Decolonizing antiracism.

• Author: Lawrence, Bonita

Introduction

IN CONTINUOUS CONVERSATIONS OVER THE YEARS, WE HAVE DISCUSSED OUR DISCOMFORT with the manner in which Aboriginal people and perspectives are excluded within antiracism. We have been surprised and disturbed by how rarely this exclusion has been taken up, or even noticed. Due to this exclusion, Aboriginal people cannot see themselves in antiracism contexts, and Aboriginal activism against settler domination takes place without people of color as allies. Though antiracist theorists may ignore the contemporary Indigenous presence, Canada certainly does not. Police surveillance is a reality that all racialized people face, and yet Native communities are at risk of direct military intervention in ways that no other racialized community in Canada faces. (2) This article represents a call to postcolonial and antiracism theorists to begin to take Indigenous decolonization seriously. Because we are situated differently in relation to decolonization and antiracism, we are beginning with our own locations.

Bonita" I first encountered antiracism and postcolonial theory when I began attending university, in my early thirties. I looked to antiracism, as I earlier did to feminism, to "explain" the circumstances my family has struggled with, but ultimately both sets of perspectives have simply been part and parcel of an education system that has addressed male and white privilege, while ignoring my family's Indigeneity.

To say this is to acknowledge that several factors--notably immigration and urbanization--have already been at work in delineating relations between Aboriginal people and people of color. In the 1960s, when Canada was overwhelmingly white, my mother, who was Mi'kmaq and Acadian, cleary felt marginalized and inferiorized by Anglo-Canadians and ostracized by many French-Canadians. In the city, she welcomed the new presence of people of color as potential friends and allies, and a saw a common struggle for survival and adaptation to the dominant culture. There were not many of us, Aboriginal people or people of color, brown islands in a white sea.

Fast forward to 2005. For many Native people in Eastern Canada, the urbanization and assimilation pressures of the 1950s and 1960s meant that our parents married white people. This interval also featured large-scale immigration of people of color, so that today urban Native people form tiny, paler islands floating in a darker "multicultural" sea. Over the past 15 years or so since the Oka Crisis, in common with many urban mixed-bloods, I have struggled to learn about my own Indigeneity. In this context, my light skin separates me from the people of color that my mother would have viewed as allies. There is nothing new about racial ambiguity among mixed-bloods of any background. For Aboriginal peoples in Canada, though, something else is at work: the generations of policies specifically formulated with the goal of destroying our communities and fragmenting our identities.

For years, I have witnessed the result of these policies, as my family, friends, and many of my Aboriginal students have struggled with our lack of knowledge about our heritage due to our parents' silence, the fact that our languages were beaten out of our grandparents' generation, that we may have been cut off from access to the land for generations, that we may know little of our own ceremonies, and that our Indigeneity is ultimately validated or denied by government cards that certify "Indian" status. Neither these policies nor their repercussions are topics for discussion at antiracism conferences. It is difficult not to conclude that there is something deeply wrong with the manner in which, in our own lands, antiracism does not begin with, and reflect, the totality of Native peoples' lived experience--that is, with the genocide that established and maintains all of the settler states within the Americas.

Yet, even to begin to address decolonizing antiracism, I must first acknowledge that I am one of a handful of Aboriginal scholars within academia; as such, I am routinely asked to "speak for" and represent Indigeneity to outsiders in a manner that is inherently problematic. Because of this, I must always begin by referencing the traditional elders and community people--and other Indigenous scholars--for whom Indigenous (rather than academic) knowledge is most central. They would begin by asking: What does postcoloniality and antiracism theory have to do with us? An academic article addressing these issues is therefore aimed primarily at antiracism scholars and activists, who for the most part are not Indigenous. More problematically, it would use the rhythms and assumptions of academic discourse, without cultural resonance or reference to Mi'kmaw or other specific Indigenous frameworks. As such, my fear is that this article will continue to homogenize Indigenous peoples in all their diversity into a singular and meaningless entity known as "First Nations people" to outsiders, in exactly the manner that is currently common within antiracism discourse. The tensions between who I can claim to speak for, how I speak in arguing academic theory, and to whom I am speaking in this article thus remain ongoing.

Ena: I came to Canada as a 16 year old. I was born in India, and en route to Canada we resided in the United States. In all three contexts, I came across references to Aboriginal peoples. In India, people wondered of another place where people were also called Indian. Growing up in the United States and Canada, I was bombarded with colonialist history. From school curriculum to television programs to vacation spots, a colonialist history of conquer and erasure was continually reenacted. I resided in a city in which the main streets were named after Aboriginal leaders and communities. As the houses that we resided in exited onto these streets, such naming of space was important as it inserted us as settlers into the geography of colonialism. Much of this made me uncomfortable. I was given a similar history of India and other Indians, and I knew that this history was not accurate. I was vaguely conscious that the same processes were shaping the lives of Aboriginal people and people of color. I saw myself as allied with Aboriginal people. However, what I did not see was how I might be part of the ongoing project of colonization. I did not place myself in the processes that produced such representations, or relations.

As a young woman, my experiences with racism, sexism, and imperialism led me to become engaged in a project of developing antiracist feminism. This site, I hoped, would enable us to look at the ways in which different kinds of oppressions intersected. Looking back, I realize that we failed to integrate ongoing colonization into this emerging body of knowledge. For example, in a collaborative book project I edited, antiracist feminist scholars explored the intersections of "race" and gender. At the time, I felt that we were doing a good task of centering Aboriginal issues. The anthology first examined the ways in which Aboriginal women had been racialized and gendered historically. Another article investigated questions of Aboriginal self-government. I now think we failed to make Aboriginality foundational. We did not ask those who wrote on work, trade unions, immigration, citizenship, family, etc., to examine how these institutions and relationships were influenced by Canada's ongoing colonization of Aboriginal peoples. More recently, I turned to cultural theory, critical race theory, and postcolonial studies, but I fear that these approaches, like my earlier work, also fail to center the ongoing colonization of Aboriginal peoples.

My approach in this article, as someone committed to antiracist feminist struggles, is to examine my complicity in the ongoing project of colonization. My complicity is complex. First, as an inhabitant of Canada, I live in and own land that has been appropriated from Aboriginal peoples. As a citizen of Canada, I have rights and privileges that are denied to Aboriginal peoples collectively, and that are deployed to deny Aboriginal rights to self-government. Second, as someone involved in antiracist and progressive struggles, I wonder about the ways in which the bodies of knowledge that I have worked to build have been framed so as to contribute to the active colonization of Aboriginal peoples. I need to read, write, teach, and be politically active differently.

Despite our different positioning, experiences, and concerns, we have reached a common conclusion: that antiracism is premised on an ongoing colonial project. As a result, we fear that rather than challenging the ongoing colonization of Aboriginal peoples, Canadian antiracism is furthering contemporary colonial agendas. We will argue that antiracism theory participates in colonial agendas in two ways. First, it ignores the ongoing colonization of Aboriginal peoples in the Americas; second, it fails to integrate an understanding of Canada as a colonialist state into antiracist frameworks. In this article, we seek ways to decolonize antiracism theory. Our goal in writing this is to begin to lay the groundwork that might make dialogue possible among antiracist and Aboriginal activists.

What Does It Mean to Look at Canada as Colonized Space? What Does It Mean to Ignore Indigenous Sovereignty?

Antiracist and postcolonial theorists have not integrated an understanding of Canada as a colonialist state into their frameworks. It is therefore important to begin by elaborating on the means through which colonization in Canada as a settler society has been implemented and is being maintained. We also need to reference how Indigenous peoples resist this ongoing colonization.

Settler states in the Americas are founded on, and maintained through, policies of direct extermination, displacement, or assimilation. The premise of each is to ensure that Indigenous peoples ultimately disappear as...