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Exploring Indigenous Feminist Relational Sovereignty: Feminist Conversations, Non-Colonizing Solidarities, Inclusive Nations

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Exploring Indigenous Feminist Relational Sovereignty: Feminist Conversations, Non-Colonizing Solidarities, Inclusive Nations Exploring Indigenous Feminist Relational Sovereignty: Feminist Conversations, Non-colonizing Solidarities, Inclusive Nations Carol Lynne D'Arcangelis is a PhD student Introduction in Adult Education and Community Thus, I came to understand pedagogies in multiple Development at OISE/UT. Her research ways: as something given, as in handed, revealed; as draws from critical pedagogy, Indigenous, in breaking through, transgressing, disrupting, inverting post-colonial, critical race and feminist inherited concepts and practices, those psychic, literatures to consider the theoretical and analytic and organizational methodologies we deploy to practical possibilities for fostering know what we believe we know so as to make different non-colonizing solidarities between conversations and solidarities possible. Indigenous women and allies. Carol Lynne (Alexander 2005, 7) comes to her studies from an extended period of social justice activism and human rights Following Jacqui Alexander, I advocacy in Central America. endeavour to stimulate feminist conversations and solidarities by exploring points of Abstract engagement between Indigenous feminist This article juxtaposes Indigenous feminist notions of relational sovereignty and relevant perspectives on sovereignty with related ideas aspects of non-Indigenous feminist thought. of feminist scholars Jacqui Alexander and My reasons are two-fold - a blending of theory Nandita Sharma in order to further feminist and practice: to simultaneously further theorizations of sovereignty and nationhood feminist theorizations of sovereignty and that reject neo-liberalism, and to forge a nationhood that reject neoliberalism and to "non-colonizing feminist solidarity" with forge a "non-colonizing feminist solidarity" Indigenous peoples, particularly Indigenous (Mohanty 2003) with Indigenous peoples, women, in their struggles for particularly Indigenous women, in their self-determination. struggles for sovereignty. At stake is more Résumé than the possibility of enriched feminist Cet article met en juxtaposition les theorizing on sovereignty and nationhood. perspectives féministes indigènes sur la Given the primacy of neoliberalism, which has souveraineté avec les idées reliées aux proven disastrous to not only Indigenous érudites féministes Jacqui Alexander et peoples but to most others on the planet, we Nandita Sharma afin de faire avancer les all need radically different ways of organizing élaborations de théories sur la souveraineté our economies and polities. As feminist et sur l'esprit national qui rejette le academics, we need to take seriously our néo-libéralisme, et de forger une ``solidarité influence on political struggles for social féministe non-colonisatrice`` avec les peuples justice. I hope, therefore, to provide direction autochtones, particulièrement les femmes for future dialogue and stronger solidarities autochtones, dans leurs luttes pour leur around issues of common concern amongst autodétermination. feminist scholar/activists of all theoretical and political stripes. The inspiration for this article crystallized at the 2006 Diasporic Hegemonies Conference at the University of Toronto, where Indigenous feminist scholar/activists1 Bonita Lawrence and www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.2, 2010 127 Andrea Smith described their perception of a antiracism that do not disempower Aboriginal problematic aspect of some transnational and peoples...[and] that dialogue between postcolonial feminist theories - their antiracism theorists/activists and Indigenous predication on an "Indigenous absence." As a scholars/communities requires talking on scholar, I became curious about the extent to Indigenous terms" (2005, 137). I proceed with which non-Indigenous feminist theories a similar concern and spirit. In the first engage - or could engage - with questions of section, I raise the contentious issue of Indigeneity and the ongoing colonial project of retraditionalization, which is not only a white settler societies such as Canada. stumbling block in feminist attempts to work Moreover, as a white feminist ally of across difference, but also a substantive Indigenous women's struggles,2 I was challenge for Indigenous peoples who, in intrigued by Andrea Smith's suggestion that invoking tradition, risk relegation to the Indigenous feminist "flexible notions of "wrong" side of the tradition/modernity binary. sovereignty" (2005a, 129) - as articulated by I also appraise the work of Alexander and Indigenous women engaged in anti-colonial Sharma for points of convergence or struggles - could contribute to the divergence on the issue of development of alternatives to neoliberal tradition/retraditionalization. I then outline how models of governance. This article reflects my Indigenous feminist notions of sovereignty continuing efforts as a scholar/activist to draw on the traditional principles of engage in a praxis of solidarity-building in relationality, interdependence and relation to both Indigenous struggles for responsibility thereby leading to counter self-determination and broader efforts to hegemonic understandings of land/creation, dislodge "the homogenizing force of Western nation and sovereignty. In the second section, liberalism and free-market capitalism" (Alfred I consider how Sharma and Alexander cited in Coulthard 2007, 447). "converse" with the implications of Indigenous I draw primarily from the works of feminist notions of sovereignty, starting with Indigenous scholar/activists Bonita Lawrence, the principle of relationality. I focus on to what Andrea Smith and Kim Anderson, comparing extent Sharma accommodates Indigenous their ideas with those found in selected texts worldviews and political concerns in her of feminist scholar/activists Nandita Sharma critique of the "modernist project of national and Jacqui Alexander. I have chosen Sharma state building" (Sharma 2005b, 12). and Alexander for their trenchant critiques of nation-state practices arising out of the Toward Relational Sovereignty modernist paradigm. Sharma's scholarship on W HY RETRADITIONALIZATION im/migrant issues provides theoretical insights Given the ravages of colonization, into the ideological antecedents of Kim Anderson (2000), Andrea Smith (2005a; exclusionary border practices of modern 2005b; 2006) and others (Alfred 2005) nation-states, and practical advice for contend that a recovery of traditional progressive social change movements Indigenous ways of being and knowing is a contesting the current configuration of central aspect of Indigenous struggles for national borders. Prominent transnational decolonization and sovereignty. Lawrence feminist theorist Jacqui Alexander, in addition asserts that "understanding how colonial to her analyses of neo-imperialism and governments have regulated Native identity is neo-colonialism, explores a theme important essential for Native people, in attempting to to many Indigenous feminists - the value of step away from the colonizing frameworks the Sacred in political organizing. that have enmeshed our lives, and as we My decision to set the stage for struggle to revive the identities and ways of discussion with a rather lengthy focus on living that preceded colonization" (2003, 4). Indigenous feminist relational sovereignty According to the International Forum of resonates with Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Indigenous Women (FIMI), Indigenous Dua's call (in a different context) for peoples across the globe are engaging in "discussions...on how to frame claims for retraditionalization - in broad terms, the 128 Atlantis 34.2, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis re-centering of traditional teachings that value attempting to accommodate this white need women, nature and the land/creation. for certainty, Indigenous peoples risk Mindful of the dangers involved in the reinforcing a belief in their eventual process - namely, re-entrenching patriarchal disappearance: "In a context of understandings of tradition or encouraging a domination...the Western imagination has fundamentalist cultural revitalization (St. Denis painted the world as populated by 2004) - Indigenous women insist that 'endangered authenticities,' always traditional teachings, particularly those related juxtaposed to modernity, always 'going crazy' to gender balance or complementarity,3 must in the face of the inescapable momentum of be refashioned to meet the contemporary 'progress' and change....Such a viewpoint needs of Indigenous women and their nations. holds no future for Native people other than Andrea Smith explains: as quaint relics occupying an archaic pastoral backwater - or as 'the Vanishing American'" Prior to colonization, Native communities were not (Lawrence 2003, 23). structured on the basis of hierarchy, oppression or In tacit agreement with Lawrence, patriarchy. We will not recreate these communities as Sharma identifies one of the most deleterious they existed prior to colonization. [But], our colonial assumptions to arise out of modernity understanding that a society without structures of - the formation of "negative dualities of worth oppression was possible in the past tells us that our in which one half of the binary equation is current political and economic system is anything but privileged both symbolically and materially natural and inevitable. If we lived differently before, we [and which] constitutes the identity politics of can live differently in the future. (2006, 17) ruling" (2005a, 26-27). Alexander's assessment of the treatment of 5 The idea of retraditionalization religion/spirituality
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