{"id":11925,"date":"2021-07-30T08:14:08","date_gmt":"2021-07-30T13:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=11925"},"modified":"2021-11-08T09:58:06","modified_gmt":"2021-11-08T14:58:06","slug":"reindigenization-and-allyship-starting-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2021\/07\/30\/reindigenization-and-allyship-starting-points\/","title":{"rendered":"Reindigenization and allyship: starting points"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I often “think out loud” on this blog. That’s been very useful as a way of getting feedback on work in progress; it also forces me to be both honest and careful with my words. The following is being shared in the same spirit: it’s related to teaching and writing in progress, but also to my participation on my university’s (informal) Indigenous people’s working group. It is thinking that’s very much in progress and subject to revision. I hope it contributes to fruitful conversations with others. I anticipate that this will be the first post of two or more, but I offer no promises on when the others may come.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Preamble: self-positioning<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I should preface this with two notes: one on the relationship between these issues and the cultural and philosophical themes I more commonly write about on this blog; the other about my limited qualifications for writing about Indigenous issues. Regarding the first, my thinking here is loosely informed by my broader philosophical “project,” but I will leave that relationship for a follow-up post in which I’ll delve into some specific connections to environmental philosophy, poststructuralism, and the cultural politics of identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the second topic, I am not a scholar of Indigenous studies. I have participated in Indigenous solidarity groups over the years (going back to my activity with a group that solidarized with the traditional<\/a> chiefs of the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne<\/a> at a time when that nation turned out to be in a state of deep civil strife<\/a>; I learned how to remove myself from the crossfire when necessary). My research, going back to my Master\u2019s thesis, has often touched on \u201cindigeneity\u201d as a concept<\/a>, set<\/a> of discourses<\/a>, and ideal, both for \u201cwannabe Indians,\u201d environmentalists, and \u201cregular [white] folks,\u201d and for Indigenous people. The research for my doctoral dissertation included interviews with a handful of Indigenous leaders in Canada and the U.S., though only the U.S. part of that made it into the final product and the book that followed<\/a>. But I claim no expertise, and certainly no Indigenous ancestry, blood, or identity. (Well, there were some efforts to look into what indigeneity may mean in my \u201cancestral homeland\u201d of Ukraine, but those ended up more of a prompt for deconstructive critique<\/a> than an ongoing pursuit.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All that said, my commitments, as I have expressed them over the years, are toward decolonizing<\/em>, which means, in part, learning to be an ally with Indigenous people in their struggles (with all the fraughtness that entails<\/a>). And my own personal vision of a viable future is a reindigenized<\/em> one, by which I mean <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n