Citation Practices Challenge

[citationpractices]

"Canon building is empire building. Canon defense is national defense. Canon debate, whatever the terrain, nature, and range (of criticism, of history, of the history of knowledge, of the definition of language, the universality of aesthetic principles, the sociology of art, the humanistic imagination), is the clash of cultures. And all of the interests are vested."

Toni Morrison (Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature 1988)

[citationpractices]

These kids made flyers to protest "Dr. Seuss Week" at school

Rockett, 11, and Zoe, 10, just wanted their classmates to know that Dr. Seuss was kind of racist.

Wow! Dr. Seuss books were a childhood favourite of mine, but no longer! 

This week’s post features an article from the AngryAsianMan blog that highlights youth resistance against erasures of racist histories in their curriculum. Two incredible siblings, Rockett (11) and Zoe (10) designed these gorgeous posters to educate their classmates and school about the author’s side job as a political cartoonist well known for racist cartoons during the school’s Dr. Seuss week. However, their school didn’t appreciate their intervention and tried to stop them from telling this alternate history.

“While Dr. Seuss, aka Theodor Geisel, is best known for enduring, beloved books like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, he began his career as an illustrator and cartoonist who drew racist political cartoons expressing, among other things, vehement anti-Japanese sentiment. Geisel apparently had absolutely no problem with the incarceration of innocent Japanese Americans during World War II, depicting them in caricature as invading hordes and latent traitors loyal to the enemy.”

Luckily, the story doesn’t stop there. Zoe and Rockett’s parents in a brilliant show of intergenerational solidarity wrote back to the school in support of their kids. They explained how popular racist political cartoons like Geisel’s helped fuel the wartime panic and public support of Executive Order 9066 which led to Rockett and Zoe’s great grandparents’ forceful incarceration in US concentration camps among 120 000 other Japanese Americans. Part of their email read:

“This is not an opinion, much like Hitler's anti-Semitism is not an opinion, for Geisel's hatred of Japanese is well documented, and is chronicled in American history books. Unfortunately our family has had a direct impact and has suffered directly from Geisel's cartoons.

 We understand it is in your opinion that school is not for this type of "educational" encounter that Rockett attempted to present today. Perhaps trying to educate his fellow classmates with a flyer may have been a little unconventional and has placed you in an uncomfortable position. We respect your opinion and authority of what is deemed appropriate in your classroom, much as I would expect the same in my classroom, and will of course defer to you about what is appropriate. However I do have to say I disagree in principal with your standpoint that "school" is not the appropriate place to disseminate new, or differing ideas.”

 You must be wondering, what on earth does this have to do with challenging problematic citation practices?

As mentioned on a previous post, one of Citation Practices Challenge’s intentions is to highlight long standing erasures from dominant knowledges, alongside creative resistance (and there is always radical wonderful resistance) against different forms of historical erasure. What and who we choose to cite and not to cite applies not only to our writing, but to our classrooms and community work too. The school chose to cite Dr. Seuss, while choosing not to cite him as a racist. If it weren’t for Rockett and Zoe’s creative intervention, their classmates would be denied the chance to learn that a figure that they’re taught to celebrate and admire is a racist. Without knowing the full story, how could the students have chosen whether to accept or reject celebrating Dr. Seuss and accepting him as part of their learning?  

By creating and sharing these gorgeous posters that showed Dr. Seuss’ racist history, Rockett and Zoe were running critical interventions against their school’s reproduction of the depoliticized narrative of him. Plus, they were intervening with a learning environment that discourages students to resist and reject racist curriculum.

In solidarity with youth-led and intergenerational resistance,

Fi

[citationpractices]

Beautiful photo series explores the connections between the Black body, the universe and the eternal | AFROPUNK

No matter how hard one tries, it seems Black death is inescapable. Some react to this violent reality by repeatedly rehashing it over and over again, splashing images and stories of Black death all across the internet. Others stick their head under the sand as best they can, trying desperately to pretend it isn’t happening. …

This week’s post features an article from AfroPunk on the artist Mikael Owunna’s gorgeous photography series.

“Infinite Essence is my exploration of the connections between the black body, the cosmos, universe and the eternal in the face of a world that works to annihilate the black body every single day,” Owunna explains. “I do not see black bodies as 1 dimensional sites of violence and pain. I see us as bright, vibrant, exuberant, beautiful and more. After years of enduring and working to block out the brutal videos of dying black people constantly on my newsfeed, I decided to map out with my photography my own response and vision of what an emancipated black body looks like. The love and magic that I saw in the people all around me. After months of planning and conceptualization, that birthed this project.” (Owunna in Afropunk interview by Eye Candy)

His photos lovingly provide an important intervention to narratives of black death depicted in popular media’s visual citations by reimagining black bodies through the cosmos and the universe beyond.

I highly recommend visiting this page!

Fi

[citationpractices]

Woman finds brilliant way to fight racist workplace dress code

"I have come to work each day in an outfit that fits the guidelines she laid out...just...not QUITE the way she expected."

Hey fellow citation rebels,

Have you ever had a racist, sexist, ableism, or homophobic boss who just hated how you looked? Well, today’s citation practices challenge features June Rivas’, a woman of colour’s super creative way of challenging racism in her workplace using cosplay. Rivas’ boss would call her looking unprofessional no matter how she wore her hair. 

On Facebook, Rivas wrote,

“I filed a harassment complaint against her as our contract states “No dress code. Just be clean and pressed,” she continued in her post. “To counter, she issued a brand new memo. We now have a dress code. No any of above plus no straps, hats, sandals, cleavage, back out, lace, and even (and I quote) ‘cultural head wraps’” (Rivas’ 2017).

In a brilliant form of protest, Rivas’ went to work everyday in different cosplays. After all, they were all within the bounds of her boss’s new policy. Rivas’ workplace situation and her clever response to it calls out the racism and power dynamics that go into imagining some bodies as always as out of place. Her boss’s rules are not about taking issue with Rivas’ style so much as taking issue with Rivas’ presence as a woman of colour in the office space and as a professional.

Rivas’ creative protest makes me think about how our bodies, just by being in spaces that don’t traditionally expect or want us, can be forms of protest and challenge how some bodies get continuously reproduced in professional spaces.

Let’s keep thinking about resistance creatively together!

Fi

[citationpractices]

“A Structure, Not an Event”: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui discusses the distinctive shifts toward examining Patrick Wolfe’s theory of settler colonialism as 'a structure, not an event.' Kauanui argues that a substantive engagement with settler colonialism also demands a deep rethinking of the associated concept of indigeneity–distinct from race, ethnicity, culture, and nation(ality)–along with the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies.

“the logic of elimination of the native is about the elimination of the native as native. And yet, to exclusively focus on the settler colonial without any meaningful engagement with the indigenous—as has been the case in how Wolfe’s work has been cited—can (re)produce another form of “elimination of the native.” (Kēhaulani Kauanui 2016)  

This week’s post features Kēhaulani Kauanui ‘s insightful writing on the politics of citing Patrick Wolfe’s well-cited theory that, “settler-colonialism, is a structure, not an event.” Her work offers an important reminder that it’s not enough to just cite and acknowledge settler-colonialism as a structure. It’s not the same as engaging with it, if our citation ignores questions of indigeneity.

Kēhaulani Kauanui's work points out that citations can act as a place holder for seriously engaging with ways that this structure is impactful for indigenous and non-indigenous people to a settler-colonized Land and what it means to write, work, theorize, and live in a structure that asserts non-indigenous life through the erasures of indigenous life and continual presence. As a non-indigenous person to Turtle Island, it also reminds me of the importance of citing indigenous resistance as a counterpart. Just as settler-colonialism is an ongoing structure, struggles against it is also fiercely ongoing. 

How are we citing settler-colonialism in our own work? How are we thinking of the question of indigeneity when we cite it? How does settler-colonialism as a structure impact how we come to know our work, and its’ relationship to indigeneity?

Check it out,

Fi 

[citationpractices]

“works Cited”

Sharing a powerful poem that makes us think about the politics of citation by the poet, educator, scholar Isaac Ginsberg Miller published this fall 2017 in this radical volume of Propter N

May this piece nourish you as much as it nourished me.

Fi 

“Works Cited” by Isaac Ginsberg Miller

I chose not to cite [site of violence].  

I chose the sight of the Statue

of Liberty from the ferry. I chose Ellis Island

not La Frontera. I chose not to

cite Anzaldúa, Lorde, Fanon, Wynter, Du Bois, Spillers, Césaire, Boggs,  

Etcetera.

I chose the sight of the same.

I chose to avert my eyes. I chose to stare.  

 Choice is               fictive. It was

                              the slave ports

                               the lynch mobs

                               the red lines

                               that made us.  

 Europe is literally the creation

                of the Third World,

                 says Fanon.  

                  I chose to cite my Ethnic Studies major.  

I chose not to cite that one time in high school when my friends said…  

                   I chose to cite my ethnic friend.  

I chose not to cite that one time my aunt said…  

                   I chose to speak at the protest.  

I chose not to cite that one time my kind

                   old Hebrew School teacher started talking about…

 I chose to pick my battles.  

Is there a point at which art becomes betrayal,

                        a point where betrayal becomes an art?  

I chose not to cite.  

                             Or I did, out of guilt.  

                             Or I did, out of self-righteousness.

And when the Panthers held the gun.

And when AIM held the gun.

And when Mandela held the gun.

And when Leila Khaled held the gun.

And when Marissa Alexander held the gun.

And when Korryn Gaines held the gun.  

 What did I choose?”

  References:

Miller, Isaac Ginsberg. “Works Cited.” Propter Nos 2 no.1 (2017). 3-4

[citationpractices]

Disability Ain’t for Ya Dozens (or Demons): 10 Ableist Phrases Black Folks Should Retire Immediately

Black folks of the African Diaspora in the “United States” got jokes for days. Humor, wit, rhymin’ & signifyin,’ and all around hyper-creative silliness is part and parcel of Black Joy, Black...

“Although anti-Blackness and white supremacy have made many believe that Black Disabled/Deaf people don’t exist and that there is something dishonorable about the existence of Black Deaf/Disabled people, neither could be further from the truth.

The Truth is that disability has been with us, in us since the beginning of time. Disability has held and kept us. It is in our marrow, in our blood, our sweat and tears. Disability does not make us less than, it makes us who we are.

Ableism and anti-Blackness are the enemy. Disability is our kin.” (Talila A. Lewis 2017)

This week’s post features the refreshing and powerful writing of Talila A. Lewis, which begins by affirming the existence of Black Disabled people, then elegantly outlines the connections between ableism and anti-blackness, and then intervenes with anti-blackness done through ableism by asking for the retirement of 10 ableist phrases commonly used in the Black Community in the US context.

Talila’s writing teaches us about the politics of citation that are in our everyday conversations. The words that spill from us come from the same cultural fabric where anti-blackness, ableism, settler-colonialism, patriarchy, and many other systems of oppression are normalized. Even though we know systems of oppression work off of each other, it is often easy to “forget” in everyday casual conversations.

And forgetting does something. It forgets those who live, hope, and dream, within the intersections of different oppressive systems. It forgets that that those connections work to maintain White supremacy, settler-colonialism, ableism, homophobic, transphobic, racism, and classism as ongoing structures. It also forgets the futures we can make by dismantling systems of oppression together. As Talila pointed out, “disability and Blackness are part of the identities and lives of most of the Black community in the “United States.” This is why true liberation calls for a certain kind of dismantling that leaves neither oppression untouched.”

While Talila writes to the Black Communities in US contexts, I think her piece is a must read for all those interested in figuring out how to dismantle systems of oppression together. The structure will stay in place unless we address the hinges and bolts that connect it together.

Check it out!

Fi

[citationpractices]

Citations are more than merely assigning credit – their inclusion (or not) conditions how colleagues regard and evaluate your work

The significance of citations goes far beyond energising and rewarding academic competition. Patrick Dunleavy outlines why citations are so important; from setting up a specialist discourse in an e…

Fall, a season of change and transformation, both in classrooms and outside. 

What better time to start thinking through radical transformation by thinking critically about the politics that are embedded in who we choose to cite, how we choose to cite, and how or who we refuse to cite?

Today’s post considers Patrick Dunleavy’s writing about the politics of and social importance of academic citation practices. According to Dunleavy, citations and references are about more than giving credit, but they also influence how your colleagues regard your work. He carefully lists seven things that citations do:

1.    “Specify sources for assumptions and their contextual legitimacy, and to contextualise arguments within a defined field

2.    set up a specialist discourse in an economical and highly-focused manner, and to show how the relevant literature defines concepts, terms or notations

3.    show that the author has read the relevant literature and has a good understanding of it

4.    guide readers seeking to follow the author’s extended chain of reasoning. Readers should be able to understand and “replay” the intellectual journey involved

5.    accurately assign credit to other researchers for key innovations and relevant prior findings or arguments, so that readers can also access this work for themselves

6.    allow readers to quickly find and precisely check sources of evidence or other tokens for themselves.

7.    show that the author has comprehensively surveyed work that is relevant in scope, approach and recency, and to specifically point out consistencies and inconsistencies between other work and the author’s own findings”

I find these seven points quite helpful for clarifying the importance of citations and references, and agree with them. BUT I can’t help but feel uneasy by his overall argument that, “it is simply unacceptable scientific or academic behaviour now to ignore immediately relevant research or argument already in the public domain just because it does not help your case, or suit your style of work, or comes from a different discipline.”

I believe that our citations and research do not take place in a sociological and ahistorical vacuum. Our projects don’t begin from a position of social and political neutrality. Western academic research, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, has a long lineage of problematic conversations that have justified and conditioned imperialistic expansion, capitalistic labor exploitation, racism, patriarchal violence(s), slavery, eugenics, ableism, and colonization (Fanon 1952; Said 1978; Smith 2013; Simpson 2007; Tuck and Yang 2012). I have posted elsewhere, “credibility has a lineage. It has an epistemology. It has a historicity. And most of all, it requires power to maintain its credibility” (Cheuk 2017).  How we choose to cite, who we choose to cite in, or cite out, is a political act that holds much potential for both radical transformation, and problematic reproduction.

As the original call-out for the Citation Practices Challenge stated,

“Indeed, our practices of citation make and remake our fields, making some forms of knowledge peripheral. We often cite those who are more famous, even if their contributions appropriate subaltern ways of knowing. We also often cite those who frame problems in ways that speak against us. Over time, our citation practices become repetitive; we cite the same people we cited as newcomers to a conversation. Our practices persist without consideration of the politics of linking projects to the same tired reference lists.” (Gaztambide-Fernandez, Tuck, & Yang 2015)

Citations are political. For radical social transformation we need to be intentional about the conversations that we’re continuing, or choose not to continue. Perhaps we might wonder at how did some conversations become “core” to our fields even if we know them to be problematic or harmful to our communities? And if we decide to continue them, how can we take part in problematic conversations that are considered “core” to our fields in ways that favor transformative theories of change, rather than reproduce it in ways that uphold the status quo?

Thinking with you,

Fi

References:

Cheuk, Fiona. Spring is Coming. Critical Ethnic Studies Journal Blog. 2017

Fanon, Frantz. Black skin, white masks [1952]. Grove press, 2008

Gaztambide-Fernández, Rubén., Tuck, Eve., & Wayne K. Yang. Critical Ethnic Studies Blog Post. (April 2015) http://www.criticalethnicstudiesjournal.org/citation-practices/

Said, Edward. "Orientalism. 1978." New York: Vintage 199 (1979).

Simpson, Audra. "On ethnographic refusal: indigeneity,‘voice’and colonial citizenship." Junctures: The Journal for Thematic Dialogue 9 (2007).

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books Ltd., 2013.

Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. "R-words: Refusing research." Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (2014): 223-248.

[citationpractices]

Tiny haitus

Hi folks, 

thanks for thinking with me on all the complexities and possibilities of citation so far. I’m just taking a tiny little break for the summer to take on equally important projects but hope to greet you all with exciting new posts in September! 

Fi

[citationpractices]

Kent Monkman: History Painting for a Colonized Canada

Kent Monkman knew that, for Canada 150, he had to speak directly to the colonial, genocidal policies that have marked the country’s history.

“Canada’s 150 years old—what does that mean for the First People? When I thought about it, I thought it includes the worst period, because it goes all the way back to the signing of the treaties, the beginning of the reserve system, this legacy of incarceration, residential schools, sickness, the removal of children in the ’60s, missing and murdered women. So there’s a lot of material in the show that tries to encompass and stitch together this narrative that reflects back on 150 years.” (Kent Monkman)

This week’s post features an interview of Kent Monkman, an artist of Cree and Irish descent by Caoimhe Morgan-Feir about his recent exhibit at the University of Toronto titled “Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience.”

I think it’s important to bring this up in the Citation Practices Challenge project as part of my mini-series around Canada’s upcoming 150th celebration because much of the state sanctioned commemorative events consistently chooses to forget that Canada is a settler-colonial project. 

Monkman’s work provides a powerful visual commentary that resists this forgetting. Having had the chance to visit it myself, I was in awe of how his pieces really highlighted and unsettles the problematic knowledges that are reproduced such that ongoing settler colonialism, including all the harms and violence, is framed as something to celebrate. What is really being celebrated in Canada’s 150? What relationships to each other, to the land, and to memory are being produced and reproduced when folks take part in this 150th anniversary? What kind of future is desired these celebrations? What resistances might be born in light of these “celebrations”?

Thinking with you,

Fi

[citationpractices]

Remember | Resist | Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project - Graphic History Collective

Poster #4: The 1837–1838 Rebellion Remember | Resist | Redraw: A Radical History Poster ProjectThe Graphic History Collective is excited to launch Remember | Resist | Redraw: A Radical History Poster Project, a collaborative project featuring works by artists and writers committed to promoting art, activism, and alternative history in what is today known as …

This week features a radical collaborative project called “Remember | Resist | Redraw“ with works by artists and writers committed to promoting art, activism, and alternative history in Canada through posters. They are to share (and sharing is highly encouraged!!), and are posted on the project website with an essay that gives context to each poster.  

“These posters offer alternative perspectives on well-known historical events, and highlights histories of Indigenous peoples, women, workers, and the oppressed that are often overlooked or marginalized in mainstream historical accounts.”

As mentioned in the last post, this is one of the posts dedicated to projects resisting 150 years of historical “forgetting” and “erasures” as the Canadian settler-colonial state approaches its’ 150th anniversary. These gorgeously radical posters are make marvel at the creative ways in which people are resisting dominant narratives and engaging in the power of co-learning outside of schools. 

Check it out!

Fi

[citationpractices]

Recently a lot of activities around remembrance and celebration of Canadian history has been taking in preparation for the 150th anniversary of it’s confederacy as a settler state. We know that national accounts of memory often comes with an awful lot of forgetting, crossed with hyper focus on events that the nation would like people to associate with itself. 

One of Citation Practices Challenge’s intentions is to highlight long standing erasures from dominant knowledges, alongside creative resistance (and there is always radical wonderful resistance) against different forms of historical erasure. So in the next few posts, I’ll be highlighting projects resisting and intervening with the intentional forgettings in wake of these 150(+) years of history in Canada.

First up is from the blog “Unwritten Histories.” Its’ focus on the unwritten rules of Canadian history. This includes “unwritten” historical content itself, as well as methodology and radical teaching strategies for Canadian history. There’s a fantastic piece up there that’s perfect for educators interested in a more critical look at Black Canadian History. “A guide to Online Resources for Teaching and Learning about Black Canadian History” direct readers towards a rich and critical selection of free online and academically citable historical material. 

What catches my eye is the critical insight, the blogger gives to the politics of representation have impacted what parts of black Canadian history can be readily available and which ones are buried.

 “it is important that we take a moment to note the kinds of history that are represented here. History is always political, and certain aspects of history are often highlighted at the expense of others. That is why you will notice that many of the links below deal principally with two topics: the Underground Railroad and the Black Loyalists. The preponderance of these sources is directly related to the popularity of their subjects. Much of this is because Canada and Canadians like to think of themselves as a safe haven, especially when compared to the United States. While many African-Americans were able to escape slavery by fleeing to Canada, that didn’t mean that everything was sunshine and rainbows. The reality was far different. Slavery was an integral part of Canadian society, and while it was officially abolished in 1833, stipulations in the Act to Abolish Slavery were such that only a small percentage of slaves in Canada were actually able to secure their freedom. Furthermore, Black Canadians were, and continue to be, subject to racial discrimination, both personally and institutionally.” –Unwritten Histories 

 What might the next 150 years look when educators make remembering marginalized black histories in Canada part of their everyday curriculum and classroom practices? What if these teachings not only remember the past, but draw from the ongoing effects of these unwritten histories in our present? 

Check it out!

 Fi

[citationpractices]

When I first saw the title of this piece I thought, “oh no, is this another anti-immigrant event?” Fortunately, it was quite the opposite, and turned out to be a very thought provoking and visceral way of showing the deleterious effects of anti-immigrant logics, and the possibilities for rethinking what engaging in protest looks like. The curators of Davis Museum, an art gallery in Massachusetts has chosen to remove all works that have been made by, or donated by, immigrants for the President’s Day weekend. This initiative is called “Art-less” and meant to highlight the impact of immigrants in the US art world. When visiting the museum, visitors will find over 20 percent of the works covered with “black cloth over cases,” and empty walls lined with labels that say “Created by an immigrant.” By removing artwork done by immigrants and visibly marking their removal, visitors must come face-to-face with a space haunted by the absences of immigrants and the real presence of racialized exclusions in anti-migrant border policies. It’s different from direct protest as brings the protest to all who interact with the space. A shift is happening from the idea of traditional protests that call for people to speak out and hold a protesting presence against political injustices; instead, it leaves absences as protests, much like an earlier post on refusal as a method (Simpson 2014; Tuck & Yang 2014). Because "evidence erased is always evidence of something" (Sara Ahmed FeministKillJoy), what are the possibilities of reimagine protesting relationships through such negated spaces? Pondering with you, Fi

[citationpractices]

Mission Statement

“The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no...

If you’ve ever been in a gallery of European medieval art or even just googled it, chances are that you’d be faced with a sea of white people in elaborate brocade dresses, castles, on horses, as knights, and as hetero-normalized princesses representing the entire era. After all that tends to be the single narrative told repeatedly in popular culture and in schools. That narrative is so strong and encompassing that I never thought about where are the people of colour?

“People of Colour in Medieval Art History” is a must-read blog! And I’m not just saying that as a non-black poc with an art background. The blog showcases “works of art from European history that feature People of Color,” because “All too often, these works go unseen in museums, Art History classes, online galleries, and other venues because of retroactive whitewashing of Medieval Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia.” It also discusses strategies used to white-out PoCs from representations of European history in art and educational institutions. A few examples include museums choosing to curate photos with poor lighting, or not restoring colour properly to a piece.

In the spirit of the citation practices challenge, the brilliant work done in this blog is hopeful encouragement. By showing that people of colour were present within European history, it intervenes with “dominant social, cultural, and political narratives about European history in relation to both white identity and white supremacy as an institutionalized form of oppression.” The history of things in the world, and about the world always has more than a single story and maintaining a single story takes a lot of work, and a lot of power, but being ready to question even the most supported histories is critical resistance and connection as it opens hearts and minds up to those telling the counter-narratives. Just as there are people maintaining problematic single stories in the form of textbooks, curriculum, pop culture, and art, there are just as many, if not more, hearts who are who telling stories otherwise. Please read and support this incredible blog!

Resisting single stories with you,

Fi

[citationpractices]

If you’ve ever visited a museum display featuring ancient Egyptian temple, or watched some Hollywood flick that had anything to do with Western ideas of ancient Egyptian civilization, you might have noticed that these representations aren’t very vibrant. As a child watching the first version of “The Mummy,” it always seems as though all that’s imaginable of non-western histories are crumbling, sandworn, empty buildings that are always monochrome, regardless of textbooks that say life was vibrant and full of colour. It’s hard to imagine life, love, and warm human relationships taking place within such representations, even when the movie is set in ancient Egypt. The MET’s “Color the Temple” project uses digital technology to change that narrative and bring folks. In a brilliant synthesis of technology and archeological research, digital projections are used to flush the walls of ancient Egyptian temples with colours that researchers believe are close to the originals. I find this interesting to think about for the citation practices challenge because it makes me wonder what other possibilities are now possible for changing historical narratives of “the ancient past” through creative uses of tech? It also makes me think about the magnitude of limited depictions of “past” that are part of the “present” that we live within, and marvel at the interventions that people have been making. For more on this project, visit: http://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/digital-underground/2015/color-the-temple Thinking creatively with you! Fi

[citationpractices]

#StandingRockSyllabus

The Standing Rocks Syllabus is an important and timely read if you haven’t already read it. Especially with the upcoming inauguration of a U.S. president elect who fully supports the completion of the pipeline, and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’s greenlighting the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline and possible use of military power against protesters.  #NODAPL is not just a single event, but is part of the ongoing settler-colonial dispossession of indigenous people and works from the continual erasure of indigenous presence on Turtle Island.

Created by the NYC Stands for Standing Rock committee, which is a group of indigenous scholars, activists, and PoC/Settler supporters, the different sections and articles of the Standing Rock Syllabus “places what is happening now in a broader historical, political, economic, and social context going back over 500 years to the first expeditions of Columbus, the founding of the United States on institutionalized slavery, private property, and dispossession, and the rise of global carbon supply and demand. Indigenous peoples around the world have been on the front-lines of conflicts like Standing Rock for centuries.” 

The syllabus as a teaching and research tool that is distributed widely on social media not only unsettles the erasure of knowledge about indigenous histories and politics, but it also makes me think about what counts as places of learning. Reminded that much of this knowledge is “kept behind paywalls and consequently contained in the ivory towers of academia, my thoughts dwell on the decolonizing possibilities of not just sharing this knowledge, but taking it in and actively engaging it in our teaching practices and writings. Why is it that very little of these histories, politics and contemporary issues make their way into public school classrooms?  How might writing and theorizing change if even SOME of the knowledges in this syllabus were centralized broadly and across all fields of research done in settler-colonial societies? How would scholars meaningfully engage with this syllabus in fields whose core theoretical perspectives continually stem from white settler logics and Euro-centric perspectives?

Pondering and witnessing with you,

Fiona

References

NYC Stands with Standing Rock Collective. 2016. “#StandingRockSyllabus.” https://nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/.

[citationpractices]

“Research is just one form of knowing, but in the Western academy, it eclipses all others. In this way, the relationship of research to other human ways of knowing resembles a colonizing formation, acquiring, claiming, absorbing, consuming...Calling everything research doesn’t help to ensure that there are multiple opportunities to be curious, or to make meaning in life.” --Tuck and Yang 2014, R-Words: Refusing Research

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/557744ffe4b013bae3b7af63/t/557f2ee5e4b0220eff4ae4b5/1434398437409/Tuck+and+Yang+R+Words_Refusing+Research.pdf