retelling of it every year. And it does this in the relative scarcity of narratives about the horrors American colonists inflected upon indigenous peoples as they wiped out large swaths of indigenous people through violence and disease, not to mention various forms of gendered violence.

I want to emphasize that it is the lack of these narratives of the violence Americans inflicted (and continue to inflict) upon Native Americans, in combination with the dominance of the Thanksgiving narrative, that contribute to a continuing imagining of America as innocent, as not owing indigenous peoples reparations as well as an end to violence and recognition of sovereignty.

And this trope of American innocence is not limited to our relation to indigenous peoples. It comes up again when we talk about slavery and African Americans (see, for example, the resistance to The 1619 Project, which was attempting to relieve the narrative scarcity around the horrors of slavery). It comes up again when we talk about Asian Americans the specific forms of racist violence that America has always subjected them to (from the treatment of Asian immigrants working on railways to the Japanese detention camps of WWII to the violence visited upon Asian Americans during Covid). And so much more.

And this narrative of American innocence is especially reinforced by trying to put temporal distance between the oppression Americans acknowledge and us now. For example, when people respond to BLM or demands for reparations with "but that was in the past, get over it." Or the continual rhetorical positioning of indigenous peoples as "ancient" or as not continuing to struggle for existence and thriving.

And we see it again in the US's respond to the mass genocide of Palestinian civilians by the state of Israel.

As I said at the beginning, I appreciate Thanksgiving as a time to come together with family and participate in family traditions. But I can simultaneously recognize that Thanksgiving and the narratives we tell around it are part and parcel to the, I repeat, propagandizing narrative of American innocence, which serves to legitimize the continuing oppression of people of color, indigenous peoples, and many other minority populations in the US, as well as abroad.

I highly, highly encourage you to:

(i) read up a bit on these attempts to tell other stories countering the trope of American innocence (for example, Viet Than Nguyen's The Sympathizer, or the 1619 Project, or Dorothy Roberts's Fatal Invention, or Kim Tallbear's Native American DNA, or Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's As We Have Always Done, or Nesrine Malik's We Need New Stories, and so many others)

(ii) support indigenous groups like the NDN collective, and educate yourself on the indigenous peoples who lived and continue to live in your area (so, for Pittsburgh, look into the Council of the Three Rivers American Indian Center)

(iii) learn what indigenous groups are actually asking for, for example the NDN collective's statement concerning Palestine, or educating yourself on what demands for "sovereignty" mean for indigenous peoples in the US

But I also encourage you to enjoy your time with family this holiday! It's a special time that I'm glad the institutions of America give us time for

[marsduality]

Tiktok by @decolonizinglove

Best Polyamory Resources

Primer Book: Designer Relationships: A Guide to Happy Monogamy, Positive Polyamory, and Optimistic Open Relationships [link]

Primer Book: Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy with Multiple Partners [link]

Gay Male: Open Love: The Complete Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory, and More [link]

Lesbian: The Lesbian Polyamory Reader: Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy, and Casual Sex [link]

Science: Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality [link]

Trauma-Informed: Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy [link]

Workbook: Jealousy Workbook: Exercises and Insights for Managing Open Relationships [link]

Comic: Kimchi Cuddles [link]

Podcast: Multiamory [link]

Critical Theorist: Kim Tallbear [link]

Tiktok/Instagram/Peer Support/Critical Theory: @DecolonizingLove [link]

Tiktok/Instagram/Facebook/Youtube/Twitter: @Polyphilia [link]

Tiktok/Podcast/Youtube/Instagram: @ThePolyCouple

Tiktok: @Middlypolywolf

Instagram: @Shrimpteeth

Facebook Community Support Group: Polyamory Discussion [link]

Facebook Community Support Group: Poly + Mono Relationships [link] (specifically for supporting those in a Poly+Mono relationship)

Reddit Community Support: r/polyamory [link]

[college-girl199328]

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's departure from UBC shines the spotlight on the vetting of Indigenous identities

The departure of Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond from UBC is progress, says University of Alberta professor Kim TallBear expressed frustration at UBC’s silence around media reports that Turpel-Lafond’s claims of Indigenous ancestry did not align with publicly available documents.

TallBear is also calling for public accountability. “We should tally much Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond has earned in salary by making these claims. What was open to her because she claimed to be a status Indian? We should put numbers on what they have taken so people can see this within a broader history of settler-appropriation of Indigenous resources.”

Universities also need new policies and procedures to deal with Indigenous identity fraud, said TallBear, University of Alberta professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society.

“I want to see universities have the courage to start and figure out how to change their rules, policies, and procedures instead of just burying their head in the sand.”

In a statement to Postmedia on Wednesday, UBC said it was an “incredibly complicated issue and one that we know many of our community members have strong feelings about. … On Dec. 12, the Provost and President met with the President’s Advisory Committee on Indigenous Affairs for an initial conversation. The committee looks forward to deeper conversations in the future on this topic,” and added that “the university will be communicating and engaging in conversations with Indigenous faculty, students and staff on this important issue.”

“It is complicated,” said TallBear. Self-identification is not enough, nor is genetic ancestry. “We don’t actually have self-identification in Indigenous communities. We are really concerned with who you belong is not ‘self-identification.”

TallBear said university committees and faculty claims, jobs, places, or scholarships intended for Indigenous applicants must be populated with Indigenous members with knowledge relevant to different nations and backgrounds.

“We also have to deal with union rules, we also have to deal employment law, so these are very time-consuming conversations,” said TallBear.

UBC did not publicly state why the former judge and high-profile advocate for children’s and Indigenous rights is no longer a tenured professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, only confirming that she is no longer with the school as of Dec. 16. UBC cited privacy rules in not providing more details.

Turpel-Lafond, whose celebrated career has often centered around Indigenous legal issues, was appointed as the inaugural director of UBC’s Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, with a term that ended in June.

She is perhaps best known in B.C. as the province’s representative for children and youth from 2006 to 2016 and for a 2020 report on systemic racism against Indigenous people in the province’s health care system.

In October, the CBC published a lengthy investigation into Turpel-Lafond’s claims of Indigenous ancestry and statements that she grew up in Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba. The media outlet said the Cree and treaty Indian status are inconsistent with publicly available documents.

“My dad was born during my grandfather’s time at Norway House,” Turpel-Lafond told CBC. “I was raised to not embarrass, shame, or cause harm to not to interfere. I respect my parents and I will never call anyone out. Growing up, we did not question biological parentage.”

[passerine-parable]

wow wow wow I had to listen to this for a class but absolutely lovely deconstruction and anticolonization?( idk I’m still learning these words) of love and sexuality and relationship right in time for Valentine’s Day.

Asexuals even get a shoutout. I feel seen.

[fatehbaz]

“Being a bad biocitizen.”

-------

Marlene Feenstra (née McCorrister), my grandmother, was a Cree woman from Peguis First Nation. Peguis, our nation, is nestled among the ancestral lands and shared territories of the Cree, Anishinabeg, Assiniboine, and Métis peoples -- our homelands that sprawl out from the forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers in what is now Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. [...] Gram [was] born in 1936 [...]. She attended residential school [...], and then, as an adult, she was legally denied residence on her reserve due to her marriage to a non-Indian [...]. Yet, despite these and other experiences, and like many Indigenous people, my grandmother never thought of herself as being colonized. [...]

Three years ago, when my grandma passed away, I spent a few days going through the old photographs, newspaper clippings, calendars, and notes she had archived for over sixty years. [...] I was glad, on that cold Winnipeg afternoon, to appreciate her taste in interesting imagery. Their combined content lays out a scene ripe for analysis: One card depicts what it called the “Discovery of Canada”: Jacques Cartier presenting the “weird apparition” of an Indian Chief to the king and queen of France in 1536. A postcard named the “Canadian Rockies” displays a scene of Alexander Mackenzie, Simon Fraser, and La Verendrye: on the back, the card describes them as “great explorers who played stupendous and courageous roles in western development.” Another postcard features the nineteenth-century Métis leader Louis Riel, sitting inside a prison cell awaiting his federally sanctioned execution. Finally, at first glance out of place in this set, is a postcard with the name “Science and Invention” and an image of a basement laboratory peopled by Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Frederick Banting.

-------

It is difficult to say whether Gram chose these cards for how, taken together, they illustrate the curious relationships between colonial expansion, the confinement of Indigenous peoples, and scientific inquiry. If she did conceive of the reciprocal relationships connecting the logics of exploration, discovery, and innovation with histories of colonialism, then she was in good company.

Historians of colonial science, for example, have shown that there is a historical relationship between the development of what is now considered modern science, the technoscientific advances indelibly marking Western civilization, and European imperialisms and colonialisms. Further, Indigenous studies scholars have located modern science within an ongoing colonial system that, working in tandem (and, at times, in tension) with other institutionalized fields, overwrites Indigenous peoples’ knowledges of their existence as peoples in terms of the logics of citizenship, rights, sovereignty, and capital. [...]

-------

Advances in genomic knowledge are both intriguing and frightening given that the “gift” and “weight” of science and technology fields have always been simultaneously present for Indigenous peoples.

When I was invited to speak at “The Gift and Weight of Genomic Knowledge: In Search of the Good Biocitizen,” out of which this special report evolved, I was enthused by the rich conference rationale provided by organizers Joel Reynolds and Erik Parens. Consistent with Foucauldian scholarship such as that of Nikolas Rose, Carlos Novas, and Dorothy Roberts, the conference framed biocitizenship in relation to that shift provoked by increasing amounts of biological, and especially genomic, knowledge and data that are changing the ways that citizenship is being imagined. Civic responsibility in the age of biocitizenship, Reynolds and Parens observed, encompasses being and remaining healthy for the sake of ourselves and for the greater good of human populations: biometrically monitoring one's physical activity, seeking out direct-to-consumer genetic tests, coughing into the inside of one's elbow, employing barrier methods during sexual intercourse, and on and on are all examples of good bio-practice. In this spirit, biocitizenship -- the emphasis on the human population as biological -- has been endowed with the capacity to reconcile historic wrongs. The conference and this special report, as I understand them, are challenging us all to take pause amidst the accelerating pace of biomedical and genomic data generation and to critically reflect on the seemingly simple yet hugely difficult questions, what is a “good” biocitizen, and how do we become one?

I propose that one analytical pathway leading to said aspirational goodness might be found in its reverse: that is, in badness.

Following bell hooks's description of politicized looking relations, I am establishing these provocations to reorient, from my explicit vantage point, the set of concepts and real-world problems that this special report explores. As examined by hooks, in resistance struggle, the power of the dominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating “awareness” politicizes looking relations -- one learns to look a certain way in order to resist. Reframing the terms of the discussion is a critical practice in also restructuring the power dynamics that shape common-sense ideas about what it means to be good. The exogenous generation of genomic knowledge about indigeneity, for example, exerts a scientific claim that one can see indigeneity in a way that actually matters. Seeing indigeneity through the prism of genomic knowledge is shaped by colonial lenses insofar as it is based on an understanding of indigeneity as primarily real, genetically. Academic and other ways of thinking that try to make sense of and represent genomic realities of the present are also structured by colonial looking relations. [...]

-------

Over twenty years ago, among the formative scholarship of early Indigenous studies, Vine Deloria Jr. published Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (1995). Through this book and his other works, Deloria locates modern science within a colonial matrix that seeks to secure itself as a panacea of truthful knowledge creation at the expense of Indigenous sovereignties. [...] Fields, including scientific fields, that attempt to externally translate Indigenous peoples’ self-conceptions into a categorical or taxonomical language are interfering with their sovereign way of being.

Since the publication of Red Earth, White Lies, others have considered what the complicated entanglements of Indigenous knowledges are as they exist in relationship to science and technology fields. In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013), Robin Wall Kimmerer, for instance, provides a textually melodic illustration of the complementarities between botany, Potawatomi ecology, and the human and nonhuman relations that sustain her everyday experience. Noenoe Silva's Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (2004) similarly considers how Kanaka Maoli have leveraged modern technological advancements in press and printing to oppose the illegal annexation of their territories. These works and others like them have unlocked methodological potential that is not premised on orthodox cultural expectations by framing the use and formation of twentieth- and twenty-first-century sciences and technologies as being instead Indigenous. These novel works set a stage for elaborate consideration of how engagement with technosciences on Indigenous peoples’ own terms might support their local governance systems: their ways of relating in and with localities of misewa (all that exists). [...]

-------

Fundamental to colonial civilizing missions were the so-called gifts of science and technology that Western imperial powers gave to their colonies and subjects.

Through the rhetorical prism of gifting, scientific claims to the “greater good” have been an enduring logic justifying scientific pursuits, while the collateral damage characteristic of incremental and experimental scientific methods have been disproportionately felt by Indigenous peoples as well as all other bodies deemed unreasoned (including human and nonhuman). [...]

Although there are now many versions of justice in concept and practice, many if not all of them are shaped through the presumed possibility that a normative good exists and that the journey of becoming good is, in itself, good. [...]

I charge non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples alike to be bad: unpack and undermine the investments they have in propertied [...] state-based sovereignty and nationalism, capitalist cultures of consumption, and settler fantasies of being rightful and good.

-------

Jessica Kolopenuk. “Provoking Bad Biocitizenship.” Hastings Center Report Vol. 50 Issue S1. June 2020.

[gingerteaonthetardis]

"One of the biggest targets of colonialism was the indigenous family, in which women had occupied positions of authority and controlled property."

[experimental-intellection]

Riverside

By Kim Tallbear