Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Examines why identity is such an important issue for contemporary diasporic communities and former colonies. Introduces students to critiques of representations that construct "racialized" groups as inferior, primitive threats to civilization and their constitution of passive, disciplined subjects. Primarily focuses on innovative cultural strategies developed in Indigenous people, the Black diaspora, Asian/Canadian communities and survivors of the Jewish Holocaust to create ethical communities and critique the impact of colonial violence on contemporary societies.

COURSE DETAILS:

Settler colonialism represents a unique form of colonialism characterized by the possession and settlement of land and “the elimination of the native” – settler colonialism “destroys to replace” (Wolfe 2006). However, Audra Simpson (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk) (2011) asserts that “Indigeneity…[has]…survived this acquisitive and genocidal process,” demonstrating that colonialism has, in fact, failed in North America: “Indigenous peoples did not lay down and die; they persist, and in so doing, they defy all expectations – working resolutely to assert their nationhood and their sovereignty against a settler political formation that would have them disappear or integrate or assimilate.” Importantly, Glen Sean Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene) (2014) argues that although “the self-determination efforts and objectives of Indigenous peoples in Canada have increasingly been cast in the language of ‘recognition’” since the mid-1970s, the resulting state-sanctioned “politics of recognition,” and later “reconciliation politics,” have only worked to “reproduce the very configurations of colonialist, racist, patriarchal state power that Indigenous peoples’ demands for recognition have historically sought to transcend.”

Building from Coulthard’s theories of “grounded normativity” and “resurgent politics of recognition,” as well as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s (Mississauga Nishnaabeg) (2011; 2017) arguments for “Nishnaabeg brilliance as radical resurgence theory,” this seminar explores multiple diverse forms of Indigenous resistance and resurgence undertaken within North America, with particular attention given to the local and Canadian contexts. More specifically, it showcases why and how many Indigenous peoples are turning away from state-sanctioned modes of recognition and reconciliation and instead returning to self-affirming and empowering land-based and cultural practices, traditions, systems, and relationships grounded in, and thus sustaining, their own ways of knowing and being. That said, this seminar also attends to nuanced arguments for and examples of Indigenous peoples remaining grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and being while also critically engaging with Western and Settler knowledge, structures, governments, and relationships in the support of “robust resurgence” and “transformative reconciliation” (Asch, Borrows [Anishinaabe/Ojibway], and Tully 2018).

Themes and related case studies explored in this seminar include, but are not be limited to, Indigenous temporal sovereignty and tools of futurity; Indigenous political sovereignty and refusal; Indigenous science and traditional ecological knowledge; Indigenous health, wellness, and food sovereignty; and Indigenous language revitalization and storytelling.

Grading

Materials

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