As We Have Always Done by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

AS WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE Indigenous Americas Robert Warrior, Series Editor Chadwick Allen, Trans- Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies Raymond D. Austin, Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law: A Tradition of Tribal Self- Governance Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.– Indigenous Relations Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition James H. Cox, The Red Land to the South: American Indian Writers and Indigenous Mexico Brendan Hokowhitu and Vijay Devadas, The Fourth Eye: Māori Media in Aotearoa New Zealand Daniel Heath Justice, Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History Thomas King, The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative Scott Richard Lyons, X- Marks: Native Signatures of Assent Aileen Moreton- Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty Jean M. O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England Shiri Pasternak, Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake against the State Steven Salaita, Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance Paul Chaat Smith, Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong Lisa Tatonetti, The Queerness of Native American Literature Gerald Vizenor, Bear Island: The War at Sugar Point Robert Warrior, The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction Robert A. Williams Jr., Like a Loaded Weapon: The Rehnquist Court, Indian Rights, and the Legal History of Racism in America AS WE HAVE A LWAYS DONE Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON Indigenous Americas University of Minnesota Press | Minneapolis | London The publication of this book was assisted by a bequest from Josiah H. Chase to honor his parents, Ellen Rankin Chase and Josiah Hook Chase, Minnesota territorial pioneers. Title page art copyright Lianne Marie Leda Charlie “Our Treaty with the Hoof Nation” and “Binoojiinh Makes a Lovely Discovery” were previously published in Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, The Gift Is in the Making, from the Debwe Series published by HighWater Press, 2013. Reprinted with permission. The interview by Naomi Klein was previously published as “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson,” Yes! Magazine, March 5, 2013. http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/ dancing-the-world-into-being-a-conversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne -simpson. Billy- Ray Bellcourt, “sacred,” was previously published at https:// nakinisowin.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/sacred/. Reprinted with permission of the author. Copyright 2017 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu isbn 978-1-5179-0386-2 (hc) isbn 978-1-5179-0387-9 (pb) A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Introduction My Radical Resurgent Present | 1 1 Nishnaabeg Brilliance as Radical Resurgence Theory | 11 2 Kwe as Resurgent Method | 27 3 The Attempted Dispossession of Kwe | 39 4 Nishnaabeg Internationalism | 55 5 Nishnaabeg Anticapitalism | 71 6 Endlessly Creating Our Indigenous Selves | 83 7 The Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples’ Bodies | 95 8 Indigenous Queer Normativity | 119 9 Land as Pedagogy | 145 10 “I See Your Light”: Reciprocal Recognition and Generative Refusal | 175 11 Embodied Resurgent Practice and Coded Disruption | 191 12 Constellations of Coresistance | 211 Conclusion Toward Radical Resurgent Struggle | 233 Acknowledgments | 249 Notes | 251 Index | 283 INTRODUCTION MY RADICAL RESURGENT PRESENT I am writing this chapter on a gray, wet winter day, in the café in the sports complex at Trent University as my two kids attend swimming lessons.1 The doors of the complex have Trent’s logo on them—th e French “explorer” Champlain’s sword, jutting into waves, or as my elder Doug Williams often cynically jokes, “the heart of the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg.”2 My kids pass the symbol with a casual “they should change that” and “don’t have a fit, Mom.” They have grown up in their territory, learning with a community of artists, makers, and elders, a luxu- ry that not all of us, including myself, have had. Because of that, I see a strength in them that I don’t see in myself. I see an abili- ty to point out and name colonialism, resist and even mobilize to change it. They know more about what it means to be Nish- naabeg in their first decades than I did in my third. This intimate resurgence in my family makes me happy. Over a decade ago, I was listening to Doug speak to a group of Canadians in a coffee shop in downtown Peterborough, a city in central Ontario between Toronto and Ottawa. Peterborough is known to be a conservative hockey town (really, a small city) on the edge of cottage country. Doug wanted his audience to 1 2 INTRODUCTION know where they were, and he began by telling them what the land used to look like. The non-Nat ive audience was nearly si- lent, transfixed by each sentence he spoke. So was I, because as he was speaking, I was recognizing that the land I know as my home has been devastated by settlement, industrial develop- ment, the construction of highways and roads, the Trent- Severn Waterway, and four centuries of dispossession. I understood that the landscape I knew as home would be almost unrecog- nizable to my Ancestors, and I hadn’t known previously that I could barely even imagine the worlds that had already been lost. In the weeks after that talk, I spoke with Doug about what he had shared. As we drove around our territory in the months that fol- lowed, he pointed out where the Wendat (Huron) villages used to be, where hunting grounds were located, the former locations of black oak savannas and tallgrass prairies. I began to start my own talks with a narrative of what our land used to look like as a quick glimpse, albeit a generalized one, of what was lost— not as a mourning of loss but as a way of living in an Nishnaabeg present that collapses both the past and the future and as a way of positioning myself in relation to my Ancestors and my relations. I want to do the same here in this book. Nogojiwanong (the place at the end of the rapids, or Peterbor- ough) is in the heart of the Michi Saagiig part of the Nishnaabeg nation, and we call our nation “Kina Gchi Nishnaabeg- ogamig— the place where we all live and work together.”3 Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg territory is along the north shore of Chi’Niibish, or Lake Ontario. Chi’Niibish literally means “big water,” and we share this lake with the Rotinonhseshá:ka.4 Michi Saagiig means “at the mouth of the rivers,” and that name comes from our history as people that spent time at the mouths of the rivers drain- ing into Lake Ontario.5 We are travelers, moving throughout our lands rather than settling in one place. We are the eastern door- way of the Nishnaabeg nation, and we have responsibilities to take care of our relationship with the Rotinonhseshá:ka. We also have diplomacy with the Rotinonhseshá:ka Confederacy; there are at least four wampum belts (treaties) that remind us of those responsibilities as well.6 There is also a wait- in- the- woods cer- INTRODUCTION 3 emony between the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) and the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg. Diplomatically, we have always had close ties to the Wendat. They asked to live in our territory at different points in history, and we made agreements with them so they could. There are wampum belts made, and the oral tradition has a lot of evidence that we lived together quite well: they lived in longhouses and farmed, and we were hunting and fishing, ricing and sugaring, traveling by the waterways. Michi Saagiig Nishinaabeg are salmon people. Doug tells me Chi’Niibish had its own resident population of salmon that migrated all the way to Stoney Lake to spawn. We drank directly from the lakes, and that was a good, healthy thing to do. There was a large population of eels that also migrated to Stoney Lake each year from the Atlantic Ocean. There was an ancient old- growth forest of white pine that stretched from Curve Lake down to the shore of Lake Ontario, which had virtually no un- derstory except for a bed of pine needles. There were tallgrass prairies and black oak savannas where Peterborough stands today. The lakes were teeming with minomiin, or wild rice. The land was dotted with sugar bushes, the lakes were full of fish. It sounds idyllic, because compared to now it was idyllic. Our knowledge system, the education system, the econom- ic system, and the political system of the Michi Saagiig Nishi- naabeg were designed to promote more life. Our way of living was designed to generate life— not just human life but the life of all living things. Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg were travelers; we rarely settled, and this was reflected in our politics and governance, in our diplomacy with other nations, and even in the pro- tection of our land.

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