The Meaning of Indigeneity feat. Andrew

An exploration of two different ways to define being indigenous.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Zone media, welcome to krapen here, But you know, very
few things actually happen am addressage of Thetu channel androism.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Now, indigenoity is a contentious topic now more than ever,
not when it comes to flora and fauna. Of course,
as far as I know, it's a pretty simple matter
of being considered indigenous to an ecosystem when they haven't
been introduced through human intervention or manipulated by human cultivation,
as over millions of years, these living things have become
well suited to their habitats, carefully adapted to the regions, soil, climate,

(00:36):
and food web. When it comes to people, we're talking politics,
they quicks some confusion about what it means to be indigenous,
especially when questions of land rights, autonomy and reparations and
to the equation. Most people understand that Native American nations
and Aboriginal Australians are indigenous, but they don't really know
what that means. Some might then ask, well, if indigenous

(00:59):
just means originating from a place, then on all Homo
sapiens indigenous to Africa, why should one group's claim of
indigenity take precedence over any other. Others may ask the
question if a group occupies a region for several generations,
does that then make them indigenous? A White Americans indigenous
if their family has been there since the founding of
the US, A French fupial indigenous to France, And if so,

(01:23):
does that somehow justify theirs enophobia towards refugees. When generations
of martialized groups have been struggling to retain their social, cultural, economic,
and political sovereignty and achieve justice, reparations, and liberation after
centuries of oppression and attempted annihilation, we need to stand
in informed solidarity. Thus, it is vital for us to

(01:44):
understand what it means to be indigenous from what I
gather through my research, which was focused on the work
of just a few North American indigenous scholars Tayaki Alfred,
Jeff Corticell, and Robin Wild Chimera inditionity can be interpreted
as a matter of colonial relationship and or as a
matter of a land relationship, a relationship to place. These

(02:07):
two definitions are of course highly overlappened. You really can't
get away from how colonization informed the land and vice versa.
But let's start with the first interpretation of indignity. According
to Taiyaki Alfred and Jeff Cordicell, indigenousness is an identity constructed, shaped,
and lived in the politicized context of contemporary colonialism. It

(02:30):
is an existence oppositional to colonial societies and states, and
a consciousness of struggle against such forces of colonization. No
two indigenous groups are exactly alike, of course, there is
significant diversity in their cultures, contexts, and relationships with colonial forces,
but they do share that struggle to survive as distinct
peoples in an environment hostile to their existence. Efforts to

(02:55):
marginalize and eradicate indigenous peoples may not always be as
overoid as they once will, with some noticeably overt exceptions,
but the historic and ongoing dispossession of Indigenous peoples, the
erasure of Indigenous histories, geographies, and languages, and the current
situation of deprivation persist. Nonetheless, even so called reconciliation efforts

(03:17):
are tainted by the reality that Indigenous peoples remain, as
in earlier colonial eras fundamentally occupied and disempowered peoples, stripped
of autonomy in their own homelands and pressured into surrender
and cooperation with an inherently unjust colonial order just to
ensure their basic physical survival. By this understanding of indigenity,

(03:38):
it can be set up without a colonizer, without systems
in place and actions being taken to marginalize, disempower, and
destroy their societies in favor of a colonial replacement. There's
no need for the concept of indigenous. Without colonialism, there
will be no status of indigenous to be imposed upon
the groups of people whose very existence and claims the

(04:00):
is an obstacles that colonial endeavor. The un work in
group of Indigenous Issues drew partially from this understanding when
attempting to define indigenous peoples in nineteen eighty six. Indigenous communities, peoples,
and nations are those which have in a historical continuity
with pre invasion and pre colonial societies they developed in
their territories. Consider themselves distinct from other sectors the societies

(04:24):
now prevailing on those territories or parts of them. They
form at present non dominant sectors of society, and are
determined to preserve, develop, and transmit to future generations their
ancestral territories and the ethnic identity as the basis of
their continued existems as peoples in accordance with their own
cultural patterns, social institutions, and legal systems. By this definition,

(04:48):
Amerindians in the Caribbean, Aboriginal Australians, Adivasis in India, Native
North and South Americans, Siberians, Ainu Goods, Syrians, Yazidi, Palestinians, Amasafe, Sami, Basque,
Sami Basques, Hawaiians, Maori, san Guti, Papuans, Schams, and many

(05:08):
more are all indigenous peoples. There are layers of nuance
yet to be highlighted. The colonial situation is not a
simple binary of indigenous and colonists. For example, in much
of the Americas, Africans who were indigenous to their own
homelands were displaced and enslaved under the colonal regime. They

(05:29):
may not be indigenous to the Americas, but they won't
drive and settled colonial society either. In fact, someone enslaved
for inditionous people as well. At the same time, some
members of the African diaspora would join existing indigenous societies
and later create their own, such as the Garifuna of
Saint Vincent, Honduras and Belize. Meanwhile, in modern Africa, so

(05:52):
all African ethnic groups can technically be considered indigenous to
the continent. The concept of specific indigenous peoples within Africa
refers to those groups whose traditional practices and land claims
have been placed outside of the dominant state systems and
exist in the conflict with the objectives and policies implemented
by post colonial governments, companies, and the surrounding dominant societies.

(06:16):
Such a definition can similarly be applied to modern day Asia,
where governments like Indonesia, India, China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh have
infamously refused to recognize the existence of indigenous peoples within
their territories. These countries, like most countries in the world,
did not ratify the International Labor Organization Convention one sixty

(06:37):
nine in nineteen eighty nine, known as the Indigenous and
Tribal People's Convention concerning the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The
UNS Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples pass in
two thousand and seven, would however, be voted on approvingly
by most of the world, including the same countries that
haven't recognized the indigenous peoples within their borders. All four

(06:58):
of the countries have rejected that particular asis, Canada, America, Australia,
and New Zealand will later change their vote in favor
of the declaration, of course, with their own tact on
interpretations and emphasis on the declarations legally non binding nature,
as is to be expected from settler colonial societies. There

(07:18):
are approximately two hundred and fifty to six hundred million
inditionous peoples around the world today, each facing the reality
of having their lands, cultures, and forms of organization attacked,
co opted, commodified, and reconstructed by various states, regardless of
their legal recognition. Inditionous peoples themselves have long understood that

(07:40):
the endurances of people will continue to depend on their
connection to land, culture, and community, which brings us to
the second interpretation of indigenity, closely related to the first,
as an identity rooted in a relationship to place, whether
that be physical as with land, social as with community,
or cultural as with culture. An indigenous relationship to land

(08:03):
must be reciprocal with give and take, based on a
view of the land and water as a gift that
must be cared for over generations. According to Hodenosuni mythology,
as recounted by Robin Walkimur in Breaden Sweet Grass, the
mother goddess Skywoman came to the land as an immigrant
from the heavens, but became indigenous by listening to the land,

(08:26):
learning from other species to understand how to live on it,
given as she received, and caring for the earth and
its keepers for the sake of those who would inherit
it when she passed on. In their view, the land
is identity, It is ancestral connection, it is pharmacy, it
is library, and it is home, the source of all
that sustains, and the sacred ground upon which those would

(08:48):
observe their responsibility to the world. By this understanding, it
can be said that indigenity is born out of land
connection established through observation and relationship. Indigenous peoples have historically
been mobile, either by choice or by force, but regardless
of where they might find themselves home land or not,

(09:09):
even if there were other indigenous peoples in their new environments,
as long as they observed the processes and ceremonies of
generational relationship building based on mutual respect, understanding, and love
for the land in common, they remained indigenous. So then

(09:35):
the question might arise, why aren't settlers indigenous to place
if their family has lived in land for generations. The
answer lies in relationship. Settler society as a whole is
based on an extractivist capitalist relationship with the land, focus
on exploiting the land and its resources. Without a relationship
with the land that extends reverence to a deeper understanding

(09:58):
of its complex into the settler society can never become
indigenous to place. Of course, it goes with out saying
that every indigenous group or indigenous practice is perfectly sustainable.
Some have been rather destructive and even speciocidal. But if
we are to work with this definition, to conceive of
being indigenous is something based on cultivating a long term

(10:21):
relationship to place. That indigenity must be contingent or maintaining
the health and longevity of that relationship. Without community, there
cannot be indigenity. Much like the trees in a forest
are interconnected by subterranean networks of my curacy which enable
them to share resources and survive as a whole. In

(10:41):
order to be indigenous to place, community must exist to
sustain that web of reciprostitute the land so that it
all may flourish. Indigity to place extends to culture as well,
which is deeply tied to the land. It develops on
cultural ceremonies. According to Chimera, focus attention Attention becomes intention.

(11:02):
If you stand together and profess a thing before your community,
it holds you accountable. Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the
individual and resonate beyond the human realm. Such practices should
be reciprocal, as ceremonies create communities, and communities create ceremonies
as well as organic not appropriate in existing cultural celebrations

(11:25):
or tendon toward the commercial. Our social fabric has become
withered and fragmented by the pace of modern life, leaving
little room for ceremonies outside of religion or rites of
personal transitions such as birthdays, weddings, and funerals. But ceremonies
and the shared emotions they generate are part of what

(11:45):
builds community. When we gather for graduations, for example, a
sense of pride, relief, nostalgia, and excitement build in the
social atmosphere, hopefully fuel in the confidence and strength of
those who are going on to pursue their passions. But
Kimura wants us to imagine standing by a river flooded
with those same feelings as the salmon margins the auditorium

(12:06):
of their estuary being indigenous to place means cultivating cultural
ceremonies that honor the land and all the cycles and
seasons of life within it. Now that we have a
clearer understanding of these two distinct yet related understandings of
indigenity as both an identity formed as part of a
clual relationship and an identity rooted in a relationship to place,

(12:29):
I believe that we should explore how this understanding can
be applied to decolonization and social revolution. Decolonization is the
process of unsettling colonial power structures, whether that be through
overturning acts of enclosure by building new commons, overturned acts
of possession by reclaiming our spaces and identities, or overturning

(12:50):
acts of administration through social revolution. Social revolution is a
complete transformation of our society, economy, culture, philosophy, technology, relationships
and politics, an ongoing and heterogenous change in people's powers, tribes,
and consciousness through practical education, as well as a progressive

(13:10):
breakdown and transformation of existence, systems and institutions punctuated by
major ruptures and advances, or with the aim of self liberation.
It takes confrontation with the powers that be non cooperation
with the established order of things, and prefiguration of new
social relations institutions and infrastructure and practices in the here

(13:31):
and now. If we maintain the interpretation of indignity as
based on one's position in a colonial relationship, then the
decolonization process will entail the abolition of that relationship as
the premise of identity and therefore the abolition of indignity
as a status. Colonial legacies have effectively left indigenous communities

(13:52):
legally and politically compartmentalized and culturally, socially and spiritually weakened
within the narrow parameters of the state, where they end
up diverting the crucial energy necessary to confront state power
and develop the process of the econization toward mimicking the
practices of the dominant non indigenous legal political institutions through
for example, land claims and self government processes. What the

(14:17):
deconalization movement needs, according to Maya Yucateco poet Fliciano Sanchez Chan,
are zones of refuge, places where indigenous knowledge can be guarded, exercised,
and sustained. In Mesoamerica, these zones of refuge represent safe
spaces where the diverse cultural expressions of the region can
persist in spite of state efforts to create a homogenized

(14:40):
Mexican national identity. The concept of zones of refuge is
consistent of the traditional objectives of cultural preservation and autonomy,
or the social revolutionary aims of prefiguration, which seeks to
stow the seeds of future relationships, institutions and practices in
the here and now. To the expansion of zones of
refuge and other institutions resistance and autonomy, we can realize

(15:02):
decononization in reality. But again, this idea of indigenativ econization
is just one understanding of the term. We need to
explore another approach to the declonization, one that recognizes the
power and potential of indigenous relationships with the land. Globally,
the UN recognizes that additionous people to protect eighty percent

(15:24):
of the world's remaining in biodiversity, and scientists have shown
that indigenous management practices in Brazil, Canada, and Australia provide
the same level of ecosystem support and protection as any
imposed protected area, which makes it abundantly clear the colonial
approach of conservation via dispossession removes the very people who

(15:45):
take care of our most important ecosystems over the course
of braidiance. Sweet grass robin wall chimera highlights the reciprocal
relationship with the earth that many indigenous groups, including her
Potwatomi culture, have cultivated over generation. The principles of the
gift economy is an essential aspect to this relationship, which

(16:05):
forms the basis of indigenity to place. The gift economy
is a system of exchange where resources and services are
shared without expectation of remuneration or quit brokeu. The gift
economy extends not just a people, but also our non
human can caring and being cared for. In turn, if
we want to restore that relationship, we can start by

(16:27):
planting a garden. A garden could be a heathen for
native flora, a rest in place verus fauna, a feast
for dangered pollinators, a sustainer of local water table, and
a hub of thriving soil. Not only does it benefit
both our health and the health of the planet, but
is also a nurstry for nurturing or connection that extends

(16:47):
beyond that small patch of dute. I don't believe that
merely building a connection of the land can make someone indigenous,
but not being indigenous doesn't exclude us from aiding the
renewal of the world. Kimer uses the exam of the
broad leaf planting or son as the white man's footprint.
Despite not being indigenous to the Americas, it has become
an honored member of the plant community because it thrives

(17:10):
as a good neighbor instead of as a destructive invader.
While other invasive species poisonless soil or overrun the land,
the white man's footprint are called a strategy of helpful
co existence, even sharing some of its healing properties with
those who ask of it. It is not indigenous, but
it has become naturalized. Quote. Being naturalized to a place

(17:34):
means to live as if this is the land that
feeds you, as if these are the strains from which
you drink to build your body and fill your spirit.
To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie
in this ground. Hey you will give your gifts and
meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as
if your children's future matters. To take care of the

(17:54):
land as if our lives and the lives of all
our relatives depend on it, because they do decolonization require
us to uproot invasive irreferend and destructive individualists, capitalists, setlers
societies in order to rebuild in a way that treats
the land like the home that we share. And our
response will for it will require us to receive honor

(18:14):
the knowledge in the land, to care for its keepers,
and pass on that knowledge the next generation. And it
is crucial that we elevate Indigenous voices, knowledges, and pedagogical
approaches in pursuit of this aim or power to all
the people this has been It could happen here peace.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
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