so say we all

ndnsurgency:

selchieproductions:

The journal article I’m currently reading is emphasising a bone I have with post-colonialism and indigenous studies; written by two indigenous women on the issue of racism towards indigenous people within academia and submitted to one of the most influential journals in the States, it was…

This happens incredibly often, you are right. It’s frustrating and disheartening. As an Indigenous woman that works in the academy, and potentially has plans to work within it as a career, I doubt myself a lot because of the way that Indigenous women’s work is completely devalued. It’s also super frustrating because I also see certain Indigenous male figures (often scholars) that get very prominent because of the way that they theorize in a way that glamourizes men and in particular “the warrior” as the only important people who build community. They manage to completely omit women as warriors and defenders of our communities as well as Two Spirit peoples. It’s mind boggling how they can do this and still claim to represent entire communities.

I know this frustration comes from the internalization of colonial values (in particular sexism and homophobia) but often it’s under the guise of “traditionalism”. It makes me sick. Our communities can only heal and decolonize as much as possible when we can ALL take our rightful places at the circle.

Thank you for posting about this. 

“It is incredibly frustrating to turn to journals in order to find other scholars works on indigenous issues, the overwhelming majority of these pieces are written by white, non-native men with a fancy vocabulary and no real understanding of the problem they’re writing about.”

These sentiments are exactly what I fear and dislike about the current state of the academy when it comes to Indigenous issues, and these worries are at least one part of why I will be calling it quits after this year. As a non-Indigenous student studying Canadian Indigenous literature, I have huge qualms about ethnographizing and appropriating. Is there a way, through methodology or approach or I don’t know what, to write about Indigeneity as a non-Indigenous academic in a way that is not appropriative and yet not overly performative and not simply another ethnographization or exoticization? This is a genuine question, I don’t have an answer.