Re-envisioning resurgence: Indigenous pathways to decolonization and sustainable self-determination

Amidst ongoing, contemporary colonialism, this article explores Indigenous pathways to decolonization and resurgence with an emphasis on identifying everyday practices of renewal and responsibility within native communities today.  How are decolonization and resurgence interrelated in struggles for Indigenous freedom?  By drawing on several comparative examples of resurgence from Cherokees in Kituwah, Lekwungen protection of camas, the Nishnaabe-kwewag “Water Walkers” movement, and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) revitalization of kalo, this article provides some insights into contemporary decolonization movements. The politics of distraction is operationalized here as a potential threat to Indigenous homelands, cultures and communities, and the harmful aspects of the rights discourse, reconciliation, and resource extraction are identified, discussed, and countered with Indigenous approaches centered on responsibilities, resurgence and relationships. Overall, findings from this research offer theoretical and applied understandings for regenerating Indigenous nationhood and restoring sustainable relationships with Indigenous homelands.

Responsive Research in an Era of Reconciliation

Dr. Jeff Corntassel is a writer, teacher and father from the Tsalagi (Cherokee) Nation and is Wolf Clan. He was the first to represent the Cherokee Nation as a delegate to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples. He is editor of the collection, *Everyday Acts of Resurgence: People, Places, Practices* (Daykeeper Press, 2018). Jeff Corntassel received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and is currently Associate Professor at the University of Victoria and Associate Director of the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-Led Engagement. His research and teaching interests focus on the intersection between sustainable self-determination, community resurgence, climate change and wellbeing. Dr. Jacqueline Quinless is a settler whose family origins are rooted to the communities of Secunderbhad and Hyderabad India. She works as Director of Research at Quintessential Research Group, which is a community, informed research practice specializing in environmental impacts, health and wellness research and gender-based analysis. Her forthcoming book is *Unsettling Conversations: Decolonizing Everyday Research Practices (University of Toronto Press) . This event will focus on the 94 recommendations of 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Canada and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), endorsed by the United States in 2010. In addition, how the relationship between Responsive Research, Indigenous nations and community partnerships can lead to more culturally informed socio-economic, health and environmental outcomes addressed. The event is sponsored by UAA Alaska Native Studies, the National Resource Center for Alaska Native Elders (NRC-ANE), and UAA Campus Bookstore

Indigenous Peoples and Multicultural Citizenship: Bridging the Gap Between Collective and Individual Rights

In what follows we present group rights as portrayed in contemporary theoretical debates; compare this portrayal with some of the claims actually advanced by various indigenous groups throughout the world; and give reasons for preferring the practical to the theoretical treatments. Our findings suggest that liberal-individualist and corporatist accounts of group rights actually agree on the kind of importance that group interests have for persons and on what it is that groups who claim rights are concerned about. Both liberal-individualists and corporatists locate the importance of group interests in the personal psychology of individual group members. As a result, both treat group interests (such as cultural integrity) as not only different in kind from individualized interests such as freedom of expression but as potentially in competition with them. In contrast, the real-world demands of indigenous groups place emphasis on concrete ways in which the preserving of communal life can be important to individuals’ well-being, in addition to the various spiritual and symbolic resources which such life may provide. These practical aspects of communal life make individuals’ group interests a lot like their individualized ones, and so suggest that group rights do not introduce new or distinctive theoretical questions. Instead, group rights are raise familiar questions about how individuals’ interests ought to be balanced against one another when they are in competition; what counts as an adequate institutional structure for the instantiation of a right; and who ought to be recognized as an authoritative judge of whether a right has been respected

Indigenous Storytelling, Truth-telling, and Community Approaches to Reconciliation

Indigenous Storytelling, Truth-telling, and Community Approaches to Reconciliatio

Unsettling settler colonialism: The discourse and politics of settlers, and solidarity with Indigenous nations

Our goal in this article is to intervene and disrupt current contentious debates regarding the predominant lines of inquiry bourgeoning in settler colonial studies, the use of ‘settler’, and the politics of building solidarities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Settler colonial studies, ‘settler’, and solidarity, then, operate as the central themes of this paper. While somewhat jarring, our assessment of the debates is interspersed with our discussions in their original form, as we seek to explore possible lines of solidarity, accountability, and relationality to one another and to decolonization struggles both locally and globally. Our overall conclusion is that without centering Indigenous peoples’ articulations, without deploying a relational approach to settler colonial power, and without paying attention to the conditions and contingency of settler colonialism, studies of settler colonialism and practices of solidarity run the risk of reifying (and possibly replicating) settler colonial as well as other modes of domination