Student Interview Series Part II: Jordan Marie Daniel

Jordan Marie Daniel is a Native-American activist intellectual and program and community
specialist whose academic focus is Tribal Law and Policy and working on projects and initiatives
to end violence on Indigenous women. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science,
Native American Studies, and Public Management from the University of Maine. Currently,
Daniel works for the Tribal Law and Policy Institute in Los Angeles, California.

Daniel was born in South Dakota on the Kul Wicasa Oyate/Lower Brule Indian Reservation. At
the age of nine, Daniel moved from South Dakota to Maine and remained there until her
completion of college. In a pre-interview correspondence, Daniel said, “It’s been my dream since
I was in eighth grade to move to DC and be an advocate for Indian country.” In the fall of 2013
Daniel turned that dream into a reality. In DC, Daniel worked for the National Indian Health
Board, Administration for Native Americans under Health and Human Services, and for
Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-ME). Daniel’s philosophy is clear; she is an activist and a
beacon for all minorities experiencing injustice. Daniel stated, “My philosophy is much like my
elders and our way of life, you care for Unci Maka, grandmother earth, you inherently protectand take care of all. It’s not just Native/Indigenous issues I fight for and protect, it’s all people”
(emphasis added).

While working in DC, Daniel gained an insider’s perspective on the flaws and weakness of the
federal government and its relationship with Indian country. In response, Daniel created Native
in DC (now Native Perspectives blog), as a platform to discuss current policy, law, and
initiatives in DC that are significant to Indian country. Continuing her advocacy, at the height of
the #NODAPL (No Dakota Access Pipeline) Movement, Daniel founded the Rising Hearts
Coalition to be a voice for Indian country, organize events, marches, rallies, and schedule
meetings for tribal leaders or members who came to DC to lobby lawmakers and politicians.
Daniel has continued to be an advocate for minorities organizing demonstrations at the
#OccupyInauguration events with Indigenous Leaders, People’s Climate March, Women’s
March, #MeToo March and Rally in Los Angeles, NoPotomacPipeline, and March for Racial
Justice. In addition, she has been a vocal advocate for efforts to stop the KXL Pipeline and
#ChangeTheName campaign in DC against the Washington Football team.

Daniel’s individual and academic background coupled with her work with native non-profit
groups, the federal government, and community organizations gives her a unique perspective to
answer questions concerning American indigenous thought and practice, specifically those
relating to law and policy, contemporary social movements, comparative politics, and political
behavior. Below are Jordan Marie Daniel’s responses to an email interview:

1. Who or what inspired you to study indigenous rights and culture? Why did you
decide to pursue these academic interests through the field of Political Science? What
were the main challenges you faced in undertaking your studies? Who or what offered
the main sources of support?

My family and our culture inspired me to pursue a career working on Native American issues
and initiatives. I wanted to get a minor in Native American Studies because I knew there was
more to learn, that there was more than just my Tribe, and our culture in South Dakota. Also,
it helped fill that homesick feeling in college, when living far away from my family. I was in
Maine and my home is in South Dakota. I wanted to tie together Political Science and
Native Studies, and Public Management, because I know from history that Native Americans
have been at the bottom of the totem pole, in regards to receiving quality health care,
education, and more. Laws in place often exclude Native populations. I wanted to change
that, be a voice and strong advocate for change, to ensure a better future for my relatives and
our future generations.

The main challenge I faced, was not being able to connect with other Natives in my classes,
since there were only a handful of us at the University of Maine. The professors were great
in my Native Studies classes, but professors outside of that didn’t know or understand Tribal
Law. Many of the classes I took were general, focused on American politics and such. I had
to supplement those classes and information with reading books and researching how Native
Americans are included or excluded in policies. Or finding what policies exist already that
need to be improved and enhanced to reflect long-standing systematic problems that still exist. I was lucky to be in a program that gave Native Americans an opportunity for free
tuition. It was an opportunity that changed my life for the better.

2. Do you consider yourself an activist? Why or why not? If so, how does your
scholarly work inform your advocacy and how does your activism inform your
academic scholarship?

I’m often called or labeled an “activist,” but I just love and care so much for my family, my
Indigenous relatives, and all people. I can’t stand to see people excluded, to be on the
receiving end of minimal protective legislative efforts. I can’t stand to see people of color be
treated unfairly. Growing up seeing and experiencing racism, I witnessed a long-standing
problem of misunderstanding, ignorance, and intergenerational racism. I consider myself a
lover of the land and the people. And I’ll do what I can to help make the world a better place
for us. My scholarly work was not just in the classroom and listening to my professors, it
also came from family, our culture, and my tribe. That has helped inform me and those I
speak with and work with to better move the world in the kind of direction I’d like to see for
everyone. There is no, “one size” fits all; we are a country and world of many people and
cultures. There is a way to exist and a way to support each other. So sure, I am an activist,
working to raise awareness of Native Americans and build unity among all people. I engage
the public, I participate in civil disobedience when necessary, and I do a lot of outreach and
engagement on the grassroots level, because we need to be voices and support.

3. How effective are the majority of new programs, policies and initiatives created by
the national government to “help” Native people? What are the responsibilities of the
lawmakers (national government) and states (state government) in ensuring that these
new initiatives are carried out? Where do these efforts typically fall short? Why do
they do so?

First, let’s change your question.  I appreciate you putting “help” in quotes. The vast majority
of these initiatives are to address systematic neglect of and illegal activities perpetrated
against Native peoples in violation of treaty agreements and civil rights. I saw the
movie “Black Panther” and I saw a version of a utopian society that could have existed
had indigenous people, in this case African, not been the focus of aggression and the draining
of resources, both natural and human. Instead of remaining separate, many of our tribes made
agreements, in good faith, with the US government that included access to health, education,
and other essential services. Soon, we were denied these things and were the focus
of systematic government efforts to destroy our culture and disperse our people. These efforts
to steal and destroy indigenous people were, and are, ultimately unsuccessful. But, they
have taken their toll.  Who knows where we would be if the US government had left us to
develop on our own or simply kept their word and dealt with us fairly? 

The disparities between Native and all other groups are widely known. These programs
to “help” us after all of these efforts to destroy us can be looked at as consisting of two
categories: 1) To enforce treaty rights or, 2) to rectify the results of systematic repression and
neglect. Because not much thought is given to the implementation of the few policies we get passed on our behalf, and even less to appropriately resourcing proper implementation, most
of these efforts have marginal effects on their primary goals.

That is an easy question in one way: When legislation is passed, it is the government’s duty
to fund, resource, and enforce its own initiatives, whether it is Tribal, Federal, or State. Since
Tribal governments share a special relationship with State and Federal governments, the
executive responsibilities must be negotiated, articulated, implemented and enforced
accordingly. 

Lawmakers have a special responsibility to Native people, beyond ensuring treaty
obligations. We are human beings. We are not on CNN overnight, Hollywood does not
reflect our lives on screens, and we do not form a huge voting bloc. So, Lawmakers should
rely upon data to guide resources and law rather than respond to loud voices, money, or
press. Where are the bigger problems? Who is suffering and how can it be relieved? If they
were simply to go by the numbers, by the need, instead of the decibels, I think
Indian Country would be much better served. Imagine how different this country would look
if resources were allocated by need rather than lobbying? I call this the difference between
Justice and Just-us. Simply having legislation based upon social justice rather than
a competitive system of issue-targeted advocacy would be a wonderful start!

They fall short at almost every level. Lawmakers are seldom thorough in the laws passed.
Many are passed with vague and non-specific language that hobbles execution. They then are
subject to interpretation that may be orthogonal to the needs of the people in need, or the
intent of the legislation itself! Many are not funded properly. And many are passed without
consideration for the preferences of the Tribes and people they are seeking to “help.”
Tribal governments are sovereign governments. That has to be acknowledged. Native people
come from a number of very diverse contexts with different cultural resources to leverage
toward particular issues. Ignoring Tribal Governments, and the needs of the people the laws
are hoping to effect, adds several challenging layers to constructive implementation across
geographically and culturally diverse populations. These layers are seldom considered or
integrated into the implication plan.

Bureaucracy is also a major impediment. At every level of bureaucracy, someone gets a cut
and inefficiencies are magnified. So, many programs are awarded via a competitive grant
system. However, some tribes have more resources than others. The Tribes with the most
need sometimes have the fewest resources. This effects the dispersion of resources when they
are available. For example, a high needs Tribe may not be able to afford to hire a
professional grant writer while Tribes that are more well-off can. Thus there are problems
when we rely upon a competitive system that assumes a baseline level of proficiency with
respect to something like just writing a grant, rather than data, need, or preference to allocate
resources.

4. To what extent are Native perspectives and people included in the contemporary
fights, including the “Lives Matter”, #MeToo, and LGBTQ movements, for social
justice and political change? How do most of the indigenous people you work with position themselves in relationship to these contemporary social movements? What are
some issues that they think merit more attention in these social movements?

I would say, in recent years, especially since #NoDAPL, that Native Americans/Indigenous
peoples are more involved. But it’s tricky. The involvement of Native Americans in
contemporary fights is either led by Natives (which is the best), or we are asked to be part of
the planning. When we are asked to be part of something, we are either part of the
conversation and organizing, or we are just asked to be sort of a “check in the box.” The
“Check in the box” happens frequently, but provides an opportunity for Natives to correct it,
and have it be a teaching moment for everyone, to not disregard us or invite us just to be the
“Natives” on the invite list. I have seen more involvement and understanding, love and
friendship, not just banding together of activists or social/climate/racial justice fighters.

Other Indigenous organizers and leaders that I have had the honor of working with are
humble and do a very good job at involving everyone. There are some who remain
segregated, which I think hurts our cause and our future. But most want to educate non-
Natives about the 500 plus years of colonization, oppression, and racism. We also want to
educate on the good of our culture and our traditions that are still practiced today, when there
have been many attempts by government and outsiders to keep us from being who we are.
We are evolving into who we are today in terms of who we are culturally. We are caretakers
of the land and all people. That outlook is how I was raised and is how my family sees it.
Some of the issues that were evident in the #NoDAPL fights are treaty rights and human
rights. Treaties that were made between our people and the government have all been
broken. Corporations, the government, and people, have violated and disregarded Treaty of
1868 in Standing Rock to make the Dakota Access Pipeline happen. We have rights, we
have a history, and most often, we are told to get over it, or have to be on the defensive
against racism and assumptions of what non-Natives think of Natives. For example, many
non-Natives think all Natives get free healthcare, that we are all rich off casino money, etc.
We, especially our Native youth today, are working hard to take the lead and change the
narrative of Native Americans in today’s society to actually resemble our successes and
struggles of today.

5. Recently, the Cleveland Indians, an American baseball club, made national
headlines for deciding to replace their longtime logo “Chief Wahoo”. To what extent
are the names and/or logos of major sport teams, such as the Washington, DC NFL
team, discriminatory, racist or bigoted toward Native Americans? What effect do these
logos have on native communities and their self-image?

First off, I’ll say I had nothing to do with this announcement! I only say that because I was
asked, along with my organizers, if we were behind another #CultureJam. According to
Forbes, Rising Hearts is responsible for one of the best parodies/spoofs on the Internet of
2017 of the #GoRedhawks Culture Jam back in December. But back to the Cleveland
Indians logo! It was great to see. It’s a small step but we have far to go to be respected and
to get the media, teams, and schoolbooks, to portray the truth about Indian Country. Chief
Wahoo is a derogatory image and negatively portrays who we are. It gives our youth a false sense of identity. It gives our youth, and our people, an identity placed on us, by people who
are not connected to us and don’t know the history. It just makes for a cool picture and
stereotypical behavior and assumptions. Professional sports teams are using some images
and names to fuel a cool sports campaign. No one in the NFL or from the fan base would
appreciate the Cleveland Indians being called “Cleveland Caucasians” or the Washington
football team being called “Washington Whities” or “Washington Crackers.” Those ideas
would never be brought up in the first place. Sadly, these corporations are glorifying and
romanticizing this imagery and telling us how we should feel about them. Especially when I
was living in DC, I was told by many, in particular from the black community, sometimes in
angry tones, “You should feel honored!” We don’t feel honored. It may not seem like a huge
deal to non-natives, but it is to most people in Indian Country. Some don’t have an opinion.
And a little group likes it, thinking “we are finally acknowledged on something!” Hopefully
we can get them changed. Hopefully we can change the narrative and educate those who may
just not know.

6. Is there a contradiction between the desires of some Native American to be left alone
and, at the same time, to be helped? For example, some Native Americans would like to
receive federal funding, grants and, to a lesser extent, welfare but also demand that
they be left alone. Are the ideas of tribal sovereignty, self-determination and federal
funding compatible?

Again with the word “help.” Do you mean repair, support, or reimburse? We would not
“like” to receive federal funding. We do want the agreements we have made in good faith
fulfilled. Read the agreements made to us by the United States government. Realize that we
would have more accumulated wealth as a people than almost anyone else if those treaties
were properly enforced and the lands returned to us. Above that, Natives should be entitled to
all the other benefits that citizens of the United States receive, since we are citizens of and
subject to your laws. Your question intimates that federal assistance is a “give-away.” We
invented give-aways when we helped the pilgrims and the settlers. We didn’t ask for
anything in return. Empowering a people for self-determination is not a give-away. We will
never get back, as a people, what has been and is still being ripped from us. The current
system needs to empower Natives with the human dignity to flourish in a world devoid of
racism, systemic corruption, and illegal neglect of legal agreements. We have overcome
everything thrown at us. We are still here. I sometimes wonder if people are afraid to give
such a resilient people a level playing field. 

7. In Custer Died for Your Sins Vine Deloria Jr. compares the plight of “the red man”
to that of the black man. To what extent are comparisons between these two groups
valid? How do the differences between ethnicity, race and nation complicate the
comparison between the two? What are the implications of your answer for forming
potential coalitions between Native and African American communities?

It’s easy. We are both groups suffering at the hands of colonization, racism, and efforts to
erase our identities so that we would be more “civilized,” more appropriate to society, from
1492 to even now. I won’t speak for the experiences African Americans have undergone
when they were enslaved in the Americas. I see their struggle today, when organizing. Theyare severely oppressed, facing racism, and their own being murdered at exponentially high
rates by trigger-happy police. However, those rates are just as high in Indian Country. We
have our sisters stolen and murdered, which led to the creation of the #MMIW, the
Missing/Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls movement. I have no real, concrete data to
show, but it’s been happening continuously since 1492. It is the longest standing #MeToo.
Our fights for freedom, for our human rights, to be seen as equal, are similar to those in black
communities, but how we go about it is different. The media never highlights the struggles
of Indigenous Peoples. #NoDAPL finally shed light on our efforts, but Savanna Grey Wind
and Tina Fontaine barely got national attention. Both of them were native and were viciously
murdered. Their murderers were either set free (as with Tina Fontaine’s perpetrator) or the
justice system treats white offenders lightly (as with Savanna GreyWind, although she
pleaded guilty). I think it’s important, when having our communities work together, to
understand that it isn’t a competition for who struggled the most. Sadly. I have seen that in
the grassroots organizing world. We are both powerhouse communities that band together in
time of need. We need to continue and stay together throughout it all, the good and bad.

---

Andrew Cain is a Master’s student in Political Science at the University of Connecticut.
He is interested in Political Theory, especially Black Political Thought, and in exploring
the freedoms and “un-freedoms” of African-Americans past and present. His research
focuses on youth advocacy in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area and
understanding the programs designed to serve, develop, and rehabilitate black
youth. He can be reached at Andrew.cain@uconn.edu. 

We Are Not Tokens for Diversity Brochures: An Open Letter to Lakehead University to Fulfill its Commitment to Diversity, Equality, and Justice

Over the last several weeks, Lakehead University has been subject to controversy regarding the marginalization and lack of institutional support to faculty of colour. This has resulted in the high profile resignation of Angelique EagleWoman, the Dean of the Bora Laskin law school. The first Indigenous dean of a Canadian law school has gained wide support for condemning systemic racism within the university.

Related to this are other professors of colour, especially within the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Humanities, who have quietly announced they are leaving or planning on leaving Lakehead University due to facing systemic racism, hostility from non-racialized students and colleagues, and lack of support from university administration. These professors of colour have played a vital role in providing safe spaces for students of colour to discuss systemic racism and other related forms of inequality. The limited spaces that exist within Lakehead for students of colour to experience being taught by diverse faculty, including Indigenous, racialized women, and queer faculty of colour and other equity seeking groups has limited students’ opportunity to thrive in safe learning environments. These professors of colour have worked in often hostile teaching conditions to open up unique spaces within the classroom to critically explore issues related to the historical trauma and experiences of marginalization that students of colour face.

Just this month, the Canadian Association of University Teachers released a study titled, “Underrepresented & Underpaid Diversity & Equity Among Canada’s Post-Secondary Education Teachers.” In it, the study concludes that despite diversity initiatives, departments are failing to achieve employment and wage equity for academic staff. With this, departments are failing to recruit and hire faculty of colour that reflect the diversity of students they teach. Of particular concern is the finding that Black academics make up only 2% of faculty, while Indigenous academics continue to be significantly underrepresented within postsecondary institutions, making up only 1.4% of all university professors and 3% of college instructors in 2016. This finding is particularly troubling since 5% of undergraduate university students identify as Indigenous and further make up 3.8% of the total labour force. Similarly, a disturbing wage gaps exists between white men and all other groups, and is most significant for racialized women professors who only earn an average of 68 cents for every dollar. We are attentive to the fact that neoliberal shifts have resulted in the declining number of Assistant Professors, shrinking from 10,910 in 2006/07 to 8,544 in 2016/17. Adding to this challenge, Indigenous, Black, racialized women, and other equity seeking post-secondary academics are the least likely to secure full-time, full- year employment.

In the context of these distressing trends, Lakehead has positioned itself as a unique institution that is committed to diversity, equality, and human rights. Lakehead’s websites, brochures, and diversity pamphlets present powerful images of campus diversity. However, one must question if Lakehead is committed to hiring and supporting people of colour beyond tokenistic displays. We challenge Lakehead to meaningfully invest in faculty and departments that will bring Indigenous, racialized, queer, and disabled perspectives and faculty into the classroom and institutions. Current trends demonstrate that Lakehead is not meaningfully advancing the interests of staff, faculty, and students that are experiencing the forms of marginalization that Lakehead benefits from in advertising campaigns.

Of particular interest is Lakehead’s Social Justice Studies Program, which brands itself as a unique learning space: “The program prepares students to work, research and advocate towards a more socially just society which values equality, solidarity and human rights and recognizes the citizenship of
each human being.” We are aware that the SJS program has an upcoming opening for a three-year contractual appointment. The vast majority of courses taught within SJS are being taught by non- racialized professors despite dealing with issues particular to Indigenous peoples and other communities of colour. It is vital for Lakehead to hire and retain Indigenous, Black, and other racialized female faculty to advance critical scholarship and mentor students from equity seeking groups. We are dismayed that core courses that rely upon the pivotal knowledge production from scholars of colour – especially Indigenous and racialized women – are not being taught from these very same groups. It is unacceptable for a program to advertise itself as advancing the interests of equality and human rights, yet have a majority white faculty advancing their academic careers from the knowledge production of largely equity seeking groups that are not hired as full time, full year employment.

The faculty within the SJS program should be doing everything in its power to fulfill its stated goals of researching and advocating towards a more socially just society. We recognize the need for Lakehead to invest in recruiting and retaining staff and faculty of colour from equity seeking communities. Concrete hiring initiatives are pivotal for supporting students’ academic goals and to provide them with the critical tools to support the surrounding Thunder Bay community beyond tokenizing them to perform white academic allyship. This is a prime opportunity for the SJS program to meaningfully reflect its mission statement and seek to recruit diverse faculty to advance its curriculum and support future students of colour.

To Angelique Eaglewoman and all the faculty of colour who have quietly left or are announcing their departure due to forms of structural racism and outright hostility from students and colleagues, it is the hope that Lakehead University will step up to the plate and enforce a robust plan of recruiting and hiring faculty that will reflect the diversity of the student population and surrounding community. It’s time for a change, and we are confident that Lakehead can fulfill its commitment to diversity, equality, and justice.

*** We have decided to remain anonymous in order to retain the freedom to speak frankly about our experiences within the university and to shed light on racialization as a systemic problem rather than reducing it to individual bias.

Student Interview Series Part I: Clint Carroll

Dr. Clint Carroll is an Indigenous political ecologist in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado Boulder. His work deals with issues related to Indigenous environmental sovereignty (particularly in regard to the Cherokee Nation, of which he is a citizen) in settler states and the concept of environmental production, or the way the environment is influenced by the social constructs that govern a people’s relation to it. His book, Roots of Our Renewal (2015), focuses on how Indigenous Americans can employ existing governance models (i.e. the state) in order to practice environmental sovereignty.

I chose to interview him because of my own interest in the concept of sovereignty and how different “ways of knowing” manifest in material or physical terms. I am sympathetic to critiques of sovereignty as a legal form of recognition, but Carroll offers ways to reimagine or reclaim sovereignty on a peoples’ own terms. This kind of practical political solution features throughout Indigenous theorists’ writings: the immediacy of the problem is brought to the fore and theory is forced to contend with what is happening on the ground. This is evident, too, in the notion of “environmental production,” which shows how an epistemological orientation or imaginary shapes the physical landscape in profound ways. The environment is not merely a backdrop against which debates play out; it is inescapably a product of social relations.

Waring: When reflecting on identity and identification, people often observe that the extent to which they feel connected to a particular community fluctuates over time. In some of the earlier narratives that we were reading in class, authors described how, at times, they would embrace their Indigenous identity while, in other moments, they would try to shy away from it because theirs isn’t the dominant culture. I was wondering if your own identification with and connection to the Cherokee Nation fluctuated or evolved over time and, if so, how and why?

Carroll:  OK, I’m just curious. It seems, from these questions, like you’ve read some of my book. I don’t know if Professor Gordon assigned it in class or if you just read it on the side, if it’s something that you sought out on your own.

Waring: So, I haven’t read the book, but I read about the book. I read an article called “Shaping New Homelands.”

Carroll: Okay, got it. That gives me a little bit of a perspective on what works of mine you’ve read. My preface to the book talks a little bit about where I’m coming from as a scholar and my relationship with the communities, and then, on a broader level, the Cherokee Nation as a tribal nation. There’s a lot of history around Native identity as being informed by or affected by colonial policies that attempted to assimilate Native peoples. To varying degrees, you see communities who have experienced relocation, and a lot of times this was the impact of federal policies like termination relocation in the 1950s, and even policies before that that really sought to take families out of tribal communities and therefore encourage assimilation into the mainstream of society. Cherokees have seen a lot of that as well. In my family, it was relocation to California, for jobs in Northern California. Ever since my father and his generation, we’ve been separated from the land base of the nation. I say “land base” intentionally (rather than “homelands”) because we’re a removed tribe, originally from the southeastern United States and what is now North Carolina/eastern Tennessee. All these kinds of histories are really important in thinking about identity formation, leading up to my approach to the work. I was raised in Dallas, Texas. It’s about four and a half hours away from Tahlequah, which is the capital of the Cherokee Nation. Part of the processes of movement was for economic opportunities for my mother and father who relocated there. So I am a first-generation Texan, you know, from Dallas. Some of my upbringing involved reconnecting with family in Oklahoma.

 But it really was the initial experience that I had as an intern fresh out of my BA working for the tribal environmental office that reconnected me in a significant way as an adult. That really starts the story of the book, of how I came to arrive in Oklahoma with an academic background in Anthropology and American Indian Studies. That led to some preliminary field work that eventually informed my graduate studies at Berkeley and the dissertation. So getting at your question, being Cherokee has always been part of my identity, but being raised as part of what we call the “at-large” Cherokee community or, you could say, diaspora, certainly there were elements missing in terms of the cultural, linguistic, place-based parts of my identity. These formed later on when I was doing that deep ethnographic work. Acknowledging these colonial histories and the work of reconnecting brought about the work as a whole.

Waring: That caused you to reconceive of your own place in the broader scheme of things?

Carroll: Well, I would be a citizen of the Cherokee Nation regardless of my interaction with the community. By and large, Cherokee people, or at least citizens of the Cherokee Nation who live outside of the state, outside of the tribal land-base, go back and connect with family to the extent possible. My extended family, my immediate family, and I would have that connection regardless. But I think my work, in terms of its focus on culture, language, place, ecology, and politics informed my ongoing identity-formation processes and my own understanding of my position within my nation. For someone who was born and raised in a Cherokee community, that’s a different subjectivity from what I will ever have. But, at the same time, as a nation, we’re all pretty aware of differing political, social, and cultural identities within our pretty diverse national community.

Waring: What prompted you to start thinking about the issues of sovereignty and its relation to ecology

Carroll: It was a strong emphasis in my undergraduate education that, in turn, made me direct my attention back home, as it were. I say “home,” in the sense that I consider the Cherokee Nation my home just as much as I do Longmont, Colorado or Dallas, Texas. But, turning my attention back home was informed by other environmental anthropology projects that I’d been working on. It prompted a lot of questions for me: How can I apply this type of training to communities back home and what kind of difference will it offer? What kind of difference will it make? What will it offer the people?

Waring: Given that you’ve now been working on these issues for years, how do you conceive of that relationship?

Carroll: Well, there’s definitely a connection between sovereignty and the ability to protect tribal lands or the ability to enable the flourishing of local ecology. The way that sovereignty is wielded by tribal nations to assert claims to land will, in some cases, seek to conserve these landscapes in a way that preserves cultural “resources,” for lack of a better term. That’s one of the reasons why I, in the book especially, engage this conversation between Native American and Indigenous studies and political ecology. That engagement, from these two different approaches, really drives the book as a whole in terms of looking at how the Cherokee Nation specifically, but also more broadly how Indigenous nations, are using sovereignty or articulating sovereignty. In the case of the Cherokee Nation, this articulation is on a nation-state formation and that defines our sovereignty. We have a Secretary of State and we have this tribal governmental apparatus that presents this political positionality as a nation-state. These types of dominant formations are based, at least in their origins, in Europe. But how can Indigenous nations in North America wield these tools in ways that ultimately protect culture, but also connections to land, plants, and other-than-human beings? That’s the way I see this relationship between sovereignty and ecology and political ecology as a field.  Political ecology is a field that I spent a lot of time exploring through my coursework and my relationship with my primary advisor as a grad student at Berkeley in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. The questions are, What is this approach to environmental issues missing in terms of engagement with Native communities? By and large, even though Native studies is critical of sovereignty and the baggage that it carries philosophically in regard to it being a term of European origin, there’s still an emphasis on sovereignty because in our settler-colonial reality tribal sovereignty is always vulnerable. So how do you go about defending tribal sovereignty? How do you go about upholding and asserting tribal sovereignty? If you put that up against political ecology, which tends to be highly critical of ecological sovereignty in terms of how the dominant state system tends to marginalize and oppress internal minorities, including Indigenous peoples and peasant populations, it creates an interesting dialogue. How can we use the tools of political ecology as well as Native studies, both being interdisciplinary fields, in order to really understand our contemporary issues as Indigenous nations in the United States and the type of work that we’re doing to protect tribal lands and resources?

Waring: I’ve been reconsidering how claims to sovereignty or claims based on sovereignty are always very complicated. So it’s interesting to hear the concept of sovereignty applied to political ecology.

Carroll: There’s a scholar who I engage with in the book named Thom Kuehls. He critiques making environmental claims in relation to sovereignty. My perspective acknowledges that there is certainly a lot of baggage that comes with that political claim to sovereignty, but that it can be used in many different ways according to Indigenous nations that have a very different understanding of what sovereignty means, or at least are able to articulate it very differently.

Waring: So it’s kind of like redefining or reconceiving the existing terms.

Carroll: That’s the way I see it. The meaning of sovereignty is not a given. In our own field of Native studies, we have scholars who are highly critical of that term, and rightly so. It’s an important discussion to engage in as far as identifying some of the critiques of these vehicles or tools that we’re using to further Indigenous claims.

Waring: That brings us to the next question. Obviously land is really important to Indigenous studies, Native studies, and questions of colonialism and occupation. In different texts there are different conceptions of a people’s relation to the land. I’m wondering whether, in your view, there is an authentic relationship to the land or one that is proper or natural as discovered in Native American or Indigenous thought or whether there are competing claims and one could be better depending on certain goals that one has?

Carroll: We have to acknowledge stereotypes and romanticism, and this idea of the ecologically noble savage that can overshadow real, deeply political claims. I think that Indigenous philosophies and perspectives toward the land are distinctive from dominant Western ones in the sense of how these dominant, Western philosophies or perspectives toward land have evolved over time. You could highlight, as we often do in the field of Native studies, the European Enlightenment and how the ways dominant philosophers came to define land—in the Lockean sense of property based on the individual’s work; mixing labor with the land to create property—evolved and really informs and buttresses capitalism. You can identify a radically different understanding of land in many Indigenous perspectives throughout the globe as emphasizing relationships, reciprocity, and respect. The term “land” contains myriad relationships that Indigenous peoples and communities are engaging with. How do you acknowledge gifts from the land and therefore offer some sort of reciprocal exchange when taking from the land? That’s something that is entirely absent from capitalist thought, even if things are changing, with environmental studies and the greening of Christianity, for example. But still there are some radically different notions between Western thought and Indigenous thought in regard to land. So I think it’s worth emphasizing that while romanticized and deterministic understandings of Native peoples in relationship to the land can be identified and critiqued, it can be a slippery slope. When you hear Indigenous people attempting to articulate via the dominant language or discourse a true or, I guess you could say, authentic Indigenous connection to a place, it’s not necessarily coming from this kind of cynical leverage of stereotypes. I’m happy to refer you to other sources that I’m drawing upon there. That conversation is also in the preface to the introduction of the book.

Waring: Is there a distinct ontological position associated with an Indigenous conception of the land when compared to Western or enlightenment conceptions?

Carroll: It’s a really interesting question. Many of the most pressing problems are ontological by nature. However, I think the changes in the way dominant institutions and nation-states approach environmental issues don’t necessarily require a new ontology. I think that the recognition of other ontologies and really the affordance of their legitimacy is at the root of how dominant perspectives and policies might better account for alternative approaches to environmental management and governance. I’m thinking in terms of anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena and her work in the Andes of Peru and the way that she describes this engagement between Indigenous spiritual leaders who are advocating on behalf of earth-beings.  For instance, mountains that have personhood, mountains that are recognized in Quechua culture or ontology as having agency, and how that does or does not get taken up by the Peruvian state. There is the denial of the legitimacy of those claims, that type of what she calls cosmopolitical landscape.  But one of her arguments I agree with is that what’s needed is not complete buy-in or adoption or even a hybrid ontology. What’s necessary is the legitimacy or the legitimating of voices of Indigenous peoples that have a lot to say about these types of global politics.

So part of the problem is the complete eschewal of Indigenous thought, theory, or ontology, and relationships to place and other-than-human beings. In New Zealand, the Whanganui River has been established as a person, legally speaking. There has been a legal recognition of the Whanganui River’s personhood. What does that say in relation to typical Western approaches toward the environment? It was highly informed by Maori Indigenous thought and relationships to this river, and I see it as being one of these huge statements that provides this glimpse at what an alternative might look like in terms of the relationship between settler societies, settler states, Indigenous peoples, and the land. It doesn’t necessarily require a new ontology, but it definitely requires that Indigenous voices are given equal standing in this political realm.

Waring: Would that play into what you were saying about sovereignty, that, for instance, they had to articulate the river as a person in a legal sense, in order for them to have legitimate rights? That would be articulating one’s view in the language of the state?

Carroll: There are many different opinions about this issue. If you go to other scholars in Indigenous studies, you’re going to find different approaches, some of which may advocate for completely divesting and disengaging from the state and proposing to focus on the revitalization or indigenization our own pre-colonial governance structures. But, I think, if you go that route completely, you’re missing a huge opportunity to engage. I would say my perspective is somewhere in the middle ground where the work that I do is grounded in cultural revitalization and reindigenization of our own governance structures, but in ways that strategically engage with state forms of governance, state-based resource management, or environmental governance. I think this is related to the previous response that I gave in terms of how tribes are navigating this political landscape, articulating sovereignty, and articulating relationship responsibilities, including, for example, translating into policy and law the responsibility to treat the Whanganui river as a person-being.

Waring: In The Fourth World, George Manuel makes reference to a people’s birthright. I’m wondering how you understand the relationship between a people’s claim to land and their birth or ancestry? Is this the basis on which Native claims to land should be made or is it more about proper stewardship or the relationship to the land?

Carroll: I haven’t read that book, but, in reference to this specific argument, I would say that this idea of birthright clearly has very nationalistic implications. There’s something to be said about ancestry and how that situates Indigenous peoples in relation to the land, but I also think that there are good opportunities to think beyond nationalism as a birthright. Vine Deloria, Jr. oftentimes advocated, instead of looking at rights, to look at responsibilities. I’m drawing from that approach. With that said, I don’t think that this idea of nationalistic birthright and relationship responsibilities are necessarily mutually exclusive. The idea of maintaining responsibilities to the land tempers the simplistic notion that someone has a birthright to a particular claim which I think can also be problematic and play into a liberal understanding of political subjectivity, where rights are found in the individual. I think birthright is slippery. 

Certainly ancestry, for example, as in the Cherokee Nation, plays a role in how we define ourselves as nations and what connects us and makes us who we are. But there’s something missing when that’s an exclusive focus. When you think about it on solely the individual or individualistic level, there are many folks who are uninformed about ancestral knowledge or values. How can you make a certain claim when that knowledge is lacking? In a similar way, there are other articulations of nationhood that we would be missing out on if the individual and this idea of birthright were privileged over, for example, adoption or the naturalization of other individuals into the Cherokee Nation. I’m not necessarily advocating for that, but I’m saying these are other ways of looking at how to define a nation as an extended network of relationships rather than just a Euro-Western model that comes with this individual perspective or, as you say, a birthright.

Waring: If we’re emphasizing a people’s relationship to the land and responsibilities rather than rights, do you consider a people’s connection to land, including those responsibilities to it, as essential to its culture?

Carroll: The short answer is yes, but not deterministically so. The idea that land or environment determines a people’s culture is an antiquated theory in anthropology, most often referred to as “cultural ecology.” We typically point to Julian Steward, who put this theory forth. It’s not necessarily all bad, but there are problems when you say that a specific landscape determines a specific people’s culture. So acknowledging that caveat, I think, yes, for Indigenous peoples, land is central not only to culture but to the future integrity of Indigenous communities as peoples and nations. This idea is pretty widely shared among scholars in the field for a variety of reasons, but, this is fundamentally about that relationship to other-than-human beings as informing Indigenous cultural outlooks or ontological views. The expropriation of land often went hand-in-hand with the U.S. government’s attempts at Native assimilation. The allotment policy in the late 1800s, which divided up tribal land bases into systems of private individualized property, went hand-in-hand with assimilation policies like the boarding school system. So yes, land is a foundational part of Indigenous peoplehood, but it’s not necessarily, as in the case of Cherokees in Oklahoma, that these territories are our homelands. They are places that we have forged a connection to through the establishment of relationships and also the processes of land tenure and land management that were developed by Cherokee people and in governance institutions. So, the short answer is yes, this connection to land and place is one of the pillars of Indigenous peoplehood, but, at the same time, acknowledging that there’s environmental determinism that I don’t want to imply.

Waring: That brings me to the last question. You emphasize the value of Indigenous self-determination. I’m wondering how you define this concept, mainly because I’m thinking a lot about communist perspectives, that there were debates in the early 20th century between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin about self-determination and whether or not it, as a principle, is at the heart of all emancipatory politics. “There’s not a particular content to self-determination” is one argument, with the implication that it is not enough because you can have self-determination with exploitative content. So I’m wondering, in your view, is Indigenous self-determination the goal at the very center of an emancipatory project, or is it simply one of many fundamental or orienting aims or principles?

Carroll: The development and ultimate ratification of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is really significant in how it highlights these questions around self-determination. I wrote a piece called “Articulating Indigenous Statehood,” that speaks directly to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples regarding not only how these instruments developed, but also the shortcomings of this instrument of international law. The idea around the “s” in “peoples” was a contentious debate because Indigenous People or Indigenous Peoples defines if you’re looking at this global, more liberal understanding of minority populations within nation-states or if you’re looking at collectivities. I think that debate around the rights of collectivities versus the rights of individuals is really key. There are a lot of shortcomings with the UNDRIP because of its complete lack of acknowledgement of Indigenous sovereignty. It uses the term “self-determination” at the expense of acknowledging sovereignty. That’s where it gets sticky in terms of having efficacy for Indigenous nations who find themselves in settler colonial societies like the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. To get back to the question, I think my definition of the concept would draw on some of the standard ones: the ability to make free decisions, determine the future of the people collectively, of being able to fulfill certain relationship responsibilities with the land and non-human beings. I’m not really familiar with the debate you referenced.

Waring: Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg.

Carroll: Oh, Rosa Luxemburg. I think that self-determination, as I’ve defined it, does have a central role to play in liberatory politics for Indigenous peoples. I would reference a statement that I make in the introduction to my book in terms of looking at the political as environmental. In a nutshell, many, if not all, of the political issues for Native nations in the United States and in North America are connected to our relationship to the land and to the degree that we’re able to assert those relationship responsibilities with land.

 My best way of getting at the question is pointing back to that. My answer would be yes, self-determination is central. It may not be the only avenue, but I think that if we think about self-determination as it’s been articulated by Indigenous nations, that opens up a spectrum of possibilities.

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Dabney Waring is a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Connecticut. His interests include automation in relation to Marxism, legal theory, and subject formation in the context of hegemony.

Consciousness-Raising?

            Critical White Studies scholars work to counteract the “invisibility” of whiteness
through consciousness-raising. Consciousness-raising, as defined by bell hooks, is the act
of learning and teaching about a “system of domination, how it became institutionalized
and how it is perpetuated and maintained” (hooks 2000, 7). Similar to early feminists’
struggles to raise consciousness about patriarchal domination, Critical White Studies
scholars aim to raise consciousness in white people about the structure of white
supremacy and their position of power through white privilege (McIntosh 2002, 97).
Barbara Flagg characterizes white “dysconsciousness” as the “transparency phenomenon:
the tendency of whites not to think about whiteness, or norms, behaviors, experiences or
perspectives that are white specific” (Flagg 1997, 269). This lack of awareness is a
consequence of the invisibility of whiteness, which is often understood in oppositional
terms to blackness (Grillo and Wildman 1997). Ruth Frankenberg suggests that “the more
one scrutinizes it, the more the notion of whiteness as an unmarked norm is revealed to
be a mirage or indeed, to put even more strongly, a white delusion” (Frankenberg 2001,
73).
          Whether understood as invisible, delusional, or transparent, most Critical White
Studies scholars agree that there is a general white “dysconsciousness” that needs to be
taken seriously to “foster racial justice;” that we need to “look for ways to diffuse
transparency’s effects and to relativize previously unrecognized white norms” (Flagg
1997, 630). Peggy McIntosh “led the way” in creating consciousness-raising techniques
through her conceptualization of “the invisible knapsack” of white privilege (Rothenberg
2002). McIntosh states that white privilege is “an invisible package of unearned assets,which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain
oblivious” (McIntosh 2002, 97). McIntosh then lists examples of everyday occurrences
that white folks take for granted, which include the following among many others:

5. I can turn on the television or open the front page of the paper and see
people of my race widely represented.
7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify
to the existence of their race.
21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work
against me.
46. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in ‘flesh’ color and have them
more or less match my skin. (McIntosh 2002, 98-99)

Even though many examples listed should be obvious, white hegemony shields many
white folks from obvious structures of social inequality and more importantly protects
them “from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence” (McIntosh 2002, 100).
          When Critical White Studies scholars work to raise consciousness to “undo the
invisibility of whiteness,” it demonstrates a preoccupation with the white condition
(Mahoney 1997, 462). Also, “the declaration that we must see whiteness… assumes that
whiteness is unseen in the first place” (Ahmed 2004, 15). People of color know about
whiteness. People of color have always known about whiteness. People of color have
resisted and communicated the horrors of white supremacy time and time again. So, what
does this say about Critical White Studies? To raise-consciousness is to regurgitate the
words of Black feminists amongst ourselves (white folks) until we legitimize and “hear”
what people of color, or more specifically, African American women have been saying
all along. In order to remain critical, we must acknowledge that one of Critical White
Studies’ key anti-racist strategies is to tell white people what everyone else already
knows. Teaching and understanding white privilege is undoubtedly important to have any
hope for white involvement in abolishing white supremacy. However, it is evident that
consciousness-raising as social justice is limited by re-centering whiteness in Critical
Race Theory. Grillo and Wildman explain that whites re-centering whiteness is a product
of white supremacy:

White supremacy creates in whites the expectation that issues of concern to them
will be central in every discourse. The center stage problem occurs because the
dominant group members are accustomed to being center stage. They have been
treated that way by society; it feels natural comfortable, and in the order of things.
(Grillo and Wildman 1997, 621)

In order to counteract Critical White Studies’ center stage problem, we must unlearn the
white dominant narrative that convinces us that our histories and lives are the norm and must be at the center.

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Lauren A. Martin is a second year law student at Wake Forest University and a Senior Justice Law Fellow for the Decarceration Collective, an anti-carceral law firm based out of Chicago.