Imagining anti-colonial
futures
An indigenist perspective.
As we look at a world around us engulfed by arctic fires, oil wars, unacknowledged genocides, and rampant police lynchings, we often see many battles to face and wonder which one to choose. This Indigenist perspective hopes to bring together how each of these (seemingly) singular social issues are in fact part of a whole, which created today’s civilization of coloniality.
Imagining Anti Colonial futures is a look at what colonialism is and how it functions. How all these oppressions and crises are systems and useful byproducts of a functioning colonial civilization. Exploring how we might make changes for a sustainable future via disengagement. Using examples to describe the preliminary, relational steps of being able to come together in healthy ways, working towards anti colonial / decolonial, anti racist, anti oppressive understandings (and what those are) in order to imagine futures in a healthy relationship with all our relations.
Expanding in a spiral conversation the recurring topics of relationship to land, water, plants, non human animals and each other under colonialism, weave together the reasons we must radically change our perspectives, adopt anti colonial methods to build (with intent) new knowledges and relationships to disengage from colonialism and rebirth sustainable futures for all beings.
watch the session
speaker
Understandings
to read:
Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks: here
an excerpt from Coulthard's Red Skin, White Masks: here
Ybarra's Writing the Good Life: here
Patel and Moore's History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: here
A speech by Russell Means: here
Aragorn's Locating an Indigenous Anarchism: here
Abdou's Anarca-Islam: here
Abdou's Transnational Decolonization is the Solution: here
Indigenous Action's Voting is not Harm Reduction: here
T.H.U.G.'s Why Civilization?: here
K'é's Settler Sexuality: here
to look to on your own (*because much knowledge is not on the internet, in books, or attached to formal institutions):
Lakota History of PteSanWin, Algonquin history of wild rice, Midewin history of mound builders, and past civilizations, Lakota history of past creations.*
Algonquin, Dakota, Anishnawbe post contact history of the disappearance of wild rice.*
Algonquin wild rice knowledge.*
Indigenous hunters globally.*
Lakota, Algonquin understandings of how domestication wasn’t respect but dominance, a taking of freedom. A rethinking of thanks and consumption.*
Krista D’Amour Flute is a Lakota mother and 60s scoop survivor. She is a writer, speaker, organizer and activist known for an unveiling of colonialism and white supremacy that is at once raw, uncompromising and poetic. Krista's work centers on a radical hope for an Indigenist decolonization via relationships: political, environmental, social and radical sexual wellness. Her activism is strong, unsettling and passionate. Her poetry is graphic, expressive and emotional. Krista’s escapes and refills are long conversations outdoors, backpacking, and dancing, but mostly sharing in being with the land.
challenges:
-
I’d like folks to learn about the ties between classism and racism. Go find it on your own and share with each other, don’t harass racialized friends.
-
Get to know the folks in your community who don’t (or rarely) come to events, outside your friend circles. Get to know those you’ve othered and those invisible to you. This is a challenge right now but the best time to figure it out. Check your judgements with challenge 1
-
Poor folks mostly know other poor folks, we can’t just ask a friend for a ride cuz the one friend with a car is the only one in that whole circle with a car. Maynooth doesn’t have garbage and recycling pickup, so poor folks who struggle to pay dump fees, financially positioned to eat more processed, packaged foods, don’t even have a way to get to the dump in the first place. I challenge folks to build relationships that will solve this problem without funding, without the state, social workers or rules to “receive help” .