Exploring First Nations Studies

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Exploring First Nations Studies

• FNAT 101
• Week 2 Lecture
• September 9th, 2008

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First Nations StudiesThe Origin Story

• A foundation of 20th century political movements
  e.g. Native Brotherhood, Allied Tribes, National
  Congress of American Indians, AIM, etc.
• Critical population mass in each area
• Often grew out of a dialogue between community
  leaders and the university (conflict too)
• 1969 publications by Deloria (U.S.) Cardinal
  (Canada)
• Targeted recruiting of aboriginal students
• 1969 American Indian Studies at U. of Minnesota
• 1969 Native Studies program at Trent
• 1970 Convocation of Native scholars _at_ Princeton
• Tribal college movement
• Two stage proliferation 1) 1970s and the 2)
  1990s (B.C. in this grouping)

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The Resulting Community of Scholars

• Universities colleges across Canada the U.S.
  (most in the West Plains)
• Many names ie. Native Studies, Indigenous
  Studies, Indian Studies, First Nations
  Studiesimplications/reasons?
• Often grouped with other minority studies e.g.
  African American Studies Chicano Studies
  Womens Studies Ethnic Studies (but are we
  engaged in a different project?)
• Aboriginal and non-aboriginal (Who can do this
  study?)

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GOING POSTAL

• Modernity, Marxism Marginality
• in Indigenous Studies

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Lesson Objectives

• To introduce some concepts key to Colonialist
  discourse
• To explore counter - responses to those concepts

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The Rhetoric of empire
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Colonialism

• an ideology used to legitimize and/or promote a
  socio-political/economic system based
  ethnocentrism in which the colonizing nation
  attempts to subjugate another.
• Colonizing nations may feel entitled and/or
  morally obligated to manage the land,
  resources, labour, populations, and
  social/politial/cultural practices of foreign
  peoples.

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Colonization

• A Socio-political practice that extends a
  nations sovereignty over beyond its geographic
  borders by establishing colonies in foreign
  territories, in which the Indigenous peoples are
  directly or indirectly ruled, displaced, and
  assimliated.
• Colonizing nations generally dominate and
  exploit resources, labour, and markets of the
  colonial territory, expropriating the products
  of these elements for consumption in the home
  nation, creating a core periphery relationship
  in which Indignenous peoples are marginalized
  politically, economically, and socially.
• Colonizing nations may also practice cultural
  imperialism through propaganda and social
  discourse

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Better Living Through Modernity
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Modernity

• A social process that started in post medieval
  Europe and the Renaissance period, and refers to
  the replacement of traditional societies with
  modern social forms
• Increased movement of goods, capital, people,
  and information among formerly separate areas,
  and homogenization of local cultures into a
  larger aggregate
• Increased specialization of labour, and increased
  interdependency among geographic areas

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Modernity Cont.

• Industrialization
• Increased movement towards urbanization as
  opposed to rural settelments
• Standardization of social, economic,
  technological, and political infrastructures
• highly concerned with rationality, reason, and
  empiricism.
• Secularization separation of church and state

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Modernity as Emancipatory?

• In short, modernization is a social
• project that claims to enlighten
• humanity to liberate us from political,
  economic, class, and religious oppression.

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Mini - Marx

• A social/economic theory
• based on socialism and
• critical of capitalism
• Posits that all social behaviour is rooted in
  class conflict between the proletariat and the
  bourgeoisie
• Maintains that erasing class-based power,
  privilege and prestige will bring about an
  egalitarian social structure

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Posts from the Periphery
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Polyphony, Plurality, Particularity

• The posties reject grand narratives and meta
  structures in any form, and any pretesense to
  universality of truth, experience, and voice.
• They challenge boundaries of discourse and
  discipline, believing that since the social world
  is in a constant state of flux, so should our
  epistemologies follow
• Posties posit that all reality is subjective,
  stressing plurality and uniqueness rather than
  homogeneity

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Post Modernism

• Rejects replaces modernity,

specifically, the dominance of scientific
rationality, industrial progress, and empiricism

• A shift from productive to
• reproductive social order in
• Which simulations and models,
• More generally referred to as
• SIGNS,become the basis for
• Social reality, constituting
• the world, blurring the distinction between
  the concrete and the abstract.

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Post Colonialism

• Artist George Littlechild

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Its not what you may think

• Its an intellectual movement in the visual
  performing arts, humanities, and social sciences
  that began post -1960
• Its articulated from many different cultural
  perspectives, but usually from the view of the
  colonized. The field of inquiry in post
  colonialism is colonization and its aftermath.

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Post Colonial Discourse

• challenges colonialist, essentialist, and binary
  notions, emphasizing the fluidity of identity,
  esp. between colonizer and colonized
• speaks back from the margins to the centres of
  power

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Post Marxism

• Some early post-colonial writers found useful
  parallels between Marxian notions of class
  relationships and colonial hierarchies, but many
  contemporary scholars have some critiques of
  Marxist theory

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Critiques

• Although Marxism claims to be an Emancipatory
  social project, it ignores matters of race and
  difference, maintaining a colonial world view
• Modernity, esp. industrialism, has led to the
  exploitation/oppression, rather than the
  emancipation, of Indigenous peoples
• Secularization is antithetical to Indigenous
  world views and lifeways

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What does it mean to create a post-colonial
space?ANDis this possible, or even desirable?
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The Community lt-gt Academy Tension

• Community expects
• Respect
• Accuracy
• Boundaries
• Reciprocity
• Academy expects
• Standards
• Objectivity
• Traditions
• Detachment
• Stresses a new Relationship
• dual acceptance
• ongoing dialogue
• Negotiated reciprocity

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Indigenous Paradigms Language

• Acceptance of indigenous words and ideas
• New forms of knowledge based on traditional
  epistemology
• Privileging the Oral and Storytelling
• Authenticity of Voice
• Revitalization

Artist Patrick Desjarlait
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Challenging Academic Authorities

• Deconstructing Objectivity
• Part of broader questioning
• Womens Studies
• Critical Theory
• Cultural Studies
• Ensuring Agency
• To adapt and reshape indigenous being

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Post-Colonial Space

• Setting Right of Names
• Working Through Historical Trauma
• Giving Primacy to our Scholars (Traditional and
  Modern)
• Critical Examination of text and textual record
• Valuing lived, local experience
• Repair our alienation from the past (less
  one-sided view of history)
• Part of resistance movement

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An Emerging Picture of First Nations Studies

• it is about empowering ourselves through the
  examination of what we can do to indigenize the
  academy to carve space where indigenous values
  and knowledge are respected to create an
  environment that supports research and
  methodologies useful to indigenous nation
  building to support one another as institutional
  foundations are shaken and to compel
  institutional responsiveness to indigenous
  issues, concerns and communities. (Mihesuah,
  2004)