Reconstructing (de)Colonial Deconstruction

First deconstruction: love in hand

be a jack-of[F]-all-ndns

Second deconstruction: rebooting

i have made a life of s[c]ham[e]
[ctrl]definesshame: a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness
of wrong or foolish behaviour
[alt]definescham: etymologically shame comes from an indo-euro word which referred to
covering the face
[del]definesham: falsely present something as the truth; bogus; false; a pillow sham

Third deconstruction: re(pair)

so i've decided to break it
in - dig - e - nous
nóein, nóēsis, niyanán

niyanán - we/us (excluding you); kiyánaw (incl.) = we/us (including you)

First Reconstruction: the setting

instead i dance in pool halls to rihanna
"bitch better have my money"
wait for the sharks to get horny
get them off for another beer
reassure them that everyones a little gay
honey-boo-boo even told me so
channel app to exoticate myself
be a jack-of[F]-all-ndns
"thank you, come again"
tell him, "hey bo'
this is treaty 1 territory
so you may as well treat yourself too"

Second Reconstruction: the set

I'm not sure i like the word "indigenous"
when it simply divides, crippled, dying
by fighting each other to hold its hand
so I've decided to break it
in - dig - e- nous
nóein, nóēsis, niyanán
bound by the wounds that tell our stories
feeling love & pain together
indigeniety can encompass so much more
if we interject, intersect, interlay
not compete or compare
share, grow together, sideways
woven together like kokums hair
braided, queer & punk
channelling our minds
like a honeycomb
to bind, break, reclaim
reject the greed fingers
of settler colonialism

Third Reconstruction: ctrl+alt+del - transforms from

Joshua Whitehead
Full-Metal Indigiqueer

First Deconstruction - "april 5: pass[hang]over"
Second Deconstruction - "to my mister going to bed"
Third Deconstruction - "the hive"
First Reconstruction - "april 5: pass[hang]over"
Second Reconstruction - "the hive"

And so for day 2164
15.11.2012

Food

I just finished reading Eden Robinson, The Sasquatch at home: traditional protocols and modern storytelling. There is a passage that put me in mind of the important ongoing work on food security.

Economics

[...] mentally taking notes about the irony of food fishing in the imperial era of McDonald's. For instance, you have to [be] fairly well-off to eat traditional Haisla cuisine. Sure, the fish and game are free, but after factoring in fuel, time, equipment, and maintenance of various vehicles, it's cheaper to buy frozen fish from the grocery store than it is to physically go out and get it.

Ecology & Culture

If the oolichans don't return to our rivers, we lose more than a species. We lose a connection with our history, a thread of tradition that ties us to this particular piece of the Earth, that ties our ancestors to our children.

Spent a lovely hour with the 49 pages of these lectures/stories delivered at the University of Alberta in 2011 thanks to the non-circulating Toronto Reference Library — nice surroundings and always stocked.

And so for day 1915
11.03.2012

Suspension Before Entanglement

N. Martin Nakata, Victoria Nakata, Sarah Keech & Reuben Bolt
"Decolonial goals and pedagogies for Indigenous studies"
Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol. 1 No. 1 2012

At the introductory level, we do not dispute the usefulness of presenting the Indigenous-settler relation in binary terms. Nor do we dispute, that non-Indigenous students in the course of their learning need to or will be confronted and "unsettled". But we would suggest, initially at least, teaching the practice of "suspension " viz., suspension of pre-suppositions and suspension of foregone conclusions while engaging the implications of the knowledge interface for Indigenous analysis, Indigenous resistance, Indigenous knowledge revitalization, Indigenous practices, and Indigenous futures. This is [a] disruptive but intellectualized practice of a less personalized nature which still engages students in the politics of knowledge production and ultimately the politics of their location and of social reproduction. It is not an easily mastered practice either and requires academics to think about how to manage dialogue and discussion in lecture rooms so students do not revert to resigned fence-sitting but move on to re-thinking and re-articulating more complex positions. We argue it is a worthwhile skill to develop in students who will graduate into the human service professions which engage Indigenous people and practices at the interface of ongoing knowledge entanglements.

What gains traction here with me is the questioning of binary positioning, the enumeration of analysis, resistance, revitalization, practices and futures, the characterization of the interface as a set of entanglements. There is a whole ecosystem of knowledge production and social reproduction at work here.

And so for day 1911
07.03.2012