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" , 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, . 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 within (post)modernity connotes a view of tradition as alive, comes closer to talking about Indigenous non-static and fluid, not as inherently identity on its own terms, complementing anti-modern or patriarchal (FIMI 2006). As analyses of how Indigenous identities are Anderson explains, "'tradition' and 'culture' are conceptualized as traditional and thereby living entities, subject to constant change" regulated, and helping to elucidate why (2000, 34-35). Well aware of the potential for Indigenous peoples are caught in an solidifying patriarchal practices passed off as "authenticity bind:" traditions, she stresses that retraditionalization necessitates a careful ...modernization discourses and practices...collapse review of the gender teachings in all divergent histories and temporalities into these traditional practices. apparently irreconcilable binaries of tradition and In elevating tradition to a status modernity, and produce other accompanying corollaries commensurate with "modern" values, around religion and secular reason, stasis and change, Indigenous peoples must confront the and science and the nonrational. In so doing, they also Enlightenment-inspired and deeply territorialize their own distance, ultimately placing their entrenched tradition/modernity dualism, the claims within an ideological universe, whose analytic prime prism through which they have been and material boundaries dovetail with imperatives that viewed. Another risk for Indigenous advocates are most closely aligned with those of colonization. of retraditionalization is the continued (2005, 189) association of Indigeneity with an inferior, backward and immutable status, i.e., the Alexander firmly ties the tradition/modernity tradition side of the binary. As it stands, binary to (post)modern colonial logic, while Indigenous peoples are considered (mostly by speaking to the ongoing nature of colonialism non-Indigenous peoples) to be Indigenous in the Americas and the perpetuation of only if they can prove their "traditional" stereotypes about Indigenous peoples in need authenticity,4 a bind Lawrence (2003) links to of Christian "civilization:" the "white need for certainty about Indian difference" (2003, 23). Moreover, in

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.2, 2010 129 Yet, it is not only that (post)modernity's secularism been inscribed two or three times, the renders the Sacred as tradition, but it is also that previous text having been imperfectly erased tradition, understood as an extreme alterity, is always and remaining therefore still partly visible" - made to reside elsewhere and denied entry into the she describes how "the idea of the 'new' modern....[(post)modernity] profits from a hierarchy that structured through the 'old' scrambled, conflates Christianity with good tradition while palimpsestic character of time, both jettisons consigning 'others' to the realm of bad tradition and thus the truncated distance of linear time and to serve as evidence of the need for good Christian dislodges the impulse for incommensurability, tradition. (2005, 296) which the ideology of distance creates" (2005, 190). This non-linear understanding of time By pointing to the paradoxical resonates with Anderson's belief that the sub-dividing of tradition into categories of "past, present and future are understood to be "good" and "bad," Alexander explains how inextricably connected" (2000, 15) and that Christianity can become an indicator of past traditions is by definition registry in the modern, secular side of the relevant to future incarnations of nationhood. equation, and not a marker of the outmoded Anderson further claims that "our definition superstitious beliefs associated with and self-determination as individuals and as "traditional" cultures. nations involves calling on the past to define Guarding against the re/production of the future" (2000, 15-16). Palimpsestic time, patriarchal gender relations and other resulting in "the imperfect erasure, [and] misuses of tradition are prominent concerns hence visibility, of a 'past'" (Alexander 2005, for many women, Indigenous and 190), counters (post)modernist assertions non-Indigenous alike. Along these lines, that Indigenous peoples and their traditions Sharma points to how "tradition" can be are defunct (or hopelessly hybrid), and pressed into the service of the exclusionary explains how traditions are never really lost practices of (post)modern nation building: and why their recovery is possible. If we accept the positions of Alexander, Smith and Postmodern practices of racism and nationalism rely Anderson, then memory work is both possible less on ideologies of race separation and more and and in accordance with Indigenous feminist more on ideas sanctifying culture. An impoverished assessments of decolonization as an "antidote to alienation, separation, and the view of "culture" has come to overlie notions of amnesia that domination produces" biological race so that what connects identity to place is (Alexander 2005, 14). now said to be the historical existence of certain "traditions." In this, "tradition [becomes] the cultural The Contours of Relational Sovereignty equivalent of the process of biological reproduction." In her recent book, Andrea Smith (2005a, 11) warns that "because [Indigenous] sovereignty entails a vision that is beyond what we can Does Sharma, however unwittingly, see now, it is not necessarily something that equate Indigenous evocations of tradition with can be clearly articulated" (2008, 269). "traditions" that become a proxy for "notions Nonetheless, I will outline my incomplete of biological race"? Would she distinguish understanding of relational sovereignty as between colonial inheritances passed off as expressed in the words of Indigenous women "tradition" and the revitalized traditions scholars and activists. What aspects of envisioned above? While Sharma qualifies Indigenous tradition are (or could be) her use of tradition by using quotation marks, harnessed to formulate flexible or relational she does not appear to consider the forms of sovereignty? I contend that the possibility of tradition as liberating. traditional principles of relationality, Alexander, on the other hand, not interdependence and responsibility, which lie only believes in the potential benefits of at the heart of Indigenous epistemological tradition, but provides a conceptual and ontological stances, also underpin mechanism for its rekindling. Employing the Indigenous feminist views of sovereignty, with idea of a palimpsest - "a parchment that has

130 Atlantis 34.2, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis the following four features: 1) human trees, and all are nations. Each is sovereign, an equal subjectivity as relational, enacted through a part of the creation, interdependent, interwoven, and all spiritual encounter with land/creation; 2) related. These models of sovereignty are not based on sovereignty as extended beyond the human; a narrow definition of nation that would entail a closely 3) land held in trust for future generations; bounded community and ethnic cleansing. (29) and 4 ) the restoration of balance between women and men; individuals and the Being faithful to such an expanded collective; and human beings and the Sacred sense of sovereignty would require the (the whole of creation). fostering of respect between nations of all Firstly, adherence to the principles of types. In stark contrast to the modern relationality, interdependence and subject's individual rights relative to a responsibility would require the human "bounded community" such as the subject to experience herself as dependent nation-state, the Indigenous subject as part of upon and in relation to others and the the collective would have embodied rights and environment. In contrast to the Western responsibilities vis-à-vis all of creation, though liberal reverence of individualism, Indigenous in relation to a particular land base. Another conceptualizations of sovereignty hinge upon Indigenous activist puts it this way: respect for individual propensities and gifts believed to be derived from the Sacred, and We understand the concept of sovereignty as woven contextualized by participation in the through a fabric that encompasses our spirituality and collective. Thus, Anderson refers to the responsibility....It differs greatly from the concept of process of rediscovering one's "sacred sense Western sovereignty which is based on absolute power. of purpose" and concludes that "as we learn For us, absolute power is in the Creator and the natural to validate the purpose of each individual, we order of all living things...Our sovereignty is related to can build communities that are inclusive" our connections to the earth and is inherent. (2000, 203). Andrea Smith hints at the (Venne cited in Smith 2006, 17) application of these principles for the creation of alternatives to neoliberal governance: The significance of the natural "Helpful in this project of imagination is the environment for both Indigenous feminist work of Native women activists who have notions of relational sovereignty and of begun articulating notions of nation and subjectivity cannot be overstated. Unlike sovereignty that are separate from Western subjectivity - which, by positing a nation-states. Whereas nation-states are separation between humans and the natural governed through domination and coercion, environment, obscures the role of the material indigenous sovereignty and nationhood is in its formation - Indigenous subjectivity predicated on interrelatedness and explicitly claims a spiritual relationship to land responsibility" (2005a, 129). By bringing as its lynchpin. Anderson (2000) describes decolonization and land to the fore of feminist the centrality of land to Indigenous spirituality political struggle, Indigenous women are and to Indigenous women's subjectivities in challenging the idea of nation as inextricably particular: intertwined with state and beginning to articulate counter hegemonic meanings of Our relationship with creation involves connecting with both nation and sovereignty (Smith 2005a, all that exists around us...Because the land is our 2008). Earth, and the moon is our Grandmother, Native Another dimension of demarcating women have a special relationship with these parts of nation from state is the extension of creation. To many Native women, reclaiming a sovereignty beyond the human. As an relationship to land is as important as recreating Indigenous woman activist told Andrea Smith (2005a): Indigenous social and human relations, because the land is something through which we define ourselves, The idea of a nation did not simply apply to human and it is essential to our creation....The land is a relative beings. We call the buffalo or the wolves, the fish, the with whom we have a special relationship. (180)

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.2, 2010 131 The human subject engages in a process of What emerges from these narratives "becoming" through identification with the is an attitude towards land entirely distinct land. Citing ceremonies as the mechanism from the Western notion of land as (private) through which Indigenous women and men property. Anderson (2000) encapsulates this re/affirm their spiritual connection to the land, perspective: "Aboriginal women do not see to themselves, and to their communities and the land as a wild material resource that nations, Smith (2005c) clarifies the needs to be developed, possessed, or significance of land for understanding controlled" (180). Land "is 'owned' in a formal relational sovereignty: sense only by unborn children in the invisible sacred realm" (Lawrence and Dua 2005, Native spiritualities are land-based - they generally 126). Caretakers are to hold the land "in trust" cannot exist without the land from which they originate. for future generations. When Native peoples fight for cultural/spiritual For Kim Anderson (2000), fulfilling a preservation, they are ultimately fighting for the land vision of sovereignty as relational, base which grounds their spirituality and interdependent and responsible requires the culture....Native communities argue that Native peoples restoration of balance between women and cannot be alienated from their land without cultural men, individuals and the collective, and genocide....[Therefore] to disconnect Native spiritual human beings and the Sacred (the whole of practices from their land base is to undermine Native creation). Seeking balance would commit peoples' claim that the protection of the land base is women and men to fulfilling their integral to their survival and hence is to undermine their responsibilities to self, family, community, claim to sovereignty. (99) nation and creation. Women and men are ascribed social roles according to their Henrietta Mann describes the collective "predominant qualities" (to create and nurture, responsibilities understood by Indigenous to protect and provide respectively), which are peoples to inhere in this spiritual relationship seen as complementary and equivalent in between their nations and the land: value. Hence, Indigenous women play a special role in the maintenance of family, community and nation because they are Over the time we have been here, we have built cultural considered to be the life givers, teachers and ways on and about this land. We have our own nurturers of future generations. Indigenous respected versions of how we came to be. These origin conceptualizations of gender attributes and stories - that we emerged or fell from the sky or were consequent roles flow from social relations brought forth - connect us to this land and establish our that prioritize balance, harmony and realities, our belief systems. We have spiritual reciprocity, along with respect for the female responsibilities to renew the Earth and we do this power of creation. Consequently, gender roles through our ceremonies so that our Mother, the Earth, would be re/established, but not fixed, in the can continue to support us. Mutuality and respect are service of the collective. part of our tradition - give and take. (Taliman 2005, 15) Andrea Smith reminds us to historicize and politicize any discussion of Within this worldview, it is recognized gender and Indigenous nationhood. She that to ensure the viability of the earth is to writes, ensure the viability of human life. The Council of Chiefs of the Haudenosaunee explain that It has been through sexual violence and through the for Indigenous peoples a spiritual relationship imposition of European gender relationships on Native to land both reflects and translates into a communities that Europeans were able to colonize collective responsibility as caretakers of the Native peoples in the first place. If we maintain these land: "We are connected to the land in a patriarchal gender systems in place, we are then unable spiritual way....[as] stewards. Our spiritual to decolonize and fully assert our sovereignty. obligation is part of that stewardship...The (2005a, 124) land is sacred to us. It defines our identities, belief system, languages, and way of life"6 Together with a growing number of (Six Nations 2006).

132 Atlantis 34.2, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis Indigenous "feminists without apology" (those of nation and sovereignty embrace "radical who unabashedly claim the feminist label diversity" as opposed to difference as defined despite derision from their own communities by Sharma? Given Indigenous calls for and a fraught history vis-à-vis mainstream gender balance, an end to patriarchal ), she emphasizes that any project to hierarchies and strict male-female binaries, revitalize tradition in the interest of as well as the valuation of individuals for their sovereignty would have to categorically unique contributions to community well-being, disrupt the colonial legacies of patriarchy and it would seem so. Certainly Indigenous sexualized violence in Indigenous experiences with state identity regulation communities. would make them sensitive to Sharma's demand that "we be able to distinguish Relational Sovereignty in Conversation between diverse self-determined identities RELATIONALITY AND THE and the process of differentiation used to INDIVIDUAL/COLLECTIVE DIALECTIC mark Others as subordinated beings" To what extent do the Alexander and (Sharma 2005a, 29). Sharma texts speak to Indigenous feminist notions of relational sovereignty? Importantly, ON LAND, BORDERS AND NATIONAL both Alexander and Sharma allude to a core SOVEREIGNTY Indigenous ontological precept: relationality To what extent does Sharma's evidenced in the individual/collective critique of territoriality in relation to connection. Alexander states, "The central nation-state building projects accommodate understanding within an epistemology of the Indigenous worldviews and political Sacred is that of a core/Spirit that is immortal, concerns? In other words, does she at once linked to the pulse and energy of adequately take up the "spiritual and creation. It is the living matter that links us to geopolitical relations" (Lawrence and Dua each other, making that which is individual 2005, 126) said to connect Indigenous people simultaneously collective" (2005, 327). Her to the land/creation and/or acknowledge the theorization of the Sacred corresponds to possibility of Indigenous nation-building Indigenous attitudes about the sacredness of projects as being distinct from nation creation and, by extension, to the need for state-building projects? Sharma offers a clear individual/collective balance in order to realize analysis of the problem with nation a vision of relational sovereignty. Additionally, state-building projects: for both Anderson and Alexander, the Sacred is not the exclusive domain of Indigenous In modern, national styles of ruling there is a women, but must be accessed by Indigenous convergence between the imagining of communities as men to dismantle patriarchy. national and the ability of states to uphold and defend While not speaking in terms of the space it occupies. In this sense, what we have balance through a reconnection with the usually understood to be nation-building projects are Sacred, Nandita Sharma's concept of "radical more accurately understood as nation state-building diversity" echoes Indigenous calls to value projects. It is for this reason that borders - and the individual gifts or propensities in the service of immigration policies that enforce and regulate them - the collective, and I would add, for the are the point where the nation state's sovereignty finds creation of an inclusive nation. Sharma its expression. (2005b, 11-12) (2005a) distinguishes between the concepts of difference and "radical diversity," the latter She writes of "homey forms of racism" that referring to "the tangible existence of function to tie national identities to heterogeneity and mutual reciprocity within geographically-bounded territories - a nature and within that part of nature that is fundamental part of modern nation humanity. Differences, on the other hand, are state-building (Sharma 2005a). Quoting socially organized inequalities between Malkki, she writes, "The assumption that any human beings and between humans and the given culture is rooted in a particular rest of the planet" (26). Do Indigenous visions geographical place and is best kept

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.2, 2010 133 homogeneous 'actively territorializes our Sharma does not appear to conceptualize identities, whether cultural or national...[and] "land as a contested space" in the way directly enables a vision of territorial required by Lawrence and Dua (2005, 126), displacement [of the group in question] as which would mean "to acknowledge that we pathological'" (12). In most cases, however, all share the same land base and yet to modern nation-states must erase history - question the differential terms on which it is negating the very existence of Indigenous occupied, [which] is to become aware of the populations - to justify their formation: colonial project that is taking place around us" (126). While the historical displacement of ...the doctrine of Terra Nullius that allowed the Indigenous peoples in Canada figures into her Americas and the South Pacific to be viewed as empty work, Sharma does not appear to differentiate lands awaiting European civilization and cultivation between contemporary Indigenous land [which] was ...very useful in the "founding" of "White claims and exclusionary nation state-building settler societies," such as Canada. The notion that projects, nor is it clear that she would. In fact, indigenous peoples were never at home on these lands her hopes to abolish the right of nation-states worked to depoliticize their homelessness after the to differentiate citizenship and regulate advent of colonialism and the official redistribution of borders, i.e., her call for "a world without White settlers. (Sharma 2005a, 9) borders" (2005b, 12), would not seem to acknowledge the integral role of land in Sharma (2005a) expounds upon the Indigenous subjectivity, spirituality and manipulation of "home" to further nationalist sovereignty. projects: Lawrence and Dua (2005) have this to say about borders: Home...is an idea that masquerades as a place. Having a home within a nation, in particular, is not a Borders in the Americas are European fictions, geographical signpost but an ideological restricting Native peoples' passage and that of peoples signifier....[However] because [home is lived out as a of color. However, to speak of opening up borders spatial concept], it profoundly shapes our without addressing Indigenous land loss and ongoing consciousness of the relationship between place and struggles to reclaim territories is to divide communities "belonging." Its power rests in its ability to project that are already marginalized from one another. The modernist formulations of home back through human question that must be asked is how opening borders history so that our contemporary understandings of would affect Indigenous struggles aimed at reclaiming homelands come to be seen as merely the outcomes of land and nationhood. (136) some supposedly primordial need for rootedness. (8-9) Sharma does not ask this question Sharma (2005a) rightly notes that here. To be fair, this omission could stem "many supposedly natural homelands exist primarily from her focus on im/migrant issues, only because of the forcible dispossession, which leads her to use terms like the displacement, violent assimilation, and "nationalization of space and identity" (2005a, sometimes extermination of those who 6), and the "Canadianization of space" and previously built their lives and livelihoods in "nationalized imaginations" (2005b, 7) in ways these places" (15). However, would Sharma distinct from how nation is invoked by use different criteria to evaluate the notion of Indigenous peoples. At any rate, despite home used in the territorial claims of references to Indigenous peoples and colonial Indigenous peoples? Would she concede that history, she does not make the ongoing not all origin stories are reducible to tactics colonization of Indigenous nations by Canada that establish the "privileged link between foundational to her work as Lawrence and habit and habitat upon which the myth of others would have it. indigenous original rests" (2005a, 14)? The answer would seem to be no. Towards a Future Dialogue While explicitly recognizing the dispossession A fundamental question remains: of Indigenous lands through colonialism, would Indigenous conceptions of sovereignty

134 Atlantis 34.2, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis allow us to overcome the "modernist ideas of assumptions about Indigenous sovereignty family and home" that Sharma argues both with the sentiments of Indigenous women fuel patriarchal social relations and result in activists who talk about "how indigenous strictly defined, exclusionary nation-state sovereignty is based on freedom for all borders (Sharma 2005a, 8)? Would broader peoples" (2005a, 130) and that expulsion definitions of nation allow for less rigid would be out of the question. These are just geographical boundaries and more inclusive some of the questions that would arise out of practices vis-à-vis membership in a nation? the "total rethinking of Canada" called for by Historical evidence would suggest so: "the Lawrence and Dua: "Aboriginal people need Mi'kmaki, the 'land of friendship,' which to reestablish control over their own encompasses what is now called the Atlantic communities: have their land returned to provinces, [has] historically been part of...a them, making communities viable and larger geopolitical unit that extends into what rebuilding nationhood....This requires a total is now the northeastern United States" rethinking of Canada; sovereignty and (Lawrence and Dua 2005, 126). Likewise, self-determination must be genuinely on the Napoleon explains that Aboriginal nations table as fundamental to Indigenous survival, "practiced forms of nationhood that were not as lip service" (2005, 125-126). deliberately inclusive in order to build strong nations with extensive international ties" Conclusion (2005, 38). What are the implications of a In this article, I centre Indigenous stewardship relationship with land, as feminist understandings of and struggles for opposed to one of domination, for national (relational) sovereignty, and put them "in borders? Could more porous boundaries be conversation" with relevant ideas from the established that simultaneously recognize the texts of feminist scholar/activists Nandita responsibilities of those deemed the Sharma and Jacqui Alexander. caretakers of the land and the rights of After reviewing the challenges facing access to others? In other words, would the Indigenous nations who opt for "boundaries of responsibility" envisioned by "retraditionalization" as a fundamental step Indigenous nations differ from the borders towards decolonization and sovereignty, I erected by modernist nation-states? share my understanding of Indigenous According to the Council of Chiefs of feminist notions of sovereignty as predicated the Haudenosaunee, "land is a collective on relationality, interdependence, right. It is held in common, for the benefit of responsibility and balance - principles also at all....Our ancestors faced overwhelming odds the heart of Indigenous epistemologies and and relentless pressure to give up our ontological perspectives. Accordingly, lands....The agreements we recognized sovereignty would extend to both human and reflect an intention to share the land and to non-human nations, reflecting a demarcation lease the land" (Six Nations 2006; italics between "nation" and "state." Human subjects added). I would suggest that conceiving of would thus be called upon to respect the land as a collective right for the benefit of all sovereignty and interrelatedness of all of would increase the likelihood of allowing creation, as individuals and members of the people(s) access to land for subsistence collective. Human subjectivity and sovereignty agriculture, for example. Also, especially are understood to emanate from a spiritual when framed within the distinction made by relationship with the land, which is not owned Indigenous peoples between nation and as such, but held in trust for future nation-state, intentions to share or lease generations. Indigenous women, as symbols lands do not imply their cordoning off. Despite of the power and interrelatedness of creation, popular (non-Indigenous) fears to the figure centrally in the maintenance of the contrary, expansive notions of sovereignty well-being of Indigenous nations, and thus that distinguish between nation and state patriarchy is to be disrupted and balanced would not lead to the forced displacement of gender relations restored. W ithin this "others." Smith contrasts non-Indigenous paradigm, power resides in creation and

www.msvu.ca/atlantis PR Atlantis 34.2, 2010 135 nurturance, not domination and possession. Above all else, I hope to have By juxtaposing Indigenous feminist provided direction for future dialogue and the notions of relational sovereignty with the ideas formation of non-colonizing bonds of solidarity of Alexander and Sharma, I can say between Indigenous and non-Indigenous definitively that neither scholar/activist can be feminist scholar/activists around not only said to completely "write out" Indigenous Indigenous struggles for sovereignty, but peoples from their analyses. For example, social justice more generally. More both Alexander's "epistemology of the specifically, I would suggest that a deeper Sacred" and Sharma's "radical diversity" engagement with Indigenous feminist views of resonate with and enhance the Indigenous relational sovereignty might well facilitate a feminist notion of an inclusive nation, which rethinking of national borders and the creation hinges on the individual-collective dialectic. I of more inclusive nations. Perhaps a more do, however, detect a different degree of careful consideration of the overlaps, affinity between the works of Sharma and convergences and divergences of purportedly Alexander and those of Indigenous feminists antagonistic feminist currents - Indigenous, on relational sovereignty. Whereas both transnational and postcolonial included - scholar/activists acknowledge the would assist distinct groups to clarify their pervasiveness and political expediency of the courses of action, including the possibility of tradition/modernity duality, Alexander's creating links and solidarities around common analysis of religion in (post)modernity more concerns about nation, empire and thoroughly addresses the ongoing colonial democratic governance. regulation of Indigenous identities. Alexander also envisions tradition as a potentially Endnotes liberating force; there is a profound synergy 1. As Andrea Smith (2005a; 2006) clarifies, between Indigenous women's invocations of not all Indigenous women activists call rekindled tradition and Alexander's "betrayal themselves feminists. My use of "Indigenous of secular citizenship and dispossession to feminist" is consistent with recent articulations sacred citizenship and possession, from by Smith and other Indigenous alienation to belonging, from dismemberment scholar/activists who describe some to rememory" (2005, 16). Furthermore, Indigenous women's efforts to reclaim Alexander's notion of palimpsestic time feminism and address within their echoes Indigenous depictions of time as communities as integral to securing non-linear, a commingling of Indigenous sovereignty. past-present-future, and hence a gateway to 2. Since 2005, I have been an ally member of potentially liberating traditions. On the other No More Silence (NMS), a Toronto-based hand, it would seem that Sharma does not group of Indigenous women and allies raising see tradition as liberating. She also does not awareness about violence against Indigenous appear to look to Indigenous conceptions of women on Turtle Island within a broader relational sovereignty and nationhood as an project of decolonization. (Turtle Island is antidote to the modernist project of nation used by Indigenous communities in Canada state-building. If her call for a "world without to refer to North America). I began my borders" is truly silent with respect to involvement with Indigenous issues in 1988 contemporary questions of Indigeneity, she as a Rotary scholar in Australia. I increased cannot be said to accommodate the "spiritual my awareness of the oppression of and geopolitical relations" of Indigenous Indigenous peoples globally as a human peoples to the land. Finally, whether or not rights observer with the United Nations she would distinguish Indigenous notions of Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) from 1995- home, nation and territory - i.e., the differential 1998. terms on which Indigenous nations base 3. This term appears in the literature (see sovereignty/land claims - from the FIMI 2006), as well as in interviews I exclusionary border practices of modern conducted for my MA thesis with Guatemalan nation-states, remains unclear. Indigenous women.

136 Atlantis 34.2, 2010 PR www.msvu.ca/atlantis 4. See FIMI (2006, p. 22-25) for a discussion Lawrence, B. "Gender, Race, and the of how mainstream human rights discourse Regulation of Native Identity in Canada and perpetuates a false "culture" vs. "rights" the United States: An Overview," 18.2 dichotomy, pitting "traditional" cultural (2003): 3-31. practices against so-called liberating "modern" ones. _____ and K. Anderson. Introduction to 5. My use of the parentheses in the term "Indigenous Women: the State of Our (post)modernity is a deliberate attempt to Nations," Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal acknowledge the latent absolutism which, 29.2 (2005):1-8. according to Alexander (2005), infuses the supposedly cultural relativist impulses of Lawrence, B. and E. Dua. "Decolonizing postmodernity. In identifying this latent Antiracism," Social Justice 32.4 (2005): absolutism, I believe Alexander intends to 120-43. demonstrate the complex, non-linear relationship between the colonial, neo-colonial Mohanty, C. T. Feminism Without Borders: and neo-imperial state formations, and the Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. falsity of the modernity/postmodernity binary. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University This would explain how Indigenous peoples Press, 2003. experience the modern moment alongside and through the postmodern moment, i.e., Napoleon, V. "Aboriginal Self Determination: that colonization is ongoing. Individual Self and Collective Selves," 6. This is an excerpt from a statement by the Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal 29.2 Council of Chiefs of the Haudenosaunee (Six (2005): 31-46. Nations "Iroquois" Confederacy), Grand Rivers County, concerning the ongoing land Sharma, N. Home Economics: Nationalism reclamation near Caledonia, Ontario. and the Making of "Migrant" Workers in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, References 2005a. Alexander, M. J. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, , _____. "Canadian Nationalism and the Memory, and the Sacred. Durham and Making of a Global Apartheid," Women and London: Duke University Press, 2005. Environment International Magazine 68/69 (Fall/Winter 2005b): 9-12. Alfred, T. Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. Peterborough, Ont.: Six Nations "Iroquois" Confederacy. "Land Broadview Press, 2005. Rights Statement from the Six Nations 'Iroquois' Confederacy," Tekawennake Anderson, K. Recognition of Being: November 22 2006. (received as email text). Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Toronto: Second Story Press, 2000. Smith, A. "Native American Feminism, Sovereignty, and Social Change," Feminist Coulthard, G. S. "Subjects of Empire: Studies 31.1 (2005a): 116-32. Indigenous Peoples and the 'Politics of Recognition' in Canada," Contemporary _____. Conquest: Sexual Violence and Political Theory 6.4 (2007): 437-60. American Indian Genocide. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005b. FIMI. Mairin Iwanka Raya: Indigenous Women Stand Against Violence, a _____. "Spiritual Appropriation as Sexual Companion Report to the United Nations Violence," Wicazo Sa Review (Spring 2005c): Secretary-General's Study on Violence 97-111. Against Women. FIMI (Foro Internacional de Mujeres Indígenas), 2006. _____. " without

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