Its about to get Academic... a series

Cheers to my 26 year old self who wrote the essays I will share here. Deep Gratitude to the indigenous professors who challenged my concepts of blackness and indigenous sovereignty.

It’s black history month. If you follow me on Instagram you’ve likely seen me posting pro-black content with an audacity that is unmatched at all other times of the year. I’ve been refusing to move for white folks on sidewalks, interrupting my automatic apologies to tell people in grocery stores to get out of my way. I’ve been ending statements about Seattle’s specific brand of liberalist caucasity with “during black history month?”

But in contemplating black futures I’ve been returning to the indigenous scholarship I became acquainted with while studying at UW. I’ve been working more diligently than ever on allowing myself (a black American) an imagined indigeneity that black Americans are rarely allowed. What does it mean to hold ontologies beyond that of enslavement when colonization and chattel slavery have so effectively cut us from the memory of a before? When we do not know the names of our ancestors, cannot remember and struggle to even imagine a before? What are the complications of never making the choice to live on these unceded territories? How can we even begin to trust the knowing of our blood and reclaim a before without untangling our complicity in the settler colonial construct? I offer no answers I’m afraid only the vulnerable grapplings of my 26 year old self and the invitation to engage more deeply with both indigenous scholarship and the process of shutting the fuck up when indigenous people are talking. For this series I will link readings many of which are well known and iconic as well as my reflections.

Reflection 1.1: “Decolonization is not a Metaphor.” (Tuck & Yang Linked).

Tuck & Yang’s Decolonization is not a metaphor was such an effectively unsettling read for me that I will spend the duration of this reflection unpacking my internal trajectory from curiosity, to mild frustration, to anger, and finally to what I perhaps ambitiously call some semblance of understanding and recognition. Like all things my black American identity and subsequent experiences play a central role in my reactions to this work and I can make no separations in my response. This is the lens from which I construct this reflection and I will not spend time attempting to address or unpack Tuck and Yang’s assertions on white settlers. 

What is Decolonization?

The first and perhaps most illuminating assertion that speaks both to what decolonization is, as much as it speaks to what it is not is offered early. Tuck & Yang state:

“Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,’ or “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that de-center settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization (1).”

Simply put Tuck and Yang differentiate decolonization from other social justice-oriented objectives in that they assert that “decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of land simultaneous to the recognition of how land and relations to land have always already been differently understood and enacted; that is, all of the land, and not just symbolically. This is precisely why decolonization is necessarily unsettling, especially across lines of solidarity (7).” This quote is so heavy I find myself wanting to pause to let it sink in further. .. In the context of black and indigenous solidarity, critiques of the civil rights movement for seeking equality with white men aka fighting for privileges within the corrupt system of settler colonialism are well known and used repeatedly to illustrate the ways black people are more concerned with their own economic advancements and quality of life within the unjust systems than we are concerned with the acknowledgement of and subsequent necessity of abolishing a system in which our gain will always be predicated by someone else’s loss. The hypervisibility of blackness in the media, our ongoing demands for the freedom of breathing, our desires to not witness our own peoples blood spilled in the streets time after time have often been equated with the erasure of indigenous peoples and issues and many have suggested that as a group, we maintain our complicity without any true understanding and awareness of indigenous sovereignty. 

“BLACK LIVES MATTER” 

“YOU LIVE ON STOLEN LAND” 

Two trauma informed war cries. Two trauma informed war cries that according to Tuck and Yang would serve as an example of two “incommensurable” movements. Two incommensurable movements that at least in the black community are often thought to be two sides of the same coin. Haven’t we all heard that Indigenous sovereignty is tied to black liberation. Isn’t that what black and indigenous people in the streets marching for black lives have been saying all through the spring and summer? The implication being that there is some common ground, some common goal between two communities? 

Tuck & Yang suggest otherwise and only after sitting with this reading and allowing my initial shock to dissipate, have I come to agree with them. 

Settler Innocence

Tuck & Yang then go on to state that the “metaphorization of decolonization makes possible” not only the assumption that human rights and social justice movements could be tied to decolonization (contradiction), but also in a rush to “settler innocence.” 

Notions of settler innocence though not new to me are always somewhat frustrating. Not in the sense of whiteness and its obvious and ongoing (policy enforced) desires to maintain innocence, but rather in its implications for those black Americans who trace their lineage through slavery and did not make the conscious choice to be here. However even in recognizing that I didn’t start the problem I cannot recall a time in which I ever thought I was not complicit or that my very being here and having any quality of life was not intrinsically related to violence against indigenous peoples, the earth itself, and several other countries and peoples that America continues to harm. In this sense it strikes me as somewhat simplistic to suggest that black peoples are overly concerned with notions of innocence or desires to appease guilt. Personally, any desire I have ever had to forge solidarity has always been a part of bonding over shared understandings of being deemed subhuman and disposable and the knowing deeply that I am not. That we are not. That it is violence and injustice. Innocence on the other hand. I don’t actually feel like I care that much about being innocent, nor do I feel that innocence has ever really been allowed for black peoples in any capacity. 

Here in this space of recognizing common humanity and injustice however lie the fundamental disconnection of which Tuck & Yang are referencing. Black people want to be free. I want to be free. I want all people to be free and I recognize the fundamental ways that a capitalistic, patriarchal, white supremacist nation maintained by acts of violence is antithetical to this potential for freedom… But this is also the place of my misunderstanding. I thought indigenous peoples and decolonization (though more than a metaphor) was about indigenous people being free, I thought that the recognition of this system as antithetical to freedom is a perspective largely gained because of indigenous scholarship. That indigenous people should be present and at the head of imagining a new future for collective freedom.

But after reading Tuck & Yang this utopian notion of freedom for all seems more settler colonial fantasy than a possible reality. Decolonization is in this sense for and about indigenous peoples. About their land and future. There is no us. Us is the fantasy. 

Is the desire for an us- or rather are fantasies of solidarity really about wanting to be innocent? I don’t think so. I don’t think solidarity is synonymous with the desire for innocence and reconciliation? But perhaps this is because I have no conscious awareness of guilt that is directly tied to Indigenous genocide? I don’t feel that my existence is wrong. And I don’t think it’s wrong to be concerned with the future of my communities or their quality of life any more than I think it’s wrong for decolonization to be about the futures and livelihoods of indigenous peoples. 

And when Tuck & Yang state “decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity” this is what they are saying. Decolonization is about indigenous futures not collective human rights and this feels important to know because… in this sense decolonization is not for me or my people. It’s not concerned with us and it doesn’t have to be and if I’m most honest, In this understanding I’m not concerned about decolonization or land returns. I don’t believe that what has been taken can be fully regained much like I don’t believe the unbelonging specific to black peoples can be regained. I just want to be free and indigenous scholarship does not have to be concerned for my community’s future. I understand the inclination to care about your own people and their futures. There's something that feels right and recognizable about that even if I’m not articulating it well. My participation in “decolonization” as a metaphor, as a hot topic, as some proof of solidarity will forever be changed and complicated.