Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
wouldbebasedonresponsibilityforandrelationshipwithland.Theindigenouspeople's
statement echoed that of Patricia Monture-Angus (1999) who argued:
Although Aboriginal Peoples maintain a close relationship with the land … it is
not about control of the land…. Earth is mother and she nurtures us all … it is
the human race that is dependent on the earth and not vice versa.
Sovereignty,whendefinedasmyrighttoberesponsible…requiresarelation-
ship with territory (and not a relationship based on control of that territory)….
What must be understood then is that the Aboriginal request to have our sover-
eignty respected is really a request to be responsible. I do not know of anywhere
else in history where a group of people have had to fight so hard just to be re-
sponsible. (36)
But they suggested that these collectivities could not be formed without a radical
change in what we perceived ourselves to be. That is, if we understand ourselves to be
transparent, self-determining subjects, defining ourselves in opposition to who we are
not, then the nations that will emerge from this sense of self will be exclusivist and in-
sular. However, if we understand ourselves as being fundamentally constituted through
our relations with other beings and the land, then the nations that emerge will also be
inclusiveandinterconnectedwitheachother.Interestingly,thespokespeopleattheWSF
specifically stated that their goal was not to tell nonindigenous peoples to “go home.”
They articulated an expansive notion of indigeneity by stating that all are welcome to
their lands if they live in good ways with the land. Of course, these kinds of statements
canbetroublingintheNewAgecontextinNorthAmericawheretheymightbeheardas
“everyone can be indigenous by doing a pipe ceremony, sweat lodge, etc.” Essentially,
this expansive understanding of indigeneity could be understood to erase the specificity
of indigenous peoples and their struggles today.
But in this context, I would argue that while this call might be more open and affirm-
ing than the typical calls to confess settler privilege, it is also a more difficult demand.
This demand is something more akin to Weheliye's call: a complete transformation of
subjectivity and humanity. Indigenity then in this call does not become an easily calcul-
able category that the privileged subject can become through a simple process of appro-
priationandcommodification.Rather,toborrowfromtheworkofJustineSmith(2005),
indigenity becomes the performance of transformation itself. Their call then was less
aboutcritiquingsettlerprivilegeandmoreaboutgesturingtowardapoliticalprojectthat
requires global and collective participation to move beyond the conditions of settler co-
lonialism.
