ourlivinglibrary-blog

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

This is a longer version of a list of reading recommendations generated for a poster on Afrofuturism I designed for the IIT Department of Humanities. This list was made in collaboration with Sean Cashbaugh (University of Texas), John Cline (independent scholar), and Shannon…

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her in a bar once in Iowa City. Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. ...

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Noelani Goodyear-Kapoua

"When the fisher in the ocean- get your gear ready…"

Indigenous Self Determination and navigating political landscapes

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Regeneration as Decolonization

"... I wonder how we can 'reconcile' when the majority of Canadians do not understand the historic or contemporary injustice of dispossession and occupation, particularly when the state has expressed its unwillingness to make any adjustments to the unjust relationship. Haudenosaunee scholar and orator Dan Longboat recently reminded me of this, when he said that treaties are not just for governments, they are for the citizens as well. The people also have to act in a manner that is consistent with the relationships set out in the treaty negotiation process. If Canadians do not fully understand and embody the idea of reconciliation, is this a step forward? It reminds me of an abusive relationship where one person is being abused physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally. She wants out of the relationship, but instead of supporting her, we are all gathered around the abuser, because he wants to "reconcile". But he doesn't want to take responsibility. He doesn't want to change. In fact, all through the process he continues to physically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally abuse his partner. He just wants to say sorry so he can feel less guilty about his behaviour. Collectively, what are the implications of participating in reconciliation processes when there is an overwhelming body of evidence that in action, the Canadian state does not want to take responsibility and stop the abuse? What are the consequences for Indigenous Peoples of participating in a process that attempts to absolve Canada of past wrong doings, while they continue to engage with our nations in a less than honourable way?  ... For reconciliation to be meaningful to Indigenous Peoples and for it to be a decolonizing force, it must be interpreted broadly. To me, reconciliation must be grounded in cultural generation and political resurgence. It must support Indigenous nations in regenerating our languages, our oral cultures, our traditions of governance and everything else residential schools attacked and attempted to obliterate. Reconciliation must move beyond individual abuse to come to mean a collective re-balancing of the playing field. This idea is captured in the Nishnaabeg concept Aanji Maajitaawin: to start over, the art of starting over, to regenerate. Reconciliation is a process of regeneration that will take many years to accomplish. We have to regenerate our languages so we have communities of fluent speakers. We have to regenerate the conditions that produce leaders and political systems based on our collective Nishnaabeg values, political processes and philosophies. Canada must engage in a decolonization project and re-education project that would enable its government and its citizens to engage with Indigenous Peoples in a just and honourable way in the future."  Dancing On Our Turtle's Back (stories of Nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence and a new emergence), Leanne Simpson

**Art work by Jay Bird Redbell

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Today in class, two of my incredible class mates: Christine Bird- who is Anishinaabekwe from Peguis First Nation and Kailey Imes, settler Canadian, asked the questions: “What are colonial myths? Who are the actors? How do we remember/forget colonialism? When and how do we come into a mutual...

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Looking After Gdoo-Naaganinaa: Leanne Simpson

Incredible article on the integrity of pre-colonial relations of Nishnaabeg political culture.

Treaties as ongoing, fluid "maintenance of Harmonious relations". A living body which requires the respect, honour and mutual insight of both parties.

It makes one reflect about how we protect the fluid nature of relationships from the most intimate level to the international level.

http://leannesimpson.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/23-2-simpson.pdf

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

"We don’t need saving. 

We just need our Land Back. "

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Unsettling the Settler Within: Paulette Regan

"The convenient way to deal with the founding injustice of Canada is to allow colonialism to continue by ignoring the truth, to erase it from our memory, ban it from the schools, and suppress it in public. Canadians can continue to glorify their country's criminality, from Cartier to Caledonia, and force those who suffered the fraud, abuses, and violence to accommodate the denial and artifice of justice that has been set up. But as the original people of this land, as the blood and spiritual descendants of the people who lived on the land and fought and died to preserve the loving relationship they had with this continent, we cannot forget what has been done to create the myth of the country now called Canada.  Writing from a settler perspective primarily for other settlers, the author avoids the trap that so many non-Native scholars fall into- telling Native people how we must live. Instead, she homes in on what settlers must do to fix "the settler problem." By this, she means that non-Natives must struggle to confront their own colonial mentality, moral indifference and historical ignorance as part of a massive truth telling about Canada's past and present relationship with the original inhabitants of this land. The author argues that the settler version of national history denies a critical Indigenous counter-narrative. Populating the story of this country with Indigenous history and presence would mean that non-Natives will have to stop thinking of us as "obstacles" or "problems," which is counter-intuitive in Canadian society."  Taiaiake Alfred (Found in the Foreword of Unsettling the Settler Within). "Despite the long history of Indian residential schools, characterized by the imposing presence of the school buildings that dotted the Canadian landscape and were embodied in the lives and memories of survivors, most ordinary citizens say that they know nothing about them. The schools, some of which are still standing (last one closed in 1996), remain comfortably invisible to Canadians, as do the former inhabitants themselves. Perhaps we, as non-Indigenous people, can begin by asking ourselves some troubling questions. How is it that we know nothing about this history? What does the persistence of such invisibility in the face of the living presence of survivors tell us about our relationship with Indigenous peoples? What does our historical amnesia reveal about our continuing complicity in denying, erasing, and forgetting this part of our own history as colonizers while pathologizing the colonized? How will Canadians who have so selectively forgotten this "sad chapter in our history" now undertake to remember it? Will such remembering be truly transformative or simply perpetuate colonial relations? Surely, without confronting such difficult questions as part of our own truth telling, there can be no genuine reconciliation. Although the prime minister assured First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples that "there is no place in Canada for the attitudes that inspired the Indian residential school system to ever prevail again," my premise is that, unfortunately, such attitudes are alive and well today, rooted in settler historical myths and colonial mindsets. To understand why this is so, it is instructive to explore how colonial violence is woven into the fabric of Canadian history in an unbroken thread from past to present, which we must now unravel, upsetting out comfortable assumptions about the past. At the same time, we must work as Indigenous allies, to "restory" the dominant-culture version of history; that is, we must make decolonizing space for Indigenous history- counter-narratives of diplomacy, law, and peacemaking practices- as told by Indigenous peoples themselves." Paulette Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Aboriginal vs. Indigenous.

"Consider the futility of our present politics and the perversity of what I will call "aboriginalism," the ideology and identity of assimilation in which Onkwehonwe are manipulated by colonial myths into a submissive position and are told that by emulating white people they can gain acceptance and possibly even fulfillment within mainstream society. Many Onkwehonwe today embrace the label of "aboriginal," but this identity is a legal and social construction of the state, and it is disciplined by racialized violence and economic oppression to serve an agenda of silent surrender...Within the frame of politics and social life, Onkwehonwe who accept the label and identity of an aboriginal are bound up in a logic that is becoming increasingly evident, even to them, as one of outright assimilation- the abandonment of any meaningful notion of being indigenous. Challenging all of this means even redefining the terminology of our existence. Take the word, "colonization," which is actually a way of seeing and explaining what has happened to us. We cannot allow that word to be the story of our lives, because it is a narrative that in its use privileges the colonizer's power and inherently limits our freedom, logically and mentally imposing a perpetual colonized victim way of life and view on the world. Onkwehonwe are faced not with the same adversary their ancestors confronted, but with a colonization that has recently morphed into a kind of post-modern imperialism that is more difficult to target than the previous and more obvious impositions of force and control over the structures of government within their communities... The challenge is to reframe revolt." Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: indigenous pathways of action and freedom.

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Afternoons with Crazy Brave

"No," he said. "We can't work politically for a better world for the people if we can't hold it together in our own house." I convinced myself that we owed it to ourselves to keep trying. I found excuses: He had been overcome with grief for his buddy. He was an Indian man in a white world. (145) As I sketched, I considered the notion of warrior. In the American mainstream imagination, warriors were always male and military, and when they were Indian warriors they were usually Plains Indian males with headdresses. What of contemporary warriors? And what of the wives, mothers, and daughters whose small daily acts of sacrifice and bravery were usually unrecognized or unrewarded? These acts were just as crucial to the safety and well-being of the people. (150) I did not get him out of jail that time. I did not take him back. My dreams had warned me. I understood why women went back to their abusers. the monster wasn't your real husband. He was a bad dream, an alien of sorts who took over the spirit of your beloved one. He entered and left your husband. It was your real love you welcomed back in. (157) These fathers, boyfriends, and husbands were all men we loved, and were worthy of love. As peoples, we had been broken. We were still in the bloody aftermath of a violent takeover of our lands. Within a few generations we had gone from being nearly one hundred percent of the population of this continent to less than one-half of one percent. We were all haunted. (158) CRAZY BRAVE, Joy Harjo

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

Mornings with: CRAZY BRAVE.

My rite of passage into the world of humanity occurred then, through jazz. The music was a startling bridge between familiar and strange lands. I heard stomp-dance shells, singing. I saw suits, satin, find hats. I heard workers singing in the fields. It was a way to speak beyond the confines of ordinary language. I still hear it. (18) A story matrix connects all of us. There are rules, processes, and circles of responsibility in this world. And the story begins exactly where it is supposed to begin. We cannot skip any part. (28) In those early years I lived in a world of animal powers. Most children do. In those years we are still close to the door of knowing. (39) I went inside to put on a shirt. I knew better than to talk back. In that small moment the earthly delight of being five years old, of being utterly body and breath, came falling down. (47) I loved the erotic poetry of the Song of Solomon from the Bible. These were in essence love songs for a beloved. The beloved was also God. I turned to these songs in the Bible to escape the pedantic sermons of the preacher. I preferred to consider God as a beloved rather than as a wrathful white man who was ready to destroy anyone who had an imagination. (79) We were all "skins" traveling together in an age of metamorphosis, facing the same traumas from colonization and dehumanization. We were direct evidence of the struggle of our ancestors. We heard them and they spoke through us, though like others of our generation, we wore bell-bottoms and Lennon eye-glasses. (86) Breaths of CRAZY BRAZE, by Joy Harjo.  Joy is a warrior, performer/writer of the Mcskoke/Creek Nation. Her story is speaking to deep parts of my spirit and I feel the need to share some of her words, while encouraging you to read her work 

*

*Art work by: Tom Grey Eyes

[ourlivinglibrary-blog]

You were born together...

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God. But let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. 

-Kahlil Gibrand Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.  Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.