‘A New Kind Of Movement’ Decolonization And Revolution

By Taiaiake Alfred
From New Socialist Magazine

There is always a danger in speaking of colonization in theoretical ways, whether legal, political or sociological. Those of us in a position to be able to rethink our own identities and our nationhood, and to contribute to the remaking of our relationships and institutions, cannot allow ourselves to distance our minds or our hearts from the present and personal realities that the vast majority of Onkwehonwe (First Peoples) are living. The spiritual disconnection I am claiming here to be the root problem of colonization has affected us all in painful and psychologically debilitating ways. This must be acknowledged and respected.

Disconnection is the precursor to disintegration, and the deculturing of our people is most evident in the violence and self-destruction that are the central realities of a colonized existence and the most visible face of the discord colonialism has wrought in Onkwe-honwe lives over the years. Now we will turn to gaining an intimate understanding of what that disconnection means, of the personal effects of colonialism, and of the hopes we have of overcoming those effects by using the strength within ourselves, our families and our communities.

“People always used to say I was optimistic, but I’m really frustrated because of the divisions among our people. There are some of us that believe so strongly in the culture and our values, but then there are others that want to sell-out our rights, thinking that it’s going to solve all of our problems if we just own land and pay taxes like everybody else. I don’t really worry about it a lot though, because I think that if you just do what you can to make things harder for the government, you’re really doing something. That’s what I like to do: make things difficult for them.” Tahehsoomca, former elected band chief of a small Nuu-Chah-Nulth community on northern Vancouver Island

For those unfamiliar with the quality of life in most indigenous communities, getting a grip on the seriousness and intensity of the effects I am referring to here is difficult. Our communities for the most part are closed to outsiders, and Settler scholars and the corporate media have ignored our living realities in favour of reportage and scholarship on economic and bureaucratic issues; they have not conveyed to the mainstream any sense of the challenges we face. It is even difficult to obtain reliable data or statistics from the colonial government institutions that claim the mandate to manage our affairs.

But to give some sense of the problems faced by Onkwehonwe communities, consider the information contained in a 1999 report from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, which stated Onkwehonwe are victimized by violent crimes at more than twice the rate of all American residents. The report covered the years 1992 through 1996, a period before more recent surges in drug abuse and violence in Onkwehonwe communities. It found the average annual rate of violent acts among Onkwehonwe was 124 per 1,000 people ages 12 years and older; this figure was compared with 61 violent victimizations per 1,000 African-American, 49 per 1,000 Euroamerican, and 29 per 1,000 people of Asian ancestry.

It is important to note as well that the anomie experienced by Onkwehonwe youth generally is combined with colonial psychologies of self-hating, repressed rage, drug and alcohol dependency and an overall social climate of racism which create a situation in which they are more likely than any other group of people to experience interracial violence. In addition, the study found alcohol is a major factor in the violent acts committed by and against Onkwehonwe.

“There’s lots of things that people say, and the way they are towards Native people –they don’t give you a chance. They expect the stereotype, they think that you have no education, you should be on drugs, you should be selling your body for money, you should be drinking. That’s what I face a lot: people write you off. Even our own people, they have their own stereotypes. It just makes it harder, and when you don’t do those kinds of things, you’re always kind of having to be proving it to people. But you don’t always want to be proving something to people, you just wanted to be treated fairly, heh?” Chris, Saskatoon youth

Add to this the main legacy of colonial dislocation and physical dispossession that have led to widespread poverty and governmental neglect: health problems. Onkwehonwe suffer health problems at rates exponentially higher than that of Settler populations; epidemic diseases, obesity/diabetes, HIV/AIDS and the effects of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder are the primary concerns.

Cycles of oppression are being repeated through generations in Onkwehonwe communities. These social and health problems seem to be so vexing to governments; large amounts of money have been allocated to implement government-run organizations and policies geared towards alleviating these problems in both the United States and Canada, for example, but they have had only limited positive effect on the health status of our communities. These problems are not really mysterious nor are they unsolvable. They are the logical result of a situation wherein people respond or adapt to unresolved colonial injustices.
People in indigenous communities develop complexes of behaviour and mental attitudes that reflect their colonial situation, and out flow unhealthy and destructive behaviours.

“There is a spirit among young people today that is motivated by hate and that is motivated by anger. There’s a big sense of injustice coming from our young people. We’re pissed off because we’ve been shit on and we’ve been abused. It’s like waking up from a sleep and then noticing that you’ve been messed with, you know? And when you wake up out of that sleep, you’re like a bear, you’re fuckin’ angry. But in terms of our approach, and I wouldn’t want to use the word “refined” here, but it is a responsibility to carry on and to conduct ourselves properly – we’re always being watched by the people, heh? So yeah, there is hatred, anger and destructiveness, all coming from our sense of belonging in history and our sense of where these conflicts come from. It also comes from a sober understanding of our relationship with the Canadian government: we don’t bullshit ourselves into believing that Canada has the best intentions for our people.” David Dennis, instrumental in the formation of the Native Youth Movement in Vancouver and other urban centres in British Columbia; founder of the Westcoast Warrior Society

The American legal scholar Deborah Yashar’s survey of contemporary indigenous-state negotiations on issues of land claims and self-government explains that discussion and negotiation encompass a wide range of topics and offer many creative reform models. But a close reading of her research reveals all these processes – in Latin America as well as in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — fall short and strictly define indigenous peoples in the context of colonial structures and within the framework of Euroamerican values and cultures.

At this point, decolonization discourses exclude the discussion of what the colonizers consider to be their exclusive purview: elements of statehood. What’s more, Yashar’s research points out that all of the so-called decolonization and reconciliation processes implemented so far are premised not on altruism or a sincere desire on the part of Settlers for either justice or peaceful coexistence with Onkwehonwe, but on what she calls the premises of a “neoliberal discourse.” This means the promotion of the existing political, economic and social institutions and the integration of Onkwehonwe into colonial society on terms acceptable to the Settlers – the reduction of collective rights, the promotion of individual rights and decentralization of governance to aboriginal structures designed to mimic colonial forms of authority.

“We’re all getting so canadianized that we can’t even stop to think about taking some kind of action against the colonial state. We’ve been so assimilated into that state that we can only look for redress within the parameters already established by that state. I don’t know if it’s going to be this generation or the next, but I don’t believe there is a lot of time left for those who are thinking in terms of revolution and resistance and creating the liberated zones for indigenous people to survive in.” Sakej, Head of the East Coast Warrior Society; one of the main strategists and organizers behind the post-Oka Warrior Society movements in the east and west coast fishing disputes between Onkwehonwe and the government of Canada

The authentic Onkwehonwe reaction to this has been diverse in terms of defining the ideal relationship of the Onkwehonwe nation and the state (there are varying approaches to the practical implementation of the nation-to-nation concept that underlies all Onkwehonwe ideas of coexistence). But Onkwehonwe are united in their demand of the Settler state a recognition of cultural diversity, political autonomy, collective identities and rights, legal pluralism and indigenous forms of political representation. Yet they have run head-on into the fundamental reality of state sovereignty and the Euroamerican notion of power: control and monological thinking.

Onkwehonwe ideas and complex, pluralistic beliefs are too complicated and difficult, it seems, for simple-minded Settler institutions and the elites who control them, who reduce the world into categories of us-versus-them and right-versus-wrong. Aboriginalism, with its roots in this dichotomizing essentialism, plays the perfect foil to the Euroamerican mentality. Settlers can remain who and what they are, and injustice can be reconciled by the mere allowance of the Other to become one of Us. What higher reward or better future is there than to be finally recognized as achieving the status of a European?

Disentangling the elements of the Settler state from our lives any time soon seems out of the question for many of our people. But I wonder whether Onkwehonwe can even hope to survive without respect for our freedom and rights as nations of people? Think of the European definition of sovereignty, and try to imagine how any people could preserve themselves for long without possessing the elements of such a national existence: the power of and cultural capacity for self-definition; a singular or unitary identity; a shared belief in their independence and rights as a people; the capacity for self-defence; and land and a connection to the land that provides the bases for self-sufficiency and for an independent existence. Without all of these things, a people will not be long on this earth.

Yashar has surveyed the current situation facing indigenous peoples; considered the rising tide of dissatisfaction with aboriginalist-integrationist agendas pushed by aboriginalist politicians, as well as the expressed demands for recognition of national existences; and concluded that we need to come up with different and more complex political mappings that are capable of balancing the Euroamerican preoccupation with individual rights with Onkwehonwe’s diverse collective identities, forms of representation and evolving structures of governance. In doing so, she hits on the core obstacle to peaceful coexistence in this post-modern imperial age: the implicit homogeneity of neoliberalism.

Yet her progressive proposal is still framed within the state. This is its fatal flaw, reflecting the futility of all internalist approaches. The state itself is incapable of relating to other entities in a pluralistic and peaceful way. Acceptance of an Onkwehonwe existence within the colonial state, however creatively imagined, is a death sentence for that indigenous nation. The imperative of the state by design is homogenization and singular control by the monopoly of force and legitimacy. Without a fundamental remaking of the state itself, there is no chance to reform the relationship of the state to indigenous peoples.

“We were so colonized intellectually that we never even thought beyond what the government told us to think about. The fact that some of our people started to get educated opened up a lot of ideas, and it led us to start speaking out about them. We were just emotionally, physically, intellectually tied up by the government – everybody was complacent. It’s only been in recent years that things have started to change, and lot of that had to do with Oka. That was something that people had never experienced before … There’ll be a lot of internal friction in the next few years. It’s the young people who are standing up and demanding that our leadership take a different route and turn away from what the government is offering us.”
Anonymous woman from a West Coast First Nation on Vancouver Island

Even the state’s moderate advocacy of aboriginalism’s goals has not been acceptable to the conservative core of colonial society. Beyond the commonplace superficial rhetoric of toleration and reconciliation in contemporary neo-colonial countries, state policy and the law remain solidly sovereign in their effective denial of distinctiveness and autonomy for indigenous nations in any way, shape or form that can be construed as meaningful to the continuing existence of Onkwehonwe.

Negotiation and reconciliation as defined and implemented thus far are perversions of justice in that Settler societies end up gaining legal possession of not only land and governing power, but Onkwehonwe histories and identities, integrating the desirable and useful elements into their own social fabric at little or no moral or economic cost. In their efforts to co-opt First Nations politicians and to legitimize their presence in this hemisphere, Settlers attempt to take root the only way that it is possible for them to do so, by seizing the indigenous heritage of the land.
Through negotiation and the development of compromise solutions with aboriginal politicians who they themselves employ, the Settlers are in effect buying the legitimacy of their state, although they are buying it from people who have no right or authority to be selling it in the first place. In the long-term view though, protests by “traditionalist” Onkwehonwe who hold out against validating the colonial project through negotiations mean nothing to the colonizers. The token amounts of money given and the limited minority-group rights granted to indigenous peoples are a very small price to pay for the Settlers to be released from the moral repercussions of conquest and for their legitimacy as nation-states.

Every generation has to speak for itself, but I see a lot of degrading of leadership today, right across the country. I don’t see the kinds of leaders that were there when I was young. We’ve got a lot of very active young leaders today, but their goals are different. They’ve caught the white man’s gold fever. That’s what’s happened with our people, to put it simply…. Confusion is really the main problem. I understand what goes through young people’s minds when they’re trying to find their way. You know, I think it’s very difficult now for young people.
Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation; member
of the traditional Rotinoshonni Longhouse government; activist in the Red Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s

Instrumentally reforming indigenous cultures to make them more amenable to this endeavour, recognizing them, and then making amends for “historical” injustices against those reimagined and now aboriginal artifices is the perfect colonial end-game. It assuages the guilt of colonization that allows Settlers to delude themselves into believing they have transcended their own brutal, immoral past and generated a new society free of the sins of empire.

It is possible for Onkwehonwe to cut through the miseducation and colonial mythologies presented to us as truth. What is being Onkwehonwe? From what I’ve been told, and from what I’ve seen in all the time I’ve spent among Onkwehonwe all over the world, “being Onkwehonwe” is living heritage, being part of a tradition – shared stories, beliefs, ways of thinking, ways of moving about in the world, lived experiences – that generates identities which, while ever-changing and diverse, are deeply rooted in the common ground of our heritages as original peoples.

The great Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said understood being part of a culture as participation in an ongoing dynamic that revolves around people’s attempts to answer certain crucial questions about themselves in the public life of the community, questions such as how the central traditions of a people are held onto, what is considered as a tradition and how a people’s history is read. Like Said was of his own identity as a Palestinian, I am drawn to the idea of indigeneity as practice, a dynamic of reflection and dialogue; I’ve written in the past about the idea of a “self-conscious traditionalism.” My sense is that the notion of peoples’ interactions with their history is the foundation, but that a meaningful Onkwehonwe identity, one that is consistent with Onkwehonwe teachings, must go beyond reflective practices to an actual political and social engagement with the world based on consensus arrived at through broad conversation among people who are part of that culture.

“There is something starting these days, a new kind of movement among the youth, something that people may not think is very positive or healthy, but which has to be seen as a good thing in the long run, and that is the take-over and occupation of band council offices. We need more of this kind of activism; we need a real grassroots revolution in this country.” Stewart Phillip, Okanagan Nation, who with his wife Joan is leader of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC).