Pam Palmater, Mi’kmaq lawyer, activist and Ryserson prof, conducted an interview with Mohawk activist Taiaiake Alfred on her “Warrior Life” podcast last week. Listen because these two warrior-scholar-activists are theorizing the change they are leading.
In the interview the pair hash out the current pipeline politics/indigenous complicity/resistance situation in western Canada, and how this binary is manufactured - a continuation of the divide and rule tactics of the settler colonial state; they explain how the real agenda for decolonization calls for being rooted in the land, not just accepting a share in the {stolen] wealth.
About halfway through the interview they move into talking about Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (2005), Taiaiake’s groundbreaking examination of what it means to be live as Onkwehonwe (original people). From there they expand on Taiaiake’s idea of how people who have been alienated from their native culture for whatever reason can join the circle and hold up and contribute to the culture and the resistance. Listening as a settler, this opens a way into thinking about how we all have something we can contribute to the decolonization project.