Radical Relationality
What we propose here is thus not a project of self-reflexivity that occurs at the site of individual consciousness raising or healing. Rather, it is a project of inter-reflexivity, a struggle for decolonization premised on the accountabilities we form in lively relation to each other. The act of (re)making our accountability in relationship to water and (re)claiming our relational theories of water culture remind us that we are water based, that we have water memory. As Cutcha notes, in Hoopa, we define ourselves in relationship to water; but more than that, Hoopa understand our place in the world based on how water views the world, or even how water views us. Our directions are views from the river that runs through our valley. “Worldview” is “water view,” a view from the river not a view of the river. We move upriver, or downriver, to the river, or from the river. So our theoretical standpoint is one that foregrounds water view, (re)claiming knowledges not just for the people, but also for the water; not just looking at our relationship to water, but our accountability to water view.[1]
The reclaiming of our accountability to water view has been the hallmark of struggles for decolonization (including research and direct action) in recent years. Our resurgent commitment to water view has reinvigorated our human liveliness and our decolonial conviction. This accountability to water view envisions and enacts an ethos of “living well,” which Harsha Walia (2013) points out defies “the capitalist and colonial system’s logic of competition, commodification, and domination” (p. 255). Living well requires “interdependency and respect among all living things” (Ibid). We call this ethos of living well radical relationality, which is radical in the sense of roots or origins, as in a relationality from which all life and history derives meaning and shape (like water view), and also in the sense of a dramatic and revolutionary change from our current epoch of power, as in a radical shift towards decolonization. We conceive of radical relationality as a term that brings together the multiple strands of materiality, kinship, corporeality, affect, land/body connection, and multidimensional connectivity coming primarily from Indigenous feminists. It provides a vision of relationality and collective political organization that is deeply intersectional and premised on values of interdependency, reciprocity, equality, and responsibility. In ‘Talkin’ Up To The White Woman, Aileen Morton-Robinson (2001) states that “In Indigenous cultural domains relationality means that one experiences the self as part of others and that others are part of the self; this is learnt through reciprocity, obligation, shared experiences, coexistence, cooperation and social memory” (p. 16). Within this framework of relationality, water is not seen as a resource to be weaponized for the interests of capital by corporations that harness, obstruct, pollute, and discipline water through infrastructure projects like dams and pipelines to boost the capitalist economies of settler nation-states. No, within an Indigenous feminist framework, water is a relative with whom we engage in social (and political) relations premised on interdependency and respect.[2]
'Decolonization is not a Metaphor'
... Tuck and Yang intervened into the way decolonization is taken up within the field of education. They argued that educational projects that use the language of decolonization to describe their social justice endeavors participate in settler moves to innocence. Settler moves to innocence rescue settler futurity instead of fostering actual decolonization, which Tuck and Yang define as the repatriation of Indigenous land and life.
“Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” has become a touchstone for scholars and practitioners of decolonization because it maps the many ways that decolonization is constantly evacuated of its true meaning and intention, which results in the preservation of settler colonialism and consequent deferral of the repatriation of Indigenous land and life. It seems that one of the main contributions of “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” has been its articulation of what decolonization is not: it is not a metaphor to be taken up within existing settler agendas for liberal, progressive, or radical politics that do not challenge ongoing settler colonialism. If settler-initiated projects do not advance the repatriation of Indigenous life and land, Tuck and Yang remind us, these projects cannot be called decolonial; they are nothing more than settler moves to innocence that keep colonial relations and settler privilege intact.[3]
Sources
- ↑ Yazzie M, Risling Baldy C. Introduction: Indigenous peoples and the politics of water. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 2018;7(1):1-18. http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/19298692/v07i0001/1_i.xml.
- ↑ Yazzie M, Risling Baldy C. Introduction: Indigenous peoples and the politics of water. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 2018;7(1):1-18. http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/19298692/v07i0001/1_i.xml.
- ↑ Yazzie M, Risling Baldy C. Introduction: Indigenous peoples and the politics of water. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 2018;7(1):1-18. http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/19298692/v07i0001/1_i.xml.