Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T00:57:18.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Being Indigenous: Resurgences against Contemporary Colonialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Taiaiake Alfred  and
Jeff Corntassel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, we discuss strategies for resisting further encroachment on Indigenous existences by Settler societies and states – and as well multinational corporations and other elite organizations controlled by state powers and other elements of the imperial institutional network; and we focus on how Indigenous communities can regenerate themselves to resist the effects of the contemporary colonial assault and regenerate politically and culturally. We ask the fundamental question: how can we resist further dispossession and disconnection when the effects of colonial assaults on our own existences are so pronounced and still so present in the lives of all Indigenous peoples?

Type
Politics of Identity – IX
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , 2005 , pp. 597 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

‘The Politics of Identity’ is an on-going series edited by Richard Bellamy.

References

2 This article draws on analyses and concepts developed in Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom, Peterborough, ON, Broadview Press, 2005.Google Scholar

3 Bernard Nietschmann, ‘The Fourth World: Nations Versus States’, in George J. Demko and William B. Wood (eds), Reordering the World: Geopolitical Perspectives on the 21st Century, Philadelphia, Westview Press, 1995, pp. 228–31.Google Scholar

4 Graham Hingangaroa Smith, ‘Protecting and Respecting Indigenous Knowledge’, in Marie Battiste (ed.), Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, Vancouver, BC, UBC Press, 2000, p. 211. For examples of classic colonial-liberal discourse with liberatory pretences, see Patrick Macklem, Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001; Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism and ‘The Politics of Recognition’, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992; and Will Kimlycka (ed.), The Rights of Minority Cultures, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

5 For more on the global nature of Indigenous identity construction, see Corntassel, Jeff, ‘Who is Indigenous? “Peoplehood” and Ethnonationalist Approaches to Rearticulating Indigenous Identity’, Nationalism & Ethnic Politics, 9 (2003), pp. 75–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 85. For the explanation of his concept of Indigenous identity, one that is often characterized as a sort of strategic essentialism – meaning that it is multi-faceted and flexible, yet rooted in Indigenous cultural ground – see also Alfred's Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

7 George Manuel and Michael Posluns, The Fourth World: An Indian Reality, New York, Collier Macmillan Canada, 1974, p. 60.Google Scholar

8 Nietschmann, ‘The Fourth World’, pp. 236–37.Google Scholar

9 James Minahan, Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations, Volume II, Oxford, Greenwood Press, 2002, pp. 845–50; Rajkumari Chandra Roy, Land Rights of the Indigenous Peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh,Oxford, IWGIA, 2000.Google Scholar

10 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York, Grove Press, 1963, p. 210.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., pp. 306–7.Google Scholar

12 Alfred, Taiaiake, ‘Deconstructing the British Columbia Treaty Process’, Balayi: Culture, Law and Colonialism, 3 (2001), p. 49.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 41.Google Scholar

14 Corntassel, Jeff, ‘ “Deadliest Enemies” or Partners in the “Utmost Good Faith”: Conflict Resolution Strategies for Indian nation/state Disputes in an Era of Forced Federalism’, Ayaangwaamizin: International Journal of Indigenous Philosophy, 3 (Summer 2003), pp. 141–67.Google ScholarFor a further elaboration of this argument, see Jeff Corntassel, Forced Federalism: Contemporary Challenges to Indigenous Nationhood, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, forthcoming.

15 Inés Hernández-Úvila, ‘The Power of Native Languages and the Performance of Indigenous Autonomy: The Case of Mexico’, in Richard Grounds, George E. Tinker and David E. Wilkins (eds), Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance, Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2003, p. 56.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. 38.Google Scholar

17 Deloria, Vine, Jr., Custer Died for your Sins, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1988, p. 27.Google Scholar

18 Nagel, Joane, American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of Identity and Culture, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 113.Google Scholar

19 Niezen, Ronal, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Mihesuah, Devon A., ‘American Indian Identities: Issues of Individual Choices and Development’, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 22 (1998), pp. 193–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Weaver, Hilary N., ‘Indigenous Identity: What is It and Who Really Has It? American Indian Quarterly, 25 (2001), p. 245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Snipp, C. Matthew, American Indians: The First of This Land, New York, Russell Save Foundation, 1989, p. 27.Google Scholar

23 Gurr, Ted Robert, Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century, Washington, DC, United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000, p. 17.Google Scholar

24 Niezen, , The Origins of Indigenism, p. 19.Google Scholar

25 Snipp, American Indians; Hagan, William T., ‘Full Blood, Mixed Blood, Generic and Ersatz: The Problem of Indian Identity’, Arizona and the West, 27 (1985), pp. 309–26.Google Scholar

26 Anderson, Kim, A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood, Toronto, Sumach Press, 2000 Google Scholar; Mihesuah, Devon A., Indigenous American Women: Decolonization, Empowerment, Activism, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2003.Google Scholar

27 Anderson, A Recognition of Being, pp. 116–36.Google Scholar

28 Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–1960, Phoenix, University of Arizona Press, 1962.Google Scholar

29 Spicer, Cycles of Conquest, pp. 576–8.Google Scholar

30 Robert K. Thomas, ‘The Tap-Roots of Peoplehood’, in Daphne J. Anderson (ed.), Getting to the Heart of the Matter: Collected Letters and Papers, Vancouver, Native Ministries Consortium, 1990, pp. 25–32.Google Scholar

31 Holm, Tom, J., Pearson, Diane and Chavis, Ben, ‘Peoplehood: A Model for American Indian Sovereignty in Education’, Wicazo Sa Review, 18 (2003), pp. 7–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 15.Google Scholar

33 Quoted from Hernández-Úvila, ‘The Power of Native Languages’, p. 62.Google Scholar

34 Cajete, Gregory, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence, Santa Fe, NM, Clear Light Publishers, 2000, p. 178.Google Scholar

35 Thomas, ‘The Tap-Roots of Peoplehood’, p. 29.Google Scholar

36 Manuel and Posluns, The Fourth World, p. 261.Google Scholar

37 Nietschmann, ‘The Fourth World’, pp. 235–6.Google Scholar

38 Hall, Anthony J., The American Empire and the Fourth World, Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003, pp. 523, 530.Google Scholar

39 Garroutte, Eva Marie, Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003, p. 144.Google Scholar

40 Alfred, , Peace, Power, Righteousness, p. 81.Google Scholar

41 See, for example, Roger Maaka and Augie Fleras, ‘Engaging with Indigeneity: Tino Rangatiratanga in Aotearoa’, in Duncan Ivison, Paul Patton and Will Sanders (eds), Political Theory and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 89–109.Google Scholar