By Ajay Parasram
Taiaiake Alfred, a Mohawk intellectual and University of Victoria professor, gave two powerful presentations at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa on Nov. 12 and 13, respectively. On the invitation of the Carleton Centre for Aboriginal Culture and Education, Aboriginal Service Centre and the Graduate Student Association, Alfred discussed the importance of Indigenous “resurgence” as a counterpoint to the mainstream politics of reconciliation in Canada. The challenge of resurgence, Alfred said, is to transform yourself, moving actively away from colonialism and towards the “home fire.”
This theme was essential to both talks. “Men’s ideas about what it means to be a man, a husband and part of a family are colonized,” Alfred told the crowd at UOttawa. Drawing on the example of his home territory in Kahnawà:ke, he explained that masculinity tends to be expressed through lacrosse, iron working and the military. These limited pathways for masculinity are corrupted and distorted by colonial capitalism, making the task of reconnecting to Indigenous masculinity through the land a difficult, but necessarily transformative process.
Resurgence, in this line of thinking, requires three things which he named ART: being Accountable to a community, being Rooted to the land, and embodying Transformation. Alfred explained at his Carleton presentation how land rights are much deeper than simply creating new treaties. He used the example of how modern capitalism and industrialization have poisoned the land and have severed lines of knowledge, which had been passed down from generation to generation. Resurgence requires identifying with the land in ways that cannot coexist with capitalist and colonial ways of being.
Alfred explained how colonial and capitalist commodification of nature has led to pollution and destruction, which has alienated people from their collective identities with one another and to the land. This kind of colonial, capitalist violence is never represented in the liberal logic of “land claims,” which perverts land by treating it as a commodity. The generational results of this kind of settler-colonial violence has been turning vibrant Indigenous nations into “groups of individuals on a reserve,”Alfred said.
Resurgence is about de-linking from individual identities as consumer-citizens in modern colonial capitalism, and embracing the principles of ART. It is something that cannot exist within “Canada” as we know it, because Canada is an ongoing colonial project.
Drawing on the example of Wab Kinew’s famous monologue calling for a “seat at the big table,” Alfred instead argued that sitting at the big table is not as important as re-learning how to connect with the land.
“That table was set by people who destroyed the land and our people and crushed our ancestors’ bones to build that table…You are allowed to be Indigenous, so long as you don’t disturb that table,” said Alfred.
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 8 No. 3 (Nov/Dec 2015).
