Great reads for this week!

There’s lots to talk about, which I am sure we will cover in our discussion section tomorrow, so I am only going to highlight the main takeaway from this week’s readings.

“Indigenous Knowledge, Traditional Knowledge and the Colonization of Indigenous Studies”

Last year I took an intro to Aboriginal Studies course at Langara. Coming from a place like the US, where indigenous culture and history is erased almost entirely from the curriculum, I thought it was incredibly important to participate in this class as a newcomer settling in Canada. (side note: take a look at Trump’s plan for a ‘Patriotic Education’ curriculum). One of the biggest topics we covered was the colonization of traditional knowledge. The idea of colonizing traditional knowledge stems from a “The West” vs “The Rest” idea of Eurocentric power over ‘others’. Over centuries of forced assimilation, colonizers attempted to erase traditional knowledge, mostly through violence. After stealing, appropriating and commodifying indigenous knowledge as property of the West, we are now attempting to decolonize education.

What the authors touch on briefly in the introduction, and obviously continue to break down the variables of colonized education in future topics, is the idea that “white settlers make their [own] experience the center of life and work.” (14). Researchers come in and ask indigenous communities for ‘contacts’ and ‘networks’ and to do the labour for them having not formally been invited or asked to be a part of their community (12). Because they are researching such a topic like decolonization, whether it be indigenous studies or anthropological, there is this sense of ownership over the indigenous knowledge in the community when in reality, they do not have the same relationship with the nature and culture nor is it their right to be there. These researchers can never fully grasp or understand that their presence in that moment of asking the community to perform for them IS colonizing their traditional knowledge. It is important to note that by coming into an indigenous community as a non-indigenous person means that your lens is obscured by your own cultural experiences and your being there is not for them but for your own interests. In fact, it is more about cultural appropriation than cultural appreciation.

The authors also talk about how decolonizing and decolonization are trendy terms with no backbone towards change. Doing ‘decolonizing’ research on indigenous land and people, even with a positive intention, is still building a insider/outsider relationship with the community. It is important to think about the many aspects that intersect in a settler/colonized relationship like language, resources, racism, stolen land and sexism. To begin ‘decolonizing’ anything, you must change the power structure within the relationship, and you must acknowledge the history that built this hierarchy in the first place. Most importantly, understand how you play a role.

So, my first ending question goes back to our first class discussion: What makes research ethical and how can we decolonize our course in a meaningful way?

Second, how can we relate the topic of performative decolonization to what is happening with the Black Lives Matter, Indigenous Lives Matter movement currently happening in Canada and the US?  

Works Cited (informally)

Tuhiwai Smith, Linda, and Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. “Introduction.” Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View. Edited by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Eve Tuck, and K. Wayne Yang, Routledge, 2018, pp. 1-23.