So far in Unit 2, Climates of Resistance has considered the Disparate Distribution of environmental risks and benefits, and the need for evidence-based information about racialised trends in resource access and allocation.
“(De)Colonising Land” takes a closer look at the root causes of these divisions, critically examining imperial histories of colonialism. This week’s class will explore how the inequalities created by settler and exploitation colonisation have been maintained through practices of Indigenous reservations, redlining, gerrymandering, and border control.
Understand: the relationship between imperialism, colonial practices, and environmental control through this “Theory at a Glance” overview.
read full lyrics
Intro: Excerpts from the State Attorney’s intervention in a court case between the Sámi reindeer herding community Girjas - from whence Sofia Jannok’s grandmother came - and the Swedish State.
“The State is of the opinion that the claim put forward by the Sámi reindeer herding community with regards to their long tradition of being engaged in reindeer husbandry, hunting and fishing in the area is of irrelevance to the case. In order to be eligible to claim immemorial prescription, said claim has to be based on a 90 years long use of an area. Any additional use for a longer period of time is of irrelevance to the legality of the claim.”
“Because of the claim that it is of importance that the Sámi have been using this area, the State is of the opinion that it is of utmost importance to define what is meant by the term Sámi, and how specific such a definition really is. This is what the following material is meant to do.”
(Gällivare Lapland District Court, June, 2015.)
This is my land, this is my country and if I’d be the queen you’d see that I’d take everyone by hand and sing it so it’s out there
that we’ll paint this land blue, yellow, red and green
If you say that this girl’s not welcome in this country, if she must leave because her face is brown
Well, then I’d say you go first ’cause frankly this is my land and here we live in peace, I’ll teach you how
This is my pride, this is my freedom, this is the air that I breathe and you’ll find no kings, no queens, here everybody’s equal - men, women and all who are in between
This is my home, this is my heaven, this is the earth where I belong and if you want to ruin it all with big wounds in the mountains then you’re not worthy of listening to this song
This is my land, this is my country, these lakes, rivers, hills and woods If you open up your eyes you’ll find someone is lying
I’ve always been here, welcome to my hoods
Brita Maret “Sofia” Jannok is a Swedish Sámi artist, singer, songwriter and radio host who has been nominated twice for a Grammy Award. Her music is shaped by a diversity of musical influences including folk, pop, jazz and yoik (a traditional form of song in Sámi music). Born and raised in Sápmi, Sofia is an activist for Indigenous rights. She regularly speaks out against mining on land used by Sámi reindeer herders and uses her music to advocate for her people. “For the unbreakable sinews of kin, I continue to sing. For my future sisters, I raise my voice to the misters. Kings and queens. Cities and trees. Mountains and seas. All that is in between. This is my land. ORDA [tree line].”
Watch: this piece motivated by the Keystone XL Pipeline that highlights a few of the similarities between the US’ reservation system and racist zoning practices.
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Everything’s Red (All Red Everything)
Everything’s Red (All Red Everything)
Everything’s Red
Everything’s Red
Red
Red
Dead
Red
Dead
Red
First off, I send love to Lupe
For giving us hope in this Lakota Sioux way
All Red Everything; Red Nation Rising
Revising our story they’re televising
Child of the Plains, I see 20/20
Poverty porn TV pimp us for money
Tell Diane Sawyer I am a warrior
Give me your camera, send Peltier your lawyer
Free all my people; get them out of prison
Take them to Sundance; show them how we’re livin’
Give youth an outlet, disadvantaged prodigies
Feed these Republicans all our commodities
Put them on the rez from the day they’re born
They won’t survive, cuz their cancer is airborne
Put them in our schools, put them in our shoes
Take away their money and give them our blues
Red
Make everything Red
Words of my ancestors up in my head
Food for thought, our kids underfed
Your oil is mud, they want the Earth dead
Oil 4 Blood
Oil 4 Blood
Making you rich, you soil my love
Oil 4 Blood
Oil 4 Blood
My Mother is clean, that oil is mud
(Keystone) Everything’s Red
(Pipeline) Now everything’s dead
(Keystone) Everything’s Red
(Pipeline) Now everything’s dead
Everything’s Red
Everything’s Red
Red
Red
Dead
Red
Dead
Red
I can’t afford to leave the rez
Government has got me trapped
Our leadership need a tip and most my tribal leaders wack
But they don’t wanna hear that; they just wanna chill
I’m sick, I’ll go to IHS and get a pill (For real?)
Like a song without a title
Feel forgotten like slaves picking the cotton
Forever tribal with no connection to the bible
Plottin’, people rotten, sometimes I’m suicidal
Feeling like No Exit, Generation X shit
Text messages and sex, what I connect with
Technology, get this world to acknowledge me
My ancestors studied numbers and astrology
Lakota philosophy; keep them haters off of me
Keystone XL, you smell like an atrocity
To my home and my ancestors I am loyal
Build that pipeline and I’m burning down your oil
Oil 4 Blood
Oil 4 Blood
Making you rich, you soil my love
Oil 4 Blood
Oil 4 Blood
My Mother is clean, that oil is mud
(Keystone) Everything’s Red
(Pipeline) Now everything’s dead
(Keystone) Everything’s Red
(Pipeline) Now everything’s dead
Everything’s Red
Everything’s Red
Red
Red
Dead
Red
Dead
Red
Frank Waln is an award winning Sicangu Lakota Hip Hop artist and music producer from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. A Millennium Scholar, Waln attended Columbia College Chicago where he received a BA in Audio Arts and Acoustics. While in Chicago, Frank became more aware of the connections between Native American youth on reservations and Black youth in urban spaces: “we are both being oppressed by this system that was imposed on us”.
In 2010, Waln became the youngest Native American Music Awards winner in history for producing “Scars and Bars” with his group Nake Nula Waun (I am always ready, at all times, for anything). Waln has written for various publications including Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society and The Guardian. Frank travels the world telling his story through performance and doing workshops focusing on self-empowerment and expression of truth.
Imagine: what the world could look like “without the violence of colonialism, imperialism, and borders”, in the words of poet Janel Pineda.
The war never happened but somehow you and I still exist. Like obsidian,
we know only the memory of lava and not the explosion that created
us. Forget the gunned-down church, the burning flesh, the cabbage soup.
There is no bus. There is no border. There is no blood. There are
only sweet corn fields and mango skins. The turquoise house and clotheslines.
A heaping plate of pasteles and curtido waiting to be disappeared into our bellies.
In this life, our people are not things of silences but whole worlds bursting
into breath. Everywhere, there are children. Playing freely, clothed and clean.
Mozote does not mean massacre and flowers bloom in every place shoes are
left behind. My name still means truth, this time in a language my mouth recognizes,
in a language I know how to speak. My grandmother is still a storyteller although I am
not a poet. In this life, I do not have to be. This poem somehow still exists. It is told
in my mother’s voice and she makes hurt dissolve like honey in hot water, manzanilla
warming the throat. You and I do not find each other on another continent, grasping
at each other’s necks in search of home. We meet in a mercado, my arms overflowing
with mamey and anonas, and together we wash them in riverwater. We watch sunset fall over
a land we call our own and do not fear its taking. I bite into the fruit, mouth sucking
seed from substance, pulling its veins from between my teeth. Our laughter echoes
from inside the cave, one we are free to step outside of. We do not have to hide here.
We do not have to hide anywhere. A torogoz flies past my face and I do not fear its flapping.
Born in Los Angeles, Janel Pineda is a Salvadoran poet and educator. A first-generation college graduate, she earned a BA in English from Dickinson College, where she was a Posse Scholar. She is a part of the editorial team that founded La Piscucha Magazine, a multilingual arts, literature, and culture magazine created by Salvadoran writers, and a member of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). As a Marshall Scholar, Janel holds an MA in Creative Writing and Education from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her debut poetry chapbook, Lineage of Rain, was published from Haymarket Books in February 2021. (Photograph by Luz María Castillo.)
Realise: that decolonisation is not a metaphor, but the active “repatriation of Indigenous land and life”. Decolonisation is not about the reconciliation of settler guilt. Nor is it focused on settler futures. It is unsettling, in its truest and fullest sense. Read more in this article by Tuck and Yang.
Note: This article is really good, and we highly recommend that you read it - but it is a complicated one. It isn’t critical for your Learning Log responses, so you can take your time with it and work on it throughout the course.
Eve Tuck is Associate Professor of Critical Race and Indigenous Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Dr Tuck is Unangax̂ and is an enrolled member of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Alaska. She earned a PhD in Urban Education from The Graduate Center, The City University of New York in 2008.
Tuck’s research focuses on how Indigenous social thought can be engaged to create more fair and just social policy, more meaningful social movements, and robust approaches to decolonisation. She makes a podcast with graduate students called The Henceforward on relationships between Indigenous and Black communities on Turtle Island.
Wayne Yang’s work transgresses the line between scholarship and community. Before his academic career, he was a public school teacher in Ohlone territory (now called Oakland, California), where he co-founded the Avenues Project, a youth development non-profit.
Dr Yang writes about decolonisation and everyday epic organising, particularly from underneath ghetto colonialism. He is interested in the complex role of cities in global affairs: cities as sites of settler colonialism, as stages for empire, as places of resettlement and gentrification, and as always-already on Indigenous lands.
Sometimes he writes as la paperson, an avatar that irregularly calls.
Examine: these works by Demian DinéYazhi´ and Noelle Sosaya reclaiming settler symbols and valuing the Land.
Demian DinéYazhi´ is an Indigenous Diné transdisciplinary artist born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Growing up in the colonised border town of Gallup, New Mexico, the evolution of DinéYaz´’s work has been influenced by their ancestral ties to traditional Diné culture, ceremony, matrilineal upbringing, the sacredness of land, and the importance of intergenerational knowledge.
They are the founder of the Indigenous artist/activist initiative, R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment, a non-profit based in Oregon dedicated to the education, dissemination, & evolution of Indigenous art & culture.
Noelle Sosaya is an Albuquerque-based artist and vintage shop owner.
About “Untitled (Sovereignty)”
“I think of this piece as being about reclaiming settler colonial symbols, but also as an object symbolic of community trust. Noelle and I hardly knew one another, but being part of the #QTPOC (Queer and Trans People of Color) community we came together to bring this piece to life.
“This piece is about so many things. I imagine it being hung after this empire has been burned to ash and Indigenous Queer, Trans, GNC, and 2Spirit babes reclaim what was stolen from our communities. The colours are reflective of Indigenous colour symbology. The crosses reference Diné rug textiles that symbolized stars, but they are also an ode to lives lost through the waves of genocide against Indigenous bodies and the lives lost during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The flag is undoubtedly an inflammatory symbol, and one that Indigenous Peoples have a complicated relationship with. My grandfather was a Code Talker, so I use the flag to honour both his service and resiliency. There are wars inside me, unsettled PTSD, but also so much untapped strength and harmony.
“Art is my method of defense, but it is also my form of ceremony.”
About “nahasdzáán biłth ha’ní”
This “is about telling, testament, revelation, and healing.
“This piece is about being accountable to the Land and utilizing the Land for healing.
“How the Land contains stories and is a safe-space for individual well-being.
“Unlike the confessional spaces set up in western religion, this piece brings us back to the Land as the source of our existence and mediates a reconnection to the cosmos.
“Everything spoken in this audio piece is meant for the Land and no one else.
“It is as much about burying as it is about revealing truths to all the living energy that has existed and come to pass throughout the history of this earth.”
The piece involved pouring sand collected from the Columbia River Gorge over a phone playing a recording from the artist, such that their words were heard only by the Land.
Complete: your Learning Log for this session via the form below.