Indigeneity

**Please also view my most recent post: Indigeneity (revisited)

Indigenous, what a complex and super political word. It's been coopted, politicized, and misused, and particularly by settler colonial peoples.

This word is rife with conflict and complexity within me as well. Conflict on the one end because I feel a strong sense of belonging and connection to the land similar to the Indigenous people I have met all over the world over my lifetime, yet I am not part of any recognized tribe. Complexity because what it means to be indigenous gets lost in translation, and gets even more complicated when attaching loyalty, morality, culture, policy, and language to this term. I'm going to attempt to flush this out in this post, let's see how it goes.

I've always felt a strong attachment to nature, a strong resonation with the land. Everywhere I go, the first thing I notice is the natural world around me, the way the trees sway, what types of flowers are blooming, the types of stories told, how languages and cultures have developed to make sense of the surrounding nature, and especially the people's recognition of the plants around them. I've always seen the world as living, the plants, the bugs, the water, the sky, the clouds, the air, all of that has always been alive to me.

It's a complex history we have in my immediate family. I grew up with stories of how the earth cared for my family, how it was alive, how nature watched over us, and how lots of things we couldn't explain always seemed to work out for us. To say my family "gets lucky" is an understatement. I don't think it's that though, I think we just listen. It's amazing how much the trees tell you things, how much the scents in the air can tell you to come closer or to stay away or to flee, and our deep sense of intuition is something I was taught at an early age to cultivate and to trust.

But we also grew up with the Catholic church. We also grew up in a colonial world that told us that the old ways in which we found to be helpful and connecting were witchcraft, not part of "god's" way, and were nothing but superstitions. I'm not talking about those pretty ridiculous superstitions that a lot of Mexicans growing up had, like the egg under the bed, or the "ojo" or shit like that. I'm talking about the fact that in my family, at times we would have overwhelming urges to leave somewhere, and suddenly a few minutes later, terrible things in the area would happen. I'm talking about it not raining in the desert for months until the day my mom decides she has to go home for a quick visit. Or having dreams about loved ones and death, and being so spot on, it's terrifying how accurate your dreams are at first. This takes getting used to, because we were told by society that we were insane, we should be pathologized, that there was no way of knowing what we knew, and that "god" and the church (i.e. indoctrination) were the only holders of truth.

Though we never really bought into that my siblings, mom, and I, it still had tremendous impacts on our lives. I wish my mom and I could have talked more openly about it when I was growing up. But those types of intuitive conversations were steeped in fear, steeped in protection because as much as we like to think staking witches are a thing of the past, there are very real social ostracization implications for saying that you just trust the earth and it takes care of you. Mainly, you're deemed insane, and nobody takes you serious. So we learn how to be more selective in our storytelling.

But I've never been a good listener of others telling me how I should feel, or what I should think. Actually, I would say I'm pretty terrible at taking other people's word for things. If I haven't experienced it myself, then I'm less likely to take it at face value when it's coming out of a person's mouth. That has a lot to do with why I've lived in so many places. I never wanted people to tell me what experiences in other places were like, I wanted to experience it for myself. Even now, I see how my perceptions and attitudes differ from others when thinking about what life in other cultures and places has taught them. Most people get really good at having one great experience, and then riding that out for the rest of their lives. Oh I lived in _____ for ___ years, and blah blah blah, this is how things are forever and always, and you can't call me out on it because you've never lived there.

So what does this all mean to indigeneity? Well, a professor I've started reading more of, and watching more videos about uses the terms "relationality" and "resurgence." The idea being that with resurgence, all the knowledge that we seek, know exists but have difficulty accessing, is there within us, and all around us. And it is connected to the idea of how we relate to everything around and within us. For me, that's a no-brainer, that's how I've always lived, and I learned how to navigate the brain washing systems without being brainwashed by them in the process. But for others, and this is demonstrated by all the problems we call problems that aren't actually problems because we created them and can just as easily "uncreate" them, this idea is not so easy to grasp.

This professor says that you don't have to be Indigenous to have an Indigenous way of thinking and world view. I agree, but at the risk of sounding like I'm coopting the word and falling to colonial settler mindframes myself, let me flush this agreement out a bit more.

For me, it's about understanding your place, your physical presence in space, your location within existence, and how that relates to everything else. It's first learning who you are as the first step in how you relate to everything else. This isn't some meta hippie bullshit, this is real practical ideas you can apply to daily life. It means allowing yourself to learn about yourself. Most people want some sort of guide, some sort of outside authority telling them how they can best discover "themselves" and one true path on how to discover who they really are. This is how the church does it, this is how peer pressure works, this is how oppressive nation states are built. They tell you you must listen to "god's" [the country's] teachings [as defined by the church/state] to find the true light to yourself and to the kingdom of "heaven," [freedom] and if you continue to donate to them [or fight for freedom], [and overlook the pedophilia of the Catholic church, and massive human rights violations of pretty much all nation states], and allow yourself to continue being indoctrinated by the whole system, then you'll be given this magical key of knowledge at some point to discover what the true meaning of life is, what your true purpose is, and who you really are.

Of course, they never tell you that this quest will never be accomplished, and you will die without knowing any of this, and this is how things should be, we should never truly know anything about ourselves, because only "god" [the state] can know this, and god does not share information in this model. This is not only how the church work, this is how nation states are built, how sports function as a social phenomena that reinforce violence, and how peer pressure in a capitalist system keeps us scared enough to never question it while at the same time brain washes us into thinking that if we just buy enough things and have enough money, we can escape this circle of oppression. What they don't tell you is that you've been thrown into the current without a life vest, and the more you drown, the more you think you have a chance of surviving. What they don't tell you is that nobody that is not you can ever truly discover who you are, nobody that is not you can ever fully experience your life fully, and understand how you are connected to all else.

This is dramatically different from what this professor is talking about resurgence and relationality, at least how I understand it. Resurgence is this idea that you can and do know yourself. If society can provide you just a bit of guidance, not in the sense of self help books or products you can purchase, but in the sense of encouragement, acknowledgement, and patience, then you can figure out who you are. And figure out who you are in relation to time, not as a stagnant being that will be a cog in a system and serves only one function and purpose in society, but as a dynamic player in society, and more importantly, a dynamic part of the entire earth and the space we inhabit. You begin to understand your fluidity, and begin to understand that the ways in which you change are also the ways in which you grow, and when you grow you learn more about yourself. It is not about comfort and being able to find your one true calling you can be for the rest of eternity, it is about jumping into the unknown, making a fuckton of mistakes, and learning so much in the process. And most importantly of all, it is about connecting with everything, and understanding the impacts and consequences even your most miniscule of actions can have. It is then about understanding your relationality to everything else. Recognizing that you are not a solitary being whose decisions do not have an impact on others, you are a connected piece of existence that is extremely powerful and influential, especially when you allow yourself to develop as a person, as an existent being.

The professor also discussed that for Indigenous people, they have learned much of that knowledge because of their long times and connections to the physical land. It makes sense. In order to survive for millenia, and to thrive in climates and territories the world over, we must adapt, must change, must allow our understandings to be fluid and to move with time. I think the main thing I liked about her writing and lecture video was this underpinning sense that Native peoples are not "ancient" and "from the past" or "archaic," they are peoples with rich understandings of the locations they inhabited for so long, and know so much about the earth and cosmology that can benefit us all as a species if we would only allow them their sovereignty and space to actively engage with all of that. Native people's are alive.

You don't have to be Indigenous to have an indigenous world view, this professor says. This is true, but I fear this will get misconstrued by so many. Most people want to claim some sort of "authenticity" in culture, and most people do this because they want some sort of cultural, political, or monetary entitlement to something. It is selfish and coopting of what these words really mean. To me, it means that I am not special, I am just as much a person as the next, and I have skills and life experiences that are just as valid, just as diverse, and just as beneficial to everyone as the person next to me. It means that I can understand that although I am not a recognized member of any tribe, I don't need to be in order to understand my own connection to the planet, and my own connection to myself, how all my actions have profound impacts, and how all of that relates to the broader scheme of the universe and existence.

It means that I can learn from stories that are not my own, indeed I have, and not coopt them in the learning process to claim I am "more authentic" than someone else who has a different story. It means that when I go out into the woods, I don't have to belong to a certain subgroup of people to understand that the trees are alive, that the winds know how to sing, and that the sky is vast and beautiful. It means the sensations on my body when I swim in the ocean are ways that are real to me, and are ways that help me think about and process my place on the earth. It means that all the sensations I feel, my deep emotions, my logical understandings, my passions, my hopes and dreams, are all part of who I am. It means that I can be a whole person even when I still have so much to learn, in fact that's what makes me a whole person, and that I know that discomfort is a sign of an opportunity for learning. It means that I know that I am alive, and that my body isn't regulated by the authorities just because they said so. It means that I live in many generations, thinking of all the people before me who have gotten us to this point, all the people alive I share breaths of air with on this planet, and future unborn generations and how my choices and awareness will impact their quality of life later

As I get better at allowing myself to speak to myself and listening to my physical body, the more I can connect to who I am, the better I am at connecting with others, and the rest of the planet and all of nature in the process. That is the beginning of what having an Indigenous world view without having to be "Indigenous" means to me. It is far from mystical, far from magical, and far from making claims of "authenticity" to say my worldview is better than another. It's simply creating a space for a resurgence of the knowledge I carry and have carried, and allowing the time, patience, discomfort, and understanding to come into myself, as much as that may change throughout my lifetime. It's really as simple as that. So please stop coopting Native culture, and figure out who you are first.

The lecture I used as inspiration for this post is:

Wilson, Alex (Dr.). (2016). Indigenous resurgence, body sovereignty and gender self-determination. Weweni Indigenous Scholars Speakers Series. University of Winnipeg. Online YouTube video can be found at:
(YouTube video link)