Source: Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2012). "Decolonization is not a metaphor." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society (academic journal).
So, decolonize the university =/= vaguely ""Improve the university""
Among many other things, decolonize the university = something a lot more like, oh, say: Abolish the school's board of governor's and replace it with a council of representatives and knowledge keepers from all of the First Nations whose traditional lands are within the university's modern geographic academic jurisdiction
Which is yet another longwinded way of saying LAND BACK!!
Many critical aspects of nature have been downplayed, ignored or rendered invisible by mainstream science in order to maintain the status quo. A goal of queer ecology is to critique biased science created within dominant Western paradigms.
Queer ecologists argue that the sexual diversity of animals matters. Modern theory often assumes a radical separation of nature and culture and thus minimizes the significance of animal sexuality and ‘queer animals’. But, as with other ‘keys [to the] Human Kingdom’ such as language and tool use, sex disconnected from reproduction has been similarly accomplished across a range of species (Alaimo, 2010).
This is important because it makes us reconsider our anthropocentric viewpoint of ‘natural’ sexuality as being inherently tied to reproduction (heteronormativity). The sexual diversity of the relatives that share the planet with us is meaningful because, “animals help us tell stories about ourselves, especially when it comes to matters of sexuality” (Terry 151, quoted in Alaimo). Moreover, “an understanding of animal cultures critiques the ideology of nature as resource, blank slate for cultural inscription, or brute, mechanistic force”(Alaimo 60, 2010). The more we understand animal naturecultures, the better able we are to protect them and help them thrive.
On The Origins of Species
The scientific term species was invented in the late eighteenth century (Coined by naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon), “but the term has never been free of controversy” (McWhorter). During the Nineteenth century, it was used in debates over whether “Negros and Indians” were Homo Sapiens or not and was again destabilized when Charles Darwin released his work, On the Origin of Species. “Politically charged from its scientific conception, the concept of species has often brought great harm to both racial and sexual minorities over the past two hundred years” (McWhorter).
According to Foucault, “concepts […] are for cutting. They are never merely benign representations of a natural arrangement” (1969). Essentially, the concept of “Species could be made to function oppressively to separate white from blacks because […] it was already a tool for marking separations in natures heterogenous continuities in the interest of prevailing human practices” (McWhorter).
Animals within the western paradigm are animals because they are considered a different species from humans. According to Darwin, however, the concept of rigid species boundaries is practically meaningless, given the inevitability of evolution (The Origin of Species (1859). Darwin never answered the question on the origin of species, except to say that, “there are no eternally fixed types, nor are there eternally distinct lines of descent. All life on earth, no matter how morphologically or functionally distinct at present, conceivably could be traced back to a single germ line” (McWhorter , 81).
Morton suggests that queer ecology might abandon using 'animal' and adopt a term like 'strange stranger'. Indigenous paradigms, like mitakuye oyasin, would consider ‘animals’ to be ‘relatives’ or ‘relations’.
According to Albert White Hat, Lakota elder, the wisdom in Indigenous paradigms aren’t “merely a collection of historical ideas or words” but “ a system of powerful knowledge applicable to the lives and struggles of people right now” (2020). Vine Deloria refers to mitákuye oyásįn as the ‘Indian principle of interpretation/observation,’ calling it “a practical methodological tool for investigating the natural world and drawing conclusions about it that can serve as guides for understanding nature and living comfortably within it. . . . We observe the natural world by looking for relationships between various things in it. . . . This concept is simply the relativity concept as applied to a universe that people experience as alive and not as dead or inert” (1999, 34) (Posthumus 2022 p219 f). According to the Tapestry Institute, “The Lakota phrase Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ describes Reality by addressing it as ‘All our Relations.’ All humans, all animals, all plants, all the waters, the soil, the stones, the mountains, the grasslands, the winds, the clouds and storms, the sun and moon, stars and planets are our relations and are relations to one another. We are connected to each other in multiple and vital ways. When one is in pain, all are harmed. When there is justice for one, there is more justice for all” (2020).
Mitakuye oyasin is about relationships and the decentering of humanity as ‘master’ of the land. In fact, in almost direct opposition, “the normative cultural values encompassed by mitákuye oyásʾį are the very foundation of kinship, relational ontology, and the overarching interspecies collective, of which humans are only one hoop, one oyáte ‘people, nation, tribe’, in the company of many others. The key constituents of this animist ontology and worldview, of mitákuye oyásʾį, are persons, a category that extends beyond human beings to nonhuman or other- than- human persons. [...] Importantly, the Lakota worldview sees humans as the least knowledgeable and powerful beings, requiring the most aid and pity (see V. Deloria 1999, 50; 2009, 99– 100). MItakuye oyasin as a paradigm has great potential to work in symbiopoesis with queer ecology.
Queer ecology is a critical response to biased Western science, especially about our animal relatives' naturecultures. However, by centering discourse around EuroAmerican culture, even if in critical consideration, we run the risk of reinforcing concepts such as ‘species’ which has been used by the colonial project to reinforce oppressive structures and separate us from nature. Mitakuye oyasin, is one example of an indigenous paradigm that might be an ancient answer to queer ecology’s goal of disrupting current colonial ideology. Moreover, both queer ecology and mitakuye oyasin, when they are used symbiopoetically, can provide us with the necessary imaginatory and observatory skills to contend with our current environmental issues.
Works cited:
Adams DH (2020) Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ. Tapestry Institute. Available from: https://tapestryinstitute.org/mitakuye-oyasin/ (accessed 19 March 2024). Referencing Sicungu Lakota Elder Albert White Hat.
Gaard G (1997) Toward a queer ecofeminism. Hypatia 12(1): 114–137.
George O (2023b) Climate Solutions Need Queerness. YES! Magazine, YES! Magazine. Available from: https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2023/06/08/queer-climate-solutions (accessed 6 May 2024).
Is nature queer? | out & about. YouTube. Available from: https://youtu.be/FtnkGtQygOg?si=KPBlbzpVGTjRyGgg
Article Series (U.S. National Park Service) (n.d.) National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. Available from: https://www.nps.gov/articles/series.htm?id=4dff8155-1dd8-b71b-0b4c2713f34ea25c (accessed 6 May 2024). LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, a publication of the National Park Foundation for the National Park Service--Chapter 9: Sexual and Gender Diversity in Native America and the Pacific Islands by Will Roscoe
Mortimer-Sandilands C and Erickson B (eds) (2010) Queer ecologies: Sex, nature, politics, desire. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. The chapters cited from include: Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of “Queer” Animals by Stacy Alaimo, Enemy of the Species by Ladelle McWhorter, Queernaturecultures by David Bell, and Non-white Reproduction & Same-Sex Eroticism: Queer Acts against Nature by A. Gosine.
Morton T (2010) Queer ecology. Crittheory2020science, Modern Language Association. Available from: https://crittheory2020science.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/queer-ecology.pdf (accessed 21 March 2024).
Posthumus DC (2022) All my relatives: Exploring Lakota ontology, belief, and ritual. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Rahder M (2019) Queering the Wild. Autostraddle. Available from: https://www.autostraddle.com/queering-the-wild/ (accessed 6 May 2024).
Sharpe S (2019) Queering Biology Lecture. Google Slides, Google. Available from: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HykSaiRoxGia5SUr4ZVk80GWC4Au4T4U/edit#slide=id.p32 (accessed 7 May 2024).
White Bird F (2008) Levels of Lakota Language. Lakota Country Times , Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 18th April. https://web.archive.org/web/20170222134353/http://www.lakotacountrytimes.com/common/PastArchives/1237.html
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781119179313.wbprim0135 Natureculture NICHOLAS MALONE and KATHRYN OVENDEN, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Talking about Taíno identity today requires care, because it intersects with Indigenous rights.
This is not a simple historical question of what it is or was, but rather it is a living one—shaped by colonial disruption, incomplete records, and ongoing processes of cultural continuity and revitalization across the Caribbean and diaspora.
In contemporary Indigenous rights discourse, especially in international frameworks like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (which recognized a large degree of today's Taíno yukayekes and communities as authentic), identity is not defined solely by colonial documentation or uninterrupted institutional recognition. Instead, Indigenous identity is generally understood through a combination of:
self-identification
community recognition
historical continuity
cultural connection
Importantly, these frameworks also recognize that colonial systems often disrupted the very records used to measure continuity. Notice that they indicate "community recognition" instead of "National", "Federal" or even "International", because it is the community that self-identifies.
Taíno identity today exists in a range of expressions across different communities and individuals. Some people trace ancestry through family knowledge, oral history, or regional memory (which fulfills, self-identification, cultural connection, and historical continuity). Others engage in cultural revitalization through language, history, or spiritual reconstruction (ie. cultural connection and community recognition. Should be noted that revitalization is often treated as making up or taking from other cultures instead of what it is which is the intentional recovery of knowledge disrupted over time. Every culture participates in revitalization, as it is central to growth while maintaining culture and history). Some participate in communities that actively identify as Taíno in the present day (self-identification and community recognition).
These expressions are not all identical, and they should not be treated as interchangeable—but they are all part of how Taíno presence, the Nation, in individual communities and individually as a whole, is understood in the modern world.
A necessary distinction
It is important to separate three things that are often blended together when people discuss Taíno identity and culture:
- historical Taíno societies, documented through archaeology and early colonial records. Can referred to as Classical Taíno/Arawak Culture.
- cultural continuity, which may appear in fragmented, adapted, or indirect forms. Often in reference to as surviving families/communities.
- contemporary Indigenous identity, which can include revitalization of historical Taíno societies and self-identification today through cultural continuity even if it in the barest of forms.
Confusing these categories leads to oversimplified conclusions—either erasure (“it ended”) or overstatement (“it remained unchanged”). Both extremes miss the reality, and are unrealistic expectations of any Indigenous peoples. Taíno survival should not be reduced to a single model.
Indigenous survival is not always visible through continuous institutional records, in fact is nearly never the case, because colonial systems were not designed to preserve Indigenous continuity or recognition.
But survival is also not something that exists only in abstract reconstruction. Instead, it is best understood as:
disrupted continuity
ongoing cultural recovery
and present-day identity formation
All existing at once, in different ways, across different communities, and at various stages. This is the process nearly all indigenous communities experience (even the notable exceptions, like The Māori of Aotearoa, still aren’t exceptions to colonial disruption and recognition legal battles), but is often more harshly criticized in smaller communities and those indigenous cultures directly impacted by Spain’s Empire.
We can’t leave of the affect of language, the way we talk about Indigenous peoples affects how own existence is understood.
Phrases like “disappeared,” “extinct,” or “vanished” are not neutral—they come from historical narratives that often erase complexity in order to simplify colonial histories and make them more palatable and agreeable to its audience.
At the same time, it is also important not to flatten all contemporary expressions of identity into a single uninterrupted line of tradition. Doing so assumes that if a culture has survived, it must have done so in a perfectly continuous, unchanged form—like a straight line that can be traced cleanly from past to present. In reality, very few cultures exist that way, and Indigenous histories are especially shaped by disruption, adaptation, and uneven transmission due to colonial systems.
For Taíno identity specifically, this matters because colonial violence did not only affect people—it also disrupted the conditions under which cultural knowledge has been recorded, passed down, and made visible to outsiders.
Both erasure and oversimplification distort the reality. Indigenous identity in general is not something that can be measured only through historical visibility. It is also shaped by how people understand themselves, connect to heritage, and continue cultural memory in the present. Holding space for that complexity is part of respecting Indigenous peoples.
Taíno identity today exists at the intersection of historical disruption, cultural memory, reconstruction, and contemporary self-identification.
It is not a claim that everything remained unchanged, that is simply unrealistic and unwarranted for anyone to ask of any given culture.
It is not a claim that nothing survived, because science and anthropologists keep confirming details on various oral stories and practices maintained and shared regionally and by various families/communities across the Caribbean.
It is an acknowledgment that Indigenous presence in the Caribbean was not cleanly erased, even if it was deeply disrupted and made less visible over time. One may not agree with how we exist, but existing is not the debate itself.
Unidentified Taíno artist, Kuisa [Purification implements], c. 1200–1500, bone, approximately 22 cm high (El Museo del Barrio, New York). Speakers: Dr. Lee Sessions, Permanent Collections Associate Curator, El Museo del Barrio and Dr. Tamara Calcaño, University of Puerto Rico. Warning: this video contains a discussion of vomiting in a ritual context but may be upsetting to some viewers. Transcript is under cut.
Transcript:
[music]
0:00:05.0 Dr. Tamara Díaz Calcaño: We’re here at the Museo del Barrio in New York looking at an emetic spatula from the Taíno culture.
0:00:11.8 Dr. Lee Sessions: These were made by the Taíno people, the Indigenous people of the Caribbean, [who] have been inhabiting the region since at least 1200 and descended from people who are in the region much before that. There are many people who identify as Taíno in the Caribbean who practice many of the old rituals and ceremonies, and keep the practices alive.
0:00:31.5 Dr. Díaz Calcaño: While Taíno culture was deeply affected by the arrival of the Spanish in the region, the cultural practices and the visual culture of the Taínos has continued to be present in Puerto Rico and in the Greater Caribbean.
0:00:45.7 Dr. Sessions: Even in renaming these implements kuisa, we are trying to use Taíno words to prioritize Taíno language in how we’re naming these materials that are from around 1200.
0:00:58.5 Dr. Díaz Calcaño: The emetic spatula we are looking at was part of the cohoba ritual, where the bohique or the behique, the spiritual leader in the Taíno culture, and the cacique, the political leader, would partake in inhaling the cohoba seeds which were powdered to be able to obtain the psychedelic qualities of these seeds. So in part of the ritual, they could communicate with ancestors, deities, and also interpret omens that were important for the Taíno culture and the particular history or situation of a set community.
0:01:31.1 Dr. Sessions: These would have been used to purge the stomach before the ceremony, so you would use the kuisa to purge, and then the behique grind up the cohoba seeds in a mortar and pestle, and then the user would inhale through a small straw. It’s a way to connect with the ancestors, to connect with the spiritual realm, with the many layers of reality behind the reality that we see. Often the behique would use it to obtain information about how to heal someone who was ailing in the tribe, or the cacique would use it to obtain guidance from the ancestors about a political issue.
0:02:09.0 Dr. Díaz Calcaño: They purged themselves related to the notion of purifying the body, so they could better access the psychedelic qualities of the cohoba seeds with an empty stomach. The emetic spatulas used in these rituals, like the one we have here at the museum, were usually made of a softer material, usually bone, it was a common to also use manatee ribs as the material with which these spatulas were carved. And they could also be quite decorated. They could be carved with intricate designs. And the one we are looking at has a humanoid face with great eyes that were carved and that probably had some sort of insert in a different material. You have a large nose and a wide grinning mouth, we can see all the teeth. The arms are pulled up to the chest, and right under the hands, we can see what seems to be almost like a swollen belly. And then the rest of the spatula is that more abstracted lower body.
0:03:01.5 Dr. Sessions: Because these kuisa are used in this spiritually significant ceremony where you’re accessing the world beyond, where you’re accessing your ancestors, they would often be carved with spiritually significant imagery, they would almost become kind of a guide to the underworld themselves. So this figure might have represented a cacique, someone who was participating in the ritual, it might represent some kind of other guide figure who would take the user through the other world.
0:03:30.4 Dr. Díaz Calcaño: It was very common in the design of the material culture of the cohoba ritual to add references to either important ancestors, deities. The cacique, and the behique himself are often also figures very present in the objects related to the ritual of the cohoba. So indeed, the figure carved on this kuisa could very well be a references to a cacique or a behique.
0:03:56.6 Dr. Sessions: When you look at the object from the side, you can see it has a gentle curve, which probably would have come from the material that it was made from, from some kind of rib bone. But also the curve would have helped the object function. It would have made it easier to use to purge yourself before the ceremony.
0:04:16.0 Dr. Díaz Calcaño: We look at the purging spatula from the side. And from behind, we see that it has perforations which may relate to it being worn during this ceremony almost as a pendant or as a necklace. Which also I think highlights the physicality of the object itself, how it could not only have been a practical object in the ritual, but it may have also functioned as an important adornment in the ritual itself.
If you're ever interested in what I am passionate about re: Indigenous studies... This is the First Peoples Resistance and Self-Determination unit I created when I was still trying to be a teacher.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, (2014), La tierra como pedagogía: inteligencia nishnaabeg y transformación rebelde, Translation by Sol Aréchiga Mantilla, «t-e-e» 30, El Taller de Ediciones Económicas, Guadalajara, 2022 (pdf here) [Licencia de Producción entre Pares]
Originally published as Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation, in «Decolonization» – Indigeneity, Education & Society, Vol. 3, No. 3, 2014, pp. 1-25 (pdf here)
A concept, but what if folks who were mesoamerican/indigenous/african-american could just... attend collegiate courses on mesoamerican/indigenous/african-american studies for free?..
Like yeah. "Education should be free for everyone", but the point here I am trying to making is the inherent cruelty in making sure that the only people who get to """study""" us - AREN'T us.
I uploaded a very neat book to Archive.org a while ago, it could be nice if y’all took a look at it
Its called “Ni muy tristona, ni muy tristona: testimonios de mujeres paipai y kumiai de Baja California”, It’s only in Spanish (although i could love to make an English translation for it), and its a recollection of testimonies of Yumano nation women that lived on Baja California.
Here’s a better summary (which I wrote too!!!):
“A recollection of various testimonies conducted by Doctor Mario Alberto Magaña, made to five indigenous women of the Yumano groups: Anacleta Albañez Higuera, Manuela Aguiar Carrillo, Ernestina Albañez Vega, Francisca Ochoa Montaño, y Teodora Cuero Robles. These recollections are vital keepsakes of the collective memory of these groups, as they are some of the most overlooked indigenous people, and their culture and history are not only extremely undocumented, but it is also currently in huge risk of becoming extinct due to various social and political issues. “
Here is the Archive.org link
I also just found a link to the pdf that was uploaded by the Baja California Sur Archive. I do not know how old this archive is as it wasn’t around when I uploaded it to Archive.org, but im including it too lmao
It is a very important document that is not only extremely difficult to find copies of (the only print i found was for 60 dollars in Amazon, and it was located in Great Britain or smth???), but also touches upon an indigenous group that is overlooked in Mexico.
