{"id":12487,"date":"2022-04-08T13:15:49","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T18:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=12487"},"modified":"2022-04-08T13:15:53","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T18:15:53","slug":"reindigenization-allyship-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/04\/08\/reindigenization-allyship-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Reindigenization & allyship, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have been hesitant to follow up on my post of last summer on “Reindigenization and Allyship<\/a>” because of the complications surrounding this issue, especially in my state of Vermont. The following can be considered part two in a series, as I continue to think through the politics of indigeneity, identity (including its malleability), territoriality and claims to land, and trauma and historical grievance. I see all of these as issues that will be central to the kinds of conflicts this world will see more of as climate change deepens and its associated impacts spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I should say at the outset that I write this as a Ukrainian-Canadian-American whose “whiteness” (and maleness) has given me clear benefits and privileges in the settler-colonial North American context. At the same time, my family histories, going back even only to my wartime refugee parents’ and grandparents’ generations, carry legacies of trauma associated with war that approached genocidal dimensions. (In some parts of Ukraine they were exactly that<\/a> in the 1930s, a legacy that is very evident<\/a> in today’s conflict; and the genocide of Jews was very much a part of the “bloodlands<\/a>” that my relatives mostly, though not all, survived.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The local prompt for these reflections is the work that my university’s Indigenous Peoples Working Group has been doing over the last few years, including relations some of us have cultivated with, on the one hand, members of state-recognized Abenaki<\/a> tribes, and on the other, members of the Abenaki communities in Quebec<\/a>, who are descended from those who lived in western New England up until settler wars forced their relocation north. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been one among several non-Indigenous individuals involved in co-organizing an event<\/a> that will allow the latter — the Abenaki of the Odanak First Nation — for the first time in a generation, to speak publicly at the University of Vermont. This event, however, has elicited concern and some protest from members of the four state-recognized Abenaki groups, who have seen in it an attempt to question their identities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, this is a complex issue that will need some time to be worked out. One of the members of a state-recognized Abenaki tribe, Jeanne Morningstar Kent, has just published a lengthy article<\/a> commenting on this event and the controversy surrounding it, especially in its connection to the work of scholars like Darryl Leroux<\/a>, who have questioned<\/a> Vermont\u2019s state-recognized Abenaki tribes as consisting mainly of self-identified Abenaki \u201crace-shifters<\/a>\u201d (individuals who intentionally shift from white to Indigenous racial identity, without necessarily having any Indigenous ancestry).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I have suggested before<\/a>, I am not in a position to comment on the work of Leroux or others who write about race-shifting<\/a>, Pretendianism<\/a>, and the like, nor on the status of anyone claiming ancestry or identity as Indigenous. As a white academic, the best I can do is to use my research skills to contribute to the documentation of issues that bear upon these questions, so that Indigenous communities can use them as they see fit. I look to Indigenous communities to identify what being Indigenous means, and who belongs in that category. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, I also support a more general \u201creindigenization<\/a>\u201d in relations between people and their past<\/a>, and between people and the land (recognizing that the term itself can be problematic<\/a>). And I appreciate the work of white Indigenous allies in contributing to that — for instance, through supporting Indigenous recognition and sovereignty, Indigenous language revival, Indigenous agroecology, and the like.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just want to comment here briefly on something that I think is fairly central to Kent’s argument, which happens to overlap with some of my own previous research on identity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kent writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is an unexplained recognition which draws Natives together.  Whether raised with the culture or not, people know where they belong and search for “home.”  Perhaps, it cannot be explained scientifically or with statistics and charts, but it does not mean that it does not exist.  The situation is not the same as those with no heritage claiming they were Indian in a past life, drawn to the culture, or simply having motives for personal gain.  It is a genuine, unexplained connection that no amount of science can explain.  Not even DNA has offered certainty because how much of one parent’s genes are passed to siblings can vary so much that siblings appear to not even be related.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In my work on identity among followers of New Age<\/a>, ecological<\/a>, Neo-Pagan<\/a>, and neo-traditionalist Native Faith<\/a> spiritualities (the former three in North America and the U.S., the latter two in Eastern Europe, with overlap in the third category), I have found that the feeling Kent describes — of a loss of a \u201csense of home\u201d and the desire to reconnect with it — is widespread among these communities. This is in concordance with many other researchers\u2019 findings (e.g., the work of Sarah Pike<\/a>, Kathryn Rountree<\/a>, Graham Harvey<\/a>, Barbara Davy<\/a>, and others in the fields of religion and ecology<\/a>, Pagan studies<\/a>, and related fields). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some find that \u201csense of home\u201d within the practice of a spirituality rooted in claimed or perceived Indigenous or Native traditions. This phenomenon has a long history<\/a> and covers a broad range, from “Indianthusiast<\/a>” re-enactors and hobbyists to those who have changed their lives<\/a> based on extended encounters<\/a> with tribal or traditional elders. I have found no reason to doubt that the \u201csearch for \u2018home\u2019\u201d such people often describe is real: the feelings associated with the \u201cneed,\u201d the \u201csearch,\u201d and the eventual \u201cfinding\u201d of a \u201chome\u201d are genuine experiences, which often contribute profoundly to the experienced reality of one\u2019s identity once it is \u201cfound.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kent writes that \u201cThe situation is not the same as those with no heritage<\/em> claiming they were Indian in a past life, drawn to the culture, or simply having motives for personal gain\u201d (italics added). This would appear to be a key point of differentiation here. But I am not aware of any way to clearly distinguish these two categories — i.e., between those with some<\/em> Indigenous heritage and those with none<\/em> — except<\/em> through genealogical demonstration (on paper or orally transmitted) of that heritage. And yet, as Kent argues, genealogical research is not fool-proof. Church and census documents, which genealogists rely on, do not convey everything there is to be known about a person. Sometimes they may be misleading; typically they can be quite incomplete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if genealogy is not taken seriously (as Kent seems to suggest), then we are left with little means of defining the difference between people with <\/em>Indigenous heritage (no matter how insignificant) who are reclaiming that heritage based on their perceived \u201csearch for \u2018home\u2019\u201d and people without<\/em> Indigenous heritage who are doing the same thing.\u00a0This would seem to leave us in a bind, the kind identified by Indigenous scholars like Kim TallBear<\/a> and others<\/a> for whom race-shifting takes away<\/a> from Indigenous peoples’ capacity to reclaim their histories, lands, and communities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it is worth framing these questions in a broader field, one relevant not only to North American contexts but to others around the world as well. When we do that, a series of other questions become relevant:<\/p>\n\n\n\n