Prep

WHITE FRAGILITY

Before we meet to discuss identity: Please familiarize yourself with the concept of White Fragility (if you're not already).

We invite you to listen while Robin DiAngelo explains the term White Fragility to a group of Unitarians. There are some general responses people tend to exhibit when they feel triggered in this way:

• argue

• leave

• get emotional

• deflect, and

• assert individuality are some of the most common.

Consider: What are your fragility triggers? How do you respond when triggered?

IDENTITY

The topic of identity is multifaceted and can be extremely deep, depending on how you approach it.

We’re offering resources in layers with the understanding that you can choose how deep you take your exploration.

Layer 2: Indigenous experiences of identity

The concept of identity is not only a psychological and/or sociological topic for Indigenous peoples but also a highly political and cultural one that in also interwoven into a sense of spirituality and place.

READ: What is Indigenous identity?

READ: Why Continuity of Indigenous Identity is Critical

WATCH: Film: Club Native

EXPLORE: Artist Dana Claxton Website

LISTEN: AUDIO CLIP from REEL INJUN (transcript below)

“….See when they got off the boat they didn’t recognize us. They said, ‘who are you?’

And we said, ‘we are the people, we are the human beings.’

And they said, ‘Oh, Indians,’ because they didn't recognize what it meant to be a human being.

‘I am a human being; this is the name of my tribe, this is the name of my people, but I am a human being.’

But the predatory mentality shows up and starts calling us Indians committing genocide against us, as a vehicle of erasing the memory of being a human being. So they used war, textbooks, history books, and when film came along, they used film. Even in our own communities, how many of us are fighting to protect our identity of being an Indian, and 600 years ago, that word Indian, that sound was never made. On this hemisphere that noise was never ever made. Ever. And we are trying to protect that as an identity, you see, so it affects all of us. It’s reached a point evolutionarily speaking we’re starting to not recognize ourselves as human beings. We’re too busy trying to protect the idea of being a Native American or an Indian, but we are not Indians and we are not Native Americans. We are older than both concepts. We are the people, we are the human beings.” John Trudell, Lakota poet and activist, Reel Injun

‘Thank you for making me a human being! It makes my heart say, a world without human beings has no centre to it.’...”

Layer 4: Decolonizing identity

This section invites you to look at how someone might go about actively decolonizing their sense of identity.

READ: Reclaiming my Indigenous Identity and Emerging Warrior- An Autoethnography

RE_READ: Colonization and Identity: (selection from Understanding Colonization document)

Colonization is a process of conquest whereby one nation establishes a colony on another nation’s territory with the intent of taking power, land, and resources. Indigenous peoples have been resisting colonization since the beginning of the European/Aboriginal relationship. European colonialism dates from the fifteenth century onwards, and involved the brutal establishment of European sovereignty on stolen non-European territory. Colonialism is not only about material accumulation but requires the production of ideologies that justify the theft and violent practices at its root.

The Colonization Process has been described in 7 aspects:

1. The incursion of the colonizing group into a geographical area

2. Destructive effect on the social and cultural structures of the Indigenous group

3. External political control

4. Economic dependence

5. Provision of low quality services for the colonized (Indigenous Peoples)

6. Racism and the establishment of a colour line

7. The ultimate consequence is to weaken resistance (of Indigenous Peoples) to the point they can be controlled