[m2c] Indigenous feminism without apology

[usman x]

http://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/indigenous-feminism-without-apology/

Indigenous feminism without apology

September 8, 2011 by Recovering Wasi’chu/Wetiko
By Andrea Smith, Unsettling Ourselves

We often hear the mantra in indigenous communities that Native women
aren’t feminists. Supposedly, feminism is not needed because Native
women were treated with respect prior to colonization. Thus, any
Native woman who calls herself a feminist is often condemned as being
“white.”

However, when I started interviewing Native women organizers as part
of a research project, I was surprised by how many community-based
activists were describing themselves as “feminists without apology.”
They were arguing that feminism is actually an indigenous concept that
has been co-opted by white women.

The fact that Native societies were egalitarian 500 years ago is not
stopping women from being hit or abused now. For instance, in my years
of anti-violence organizing, I would hear, “We can’t worry about
domestic violence; we must worry about survival issues first.” But
since Native women are the women most likely to be killed by domestic
violence, they are clearly not surviving. So when we talk about
survival of our nations, who are we including?

These Native feminists are challenging not only patriarchy within
Native communities, but also white supremacy and colonialism within
mainstream white feminism. That is, they’re challenging why it is that
white women get to define what feminism is.


DECENTERING WHITE FEMINISM

The feminist movement is generally periodized into the so-called
first, second and third waves of feminism. In the United States, the
first wave is characterized by the suffragette movement; the second
wave is characterized by the formation of the National Organization
for Women, abortion rights politics, and the fight for the Equal
Rights Amendments. Suddenly, during the third wave of feminism, women
of colour make an appearance to transform feminism into a
multicultural movement.

This periodization situates white middle-class women as the central
historical agents to which women of colour attach themselves. However,
if we were to recognize the agency of indigenous women in an account
of feminist history, we might begin with 1492 when Native women
collectively resisted colonization. This would allow us to see that
there are multiple feminist histories emerging from multiple
communities of colour which intersect at points and diverge in others.
This would not negate the contributions made by white feminists, but
would de-center them from our historicizing and analysis.

Indigenous feminism thus centers anti-colonial practice within its
organizing. This is critical today when you have mainstream feminist
groups supporting, for example, the US bombing of Afghanistan with the
claim that this bombing will free women from the Taliban (apparently
bombing women somehow liberates them).

CHALLENGING THE STATE

Indigenous feminists are also challenging how we conceptualize
indigenous sovereignty — it is not an add-on to the heteronormative
and patriarchal nationstate. Rather it challenges the nationstate
system itself. Charles Colson, prominent Christian Right activist and
founder of Prison Fellowship, explains quite clearly the relationship
between heteronormativity and the nation-state. In his view, samesex
marriage leads directly to terrorism; the attack on the “natural moral
order” of the heterosexual family “is like handing moral weapons of
mass destruction to those who use America’s decadence to recruit more
snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers.”

Similarly, the Christian Right World magazine opined that feminism
contributed to the Abu Ghraib scandal by promoting women in the
military. When women do not know their assigned role in the gender
hierarchy, they become disoriented and abuse prisoners.

Implicit in this is analysis the understanding that heteropatriarchy
is essential for the building of US empire. Patriarchy is the logic
that naturalizes social hierarchy. Just as men are supposed to
naturally dominate women on the basis of biology, so too should the
social elites of a society naturally rule everyone else through a
nation-state form of governance that is constructed through
domination, violence, and control.

As Ann Burlein argues in Lift High the Cross, it may be a mistake to
argue that the goal of Christian Right politics is to create a
theocracy in the US. Rather, Christian Right politics work through the
private family (which is coded as white, patriarchal, and
middle-class) to create a “Christian America.” She notes that the
investment in the private family makes it difficult for people to
invest in more public forms of social connection.

For example, more investment in the suburban private family means less
funding for urban areas and Native reservations. The resulting social
decay is then construed to be caused by deviance from the Christian
family ideal rather than political and economic forces. As former head
of the Christian Coalition Ralph Reed states: “The only true solution
to crime is to restore the family,” and “Family break-up causes
poverty.”

Unfortunately, as Navajo feminist scholar Jennifer Denetdale points
out, the Native response to a heteronormative white, Christian America
has often been an equally heteronormative Native nationalism. In her
critique of the Navajo tribal council’s passage of a ban on same-sex
marriage, Denetdale argues that Native nations are furthering a
Christian Right agenda in the name of “Indian tradition.”

This trend is equally apparent within racial justice struggles in
other communities of colour. As Cathy Cohen contends, heteronormative
sovereignty or racial justice struggles will effectively maintain
rather than challenge colonialism and white supremacy because they are
premised on a politics of secondary marginalization. The most elite
class will further their aspirations on the backs of those most
marginalized within the community.

Through this process of secondary marginalization, the national or
racial justice struggle either implicitly or explicitly takes on a
nation-state model as the end point of its struggle – a model in which
the elites govern the rest through violence and domination, and
exclude those who are not members of “the nation.”

NATIONAL LIBERATION

Grassroots Native women, along with Native scholars such as Taiaiake
Alfred and Craig Womack, are developing other models of nationhood.
These articulations counter the frequent accusations that nation-
building projects necessarily lead to a narrow identity politics based
on ethnic cleansing and intolerance. This requires that a clear
distinction be drawn between the project of national liberation, and
that of nation-state building.

Progressive activists and scholars, while prepared to make critiques
of the US and Canadian governments, are often not prepared to question
their legitimacy. A case in point is the strategy of many racial
justice organizations in the US or Canada, who have rallied against
the increase in hate crimes since 9/11 under the banner, “We’re
American [or Canadian] too.”

This allegiance to “America” or “Canada” legitimizes the genocide and
colonization of Native peoples upon which these nation-states are
founded. By making anti-colonial struggle central to feminist
politics, Native women place in question the appropriate form of
governance for the world in general. In questioning the nation-state,
we can begin to imagine a world that we would actually want to live
in. Such a political project is particularly important for colonized
peoples seeking national liberation outside the nation- state.

Whereas nation-states are governed through domination and coercion,
indigenous sovereignty and nationhood is predicated on
interrelatedness and responsibility.

As Sharon Venne explains, “Our spirituality and our responsibilities
define our duties. We understand the concept of sovereignty as woven
through a fabric that encompasses our spirituality and responsibility.
This is a cyclical view of sovereignty, incorporating it into our
traditional philosophy and view of our responsibilities. It differs
greatly from the concept of Western sovereignty which is based upon
absolute power. For us absolute power is in the Creator and the
natural order of all living things; not only in human beings… Our
sovereignty is related to our connections to the earth and is
inherent.”

REVOLUTION

A Native feminist politics seeks to do more than simply elevate Native
women’s status — it seeks to transform the world through indigenous
forms of governance that can be beneficial to everyone.

At the 2005 World Liberation Theology Forum held in Porto Alegre,
Brazil, indigenous peoples from Bolivia stated that they know another
world is possible because they see that world whenever they do their
ceremonies. Native ceremonies can be a place where the present, past
and future become copresent. This is what Native Hawaiian scholar Manu
Meyer calls a racial remembering of the future.

Prior to colonization, Native communities were not structured on the
basis of hierarchy, oppression or patriarchy. We will not recreate
these communities as they existed prior to colonization. Our
understanding that a society without structures of oppression was
possible in the past tells us that our current political and economic
system is anything but natural and inevitable. If we lived differently
before, we can live differently in the future.

Native feminism is not simply an insular or exclusivist “identity
politics” as it is often accused of being. Rather, it is framework
that understands indigenous women’s struggles part of a global
movement for liberation. As one activist stated: “You can’t win a
revolution on your own. And we are about nothing short of a
revolution. Anything else is simply not worth our time.”

Andrea Smith is Cherokee and a professor of Native American Studies at
the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and co-founder of Incite! Women
of Color Against Violence and the Boarding School Healing Project.

-- 
"Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted
with enslavement." Lee Maracle
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