Beyond Recognition: The Power of Refusal in Ainu and Uchinaanchu Homelands

This event is supported by SFU David Lam Centre in partnership with Granville Island and Vancouver Writer’s Festival.

In this presentation, we grapple with issues shared by Ainu and Okinawan liberation struggles.

Yaunmosir (Hokkaido) and Uchinā (Ryūkyū) are ancestral and present-day homelands for Indigenous Ainu and Uchinaanchu in Japan. These are Japan’s oldest settler colonies. Okinawa was subjected to double colonial occupations: Japan (1879-1945; 1972-present) and the US (1945-1972). Both communities struggle with the merits of asserting “Indigenous” identification when faced with 1) US settler militarism (Okinawa), 2) racism and prejudice, 3) a monolingual society that imagines itself as monoethnic, and 4) right-wing hate against “multicultural policies.”

In this presentation, we grapple with issues shared by Ainu and Okinawan liberation struggles: “extraction” and “ethnographic refusal.” “Extraction” often gestures toward fossil fuel removal; here we examine “extractive logics” (Gago-Mezzadra 2017) of Japan’s settler colonial policies that disrupt life-nurturing relationships in Ainu and Okinawan ontologies. “Ethnographic refusal” (Simpson 2014) provides a framework to expose the myth of state claims that “Indigenous recognition” enables justice. Instead, we engage with Ainu and Okinawan communities as multi-layered, recognizing they/we exercise self-governance and self-representation, and reclaim space for internal dialogue to determine what form/s justice should take. For example, Japan’s multiculturalist policies promote tourism and “tradition” while erasing Indigenous self-determination and commoditizing Indigenous values. Panelists draw from personal experience/research on a) Hidden strategies for narrating multiple Ainu identities in historiography (Arai); b) U.S. military settler colonialism and Japan’s assimilation policies following the forced annexation of Okinawa (Oyakawa); c) Reclaiming knowledge with Indigenous resurgence through Decolonization (Sakai); and d) Language reclamation and empowering Ainu self-determination (Cagielnik).

Speaker Biographies

Panelists: Kaori ARAI (Research Fellow, Hokkaido University) is an Indigenous Ainu scholar and activist whose grandfather was a lead plaintiff in the Nibutani Dam case (which was the first time Ainu were recognized as Indigenous by Japan’s courts). Shinako OYAKAWA (Lecturer, Okinawa University) is an Indigenous Okinawan scholar and activist, founder of the Ryūkyū Peoples Independent Research Society, Instructor of Uchinaaguchi, and regularly advocates for Okinawa at the United Nations. Risako SAKAI(postdoctoral fellow, Cornell University), is an Indigenous Okinawan scholar who works with Indigenous knowledge systems as methods to strengthen marine protection in her home community toward Indigenous resurgence. Taciana CAGIELNIK (Research Fellow, Hokkaido University), is a Japan-based Belarusian scholar who works for Ainu language revival by teaching her children with her Ainu partner.

The panel will be moderated by ann-elise lewallen (Pacific and Asian Studies, University of Victoria), who has worked to support Ainu, Adivasi and Indigenous rights in Japan and India since the 2000s.