I’m actually not interested in justice. I’m interested in Indigenous resurgence […], addressing gender violence, movement building, linking up and creating constellations of co-resistance with other movements. […]
[T]he state has co-opted narratives of justice in complex ways, especially against Indigenous and Black peoples. […] The criminal justice system is another narrative of justice that ends up not being about justice at all; it ends up murdering […] and criminalizing our communities. […] [I]n Canada […] we have a goveernment that is very good at neoliberalism and seducing our hope […].
So I don’t think about justice very much. I think about resurgence and movement building. […] I think […] when we are talking about justice or solidarity […], we need to start within our intelligence systems […] the systems of ethics that are continuously generated by a relationship with a particular place, with land […]. It is an embedded and interwoven spiritual, emotional, and social system of intelligence that fosters independence, community, and self-determination in individuals. It is centered around individuals, a diversity of individuals acting in a way that promotes and brings about more life […]. The well-being of individuals is directly linked to the well-being of collectives. […] These processes allow the community of people impacted by the imbalance to learn the context of the individuals directly involved. […] It focuses on repairing and regenerating relationships […]. It is a supportive system of processing trauma […], of accounting for losses or hurt. […] [S]eeking recognition with the settler-colonial state is a process of co-option and neutralization […] that guts our resistance movements […].
When I consider this within Anishinaabeg thought, my understanding is that we are more a collection of collectives, so I don’t see a tension between individuals or collectives. Individuals are hubs of networks. When an individual is hurt, then the system is out of balance. […] I don’t want to be too prescriptive here because for Indigenous peoples this kind of knowledge has to be learned in a particular way. You can’t read an academic paper or a book about it and think you know what you are talking about. […] This kind of knowledge needs to be learned in relationship to the place that generated it […]. There are different ways of interpreting knowledge that collectives of people need to figure out. […] The point of resurgence isn’t to present case studies and then have them replicated in other communities. That won’t work. […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about constellations within Nishnaabeg thought. Dene/Cree scholar Jarrett Martineau’s dissertation, “Creative Combat: Indigenous Art, Resurgence, and Decolonization,” uses the artistic practices of a diverse series of Indigenous provocateurs to examine the decolonizing potential of art-making […]. He really advances this idea of the constellation, drawing upon the work of Indigenous artists’ collectives and folks like Black Constellation. […]
We can’t rely on the culture that capitalism creates. We just can’t. We can’t achieve Indigenous nationhoods while replicating antiblackness. We can’t have resurgence without centering gender and queerness […]. Therefore, we need to create constellations of connections with other radical thinkers and doers and makers. […] That’s why resurgence is so important. I am not particularly interested in holding states accountable because the structure, history, and nature of states is exploitative by nature.
I’m interested in alternatives, I’m interested in building new worlds.
—————–
Leanne Betasamosake SImpson. “Indigenous Resurgence and Co-resistance.” Critical Ethnic Studies. Fall 2016.
