An Essay by Neil Kato

“It’s horrible how their culture was destroyed as if in some reckless storm but thank god we were able to save some of these artifacts —history is so important”

— Tommy Pico, Nature Poem

These lines from Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem take on the perspective of settler society. One that has surface-level sympathy for Indigenous people and “their culture”, yet, also a society that refuses to acknowledge their own complicity in the plight of Indigenous peoples and cultures. Brushing it off as the result of a “reckless storm”. They also choose to ignore that Indigenous peoples and cultures still exist. Saying that “their culture was destroyed” and there are only “artifacts” left; artifacts that they will probably admire in museums and use to romanticize the peoples and cultures they are trying to erase. As is true about most poems, these lines discuss a lot of ideas and thoughts. They cover themes of settler narratives, the myth of the extinction of Indigenous peoples and cultures, and the romanticization and appropriation of Indigenous cultures. Furthermore, this poem embodies the resistance of Indigenous peoples and communities against colonization.

While merited, I think that there is generally too much focus in “progressive” settler narratives placed on the violence committed against Indigenous people. Although it is vital to have education on the history of and continued colonial violence and erasure of Indigenous peoples and cultures, I think that it frames Indigenous people too much as helpless victims. In reality, it is a much more nuanced picture. There is a lot of resilience and resourcefulness in Indigenous communities that have enabled them to survive and preserve many cultures and traditions despite an apocalyptic situation. They have and continue to subvert attempts of colonial violence and cultural erasure. In my view, the history of this resistance gets too lost in the discussion. And while it should not be used to romanticize Indigenous people and oppress them further, this history can help inform continued resistance against settler society and the eventual decolonization of Indigenous lands. Since it is not feasible for me to try to even attempt to cover the entirety of this history of resistance, I have decided to focus on modern-day projects and work. I think that this focus can also be helpful in sparking ideas on how people can get more actively involved in the process of decolonization, seeing that as Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang point out, “decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools” (Tuck, Yang, 1).

The continued survival of Indigenous peoples and the preservation of their nations and cultures have not been the result of the failure of Western governments to erase them and their cultures but is instead credit to the resistance and resourcefulness of Indigenous communities that have subverted these attempts and have used them for their own empowerment. Cherokee academic and author, Daniel Justice, writes that “our nations today are the embodiment of the fierce, desperate hope and relentless insistence of our ancestors to continue on in whatever way they could. Indigenous people today honour that determination by being, and by carrying on that purpose to the best of our abilities” (Ch. 3, 115). As such, in this paper, I will be discussing active modern Indigenous resistance in social movements, language, and story.

Spawned in the history of boarding schools and the Red Power Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the Standing Rock protest has become one of the most widely known recent instances of Indigenous activism. Beginning in early 2016, the Standing Rock reservation protested the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and its implications on their sources of water and other culturally significant tribal lands (Treuer, 432). The protests bloomed and eventually included Indigenous people “from more than 300 different tribes” and “food, firewood, and supplies” sent by tribal authorities from all over the country (Treuer, 435). A fairly new phenomenon, this unity between many tribes is in part “a by-product of the shared experience and common language instilled, however brutally, by the boarding schools” that developed “an intertribal sense of identity with shared historical experiences” and “a social network that often extended well beyond the borders of their community or tribe or language group” (Treuer, 286-287). This united identity was one of the catalysts for their massive amount of public support and their immense pressure on the government. While the pipeline is currently pumping oil across four states, this protest showed the might and reach of a united tribal front that is helping fuel Indigenous activism and their continued fight to protect the land and gain back their sovereignty.

Like land, language is integral to a culture. “Language is intrinsic to the expression of culture. As a means of communicating values, beliefs and customs, it has an important social function and fosters feelings of group identity and solidarity. It is the means by which culture and its traditions and shared values may be conveyed and preserved” (Racism no way). Despite attempts by Western governments to eradicate Indigenous cultures, especially their languages, through boarding schools and other means, there has been a resurgence in efforts to revitalize Indigenous languages. A notable example of this is the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. Seeing that the majority of fluent Cherokee speakers are older, they decided to make a major investment to revitalize the language. As a part of a 10-year plan, they started developing curriculum for total Cherokee language immersion programs, establishing community language programs for those “who want to learn Cherokee as a second language”, and giving out “scholarships for future teachers of Cherokee language” (Cherokee Language). While they have cited some challenges including, “creating learning materials for varied ages, finding and training teachers, designing programs for adult second-language learning, and identifying tools to measure fluency”, they have also noted that “a number of stakeholders believed the progress or impact of the initiative is “significant” and that the “integration of Cherokee language into the everyday lifestyle of the community is evident” (Cherokee Language).

The integration of Indigenous languages into everyday life has been supplemented by a rise in Indigenous languages in film. Released in 2018, the feature film, SG̲aawaay Ḵ’uuna , captures the “culture of the indigenous peoples of Haida Gwaii” and is the first filmed in a northern Haida dialect, “that has fewer than twenty-four fluent speakers” (NoiseCat). It has been well received by the Haida Gwaii community, who believe that having the youth see “their language being spoken on a feature-length film. . .[affirms] their identities and [empowers] them to speak” (NoiseCat). If tastefully done, seeing one’s language and culture being represented in films and media is powerful. For marginalized and/or minority communities, it can validate one’s experiences and celebrate one’s community and culture. They can counter repressive narratives that have been crafted by mainstream society, and give space for the creation of new, empowering narratives to replace them with. For projects like this, it’s not just about language preservation, it’s also about giving the language a future. As Justice writes “we learn to be human from everything around us, as the worlds we inhabit help to define both the limits and the possibilities of our humanity (Ch. 1, 34). This is why it’s especially important to create films like this. They replace stifling and limiting narratives, with ones that open up possibilities for who we can be.

While many Indigenous peoples have adopted English as their primary language, whether by force during the boarding schools and/or to assimilate into American society, there are many Indigenous authors that are revamping English in ways that hold Indigenous values, fight against settler frameworks of seeing the world, dispel false notions about Indigenous peoples, and show what being a modern Indigenous person can look like. As David Treuer, Ojibwe author and professor, writes, “just as the Lakota, Comanche, Nez Perce, and other Plains tribes had the horse and the gun and made them their own, so, too, did modern Indians take the tools that might have spelled our end (English, technology, Western education, wage labor) and make them ours” (Treuer, 412).

Like language, stories can embody Indigenous values and challenge settler ways of thinking. “Stories in Indigenous epistemologies are disruptive, sustaining, knowledge producing, and theory-in-action. Stories are decolonization theory in its most natural form” (Sium, 2). They “reflect an individual’s worldview” and “provide insight into persons’ values and beliefs and their perception of the temporal and causal relationships among people, objects, and events in the world” (Westby). In Natalie Diaz’s poem, The First Water Is The Body, she highlights her people’s relationship with water and life. She emphasizes that when she says, “I carry a river” or that “the river runs through the middle of my body,'' it isn’t a metaphor. This calls attention to the way Indigenous views and values are “dismissed as myth” and/or are construed as being “[surrealistic] or magical realism” when they challenge Eurocentric thinking (Diaz). This dismissal has the effect of diminishing Indigenous values and views, by falsely painting them as not valid, using Eurocentric concepts of rationality and science as their basis for justification. By pointing this out, Diaz is confronting this repressive behavior and is challenging the reader to consider how their own thinking might promote Eurocentrism and the erasure of Indigenous peoples and cultures.

It is not only in their themes that Indigenous stories can challenge settler ways but also in their structure and form. This is evident in Cree writer and academic, Billy-Ray Belcourt’s essay AND SO I ANAL DOUCHE WHILE KESHA’S “PRAYING” PLAYS FROM MY IPHONE ON REPEAT. In this essay, he shows himself and his struggles through an intimate stream of consciousness that jumps from idea to idea. While Eurocentric critics may consider Belcourt’s essay “unorganized” and “rambling” (Westby), or as Belcourt has tweeted himself, “simple plainspoken savage ridiculous florid mouthful” (@BillyRayB), these critics fail to understand a component that is key to many Indigenous cultures. Many “story plots in native narratives do not flow in a linear manner with clear temporal–causal relationships” (Westby). Instead, there is an emphasis on the circularity of life, and how the past, present, and future are all interwoven together. This kind of narrative embodies Dr. Dian Million’s concept of dreaming, which she describes as “the effort to make sense of relations in the worlds we live, dreaming and empathizing intensely our relations with past and present and the future without boundaries of linear time” (Million, 315). This produces a different way of knowing, by “[allowing] us to creatively sidestep all the neat little boxes that obscure larger relations and syntheses of imagination” (Million, 315). Through his style of writing, Belcourt reinvents and harnesses English in a way that expresses himself and his culture, and challenges Eurocentric epistemologies.

Storytelling also challenges false settler beliefs about Indigenous people and what a modern Indigenous person can be. A part of colonial efforts to erase Indigenous culture has been the spreading of the myth that Indigenous people, or at least “real” ones, no longer exist. This can be seen in how Indigenous cultures are often framed as history or artifacts, even though many are still active. Furthermore, as more Indigenous people have left reservations and moved to cities, there are questions about whether one can be both Indigenous and a modern American, as well as how one can resolve this apparent duality. However, the idea that one is more or less Indigenous based on their lifestyle and involvement in mainstream America is problematic. We only see this behavior as conflicting because we assume that there is only one way to be an Indigenous person, one that is typically based on stereotypes. However, these changes in lifestyle have been the result of adaptation and survival in the face of genocide. Through storytelling, we are offered a glimpse into the lives of modern Indigenous people. We see the struggle with this duality, and/or lack thereof, and are offered with a spectrum of ways it can mean to be an Indigenous person in modern Western society.

Lastly, storytelling can also challenge the status quo by offering other ways of living and different possibilities for the future. This is most evident in the genre of speculative fiction or Indigenous Futurism. Coined first by Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillion, Indigenous author Rebecca Roanhorse defines Indigenous Futurisms as, “a term meant to encourage Native, First Nations, and other Indigenous authors and creators to speak back to the colonial tropes of science fiction—those that celebrate the rugged individual, the conquest of foreign worlds, the taming of the final frontier. Indigenous Futurism asks us to reject these colonial ideas and instead re-imagine space, both outer and inner, from another perspective. One that makes room for stories that celebrate relationship and connection to community, coexistence, and sharing of land and technology, the honoring of caretakers and protectors” (Roanhorse). These genres give space for Indigenous authors to imagine and dream about alternative decolonial Indigenous futures, while simultaneously deconstructing colonial ideas and tropes (Sium, 8). They show Indigenous values of the importance of Elders, kinship, and symbiotic relationships with nature, and imagine futures where these traits flourish. Similar to the new wave of Indigenous film, they give the freedom to fight back, strip away oppressive narratives, and create new stories and possibilities.

While I will reiterate that we shouldn’t frame the survival of Indigenous people solely as an act of heroism, as that would expunge settler society of its complicity and violence, I offer these examples of resistance and resilience as hope for the present and future. These examples of resistance are important because without being able to imagine what’s possible, it’s difficult to make it happen. In this process, I think that it’s crucial for non-natives, myself included, to be supportive of Indigenous causes, yet cognizant of our role. Yes, we should work to learn about and help deconstruct colonization, but we need to remember that Indigenous people are the leaders of this resistance. While not a homogenous group, they know their cultures, history, and causes the best, and it would only further repression if we co-opt this resistance for our own gains, even if done with “good intentions”. As was mentioned earlier, decolonization isn’t theoretical or hypothetical. Decolonization has very literal goals. Goals that these acts of resistance illuminate and work towards fulfilling by looking to the past, present, and future.

Works Cited

@BillyRayB. “simple plainspoken savage ridiculous florid mouthful (keeping an inventory of words white men have used to describe my writing in newspapers..).” Twitter, 27 Nov. 2019, 3:00 p.m., https://twitter.com/BillyRayB/status/1199825399133261825

“Chapter 1: How Do We Learn to Be Human?” Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, by Daniel Heath Justice, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018, pp. 33-70.

“Chapter 3: How Do We Become Good Ancestors?” Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, by Daniel Heath Justice, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018, pp. 113–156.

“Cherokee Language.” Cherokee Preservation Foundation,

cherokeepreservation.org/what-we-do/cultural-preservation/cherokee-language/.

Diaz, Natalie. “The First Water Is the Body.” New Poets of Native Nations, by Heid E. Erdrich, Graywolf Press, 2018.

Million, Dian. "Intense Dreaming: Theories, Narratives, and Our Search for Home." The American Indian Quarterly, vol. 35 no. 3, 2011, p. 313-333. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/447049.

NoiseCat, Julian Brave. “Can Film Save Indigenous Languages?” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 14 Nov. 2019,

www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/can-film-save-indigenous-languages.

Pico, Tommy. “Nature Poem.” New Poets of Native Nations, by Heid E. Erdrich, Graywolf Press, 2018.

Racism. No Way! “Culture, Language and Identity - Understanding Racism.” , www.racismnoway.com.au/about-racism/understanding-racism/the-importance-of-culture -language-and-identity/.

Roanhorse, Rebecca. “Postcards from the Apocalypse.” Uncanny Magazine, uncannymagazine.com/article/postcards-from-the-apocalypse/.

Sium, Aman, and Eric Ritskes. “Speaking Truth to Power: Indigenous Storytelling as an Act of Living Resistance.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2013, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/19626.

Treuer, David. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present. Riverhead Books, 2019.

Tuck, Eve, and Yang, K. Wayne. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2012,

jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/18630.

Westby, Carol, et al. “Reinventing the Enemy’s Language: Developing Narratives in Native American Children.” Linguistics and Education, vol. 13, no. 2, 2002, pp. 235–269., doi:10.1016/s0898-5898(01)00063-8.

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© Copyright Neil Kato, 2019