Building Transdisciplinary Relationships: Indigenous and German Studies

Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies is published by the University of Toronto Press, located in Tkaronto, the traditional territory of many Indigenous peoples. “For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island,” (University of Toronto) and we, as settler scholars and guests, write from our respective institutions, which are located on the traditional and storied lands of Treaty 6, Treaty 7, and Treaty 13.

This introduction was written by Renae Watchman, Carrie Smith, and Markus Stock. While we worked collaboratively and critiqued each others’ writing, we decided to keep our voices visibly apart. In what follows, Renae’s text will be blue, Carrie’s green, and Markus’s magenta.

As I think about the project ahead, I am looking out my front bay window, watching people jog or walk along the footpath while pelicans, geese, and even a trio of eagles circle overhead, I am struck by how different, yet coexistent we are. We are ostensibly incommensurable. For me as a Diné woman, it is instinctive to evoke the Diné (Navajo) educational and cultural philosophy of Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhóón, “the Diné traditional living system, which places human life in harmony with the natural world and universe” (Diné College). In this introduction, we collectively think, analyze, plan, implement, and reflect on building transdisciplinary relationships, yet our narratives retain distinct positionalities of our own subjective voices and are demarcated as such.

On 1 March 2018, I received an email from Carrie Smith and Markus Stock. As co-editors of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, they wanted to collaborate on what has become this special issue: Building Transdisciplinary Relationships: Indigenous & German Studies. Prompted by the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (December 2015) and the ninety-four “Calls to Action,” Carrie and Markus were ready and willing to embark on a collaborative journey of transformative learning and reflection particular to the field of German Studies and to further seek, query, and critique intersections with Indigenous Studies. The majority of my time (as a cross-appointed associate professor, seconded to a full-time administrative position to lead Indigenization across my institution) is spent on thinking about how incommensurable the mandates are to transform the academy from the inherently oppressive structure that it is, to become a hospitable, welcoming, and safe space for Indigenous people and Indigenous knowledges. I have often said publicly in meetings that we are all responsible for decolonization, but not all of us can do Indigenization. I then (usually) recommend that colleagues and students read Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s 2012 essay, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” wherein they posit an

ethic of incommensurability, which guides moves that unsettle innocence, stands in contrast to aims of reconciliation, which motivate settler moves to innocence. Reconciliation is about rescuing settler normalcy, about rescuing a settler future. Reconciliation is concerned with questions of what will decolonization look like? What will happen after abolition? What will be the consequences of decolonization for the settler? Incommensurability acknowledges that these questions need not, and perhaps cannot, be answered in order for decolonization to exist as a framework. [...] [D]ecolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler futurity. Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity.

(35, authors’ emphasis)

Putting together this special issue on Indigenous and German Studies has been an important, and long-overdue, learning process for me. I am a white, queer woman, with family roots in the US section of the Pacific Northwest that date back to the second expedition of the Oregon Trail. As scholar, educator, leader, and human, I am committed to the feminist principles of social justice. And yet: when, beginning roughly five years ago, statements about the land on which my institution, the University of Alberta, sits and its peoples began appearing at meetings and formal gatherings, I realized that there is so much I must learn about...