...one commenter argued that knowledge is knowledge and therefore the subject position of the teacher is irrelevant. Knowledge is, however, political when it determines what is thinkable and who can produce it. Knowledge is, however, oppressive when Indigenous peoples do not have access to the knowledge produced about us, when such knowledge produces us as subjects. Knowledge is, however, problematic when white people aren’t accountable to Indigenous peoples and don’t unsettle the colonial history through which settler life-ways are already Indigenous death-ways. Knowledge is, however, empowering when an Indigenous academic teaches me about our shared histories of being Indigenous, of what it means to embody and live indigeneity — to unbecome a site of settler coloniality. So, no, I don’t think white people should be teaching Native Studies. This, I argue, would constitute an epistemic violence whereby whiteness is re-centered as the objective subject position, as the site from which indigeneity is rendered knowable. I call on white academics in Native Studies to question their own complicity in white pedagogies, in making the history of indigeneity a site of whiteness. What brought you to Native Studies? What keeps you there? How does your tenure withhold tenure from Indigenous academics? Should you instead be talking about settler identity politics? Of settler colonialism and its discontents?
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 22:39:24 +0000
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