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Title: Autonomously and with Conviction Author: Tawinikay Date: October 12, 2018 Language: en Topics: indigenous anarchism Source: Retrieved on 25th February 2021 from https://north-shore.info/2018/10/22/autonomously-and-with-conviction-a-metis-refusal-of-state-led-reconciliation/ Notes: Transcription of a talk given by Tawinikay on October 12, 2018 at the 13th annual Decolonizing Thanksgiving Dinner in Guelph, Ontario on traditional Neutral/Chonnonton, Anishinabec, and Haudenosaunee territory.
Zhaawanong Noodin Ikwe ndishnikaaz. Michif-NĂŞhiyaw endow. Gaawiin
ningikenimaasii nindoodem. Kisiskatchewanisipi nindoonjibaa. Hamilton
nindaa.
My name is ******. My Indian name is Southern Wind Woman. I am
Michif-Cree. I do not know my clan. I am from Saskatchewan (Meadow Lake,
specifically) and I now live in Dish with One Spoon Territory in
Hamilton now. I announce my name in Anishinaabemowin because I received
it in an Ojibwe Sundance lodge, a community here in these territories I
have been accepted into. I have mixed French, Scottish and Swedish
heritage. Furthermore, I identify as Queer/Two Spirit interchangeably
(she/her), I’m an organizer, a proud feminist, and an anarchist.
Over the years I’ve been intimately involved in a wide range of
movements, from animal liberation to land defense struggles, issues of
Indigenous sovereignty, the fight against patriarchy, and push back
against gentrification. I see all these struggles as connected.
I want to take a second to reflect on knowledge and the creation of it
in our communities. What you will hear me speak on tonight is a work in
progress and, you can be sure, that six months from now I’ll probably
have different feelings and new thoughts about it. Ideas aren’t static.
It is also important to acknowledge that our individual realities limit
our ability to comprehend the diverse networks of knowledge that inform
other people’s lives. Tonight, I am up here speaking and what I say will
be attributed to me. What is lost is the hundreds of hours of support,
reflection, and political debate that other comrades and friends have
engaged in with me.
Knowledge is not created by individuals, but by communities.
Because I believe these things, I’ve decided that this will be my last
speaking event of the year. I’ve been honoured with a lot of
opportunities to share my opinion lately, but it is now my time to sit,
listen, and reflect. And there is no better time to practice that
humility than winter.
I’d just like to preface this by saying that some of the things I’m
going to say tonight are going to be challenging, maybe even upsetting,
for some people. If it is, I apologize. But I was also offered tobacco
to speak tonight and so I have to speak my truth.
I was asked to come and speak to you tonight about reconciliation.
I think it is important for me to begin this talk by telling you that I
have no interest in reconciliation (at this time) and that I think the
concept is a state-led smoke screen used to advance a more sophisticated
policy of assimilation. I want to talk a little bit about
reconciliation, decolonization, the difference between the two, and the
role of the state in all of this.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed in 2007 after
residential school survivors won the largest class-action lawsuit in
Canadian history. They modelled it after the post-apartheid Truth and
Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, which was fitting, seeing as
how South Africa looked to the Canadian reservation infrastructure for
inspiration in setting up their own racist and segregated system.
As most of us know, the TRC concluded with 94 actionable measures that
the government, educational institutions, and individuals could take to
pursue reconciliation between settler and Indigenous communities.
Universities started implementing new educational curriculum about
colonization. Trudeau started wearing shorter sleeves so we could all
see his Haida raven tattoo. Land acknowledgements began popping up
everywhere. The government of Canada recently released their 10 Points
of Official Reconciliation, which is a document that I will refer back
to during my talk.
I’m honoured to sit here tonight and tell you that reconciliation – as
we know it – is an impossible lie.
Official Canadian reconciliation centers on accepting the past,
apologizing, and moving forward together. It doesn’t necessitate
physical reparations for the history of colonization. In fact, it
discourages that sort of rhetoric as divisive. Counterproductive.
Difficult.
There exists a fundamental problem here, because settler-colonialism
doesn’t exist in the past. Its violence is pervasive and ongoing, right
now, tonight, everywhere we look. Reconciliation is the erasure of this
current settler-colonial violence.
Reconciliation – as a term – is about resolving a conflict, returning to
a state of friendly relations. It can also mean the bringing together of
two positions so as to make them compatible.
Decolonization – on the other hand – is about repealing the authority of
the colonial state and redistributing land and resources. It also means
embracing and legitimizing previously repressed Indigenous worldviews.
Decolonization isn’t a light word. We have to think about what
colonization is to understand it: the complete administrative and
economic domination of a people and place. Repealing that is a big deal.
Nevertheless, you will often see these two words thrown around almost
interchangeably, especially in the university context where folks using
them aren’t actually actors in struggle. I would argue that this is
inappropriate.
The occupying and dominating force in our context is the state of
Canada.
I don’t see the creation of the Canadian state as coinciding with the
signing of the British North America Act in 1867, but as a slow process
of institution-building that began at first settlement. Confederation
was just the official recognition of that process.
The state – we use this word a lot, but we aren’t always using it with
an understanding of what it is. Tonight when I use the term, I mean a
state is a compulsory political organization with a centralized
government that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of force
within a specific territory, mapped out within the confines of borders.
This is what Canada is. Secondary are the public declarations of love
for poutine and jokes about affinity for beavers.
Zoos are colonial institutions as well. And they used to hold humans.
True fact, you can look it up. A lot of Indigenous humans, and Africans.
Trying to shed the baggage of that racist past, they later rebranded
themselves as educational and conservation organizations. But a zoo will
always be a zoo.
Canada was created in order to govern, exploit, and expand the
territories swindled, settled, and stolen from Indigenous peoples of
this land. That wasn’t a by-product, it was its primary function. It
still is. It always will be. It can’t escape that.
So how can the Canadian state reconcile with Indigenous peoples?They
certainly can’t “go back” to a state of friendly relations because there
never existed such a time. Reconciliation can only mean eliminating the
conflict by enmeshing Indigenous and settler communities, which is the
second version of that definition that I shared, making conflicting
positions compatible.
This means assimilating Indigenous peoples by having them give up their
claim to sovereignty in exchange for the promise of the economic
equality within Canada. And it means Canadian people get to devour
Indigenous ideas and symbols into their own settler stories, their own
canadiana. This is the only path possible under the Canadian state.
The return of land and the power to govern said lands could never be
possible under this structure. The resource-based frameworks that define
land and water under the logic of Capitalism could never be reconciled
with giving away so much money to Indigenous communities. The
state-based frameworks that define territory under the nation-state
system could never be reconciled with giving away so much power. It just
couldn’t happen.
I don’t want to sit up here tonight and lecture you, I want you to be
politically engaged with these ideas and thinking about your own
politics. Realistically, what I’m offering you is a challenge to your
own frameworks of justice and “good enough”.
I posit that you have to decide which of these ideas you are pursuing
politically?
Are you interested in reconciliation or are you fighting for
decolonization?
The words aren’t interchangeable. We have to stop using them that way.
I also don’t see the two ideas as compatible or complimentary. They
aren’t part of some mythical umbrella of Left progressivism. One is
calling for the continuation of the Canadian state and the other for its
abolition.
This goes beyond simply saying that you are fighting for decolonization.
Your politics matter. If you believe in Canadian democracy, if you
believe the system works but is just broken, if you believe that voting
in another electoral party candidate could truly make a difference, then
you aren’t interested in decolonization.
Decolonization doesn’t just mean anti-capitalist, it means anti-state.
The first of these opinions is relatively uncontroversial and accepted
in our activist circles, it’s the second that usually gets people.
To those who feel as though what I’m saying is too binary, that there is
still good to be done under the system of a Canadian state, I offer you
the logic of Canada’s 10 Points of Official Reconciliation and ask you
to ponder the question of “rights”.
Let’s look together at some of these points.
1) Canada recognizes Indigenous rights to self-determination.
2) Canada sees reconciliation as fundamental to Section 35 of the
Constitution Act.
3) Canada recognizes it needs to act with integrity.
4) Canada sees Indigenous self-government as part of
the federalism of the provinces
5) Canada says it needs to uphold the treaties.
(Six and seven I’ll come back to.)
8) Canada desires to construct a new fiscal relationship.
9) Canada recognizes that reconciliation is flexible.
10) Canada recognizes that Indigenous peoples are all different.
I chose not to read out the expanded points of this list because I think
it is a generally useless and boring document. A perfect example of the
bureaucratic skill of using an abundance of words to say absolutely
nothing. But I would encourage you to peruse it on your own, if you feel
so inclined.
Pay particular attention to the careful phrasing to describe where
Indigenous people fit into the imagination of this post-reconciliation
utopia. For all the fancy wording, there is no promise of sovereignty,
only money that will bring Indigenous people up to the standard of
living of Canadians, so that they are readily available and willing to
be absorbed into the project of Canada.
I give you a quote from point 2 to illustrate this:
“Reconciliation is an ongoing process through which Indigenous peoples
and the Crown work cooperatively to establish and maintain a mutually
respectful framework for living together, with a view to fostering
strong, healthy, and sustainable Indigenous nations within a strong
Canada.”
There are different incarnations of this subtle assertion of Canadian
supremacy in points 2, 3, 4, 8, & 10. Now let’s go back to points 6 & 7,
arguably the most important in this document.
Point 6 talks about securing the free, prior, and informed consent of
Indigenous peoples in regards to their land when Canada wants to take
it, develop it, or exploit it. This wordy section is full of phrases
like consensus and consent, collaboration and consultation: it actually
has all of those in one little section.
Point 7 – a much shorter section – immediately revokes that false
commitment. It says that, consultation is an aspiration, but that the
control of land supposedly held by Indigenous peoples can be overridden
in any situation beneficial to the state of Canada.
Indigenous peoples, even under the banner of reconciliation, do not have
the right to say no to the state of Canada. The right to say no is
critical to the realization of sovereignty, of consent, of freedom.
But it should come as no surprise to Canadians who are paying attention.
States operate on the illusion of rights. The government has the right
to seize your property too. It can expropriate any piece of land that it
needs to serve its goals of economic expansion, whether that be for a
dam or an airport or a highway or a pipeline.
This is because rights “given” to you by the government can be taken
away by the government. These rights aren’t real. This is fake freedom.
It is my belief that there can be no reconciliation that recognizes the
self-determination of Indigenous peoples so long as the state of Canada
exists. Once embraced, this conclusion leads you towards a radical and
revolutionary politic in search of answers. Though I I will admit I
remain skeptical as an anarchist, I spent a good deal of time listening
and trying to envision what Communist comrades meant when they spoke of
revolution.
I asked them where Indigenous nations fit into their hope for a
proletariat-dictated state. I asked them how this new world would make
space for Indigenous worldviews or land-based spiritualities. I asked
them how they intended to share power and return land.
Time and time again I was convinced – through their insufficient or
nonexistent answers to those questions – that their proletariat-dictated
state would be no better for the people or the earth than the
liberal-capitalist one we have now.
Many times they would tell me that the return of land was paramount to
upholding the justice of the new communist state, but their mechanisms
for handing back that land were missing. In this new state, where land
was to be publicly seized and redistributed among working class
settlers, where was the room to authoritatively give away huge sections
of it to sovereign entities without sparking massive
settler-entitlement-provoked unrest?
Many times they countered that argument by saying there was more than
enough Crown Land to give back to Indigenous nations that they wouldn’t
have to give away cityscapes or farm land, but they fail to realize that
much of that Crown Land is the site of massive resource wealth. An
industrial communist state – which we could almost definitely expect –
would need to produce prosperity to ensure a counterrevolution didn’t
quickly overtake its new central authority. Wouldn’t it then need
resources in order to keep the people happy and also to fuel the grand
people’s military?
These are all huge problems, and the picture they paint doesn’t make me
very enthusiastic for the coming red revolution, but most importantly,
they don’t begin to address the fundamental conflict. The same conflict
that the Canadian state faces now in its own reconciliatory rhetoric.
Even if this land known as Canada were to be chopped in half and half
returned to Indigenous nations, the relationship between a dense,
centralized state and a diverse, heterogeneous group of communities will
always remain a gross imbalance of power. There is no nation-to-nation
relationship, it’s one of nation-to-nations.
In address of this problem, Communists always point to the same tired
solutions that Canadians do. Insisting that Indigenous people will form
new federations like the AFN which will help to liaise between the
parties. I am not inspired by this solution.
Since the early days of this colonial project, settlers have been trying
to figure out how Indigenous governance works. And when they did figure
it out, they didn’t like it. It took too long. It was too fluid. And it
didn’t govern the principles of property and ownership in a way
conducive to their mission.
With the realization of the Indian Act, settlers set up neo-colonial
governments called Band Councils to replace traditional governance
systems. These were elected positions, based on representative democracy
mirroring the settler system. They considered this and only this
legitimate and they enforced that legitimacy through coercive authority.
Often at gunpoint.
Over time, with the Canadian state swelling to the unimaginable size
that it has now through the pillaging of stolen resources, many
Indigenous nations tried to gain legitimacy by forming associations
based on euro-centric modes of government. The Allied Nations of BC, the
Indian Association of Alberta, the MĂ©tis Nation of Ontario (of which I
am a part), culminating in the UN-inspired Assembly of First Nations
(AFN).
The AFN doesn’t represent the needs and desires of Indigenous people
just in the same way the Canadian government doesn’t represent
Canadians. Representational democracy is a far cry from “rule by the
people”. Pipeline Perry is busy handing over Eagle Staffs to Justin
Trudeau and thanking him for his charity while the rest of the assembly
works with the RCMP to out land defenders across Turtle Island.
Now, I don’t blame our elders and community leaders for trying to do
good for Indigenous peoples through the only system allowed by Canada –
the current occupying force. But it’s not a secret that these systems
also breed corruption. For as many good and decent people there are in
these positions, when people are kept powerless on purpose, there will
always be those who crave the authority of the colonizer.
But, as long as there have been the forcefully implemented
representative democracy of band council, the false nations of the MNO,
and the coerced federalism of bodies like the AFN, there have been
Indigenous people and communities fighting to dismantle them and return
to systems of traditional governance. Smaller in size and locally based
on belonging in a community.
Which brings me to anarchism.
Anarchism is a political philosophy – some might say a beautiful idea –
that believes in self-governed societies based on voluntary association
with one another. It advocates for non-hierarchical decision making,
direct participation in those decisions by affected communities, and
autonomy for all living persons. Furthermore, it leaves space for the
valuation of non-human entities beyond their monetary worth or
usefulness to human beings.
My Indigenous teachings have communicated to me that our communities are
important, but so are we as individuals. Traditional ways saw decision
making as a participatory process, based on consensus, where communities
made choices together. My teachings tell me that the land can offer us
what we need, but never to take more than that. I see these ideas as
fundamentally compatible.
Anarchism envisions a world where there exists a system of land
stewardship, but not ownership. A world where there are territories, but
not borders. Although. sticking with my conceptual tool, I could call
this association between diverse communities of settlers and Indigenous
people a nations-to-nations relationship, it wouldn’t be quite accurate
either.
Anarchists don’t believe in nations. But I would argue neither do
Indigenous folks. The word nation is a funny one, imposed on Indigenous
communities as the most comprehensible label for their form of political
organization. It’s useful in some contexts, often it’s not, and it has
never quite fit.
Indigenous communities used to meet each spring to negotiate
territories, form new agreements, and redistribute resources. Not all,
of course, sometimes they just burned down their neighbors houses when
they wanted them to move out. I am not here tonight to romanticize some
pre-contact utopia free from oppression and conflict.
But the conception of their “nations” was far different than the
Westphalian model followed and imposed by Western society. Decisions
were made by communities. Resources were shared. Membership was fluid
and adoption common. Leaders were seen as spokespeople or advocates more
than authorities. Positions of honour were given to those with life-long
demonstrations of service, wisdom, and integrity. Those positions were
also revocable. It’s possible to reconcile this with the anarchist idea
of legitimate authority. This wasn’t anarchy exactly as we know it, but
it was close.
It figures then that both liberal and Marxist theories have found a
story to explain away the validity of such societies. Liberals were fond
of social Darwinist theories of societal evolution that saw my ancestors
as stuck in a stage of savagery. Marxists preferred their theory of
historical materialism to claim that Indigenous societies were just a
form of primitive communism, which would need to evolve through
capitalism to ever reach the more respectable industrial communism they
imagine.
I’d like to challenge this framework and, instead, offer a circular view
of history embraced by my Indigenous teachings. I don’t think we need to
“go back” along a linear timeline of so-called progression. There is no
going back. But I want to return to the ideas of my ancestors and see it
as moving forward, or maybe just as movement, directionless.
I’d like to see an anarchy of my people and the anarchy of settlers
(also my people) enacted here together, side by side. With an equal
distribution of power, each pursuing healthy relationships, acting from
their own ideas and history. Just as the Two Row imagined.
I would like to see the centralized state of Canada dismantled. I’d like
to see communities take up the responsibility of organizing themselves
in the absence of said central authority. Community councils meeting
weekly to discuss the needs of the community and the limitations of the
land to provide for those needs, with a renewed emphasis on staying
within those limits. Decisions made on consensus, with a more active
participation from all persons. Participation made more accessible by
the lessening of work necessary with the return to a subsistence economy
rather than one of accumulation. I’d like to see more conversation, more
cooperation, more shared production. A system that may have regional
communication and collaboration, but always with an emphasis on the
primacy of the community to determine its own needs and values.
I think beautiful things would follow from these changes naturally. I
think that if it were up to communities to decide whether it was worth
it to open a gravel pit in their territory if it meant risking their
only water source, we would see less gravel pits. The violence of
centralized authority means creating sacrifice zones without a thought.
Even in this lovely future, there would still be conflict because
conflict is a constant and that’s okay. Not all newly sovereign
communities – Indigenous or settler – would immediately institute
reciprocal relationships with the planet because, as we know, there are
plenty of Indigenous capitalists out there alongside settler
capitalists.
But the new relationship to place and focus on interdependence will give
settlers a chance to genuinely form a new connection to this land
themselves. To adopt their own traditions and values that deal with the
ethics of consumption and growth.
Over time, I think we would see the blending together of communities of
settlers and Indigenous folks who committed themselves to the same
ideas. The love of land would bring some people closer. The new site of
conflict would be less based on a racialized claim to land and more
based on defending a worldview that calls for its defense.
This. This point is where I think the word reconciliation could be used
between our communities.
I identify as Michif-Cree. And I always list my other European ancestry
when I speak to people. Sometimes other Indigenous folks have asked me
why I don’t just claim myself as nêhiyaw-iskwêw (a Cree woman). But I
tell them I want to find ways to honour my mother’s ancestors as well.
And it was important to my grandfather that we remember that we were
MĂ©tis, and to be proud of it.
I am proud to be Métis. The Cree used to call us “Otipemisiwak”, which
means those who govern themselves. My direct ancestors and their
communities waged a commendable resistance against the early Canadian
state, carried in whispers as the Red River Rebellion. They lived a hard
life on the margins of society and paid dearly for their resistance,
surviving as squatters for almost 60 years. They called them the Road
Allowance People.
To be Métis means I walk in two worlds. I consider it a gift. I didn’t
always think that, but I do now.
I learn so much from my political community in Hamilton, constantly
expanding my ideas and challenging me to take bigger risks. I learn so
much from my ceremony families at New Credit, Chippewa of the Thames,
and Kipawa digging deep into my healing and my responsibilities.
Sometimes, I wish I could bring these two communities together more. I
think they both have things to learn from the other. But it’s hard.
It takes a constant vigilance to both urge my settler friends to
reconnect with land and spirit and to guard against them assuming too
much. I love the phrase, “becoming Indigenous to place”, but I still
can’t bring myself to use it. It’s too dangerous, people are too
irresponsible.
The thing is, I don’t think settlers need to co-opt Indigenous
worldviews or to start using our forms of governance. I really think
anarchism can provide us with a political system parallel and
harmonious. A set of ideas that can also allow for us to acknowledge the
interdependence of the earth and to form new values based on that sacred
connection.
Again, it’s not about going back. It’s about taking the knowledge that
has survived and using it to create a more beautiful and just future.
For all of us.
The Canadian state cannot reconcile with Indigenous communities. But you
can, as individuals. It starts with you making choices. Autonomously.
With conviction.
Maybe you decide tonight that you still believe in supporting Canadian
state-led reconciliation, regardless of what I said. Okay. But own it.
Don’t make yourself out to be a revolutionary. Because your ideas
aren’t.
Maybe you decide to leave here tonight and take your politics a little
more seriously. Or maybe you already are an anarchist and everything
I’ve said was a reminder or a validation. To you, I say remember your
politics and choose your allies carefully.
Saying you support Indigenous sovereignty doesn’t mean backing every
Indigenous person on every project. There are plenty of Indigenous
misogynists and ladder-climbing politicians out there, and you don’t do
me any favours by helping them gain power. Fight for liberatory ideas,
not for nations or bloodlines.
We do this all the time. There are Indigenous people out there who
oppose pipelines and those who support them, but we align ourselves with
the resistance, so we are making choices already. Own it. It’s okay.
It’s good to fight for the land and for freedom.
This also means you have to do your homework. Understand what struggles
are about and know who is participating in them. Get to know those
people. Build relationships. Build meaningful relationships outside of
the occupation, as friends. It can’t start from a place of white guilt.
Don’t get swept up in your own settler redemption story.
Remember that fighting for a future that sees justice for Indigenous
communities is not just done as comrades in their struggles. It should
be a politic you live every day. You can do this without speaking on
their behalf. Be thoughtful. And creative. And, whenever possible, just
work to undermine and attack the Canadian state in all of your work.
That is the work of decolonization. And it’s where you will find your
own liberation too. This is your government, not theirs, and it
shouldn’t be their responsibility to tear it down.
Maarsii. Thank you. That’s all I have to say.