Embedded Files
Session Objective: to understand spatial politics and how geographical histories of power have shaped access to land
Review: the Course Slides, summarising our community conversation on spatial politics.
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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].”
Challenge: American militarisation with this poem from William Nuʻutupu Giles critiquing the price of citizenship in a colonial settler state.
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Open letter to Marvel Comics:
I’ve always been confused about your flagship character, Captain America. As one of the most militarised nations in the history of the world, I don’t understand how our
mascot’s primary weapon is a shield.
I feel like he’d be more authentic if he walked around with the nuclear missiles stuffed into his tighty-whities, or if he stalked around waterboarding terrorists with Diet Coke, or if he touted a bag of Big Macs to clog the arteries of his enemies.
If the next Avengers movie is a prequel and we travel back to 1492, would they call Christopher Columbus Captain America? Would his weapon be a flag infected with smallpox?
Or if it was set in Hawaii 1778, would that American Captain’s name be Cook, his weapon a ship full of cholera?
When I see that shield, I’m reminded that one of every eight adult Natives in Guam is a US veteran.
That American Samoa has the top Army recruiting station in the country. That Polynesian Islanders have the highest casualty rates in our armed forces. We are dying to belong.
And I’m beginning to understand the metaphor of Captain America’s weapon. So show me how a man builds a human shield; fills a military with the children of nations he has slain. We in the United States spend over eight times as much of our budget on warfare than we do on education. Then we wait as failing schools spit out kids unserved; wait until the opportunities we dreamed of seemed farther away than the stars our people once used as maps. And we ask the question to the young: “Would you fire a gun to feed your sons? Would you die on a battlefield to build a house for your daughter?”
We in America decry warlords in Africa for enlisting 13-year-old soldiers, while ROTC recruiters fish cadets out of our classrooms. See, when the military grabs the Land your family used to farm, sugar plantation becomes platoon...but when farmers till the earth with guns, the only crop is blood. When war is our only industry, the only crop is blood.
In these territories: American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Northern Mariana and Virgin Islands, the people are unable to cast a vote for the US president who decides where and when we go to war. So they’re a shield with a lip but no mouth; no say what country it will be thrown into next.
We are so much more than wars, bone and blood, fists; more than body made bullet-trap. I will show you how a shield given no voice can still grow teeth, still teach itself how to speak.
We, survivors turned soldiers; we, once and always will be warriors; we, as Captain America. When your shield – Our People – decide our lives are worth more than the price of your citizenship... what will you hide behind then?
William Nuʻutupu Giles is an afakasi Samoan writer and arts educator from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Will has facilitated poetry workshops across Oceania in Papua New Guinea, Guåhan, and Aotearoa. They were also the first Pacific Islander to win the National Underground Poetry Individual Competition.
Will’s poems dig for the political seeds in personal stories. Their work connects contemporary poetry with the Oral Traditions of Polynesian genealogy and crosses oceans of immigrant identity, colonisation, representation, and masculinity.
At home, they have spent the last 10 years working with Youth Speaks Hawaiʻi, giving back to the organisation and community that helped them develop a voice. Will lives for the moment of firsts in a blooming poet’s eyes. The first line, first draft, and the first time someone opens their mouth and believes in the power of their own story.
Listen: to this Indigenous poet’s call out to Justin Trudeau and the Canadian settler government about broken promises, environmental marginalisation, and sovereignty infringements.
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Hi, my name is Helen and I’m Dane Zaa and Nehiyaw from Prophet River First Nations, living in Fort St. John, B.C., and I wrote a poem for Justin Trudeau. Here you go:
Hey Justin,
There’s some words that I’ve been meaning to get off my chest.
I’ve even traveled twice to Parliament steps.
I’ve heard some of your MPs say that ‘this new relationship is based off of give-and-take’, and ‘we can’t have everything that we’re asking for’.
We have 500 years of giving behind us, but hold up, let me check: Are you good? Or can I get you anything more?
Because your Cabinet Ministers and Departments are sitting behind desks and signing off on permits, while you’re in the public eye paying lip service to Indigenous populations.
Well, y’all are making decisions that are going to be impacting the next seven generations, doing so in spite of Section 35 violations; signing off in light of supposed ‘consultation’.
And now, you are the head of the paternalistic patriarchal structures that be.
The ones that change their names over time from “Indian Affairs” to “Indigenous Affairs”...as if a name change would change the fact that y’all are still operating on the bones of the Indian Act: trying to govern how your ‘Indians’ act.
Or when it comes to sightsee the mega hydro dam that they want to build in this territory, you’d rather we not react. Rather we take your silence for fact, your approval for law, and your blind eyes as reasons for your wrongs.
Well I thought you should know: I’m delivering this poem from within the proposed flood zone, and this land has been my people’s home since time immemorial.
I don’t come from a placeless people.
I come from spines that were made sturdy while sleeping on spruce boughs
From legs that grew strong by scaling the sides of these mountains
And from arms that were taught to navigate these waters that span out like arteries all across this territory.
This land is my ancestors’ living memory.
But do you even understand this concept?
I think that you like to pretend to. Especially when you’re donning headdresses and sporting Indigenous-inspired tattoos. But when we say ‘places have no monetary value’, we actually mean it. Take our ‘nos’ for what they are, because we can't just head south when everything heads south.
We are the ones who have to stay behind and clean up your mess; our children the ones who are gonna have to suffer from your regrets.
So if you want real change you can’t give half measures and only ‘kind of oppress’ only ‘kinda’ continue to violate treaties only ‘kinda’ continue to colonise.
So please don’t promise anything if you’re not even willing to try.
As for me and mine? We’re gonna continue to fight. We’re gonna continue to rise up like sage smoke carrying valley and prairie prayers just like we have done for the past five hundred years.
Because in case you haven’t noticed...in spite of everything...we are still here.
Helen Knott is of Dane Zaa, Nehiyaw, and Euro descent from Prophet River First Nations, living in Northeastern B.C. Helen is a graduate student in First Nations Studies at UNBC. She holds a Bachelors Degree in Social Work.
Helen writes and speaks to share what lessons, insights, and challenges she has experienced. She was once taught that teachings are not yours until you give them away, so her words are a part of her offering back to the people. She has published in a number of places, including a compendium entitled Surviving Canada: Indigenous People Celebrate 150 Years of Betrayal. She recently published her first book, In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience, and is currently writing Taking Back the Bones, an “Indigenous female manifesto”.
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.)
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