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nialism, it is sometimes interpreted to mean that Native peoples must reject everything
that is not “indigenous” in order to be properly authentic.
As Kiri Sailiata (2010) notes, this understanding of decolonization imagines itself as
anextractiveprocesswherebywemustremoveanythingfromlivesthatistaintedbyco-
lonialism. Similarly, Scott Lyons's X-Marks (2010) contends that a politics of decolon-
ization has the danger of lapsing into a politics of purity in which any engagement with
the current legal and economic system is dismissed as co-opted. “If you happen to live
away from your homeland, speak English, practice Christianity, or know more songs by
theDaveMatthewsBandthanbytheancestors,youeffectively'ceasetoexist'asoneof
the People” (139). While Lyons does not dismiss the importance of decolonization, he
argues that such politics do not begin from an imagined precolonial past but under the
conditions in which we currently live. Rather than articulate contemporary Native iden-
tity as an “impure” version of traditional identity, Lyons argues that such a framework
locks Native identity in the past and cedes the “modern” to whiteness. Decolonization
entailsnotagoingbackwardtoaprecolonialpast,butacommitmenttobuildingafuture
for indigenous peoples based on principles of justice and liberation.
Keeling (2009) suggests that the “outside” should not be seen as the opposite of the
current system, but instead imagined as being in noncorrespondence to the current or-
der. Thus, since it is not the opposite of our current grid of intelligibility, we may be
able to see glimpses of the outside—ghosts that gesture toward a beyond—within the
current systems. And, as a result, we do not have to reject everything within the current
system in our quest for liberation. Some theoretical concepts within Native Studies can
help elucidate her arguments.
The work of Vine Deloria Jr. has provided much of the theoretical grounding for Nat-
ive Studies. He argued that decolonization required a fundamental epistemological shift
that questioned the very logic systems of Western thought itself (1977, 17). In God is
Red , he articulated what he viewed as some of the distinctions between Western and in-
digenousthoughtsystemssuchasthedistinctionbetweenspatialversustemporalorient-
ations, circular versus linear time, and practice versus belief centered traditions (Delor-
ia 1992).However, as Scott Lyons (2010) notes, these concepts started to become taken
very literally such that Native scholars started insisting that Native people “think in
circles.” However, I think Deloria's analysis could be better understood not as a literal
reading of indigenous epistemologies but as a gesture toward a beyond the colonial
order. Because of colonization, one must articulate these frameworks within colonial
terms. Yet, colonialism cannot contain them either. What Keeling (2009) suggests then
is that these gestures toward the beyond are critically important, but we should not mis-
take the gestures for the “beyond” itself.
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