Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World through Stories

Theorizing Resurgence from within Nishnaabeg Thought

279 theorizing resurgence from within nishnaabeg thought LeAnne betAsAmOsAKe simPsOn With ednA mAnitOWAbi One of the most crucial tasks presently facing indigenous nations is the continued creation of individuals and assemblages of people who can think in culturally inherent ways. by this, i mean ways that reflect the diversity of thought within our broader cosmologies, those very ancient ways that are inherently counter to the influences of colonial hegemony. i believe we need intellectuals who can think within the conceptual meanings of the language, who are intrinsically connected to place and territory, who exist in the world as an embodiment of contemporary expressions of our ancient stories and traditions, and who illuminate mino bimaadiziwin in all aspects of their lives. Western theory, whether based in postcolonial, critical, or even liberatory strains of thought, has been exceptional at diagnosing, revealing, and even interrogating colonialism; and many would argue that this body of theory holds the greatest promise for shifting the Canadian politic, because it speaks to that audience in a language they can understand, if not hear. Yet Western theories of liberation have for the most part failed to resonate with the vast majority of indigenous peoples, scholars, or artists. in particular, Western-based social movement theory has failed to recognize the broader contextualizations of resistance within indigenous thought, while also ignoring the contestation of colonialism as a starting point. While i believe liberatory theory and politics are always valuable, indigenous thought has the ability to resonate with indigenous peoples of all ages.1 it not only maps a way out of colonial thinking by confirming indigenous lifeways or alternative ways of being in the world. ultimately indigenous theory seeks to 280| Simpson and Manitowabi dismantle colonialism while simultaneously building a renaissance of mino bimaadiziwin. What if this was our collective focus? Part of being indigenous in the twenty-first century is that regardless of where or how we have grown up, we’ve all been bathed in a vat of cognitive imperialism, perpetuating the idea that indigenous peoples were not, and are not, thinking peoples—an insidious mechanism to promote neoassimilation and obfuscate the historic atrocities of colonialism.2 in both subtle and overt ways, the current generation of indigenous peoples has been repeatedly told that individually we are stupid, and that collectively our nations were and are void of higher thought. this is reinforced when the academic industrial complex—often propped up by indian and northern Affairs Canada (inAC)—promotes colonizing education for our children and youth as the solution to dispossession, poverty, violence, and a lack of self-determination in our lives. Cognitive imperialism also rears its ugly head in every discipline every time a student is told that there is no literature or no thinking available on any given topic from within indigenous intellectual traditions. Our elders and knowledge holders have always put great emphasis on how things are done. this reinforces the idea that it is our own tools, strategies, values, processes, and intellect that are going to build our new house. While theoretically we have debated whether Audre Lourde’s statement “the master’s tools can dismantle the master’s house” is correct, i am interested in a different question. i am not so concerned with how we dismantle the master’s house—that is, which sets of theories we use to critique colonialism—but i am very concerned with how we (re)build our own house, or our own houses. i have spent enough time taking down the master’s house, and now i want most of my energy to go into visioning and building our new house. For me, this discussion begins with our creation stories, because these stories set the “theoretical framework,” or give us the ontological context from within which we can interpret other stories, teachings, and experiences .3 these stories and their nishnaabeg context are extremely important to our way of being, and they are told and retold in our communities throughout one’s life. Our children first start to learn nishnaabeg thought and theory through these Aandisokaanan very early in their lives.4 As they travel through the Four hills of Life,5 these teachings deepen and resonate in different ways. benton-banai writes: And so, Anishinaabe can see that if he knows his creation story, if she knows her creation story, they know also how all of life moves. they can know how life Theorizing Resurgence...