Abstract
Stemming from the radio programme titled Native New England and Beyond aired between 2007 and 2013, Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders is a compilation of various interviews with regional and global Indigenous scholars. The intent of publishing the series was to learn from critical conversations surrounding settler colonialism and the conflation of race and Indigeneity within neo-liberal societies. This book aims to push discourses on Indigenous resistance beyond the contemporary context. Kauanui converges her academic work with political activism, to unpack social and political inequities that are oblivious to dominant settler colonial societies. Episodes of the programme consist of interviews that undermine Western socio-political equality rhetoric espoused by regional and global governing bodies while exposing epistemic violence brought by franchise colonialism. By critiquing settler colonialism, Kauanui and her contributors commit to deconstructing the ongoing consequences of Western neo-colonial conditions that inflict Indigenous peoples. Thus, this book emerges as a responsibility to Indigenous activism, which is achieved by advocating for pro-sovereignty movements.
The collection is opened with a foreword written by Robert Warrior, a professor of American literature and culture at the University of Kansas. In Warrior’s forward, he introduces Kauanui as someone who artistically uses the radio platform to subvert Western assumptions of Indigenous politics to arrive at a critical juncture—to use Indigenous politics to counter colonial echoes. The compelling forward that operates as a reader’s guide is followed by an introduction titled Indigenous Politics from Native New England and Beyond written by Kauanui. She narrates her rationale behind the radio programme and the subsequent publication of this book; that is to prompt “contemporary Indigenous resurgence and inspiration for its continuance” (p. xxiii). The lack of a rigid separation in the overall structure of the book into themes or parts precisely demonstrates how Indigenous resistance should not be compartmentalized; rather, it is a linear and a collective effort in the reclamation of (home)lands. Therefore, one can conceptualize the book to be divided into episodes that open with a brief biography of the interviewee followed by a contextualization of their activism. In addition, the writing throughout the book remains consistently authentic, non-prescriptive, and thereby anecdotal; thus, giving the readers an illusion that they are an invited audience member and are tuning into the radio programme.
The first episode, Jessie Little Doe Baird on Reviving the Wampanoag Language discusses the salience of a language reclamation project. Baird argues language as a site of knowledge and discursive practice which allows one to become mindful of Indigenous onto-epistemology. Settler colonialism has resulted in the loss and fragmentation of Indigenous languages and knowledge systems, which can be potentially restored through language resurgence. Similarly, Hone Harawira’s interview On Māori Activism and Sovereignty uncovers the struggles he encountered when attaining legislative recognition to have Māori-language education in schools during the 1970s to prevent language erasure. Unlike Baird and Hone, settler colonialism and its permanent occupation have problematized Palestinian identity status for Omar Barghouti. In Barghouti’s episode, he highlights the ramification of being rejected as neither a native nor an original settler in Israel which is a direct result of institutional discrimination.
Likewise, Lisa Brooks’ episode On the Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast explains how institutional land claiming treaty documentations resulted in mass genocide. Brooks conceptualizes the role of writing “as a tool of social construction and land reclamation” (p. 21). To prompt Indigenous revitalization, Kathleen A. Brown-Perez also comments on the injustice behind institutional practices such as federal procedures. Unfortunately, the US institution has judicial rights to terminate and adjudicate what population can be considered as an Indian tribe. In the face of termination of her tribal nation, Brown-Perez discusses the politics and systemic barriers she navigates in her quest to gain federal acknowledgement. Although it may seem like an ordeal to fight against the institutions that thrive on capital from Indigenous lands, Jessica Cattelino’s episode On Indian Gaming, Renewed Self-Governance, and Economic Strength teaches readers how the Seminole population renewed their governance by using neo-liberal rhetoric against the institution that profits from their marginalization. The economic security achieved through gaming casinos was leveraged to win the favour of Seminole self-governance, which allowed them to safeguard their culture, land, and rights.
The battle for citizenship rights and self-determination of the Cherokee Nation has been taken as federal litigation. According to David Cornsilk, since the re-classification of Cherokee as Freedmen, the Cherokee lost their legal identity as people from African-Indigenous ancestry. In this battle, Cornsilk discloses that the amendment limited their citizenship to their (home)lands. Moreover, Johnathan Kamakawiwo’ole Osorio addresses how the state manipulates legal rhetoric such as public lands to seize 1.2 million acres of land held by Hawaiian Indigenous populations. The ongoing reconciliation of identity and land has ignited reclamation initiatives through legal and critical conversations on representational politics. Such an example can be seen in Margo Tamez’s episode On Indigenous Resistance to the U.S.-Mexico Border Wall. Tamez argues that militarized violence against Indigenous peoples such as the construction of the Mexico Border Wall is a violation of law that protects American Indian culture and burial places. Her legal resistance took form as a constitutional case against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Contrastingly, Philip J. Deloria describes the importance of intellectual activism to defy the institution. Deloria criticizes American institutions’ appropriation of Indigenous identity, which is later performed and exploited to claim Aboriginal rights. His critical assessment of Indigenous people in American modernity reveals that institution expects Indigenous constituents to perform their Nativeness. It is through this evaluation of Nativeness, the institution can grant Indigenous peoples limited authority to lay claims to land and permission to display sovereignty politics. Such cultural performance seems necessary to make legal claims when simply having ancestorial blood on their (home)lands is perceived as illegitimate. Other intellectual activism exposed the blatant truth of how Indigenous peoples are treated within settler colonial nations.
Steven Newcomb’s episode On Decoding the Christian Doctrine of Discovery challenges the US federal Indian law and policy, specifically the institution’s plenary power over the independent Indigenous nation-states. Comparably, Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s episode On Whiteness and Indigeneity in Australia analyzes how settler colonial configuration is embedded with white possession in Australia. Her theorization draws upon critical race and whiteness studies to concur that whiteness as a study in Australia “starts from the epistemological premise of Indigenous sovereignty” (p. 217). Such intellectual sovereignty is the work of a public intellectual, according to Warrior, who ingeniously uses academic-cultural boycott as a form of activism.
The last episode in the book is on On Settler Colonialism, by Patrick Wolfe who coherently articulates Indigenous politics in response to the persistence of colonial conditions: invasion, violent dispossession, and stolen generations across most Indigenous populations. Wolfe understands settler colonialism through the historic role of Indigenous peoples within the master narrative which intended the settler process to result in the necessary disappearance so that Europeans can annex territories. Though Wolfe argues how the intended structures were instilled to eliminate the Indigenous population, he overlooks the detrimental conditions of unintended factors such as epidemics and ecological imperialism which also contributed to the narrative of the vanishing Natives (Crosby, 2015).
As the book explores the current landscape of Indigenous resistance by analysing the activism in Canada, Mexico, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Palestine, Hawai’i, Australia, and New Zealand, it omits the Indigenous political protests within the continent of Africa and Asia; specifically, India which has the highest populations of Indigenous peoples (Sinha, 2017). However, despite this omission, the book candidly offers nuances of how institutionalized practices maintain settler colonialism through appropriation and dispossession.
Undeterred by the absence of closing remarks across the episodes by Kauanui and her exclusion of images of the speakers, which could have garnered more attention for readers to visualize the critical conversation that transpired in the studio, this book encapsulates how voices of Indigenous activists across the world can be mobilized into politics to defy colonial politics. Through a collective consciousness as being displaced activists, scholars, and tribal leaders alike, this book voices the contributors’ Indigenous politics despite popular assumptions.
