Indigenous decolonization describes ongoing theoretical and political processes whose goal is to contest and reframe narratives about indigenous community histories and the effects of
colonial
Colonial or The Colonial may refer to:
* Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology)
Architecture
* American colonial architecture
* French Colonial
* Spanish Colonial architecture
Automobiles
* Colonial (1920 a ...
expansion,
cultural assimilation, exploitative
Western research, and often though not inherent,
genocide.
[Smith, L. T. (1999). ''Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples''. Zed Books.] Indigenous people engaged in decolonization work adopt a critical stance towards
western-centric research practices and discourse and seek to reposition knowledge within indigenous cultural practices.
The decolonial work that relies on structures of western political thought has been characterized as paradoxically furthering cultural
dispossession. In this context, there has been a call for the use of independent intellectual, spiritual, social, and physical reclamation and rejuvenation even if these practices don't translate readily into political recognition. Scholars may also characterize indigenous decolonization as an
intersectional struggle that "cannot liberate all people without first addressing
racism and
sexism."
Beyond the theoretical dimensions of indigenous-decolonization work,
direct-action
Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to othe ...
campaigns, healing journeys, and embodied social struggles for decolonization are frequently associated with ongoing native resistance struggles and disputes over
land rights, ecological extraction, political
marginalization, and
sovereignty. While native resistance struggles have gone on for centuries, an upsurge of indigenous
activism
Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in Social change, social, Political campaign, political, economic or Natural environment, environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes i ...
took place in the 1960s - coinciding with
national liberation movements in
Africa,
Asia, and
the Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America, North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. ...
.
Methods
Indigenous Postcolonial Theory
Coined by Anna Lees, the methodology of "Indigenous Postcolonial Theory" builds upon and draws clear distinctions from other schools of
postcolonial or
decolonial thought.
First, the prefix post– doesn’t refer to a period of time, but rather a perpetual ambition of eradicating the
political and social
power imbalances and effects of
colonization
Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
that manifest in efforts to culturally
assimilate and
stereotype
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
Native Americans.
Secondly, Indigenous Postcolonial Theory was developed as an alternative method to exercising a broad, blanket critical theory to particularly center
indigenous knowledge and values rather than applying a wholesale form of decolonization to Indigenous-specific trauma, strive, love, and joy.
Similarly,
Marie Battiste posits that Indigenous Postcolonial Theory offers a method of deconstructing the layers and intricacies of colonization, its effect, and its underlying assumptions, in a way that Eurocentric theory is unable to do. She says, "
PTis based on our pain and our experiences, and it refuses to allow others to appropriate this pain and these experiences."
Survivance, sovereignty, and rhetorical sovereignty
Gerald Vizenor coined the term
survivance
Survivance is a critical term in Native American studies.
History
Survivance was originally a legal term, but fell out of use in the 18th century. It was also borrowed from the French term 'suvivance' in other contexts.
Usage
It was first empl ...
to characterize the struggle of colonized indigenous communities. Combining the words "survival" and "resistance", he evokes "the duality of how Native Americans have survived brutal
genocides and continue to resist
white supremacist laws and culture that are designed to
disenfranchise and assimilate". According to Vizenor, "Survivance is an active sense of presence, the continuance of native stories, not a mere reaction, or survivable name. Native survivance stories are renunciation of dominance, tragedy, and victimry." Thus, survivance is defined as "the resistance (of) colonial tendencies to resign indigeneity to the past by characterizing an ongoing state of being in response to colonizing efforts."
According to King, Gubele, and Anderson, the study and "decolonization" of Native American Indigeneity "requires an understanding of the importance of
sovereignty to American Indian nations…"
In this context, he defines sovereignty as including the localized self-determination of a people, as well as the political authority of nationhood and the recognition of equal-status with similarly sovereign international peers. King, Gubele, and Anderson believe that not only is this crucial for political purposes, but it's crucial for cultural and religious purposes, as well: "For Native nations, this kind of a nation is defined by a peoplehood, a concept that has its roots in the preservation and prospering of the community and binds its members together in cultural and often religious terms."
Citing the history of changes in US legislative terminology that sequentially redefined indigenous "nations" to "tribes" and "treaties" to "agreements", Stephen R. Lyons sought to generate a standard of "rhetorical sovereignty". Lyons looks at what he identifies as being "the communicative practices of the colonizer", and how consequently, indigenous representations and freedoms are constrained, as a result. He says, "Rhetorical sovereignty is the inherent right of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires in this pursuit, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse." In essence, the ambition of Indigenous rhetorical sovereignty is the desire to give rhetorical control, and thus representational control, to Indigenous ethnic groups.
Narrative, counter-storytelling, and testimonies
Thomas King states in his book ''The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative'' that stories have a substantial impact on the human condition and humans’ constructed reality as a whole. They frame human relationships, perspectives, and moral codes. As King, Gubele, and Anderson put it, "The stories we tell each other tell us who we are, locate us in time and space and history and land, and suggest who gets to speak and how."
Similarly, the stories that are widely disseminated or suppressed indicate similar societal expectations and limitations. Norman Denzin, Yvonna Lincoln, and Linda Smith, in their book titled "Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies", assert that "The
Euro-American canon and its continuance of
Greco-Roman
The Greco-Roman civilization (; also Greco-Roman culture; spelled Graeco-Roman in the Commonwealth), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and countries that culturally—and so historically—were di ...
traditions has deliberately marginalized indigenous stories that manifest in practices of theorizing, speaking, writing, and making", and that the telling of such stories would provide "alternatives to and challenge
dominant narrative
Dominant narrative can be used to describe the lens in which history is told by the perspective of the dominant culture. This term has been described as an "invisible hand" that guides reality and perceived reality. Dominant narrative can refer to ...
s", thus becoming counter-narratives to them.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes that storytelling is a means of connecting past generations to the future ones and the land to the community by "passing down the beliefs and values of a culture in the hope that the new generations will treasure them and pass the story down further." The themes and motifs of these stories pass down shared histories, knowledge, and cultural identity that can range from "humour and gossip and creativity…
olove, sexual encounters, …
ndwar and revenge."
Indigenous testimonies are a means and practice of pushing back against oppression and suppression by providing oral evidence about a painful experience or series of experiences. Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes that testimonies are contingent on a formal structure, a supportive atmosphere and audience, and upholding "a notion that truth is being revealed ‘under oath.’"
Food sovereignty
It has been speculated that
food sovereignty
Food sovereignty is a food system in which the people who produce, distribute, and consume food also control the mechanisms and policies of food production and distribution. This stands in contrast to the present corporate food regime, in which ...
is a means of providing a path towards decolonization. Its definition, in recent years, has been noted to be highly modifiable due to its dependency on the context of the circumstances to which it is applied.
In indigenous context, where sovereignty does not serve the right meaning and political intent,
the concept of food sovereignty sometimes does not follow the traditional meanings of each individual word.
It has been discussed and theorized in the indigenous context of the concept that food sovereignty is also an effort of reclaiming culture and former relationship to land;
it has also been noted that, as a situational concept, food sovereignty in the traditional sense may have underlying traces of capitalist or colonialist interests.
Food sovereignty's adaptable definition in the context of indigenous decolonization, in relation to the reclamation of culture, is then highly hypothesized to be a strong route towards decolonization.
Implications of Western knowledge production and epistemologies
As
Western scientists and academics have and continue to take advantage of knowledge from and about
Indigenous communities (whether in publications or through new pharmaceuticals), those Indigenous communities are excluded from control over the nature and usage of the newly created knowledge. Thus, Indigenous communities are spoken for and become the indigenous "other" as those institutional systems and structures reproduce a knowledge that "becomes a commodity of colonial exploitation".
This continues to reinforce the privileging of Western knowledge and
epistemologies over non-Western or Indigenous funds of knowledge (or
traditional knowledge) in Western
academia. This privilege manifests itself when, according to Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, "Indigenous knowledge systems are too frequently made into objects of study, treated as if they were instances of quaint folk theory held by the members of a primitive culture."
Indigenous decolonization seeks a dramatic shift in the subject of academic inquiry. Rather than comparing Indigenous knowledge systems in comparison to empirical Western values, Indigenous decolonization aims to reverse this perspective so that Western funds of knowledge are subjected to due examination and study en route to restoring Indigenous knowledge, traditions, and culture.
There are specific advantages to applying Indigenous decolonization to practices and situations involving Indigenous peoples over alternative critical lenses such as
critical theory
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from soci ...
, or more specifically
critical race theory
Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Goa ...
. According to Denzin and Lincoln, critical theory’s broad tenets of liberation and sovereignty are far too generalized for this application: "Critical theory must be localized, grounded in the specific meanings, traditions, customs, and community relations that operate in each Indigenous setting."
Otherwise, a critical theory that disregards context and embraces ubiquitous characteristics of social movements cannot guide meaningful change when applied to a specific Indigenous context.
In art
Indigenous artists have been using art as a form of activism for many years. Jarrett Martineau and Eric Ritskes say that art forms are never separate from our political forms and "Indigenous art thus occupies a unique space within settler colonialism: both as a site for articulating Indigenous resistance and resurgence, and also as a creative praxis that often reinscribes indigeneity within aesthetic and commodity forms that circulate in the capitalist art market".
Art can be used in political struggle to bring attention to important issues and to better convey the experiences of Indigenous peoples. Indigenous artists attempt to work outside of the binary of colonialism in their art. Martineau and Ritskes describe Indigenous art as "the ''generative'' expression of creativity, not the violence of colonial domination, and it is in Indigenous art's resistant motion to disavow the repetition of such violence that it recuperates the spirit of ancestral memory and place, and forges new pathways of re-emergence and return".
See also
*
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP or DOTROIP) is a legally non-binding resolution passed by the United Nations in 2007. It delineates and defines the individual and collective rights of Indigenous peoples, including th ...
*
Decolonize This Place
Decolonize This Place is a movement based in New York City that organizes around Indigenous rights, black liberation, Palestinian nationalism, de-gentrification, and economic inequality. Their actions often take place at museums and cultural i ...
*
Decolonization of knowledge
*
Decolonization of museums
Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on independence m ...
*
Human migration
References
{{Indigenous peoples by continent
European colonization of the Americas
Decolonization
Independence movements
Indigenous peoples