#indigenous studies

Source: Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2012). "Decolonization is not a metaphor." Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society (academic journal).

So, decolonize the university =/= vaguely ""Improve the university""

Among many other things, decolonize the university = something a lot more like, oh, say: Abolish the school's board of governor's and replace it with a council of representatives and knowledge keepers from all of the First Nations whose traditional lands are within the university's modern geographic academic jurisdiction

IT WAS NEVER "AGAINST NATURE":

Many critical aspects of nature have been downplayed, ignored or rendered invisible by mainstream science in order to maintain the status quo. A goal of queer ecology is to critique biased science created within dominant Western paradigms.

Queer ecologists argue that the sexual diversity of animals matters. Modern theory often assumes a radical separation of nature and culture and thus minimizes the significance of animal sexuality and ‘queer animals’. But, as with other ‘keys [to the] Human Kingdom’ such as language and tool use, sex disconnected from reproduction has been similarly accomplished across a range of species (Alaimo, 2010).

This is important because it makes us reconsider our anthropocentric viewpoint of ‘natural’ sexuality as being inherently tied to reproduction (heteronormativity). The sexual diversity of the relatives that share the planet with us is meaningful because, “animals help us tell stories about ourselves, especially when it comes to matters of sexuality” (Terry 151, quoted in Alaimo). Moreover, “an understanding of animal cultures critiques the ideology of nature as resource, blank slate for cultural inscription, or brute, mechanistic force”(Alaimo 60, 2010). The more we understand animal naturecultures, the better able we are to protect them and help them thrive. 

On The Origins of Species

The scientific term species was invented in the late eighteenth century (Coined by naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon), “but the term has never been free of controversy” (McWhorter). During the Nineteenth century, it was used in debates over whether “Negros and Indians” were Homo Sapiens or not and was again destabilized when Charles Darwin released his work, On the Origin of Species. “Politically charged from its scientific conception, the concept of species has often brought great harm to both racial and sexual minorities over the past two hundred years” (McWhorter).

According to Foucault, “concepts […] are for cutting. They are never merely benign representations of a natural arrangement” (1969). Essentially, the concept of “Species could be made to function oppressively to separate white from blacks because […] it was already a tool for marking separations in natures heterogenous continuities in the interest of prevailing human practices” (McWhorter).

Animals within the western paradigm are animals because they are considered a different species from humans. According to Darwin, however, the concept of rigid species boundaries is practically meaningless, given the inevitability of evolution (The Origin of Species (1859). Darwin never answered the question on the origin of species, except to say that, “there are no eternally fixed types, nor are there eternally distinct lines of descent. All life on earth, no matter how morphologically or functionally distinct at present, conceivably could be traced back to a single germ line” (McWhorter , 81). 

Morton suggests that queer ecology might abandon using 'animal' and adopt a term like 'strange stranger'.  Indigenous paradigms, like mitakuye oyasin, would consider ‘animals’ to be ‘relatives’ or ‘relations’. 

According to Albert White Hat, Lakota elder, the wisdom in Indigenous paradigms aren’t “merely a collection of historical ideas or words” but “ a system of powerful knowledge applicable to the lives and struggles of people right now” (2020).  Vine Deloria refers to mitákuye oyásįn as the ‘Indian principle of interpretation/observation,’ calling it “a practical methodological tool for investigating the natural world and drawing conclusions about it that can serve as guides for understanding nature and living comfortably within it. . . . We observe the natural world by looking for relationships between various things in it. . . . This concept is simply the relativity concept as applied to a universe that people experience as alive and not as dead or inert” (1999, 34) (Posthumus 2022 p219 f). According to the Tapestry Institute, “The Lakota phrase Mitákuye Oyás’iŋ describes Reality by addressing it as ‘All our Relations.’ All humans, all animals, all plants, all the waters, the soil, the stones, the mountains, the grasslands, the winds, the clouds and storms, the sun and moon, stars and planets are our relations and are relations to one another. We are connected to each other in multiple and vital ways. When one is in pain, all are harmed. When there is justice for one, there is more justice for all” (2020). 

Mitakuye oyasin is about relationships and the decentering of humanity as ‘master’ of the land. In fact, in almost direct opposition, “the normative cultural values encompassed by mitákuye oyásʾį are the very foundation of kinship, relational ontology, and the overarching interspecies collective, of which humans are only one hoop, one oyáte ‘people, nation, tribe’, in the company of many others. The key constituents of this animist ontology and worldview, of mitákuye oyásʾį, are persons, a category that extends beyond human beings to nonhuman or other- than- human persons. [...] Importantly, the Lakota worldview sees humans as the least knowledgeable and powerful beings, requiring the most aid and pity (see V. Deloria 1999, 50; 2009, 99– 100). MItakuye oyasin as a paradigm has great potential to work in symbiopoesis with queer ecology.

Queer ecology is a critical response to biased Western science, especially about our animal relatives' naturecultures. However, by centering discourse around EuroAmerican culture, even if in critical consideration, we run the risk of reinforcing concepts such as ‘species’ which has been used by the colonial project to reinforce oppressive structures and separate us from nature. Mitakuye oyasin, is one example of an indigenous paradigm that might be an ancient answer to queer ecology’s goal of disrupting current colonial ideology. Moreover, both queer ecology and mitakuye oyasin, when they are used symbiopoetically, can provide us with the necessary imaginatory and observatory skills to contend with our current environmental issues. 

Talking about Taíno identity today requires care, because it intersects with Indigenous rights.

This is not a simple historical question of what it is or was, but rather it is a living one—shaped by colonial disruption, incomplete records, and ongoing processes of cultural continuity and revitalization across the Caribbean and diaspora.

In contemporary Indigenous rights discourse, especially in international frameworks like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (which recognized a large degree of today's Taíno yukayekes and communities as authentic), identity is not defined solely by colonial documentation or uninterrupted institutional recognition. Instead, Indigenous identity is generally understood through a combination of:

self-identification

community recognition

historical continuity

cultural connection

Importantly, these frameworks also recognize that colonial systems often disrupted the very records used to measure continuity. Notice that they indicate "community recognition" instead of "National", "Federal" or even "International", because it is the community that self-identifies.

Taíno identity today exists in a range of expressions across different communities and individuals. Some people trace ancestry through family knowledge, oral history, or regional memory (which fulfills, self-identification, cultural connection, and historical continuity). Others engage in cultural revitalization through language, history, or spiritual reconstruction (ie. cultural connection and community recognition. Should be noted that revitalization is often treated as making up or taking from other cultures instead of what it is which is the intentional recovery of knowledge disrupted over time. Every culture participates in revitalization, as it is central to growth while maintaining culture and history). Some participate in communities that actively identify as Taíno in the present day (self-identification and community recognition).

These expressions are not all identical, and they should not be treated as interchangeable—but they are all part of how Taíno presence, the Nation, in individual communities and individually as a whole, is understood in the modern world.

A necessary distinction

It is important to separate three things that are often blended together when people discuss Taíno identity and culture: - historical Taíno societies, documented through archaeology and early colonial records. Can referred to as Classical Taíno/Arawak Culture. - cultural continuity, which may appear in fragmented, adapted, or indirect forms. Often in reference to as surviving families/communities. - contemporary Indigenous identity, which can include revitalization of historical Taíno societies and self-identification today through cultural continuity even if it in the barest of forms. Confusing these categories leads to oversimplified conclusions—either erasure (“it ended”) or overstatement (“it remained unchanged”). Both extremes miss the reality, and are unrealistic expectations of any Indigenous peoples. Taíno survival should not be reduced to a single model.

Indigenous survival is not always visible through continuous institutional records, in fact is nearly never the case, because colonial systems were not designed to preserve Indigenous continuity or recognition.

But survival is also not something that exists only in abstract reconstruction. Instead, it is best understood as:

disrupted continuity

ongoing cultural recovery

and present-day identity formation

All existing at once, in different ways, across different communities, and at various stages. This is the process nearly all indigenous communities experience (even the notable exceptions, like The Māori of Aotearoa, still aren’t exceptions to colonial disruption and recognition legal battles), but is often more harshly criticized in smaller communities and those indigenous cultures directly impacted by Spain’s Empire.

We can’t leave of the affect of language, the way we talk about Indigenous peoples affects how own existence is understood.

Phrases like “disappeared,” “extinct,” or “vanished” are not neutral—they come from historical narratives that often erase complexity in order to simplify colonial histories and make them more palatable and agreeable to its audience.

At the same time, it is also important not to flatten all contemporary expressions of identity into a single uninterrupted line of tradition. Doing so assumes that if a culture has survived, it must have done so in a perfectly continuous, unchanged form—like a straight line that can be traced cleanly from past to present. In reality, very few cultures exist that way, and Indigenous histories are especially shaped by disruption, adaptation, and uneven transmission due to colonial systems.

For Taíno identity specifically, this matters because colonial violence did not only affect people—it also disrupted the conditions under which cultural knowledge has been recorded, passed down, and made visible to outsiders.

Both erasure and oversimplification distort the reality. Indigenous identity in general is not something that can be measured only through historical visibility. It is also shaped by how people understand themselves, connect to heritage, and continue cultural memory in the present. Holding space for that complexity is part of respecting Indigenous peoples.

Taíno identity today exists at the intersection of historical disruption, cultural memory, reconstruction, and contemporary self-identification.

It is not a claim that everything remained unchanged, that is simply unrealistic and unwarranted for anyone to ask of any given culture.

It is not a claim that nothing survived, because science and anthropologists keep confirming details on various oral stories and practices maintained and shared regionally and by various families/communities across the Caribbean.

Unidentified Taíno artist, Kuisa [Purification implements], c. 1200–1500, bone, approximately 22 cm high (El Museo del Barrio, New York). Speakers: Dr. Lee Sessions, Permanent Collections Associate Curator, El Museo del Barrio and Dr. Tamara Calcaño, University of Puerto Rico. Warning: this video contains a discussion of vomiting in a ritual context but may be upsetting to some viewers. Transcript is under cut.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, (2014), La tierra como pedagogía: inteligencia nishnaabeg y transformación rebelde, Translation by Sol Aréchiga Mantilla, «t-e-e» 30, El Taller de Ediciones Económicas, Guadalajara, 2022 (pdf here) [Licencia de Producción entre Pares]

Like yeah. "Education should be free for everyone", but the point here I am trying to making is the inherent cruelty in making sure that the only people who get to """study""" us - AREN'T us.

generation

Its called “Ni muy tristona, ni muy tristona: testimonios de mujeres paipai y kumiai de Baja California”, It’s only in Spanish (although i could love to make an English translation for it), and its a recollection of testimonies of Yumano nation women that lived on Baja California.

Here’s a better summary (which I wrote too!!!):

 “A recollection of various testimonies conducted by Doctor Mario Alberto Magaña, made to five indigenous women of the Yumano groups: Anacleta Albañez Higuera, Manuela Aguiar Carrillo, Ernestina Albañez Vega, Francisca Ochoa Montaño, y Teodora Cuero Robles. These recollections are vital keepsakes of the collective memory of these groups, as they are some of the most overlooked indigenous people, and their culture and history are not only extremely undocumented, but it is also currently in huge risk of becoming extinct due to various social and political issues. “

Here is the Archive.org link

I also just found a link to the pdf that was uploaded by the Baja California Sur Archive. I do not know how old this archive is as it wasn’t around when I uploaded it to Archive.org, but im including it too lmao