Everything within a settler colonial society strains to destroy or assimilate the Native in order to disappear them from the land - this is how a society can have multiple simultaneous and conflicting messages about Indigenous peoples, such as all Indians are dead, located in faraway reservations, that contemporary Indigenous people are less indigenous than prior generations, and that all Americans are a “little bit Indian.” These desires to erase - to let time do its thing and wait for the older form of living to die out, or to even help speed things along (euthanize) because the death of pre-modern ways of life is thought to be inevitable - these are all desires for another kind of resolve to the colonial situation, resolved through the absolute and total destruction or assimilation of original inhabitants.
Another great piece. Thank you for it. As a settler, I keep learning so much from listening in to Indigenous-to-Indigenous conversation, asking--what does this mean for how I can well orient. I think, for example, about how I might be, unwittingly or not, imposing "identity" (as individualization) on others inseparably from how I think about myself in relation. (I think I actually stammer in conversations when I am doing this! But, then, too, I am weird. LOL.) At the same time, am I respecting others' relations and ecologies of values, which might also call for boundaries that create, if not an identity, an inside and outside, ephemerally (or not). Even as I type, though, I am thinking now--what if I try another slant...not inside and out, but just...different...I am still reflecting on your piece, and, will be...Well, that is largely what I wanted to thank you for, too!
Another great piece. Thank you for it. As a settler, I keep learning so much from listening in to Indigenous-to-Indigenous conversation, asking--what does this mean for how I can well orient. I think, for example, about how I might be, unwittingly or not, imposing "identity" (as individualization) on others inseparably from how I think about myself in relation. (I think I actually stammer in conversations when I am doing this! But, then, too, I am weird. LOL.) At the same time, am I respecting others' relations and ecologies of values, which might also call for boundaries that create, if not an identity, an inside and outside, ephemerally (or not). Even as I type, though, I am thinking now--what if I try another slant...not inside and out, but just...different...I am still reflecting on your piece, and, will be...Well, that is largely what I wanted to thank you for, too!