Decolonization: A Resource for Indigenous Solidarity
Decolonization is not a metaphor.
We cannot separate decolonization from Indigenous resistance and sovereignty, the interconnection between humans and nature, and our responsibility to maintain stewardship and relationship with the land.
Movement toward decolonization and Indigenization includes:
Literally Locate Yourself
We must Locate ourselves in relationship and responsibility to:
The lands and waters we exist on, and from, and with.
The Original, living Indigenous peoples that belong to those lands.
Our impact on the natural environment, ecosystems, and lives of Indigenous wildlife.
The ancestors of the lands we are on, including people, plants, animals, minerals, waters...
Here's how:
1) Ask yourself, who are the Indigenous peoples that belong to, and have always been responsible for the Lands:
You were born on
You live on
You work on
You vacation/play on
2) Concern yourself with these questions:
What is their hxstory?
What languages do they speak?
What are their cultural practices and protocols?
How am I complicit in, and/or responsible for their dispossession, displacement, disenfranchisement, and oppression due to settler colonialism?
What are my responsibilities, and what is expected of me by sovereign Indigenous Nations as a settler or displaced Indigenous visitor/guest/settler on the lands that they belong to, and that I am occupying?
What are the needs of the environment, wildlife, and ecosystems here?
How does my presence and lifestyle impact all of the above, and what do I need to do better?
3) If this is the first time you are thinking about this, ask yourself why? What might have led to not knowing? How does the colonial system support your ignorance, and what has caused you to not consider it.
"Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief."
- Frantz Fanon
4) Learn what actions can you take to ensure that others, especially young people can know the answers, as well as how to ask more questions like these?
Learn Indigenous hxstories, current events, and realities
Seek and accept the truth. No - the actual truth.
Let go of colonial attachments to Knowing and Being Right, commit to learning and humility.
"Neocolonialism in the form of resource extraction, state-funded control of Indigenous communities, lack of recognition of traditional leadership and governance systems, lack of support from settler communities when corporations work hand in hand with government"
- Melina Laboucan Massimo - Redx
Follow Indigenous media and artists
Consider Indigenous perspectives on every issue.
Spend time learning online and at the library, and attend public Indigenous-led events, performances, art shows, readings, panels, and rallies (etc.)
Note: If you are in the u.s., follow canadian media too because we have much more thorough Indigenous coverage.
Remember colonialism affects Indigenous people across constructed, settler borders.
Privately and publicly acknowledge the first two points.
But beware of performativity.
Back it up with action and make it meaningful by:
seeking actual permission to be there, to practice your trade, art, religious event (etc), or to hold your event from the local Nations
If you on treaty territory, know what the treaty agreements are and respect them.
Do it when you are speaking, posting, publishing, meeting, or holding events or ceremony. Put it in your bio and your email signature. Do it on vacation, do it at work, do it when you are with your family, or with friends, especially those who “don’t want to hear it”.
Remember that what ever burden you are taking on in vocalizing these realities, is a photocopy, of a photocopy, of a photocopy of the burden Indigenous people have been carrying since first contact.
Believe and respect Indigenous perspectives and ways of knowing and doing
Modern science is often just catching up to Indigenous knowledge.
Indigenous ways of knowing are deep, and ancient, and current, and relevant, and accurate, and most often, very, very different than ways and practices that colonizers and colonized thinkers know how to expect or respect.
Indigenous peoples have always:
eaten organic and cruelty free
been zero waste
practiced mindfulness and meditation
known women and sacred life givers are boss
understood gender way beyond any binarized construction
lifted two spirit people up in sacred and venerated roles
practiced disability justice and body sovereignty
known that melanin, or lack there of it, had no inherent value one way or the other (other than protection from the sun)
had complex social and political structures
practiced universal health care
known how to use natural medicine
understood and practiced mathematics and science including chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, midwifery, biology, including botany, ecology, zoology...
as well as intricate and masterful methods of engineering, design, construction, nautical and land navigation, farming and agriculture, leadership, philosophy, psychology, art, music, dance, theatre, creation, spirituality and the sacred, sport and athleticism...
and the list goes on and on...
For thousands of years Indigenous firekeepers have regularly set small brush fires to renew growth and clear brush and create natural fireguards. In early/mid twentieth century, these practices were outlawed, paving the way for the massive mega-fires that are now becoming a yearly inevitability as soon as the hot weather sets in. Today, settler science is starting to catch up with Indigenous knowledge far too long after massive damage is already been done. Settlers are only now beginning to find “evidence” that land craves fire, and “forests have to be burnt to regenerate.”
Indigenous people have known for millennia that we are responsible for healing the traumas of our ancestors, (seven generations before us, and for setting the foundation for the seven generations to come). And only now does settler science understand that we inherit our grandmother’s trauma in our DNA.
Indigenous people know that smudging with sage smoke cleanses and strengthens us, and settler science now confirms that smudging literally kills bacteria in the air.
Indigenous people have always known that trees communicate with one another, and now botanists are proving that fir and birch trees communicate carbon levels and environmental changes to one another via a vast fungal web beneath the surface of the ground, even sending chemical resources to one another when something in the environment is blocking that resource.
Socially Locate Yourself
We must Socially Locate ourselves in relationship and responsibility to:
Our own ancestry, heritage, appearance, experiences, and complex, intersecting identities, penalties, and privileges particularly in this case with regard to the colonial project and to Indigenous nationhood.
Our impact on the lives of Indigenous peoples, flora, and fauna in the places where our existence has an impact, which is essentially everywhere on Mother Earth, especially if you are located on Turtle Island, which is an Indigenous name for what is colonially known as North America
And our impact on the lives of one another
This includes actively acknowledging your complicity in settler colonialism.
“A 'settler' is someone whose culture/traditions do not originate in and are not embedded in the land upon which they live.
To be 'colonial' is to displace or remove the culture/traditions that are Indigenous to the land that one lives on or uses. One can be a settler without being colonial. One can be colonial without being a settler.”
Gerry Oleman St'at'imc Nation from Tsal'alh (Shalalth B.C.), Cultural Elder and Facilitator.
Unsettle Settler Colonialism
Indigenous land rights; settler reparations.
Post-colonial myth: settler colonial societies do not stop being colonial when political allegiance to the founding metropole is severed.
This section is largely taken from Global Social Theory:
1. Settler colonizers “come to stay”:
Settler colonizers intend permanent occupation and assertion of sovereignty over Indigenous lands.
If you are on Turtle island, and you are not Indigenous, your presence here is contributing to, and benefitting from the colonial project.
2. Invasion is a structure, not an event, know that you are part of the long term structure:
Persists in the ongoing elimination of Indigenous populations.
Asserts state sovereignty and juridical control over their land.
3. Seeks its own Imaginary end. Don't get carried away by the Imaginary:
Aims to appear to have ended colonial power differentials in the form of a supreme and unchallenged settler state and people.
This is not a drive to decolonize, but rather an attempt to eliminate the challenges posed by Indigenous peoples’ claims to land by eliminating Indigenous peoples themselves and asserting false narratives and structures of settler belonging.
via - Global Social Theory
Practice integrity, courage, empathy
Decolonization takes courage. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the commitment to face our fear in order to do the thing anyway.
It takes the courage of Indigenous peoples to defend the lands, the waters, our cultures, our languages, our relations, and our very lives.
And it takes the courage of settlers to not only be honest about the ways they continue to perpetuate, benefit and profit from the settler colonial state, but to also confront and resist Empire by rejecting the dominance paradigm and respecting and following the leadership of Indigenous Nations that have been the stewards of these lands since time immemorial.
Unsettle Yourself
Learn the Indigenous and pre-colonial histories of your own ancestors
Learn and practice your ancestral cultures and ways if you can
Learn your ancestral languages if you can. No matter how much or how little you know, your ancestors will hear you. Language affects how we think, and changes our neural pathways
Address Guilt and Shame
Instead of guilt, access the outrage that you too have been manipulated for so long that you are only now learning about the ways you benefit from these oppressive systems.
Don't act out of guilt, don't wallow in shame. Instead, practice honesty, vulnerability, and compassion for yourself, and for others.
Seek connection, not isolation.
Remember that shame is a deliberate tool of colonial institutions and it serves to make us feel disconnected, disempowered and alone.
Instead of shame, access the courage to be honest about your mistakes and transgressions.
- Artwork by Ricardo Levins Morales
“If you have come to help me you are wasting our time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
This popular quote was crafted by a group of Aboriginal rights activists from Queensland, Australia in the 1970s. It is often attributed to Lila Watson, a member of the group, who insists that it was a collective endeavor. - via Ricardo Levins Morales
Reevaluate your values. Unlearn colonial ways of thinking and doing
Unconscious biases are based on learned value systems.
Values = unconscious ideas, attitudes assumptions and beliefs to which strong feelings are attached, and which influence our behaviour.
Values are the operation of decision making.
We tend to make decisions toward what we value, and away from what we don’t value.
Where do our values come from? What influences them?
Family, background, education, environment, spiritual or religious orientation, identity – inherited, chosen, and enforced, and exposure to other cultures, stories, and identities. If you live in a settler colonial state, your values and biases are pretty inevitably influenced by settler colonialism.
This slide from Karen Lincoln Michel's article, Maslow's Hierarchy Connected to Blackfoot Beliefs shows basic differences between Western and First Nations perspectives, as presented by University of Alberta professor Cathy Blackstock at the 2014 conference of the National Indian Child Welfare Association.
Colonialism relies on binaries for control, and thus, Indigenized values are inherently placed at odds with colonial values. Nuance threatens the systematization of identity and experience that colonialism heavily relies on in order to objectify all that is deemed Other.
Colonial vs Indigenous
Hierarchy vs Consensus
Individual vs Community
Independant vs Interdependant
Punitive vs Equitable
Male/Masculine vs Female/Feminine
White vs Black
Straight vs Gay
Beautiful vs Ugly
Rich vs Poor
Intelligent vs Stupid
Human vs Non-Human
Subject vs Object
Normal vs Abnormal
Neutral vs Other
Right vs Wrong
Good vs Bad
etc...
"Do Not Confuse Politeness With Agreement"
Believe and respect Indigenous perspectives and ways of knowing and doing
Modern science is often just catching up to Indigenous knowledge.
Indigenous ways of knowing are deep. And ancient. And current. And Relevant. And accurate. And most often, very, very different than ways and practices that colonizers and colonized thinkers know how to expect or respect.
But settler science is just now starting to catch up with Indigenous practices and methodologies:
Indigenous peoples have always:
eaten organic and cruelty free
been zero waste
practiced mindfulness and meditation
known women and sacred life givers are boss
understood gender way beyond any binarized construction
lifted two spirit people up in sacred and venerated roles
practiced disability justice and body sovereignty
known that melanin, or lack there of it, had no inherent value one way or the other (other than protection from the sun)
known that race is a construction of white supremacy
known that cultural identity is centred in relationships
had complex social and political structures
practiced universal health care
known how to use natural medicine
understood and practiced mathematics and science including chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine, midwifery, and biology, including botany, ecology, zoology...
as well as intricate and masterful methods of engineering, design, construction, nautical and land navigation, farming and agriculture, leadership, philosophy, psychology, art, music, dance, theatre, creation, spirituality and the sacred, sport and athleticism...
and the list goes on and on...
For thousands of years Indigenous firekeepers have regularly set small brush fires to renew growth and clear brush and create natural fireguards. In early/mid twentieth century, these practices were outlawed, paving the way for the massive mega-fires that are now becoming a yearly inevitability as soon as the hot weather sets in. Today, settler science is starting to catch up with Indigenous knowledge far too long after massive damage is already been done. Settlers are only now beginning to find “evidence” that land craves fire, and “forests have to be burnt to regenerate.”
Indigenous people have known for millennia that we are responsible for healing the traumas of our ancestors, (seven generations before us, and for setting the foundation for the seven generations to come). And only now does settler science understand that we inherit our grandmother’s trauma in our DNA.
Indigenous people know that medicine smudging with sage smoke cleanses and strengthens us, and settler science now confirms that smudging literally kills bacteria in the air.
Indigenous people have always known that trees communicate with one another, and now botanists are proving that fir and birch trees communicate carbon levels and environmental changes to one another via a vast fungal web beneath the surface of the ground, even sending chemical resources to one another when something in the environment is blocking that resource.
Understand and practice respect for boundaries and consent, and practice nurturance culture.
We must unlearn colonialism in order to even begin to meaningfully, and lastingly address Rape Culture.
is a culture of theft, entitlement, non consent, and violence. Indigenizing means practicing nurturance culture, and radical consent culture:
Go humbly
Expect and be prepared to accept rejection
Practice gratitude
Practice reciprocity
Be in service
Commit and follow through
Do the boring, difficult and/or low status work
Do not expect gratitude, interest, or friendliness from Indigenous people
Be respectful when it is offered
Don’t appropriate.
Appropriation is deeply disrespectful, and it’s theft. Quit it.
Support Indigenous artists and businesses.
Don’t make money or allow yourself to get social capital off of cultural sharing.
Equitably pay Indigenous people for their time, energy, labour, knowledge, and expertise.
Know the meaning, origin, artist or originator, and Nation or Tribe, as well as the impact that non-Indigenous use of the item or practice in question may have on Indigenous people.
If it is a cultural practice, learn the protocol before consuming or practicing.
If the protocol is in question, or you are remotely unsure about it, don’t partake.
Instead, turn that same energy or desire for meaning, depth, art, beauty, connection, culture, power, land, spirit, or ancestors toward learning about your own ancestry, cultural heritage, art, or about how to make more reciprocal space for Indigenous artists and leaders, or about what you can do to end oppression for Indigenous people.
Join the resistance for decolonial, social and ecological justice and liberation with humility
Leave the savior complex in hollywood
Don’t expect or even try to be a star. Be a team player, follow instructions, when appropriate, quietly ask for permission to be there and to support, respect Indigenous elders, matriarchs, leaders, and youth.
Indigenous leadership is earned over decades, and sanctioned by the community. Mastery takes a lifetime. Colonial ideas of individualism and self righteous entitlement are not a match for Indigenized praxis.
Learn local protocol, expectations, and best practices for settlers and visitors
Seek this out, but remember Indigenous peoples don’t owe settlers anything, and elders and leaders are BUSY. Be respectful in your inquiry.
Find out local Indigenous protocol before any public event, practice, worship, or ceremony. If approval is not granted, instead, turn your energy to raising awareness of local Indigenous issues, and providing support - financial or in action - to local Indigenous movements, actions and events.
Advocate for Indigenous sovereignty, representation, and partnership - not tokenization
In your workplaces, organizations, movements, nations, communities,
and families.
Privilege is the ability to ignore or not notice certain injustices that do not affect you, and to let oppressive comments, behaviours and practices slide, with little consequence to yourself.
When you are faced with that sacred moment where you have a choice to say or do something to call out oppression, remember that whatever burden a privileged person may take on when moving up for justice, in any context, will always be a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of what Indigenous people have to endure, and have endured for centuries since first contact.
