(IND5c) Indigenous-Settler Relations and Decolonization III

This session features presentations addressing issues of Indigenous-settler relations and decolonization. Tags: Indigenous Studies

Organizer: Kerry Bailey, McMaster University and University of Saskatchewan; Chair: Kerry Bailey, McMaster University and University of Saskatchewan

Presentations

Carol Lynne D'Arcangelis, Memorial University

Cuerpo-Territorio meets Body-Land: Towards (More) Indigenous-Settler Feminist Solidarities in the Americas

In the face of unprecedented climate catastrophe, ongoing Indigenous dispossession, and seemingly intractable gender-based violence, the need for feminist solidarity in all its iterations—including between Indigenous peoples and settlers—has never been more profound. As an entry point into the topic, I consider the concept of cuerpo-territorio in relation to analogous ideas in English, thereby reading across literatures (and praxes) that are rarely, though increasingly, brought into conversation: Indigenous feminisms in Anglophone North America and Latin American Indigenous/decolonial feminisms (Altamirano-Jiménez, 2020; Cabnal, 2010, 2019; D’Arcangelis and Quiroga, 2023; Konsomo and Kahealani Pacheco, 2016; Kuokkanen, 2019; Mack and Na’puti, 2019; Mollett, 2021; Motta, 2021; Nickel and Fehr, 2020; Paredes and Guzmán, 2014; Simpson, 2017; TallBear, 2016; Vasudevan, Ramirez, Gonzalez Mendoza, and Daigle, 2023; Zaragocin and Caretta, 2021). In so doing, I aim to think more deeply about the possibilities and challenges of solidarity, specifically among and between diversely positioned feminists across the “Americas.” In this way, I enter a burgeoning South–North dialogue about, amongst other things, the parameters of anti-/decolonial feminisms (Anderson, Ruíz, Stewart and Tlostanova, 2019; D’Arcangelis, 2020; Lugones, 2007; Mendoza, 2016; University of Washington, Plurifeminisms across Abya Yala Symposium, May 2022). By looking more closely at how diverse feminists theorize and enact cuerpo-territorio and related concepts, I hope to contribute to this nascent dialogue, in particular concerning the promise (and pitfalls) of feminist solidarity in the hemisphere. Following Conway and Lebon’s (2021) concerns about how the category of “popular feminisms” might create and sustain “elisions of racial and colonial difference” (p. 8), I wonder if certain understandings and applications of cuerpo-territorio —and of “the decolonial” more broadly— might eclipse the specificities of Indigenous (or Black/Afro-descendant) struggles . To lay part of the foundation for assessing this risk, this paper offers a preliminary look at Indigenous communitarian feminist understandings and applications of cuerpo-territorio and similar, but not necessarily equivalent, ideas in Indigenous feminist theory and practice across Turtle Island (North America). What might such a comparative analysis reveal about the possibilities and challenges of feminist solidarity between Indigenous feminist communitarian scholars and activists on the one hand, and Latinx, Afro-descendant, and/or white (Euro-American) settler scholars and activists on the other? How do differently positioned scholars and activists invoke these concepts and to what ends? What might any resonances (or dissonances) tell us about the parameters and salience of decolonial feminism as an analytic category in the hemisphere? Importantly, I engage with these ideas from a particular locus of enunciation (Mignolo and Walsh 2018)—as a white settler feminist located in Canada. After providing an overview of the concept of cuerpo-territorio , I argue that the scholarly literatures under juxtaposition and the embodied practices they discuss share key concerns and analyses, namely, that (1) colonialism is inherently patriarchal, (2) violence against the body is intimately linked to violence against the land, in particular the violence of extractivism, and (3) human life exists in relation to land, non-human animals, plants, and other beings. I conclude with some initial thoughts about what these convergences in theorizations and enactments of cuerpo-territorio and related concepts might indicate about a path towards enhanced South–North collaborations among feminists in the hemisphere, including but not limited to stronger Indigenous–settler bonds of solidarity.

Lily Ivanova, University of British Columbia

"Doing the Work": How Settlers Negotiate Responsibility for Genocide in Canada

What does it mean for settlers to take responsibility for past and ongoing harms against Indigenous communities? The importance of settlers "doing the work" to understand and interrupt Canada's colonial harms has become a shorthand for the personal ethics of decolonizing, both in popular discourse and academic texts. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang incisively stated in 2012, "decolonization is not a metaphor" and requires a commitment to tangible changes that people and states need to make. Since this time, and with the increasingly public stories of Residential School survivors, the Truth and Reconciliation's 94 Calls to Action , and rising Indigenous voices in arts, storytelling, and political action, what it means for settlers to "do the work" is wide-ranging--from the responsibility to "bear witness" to lived experiences of suffering, undertake organizational and institutional changes, and unpack one's lived experiences and positionality. This paper takes up the question of how settlers in Canada understand their responsibility for colonial genocide. Drawing on an ethnographic and interview-based study of xʷʔam̓ət (home) , an interactive theatre production about the intergenerational effects of colonial harms in contemporary Canadian society, I look at the approaches that participants took to intervene on the "blockages" to reconciliation they saw in the non-Indigenous characters in the play. Analyzing their on-stage interventions and in-depth interviews reveals the different and complex facets that facilitate settlers taking responsibility, such as nuanced understandings of Indigenous experiences and politics, a self-awareness about emotional reactions like guilt, shame, and fear, and the interpersonal ability to de-center their own experiences when hearing about the harms to Indigenous people and communities have experienced. These insights contribute to conversations about the role and responsibilities of allies in decolonization, the self-oriented and interactional skills and practices involved in identity work, and shifting societal meanings about identity as Canada acknowledges genocide.

Yeslie Lizarraga Leyva, University of British Columbia

What does it mean to be Mexican?: Colonial Hegemony, Identity, and Resistance

In the territory known as Mexico, national identity has been based on both the Indigenous and colonial histories. Most accounts of contemporary Mexican national identity suggest it is largely rooted in and reaffirmed through the narrative of mestizaje, a concept that embodies a shared history, experiences, and attributes of the Mexican people based on a common and unifying origin through cultural and racial mixing between European and Indigenous ancestors. While mestizaje presents itself as a promise towards inclusion and equality, social and institutional privilege awarded to whiteness and European systems continue to impact the daily lives of all Mexicans, despite not operating as explicitly as it did during the colonial period. Scholars have pointed at the hierarchies of power, resources, and privilege that mestizaje ‘as a project and ideology’ has cemented on Mexican society (Moreno Figueroa 2022). Moreover, there is academic research and civil discourse regarding the persistence of inequalities in Mexico, along the lines of race and class. Thus, the legacies of the colonial project in Mexico seem to remain through times of revolution, social change, and liberal democracy. Existing sociological literature has identified logics of whiteness and assimilation as part of the mestizaje project, drawing its connection to logics of colonialism (Moreno Figueroa 2011; 2022). However, the conceptual tool of colonial hegemony is not commonly applied to frame and understand the dynamics that sustain colonial logics and the permanency of inequality throughout changing times. Among the few studies that do, the bulk of research emphasizes macro-level or government factors, rather than the on-the-ground experiences of everyday Mexicans. Thus, through the situation and exploration of colonial hegemony in the evolution of contemporary Mexican identity, I offer a critical revision of the narratives surrounding the Mexican identity. I engage with questions of how colonial hegemony shapes understandings of contemporary Mexican identity in urban Mexico and how are symbols, histories, and experiences coopted and transformed into tools of hegemony. Using qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with Mexican adults, I examine people’s engagement with popular narratives of Mexican identity, such as mestizaje, and how they make sense of the complexities and contradictions that are embodied in meanings of ‘being Mexican’. Preliminary findings show that ideas of ‘racial mixing’ and duality still hold significant validity in people’s understandings of what being ‘Mexican’ is, while simultaneously questioning its consequences for oppression in Mexico and reconciliation with Indigenous communities in the Mexican territory. Following others’ examination of their own lived realities in a neocolonial world, findings from this research can both disrupt and enrich the assumptions we embrace in our identity in the collective imaginary, in line with calls for justice in Mexico and within a global context of decolonization. I interpret these findings in light of critical race theory and the sociology of nationalism and identities. The findings have implications for a diverse set of audiences, including sociologists interested in identity, colonialism, and nationalism. Additionally, this research is in service of solidarity with movements for justice in Mexico and abroad, where solidarity requires taking responsibility to question, unlearn, and challenge the systems that uphold inequality and make struggle necessary.