Abridged and adapted with permission from “First Words,” in Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2005. The full text of this chapter as well as other articles by Alfred and discussions about his ideas can be found at http://www.taiaiake.com
Taiaiake Alfred teaches in the Indigenous Governance Program at University of Victoria. Deborah Simmons teaches Native Studies at University of Manitoba, and is a member of the New Socialist Group.
Taiaiake Alfred has been called by my indigenous collaborators in Winnipeg a true “pan-indigenous leader.” Firmly rooted in his own Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) heritage, his recent writings and orations also appeal to all indigenous peoples and their non-indigenous allies on the Left to build a radical alternative to this society divided by race, class and gender. This is the task of the warrior described in his recently published book Wasáse: Indigenous Paths of Action and Freedom. As Alfred put it in a recent lecture at the University of Manitoba, “Given the reality we face in the communities, how could you not want to be a warrior?”
It is no coincidence that the cover image for Wasáse closely parallels the poster of Malcolm X titled “By Any Means Necessary.” Alfred follows in the footsteps of Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon and Howard Adams, while at the same time aiming to develop a collectivized strategy for resurgence that is rooted in the contemporary experiences of aboriginal communities.
Alfred’s own history has been one of intensive experiential learning, informed by elders whose formative political experience was the Red Power movement of the 1970s; by his experience as a Marine in Honduras; by his participation in the Kanien’kehaka movement to achieve economic self-sufficiency through extra-legal means; by the rebellion at Oka Quebec in 1990; and by his subsequent involvement in self-government negotiations. Each of his publications has marked significant evolution of his thinking in dialogue with other indigenous activists in Canada and beyond about the nature of self-determination, as well as an expanded understanding of the crucial role that aboriginal youth will play in leading the movements for change.
In a recent note about his contribution to this magazine, Alfred wrote of his hope that “some day soon our shared commitments and views and values will form the basis of a new movement to displace the collaborationists and capitalists that have become our ‘leaders.’” The protests against the recent First Ministers Meeting on Aboriginal Affairs were an indicator that such a movement can be built; now is the time for socialists to deepen our understanding of aboriginal oppression in Canada in order to build solidarity in fighting it. - Deborah Simmons
Indigenous resurgence and the new warrior
By Taiaiake Alfred
It is time for our people to live again. This writing is a journey on the path made for us by those who have found a way to live as Onkwehonwe, original people. The journey is a living commitment to meaningful change in our lives and to transforming society by recreating our existences, regenerating our cultures, and surging against the forces that keep us bound to our colonial past. It is the path of struggle laid out by those who have come before us; now it is our turn, we who choose to turn away from the legacies of colonialism and take on the challenge of creating a new reality for ourselves and for our people.
The journey and this warrior’s path is a kind of Wasáse, a ceremony of unity, strength, and commitment to action. Wasáse is an ancient Rotinoshonni (Iroquois Confederacy) war ritual, the Thunder Dance. The new warrior’s path, the spirit of Wasáse, this Onkwehonwe attitude, this courageous way of being in the world – all come together to form a new politics in which many identities and strategies for making change are fused together in a movement to challenge white society’s control over Onkwehonwe and our lands.
Wasáse, as I am speaking of it here, is symbolic of the social and cultural force alive among Onkwehonwe dedicated to altering the balance of political and economic power to recreate some social and physical space for freedom to re-emerge. Wasáse is an ethical and political vision, the real demonstration of our resolve to survive as Onkwehonwe and to do what we must to force the Settlers to acknowledge our existence and the integrity of our connection to the land.
There are many differences among the peoples that are indigenous to this land, yet the challenge facing all Onkwehonwe is the same: regaining freedom and becoming self-sufficient by confronting the disconnection and fear at the core of our existences under colonial dominion. We are separated from the sources of our goodness and power: from each other, our cultures, and our lands. These connections must be restored. Governmental power is founded on fear, which is used to control and manipulate us in many ways; so, the strategy must be to confront fear and display the courage to act against and defeat the state’s power.
The first question that arises when this idea is applied in a practical way to the situations facing Onkwehonwe in real life is this: How can we regenerate ourselves culturally and achieve freedom and political independence when the legacies of disconnection, dependency, and dispossession have such a strong hold on us? Undeniably, we face a difficult situation. The political and social institutions that govern us have been shaped and organized to serve white power and they conform to the interests of the states founded on that objective. These state and Settler-serving institutions are useless to the cause of our survival, and if we are to free ourselves from the grip of colonialism, we must reconfigure our politics and replace all of the strategies, institutions, and leaders in place today.
The transformation will begin inside each one of us as personal change, but decolonization will become a reality only when we collectively both commit to a movement based on an ethical and political vision and consciously reject the colonial postures of weak submission, victimry, and raging violence. It is a political vision and solution that will be capable of altering power relations and rearranging the forces that shape our lives. Politics is a force that channels social, cultural, and economic powers and makes them imminent in our lives. Abstaining from politics is like turning your back on a beast when it is angry and intent on ripping your guts out.
It is the kind of politics we practise that makes the crucial distinction between the possibility of a regenerative struggle and what we are doing now. Conventional and acceptable approaches to making change are leading us nowhere. Submission and cooperation, which define politics as practised by the current generation of Onkwehonwe politicians, are, I contend, morally, culturally, and politically indefensible and should be dismissed scornfully by any right-thinking person and certainly by any Onkwehonwe who still has dignity.
I pay little attention to the conventional aspects of the politics of pity, such as self-government processes, land claims agreements, and aboriginal rights court cases, because building on what we have achieved up until now in our efforts to decolonize society is insufficient and truly unacceptable as the end-state of a challenge to colonialism. The job is far from finished. Fundamentally different relationships between Onkwehonwe and Settlers will emerge not from negotiations in state-sponsored and government-regulated processes, but only after successful Onkwehonwe resurgences against white society’s entrenched privileges and the unreformed structure of the colonial state.
As Onkwehonwe committed to the reclamation of our dignity and strength, there are, theoretically, two viable approaches to engaging the colonial power that is thoroughly embedded in the state and in societal structures: armed resistance and non-violent contention. Each has a heritage among our peoples and is a potential for making change, for engaging with the adversary without deference to emotional attachments to colonial symbols or to the compromised logic of colonial approaches. They are both philosophically defensible, but are they both equally valid approaches to making change, given the realities of our situations and our goals?
We need a confident position on the question as to what is the right strategy. Both armed resistance and non-violent contention are unique disciplines that require commitments that rule out overlapping allegiances between the two approaches. They are diverging and distinctive ways of making change, and the choice between the two paths is the most important decision the next generation of Onkwehonwe will collectively make.
This is the political formula of the strategy of armed resistance: facing a situation of untenable politics, Onkwehonwe could conceivably move toward practising a punishing kind of aggression, a raging resistance invoking hostile and irredentist negative political visions seeking to engender and escalate the conflict so as to eventually demoralize the Settler society and defeat the colonial state.
Contrast this with the strategic vision of non-violent contention: Onkwehonwe face the untenable politics and unacceptable conditions in their communities and confront the situation with determined yet restrained action, coherent and creative contention supplemented with a positive political vision based on re-establishing respect for the original covenants and ancient treaties that reflect the founding principles of the Onkwehonwe-Settler relationship. This would be a movement sure to engender conflict, but it would be conflict for a positive purpose and with the hope of recreating the conditions of coexistence. Rather than enter the arena of armed resistance, we would choose to perform rites of resurgence.
These forms of resurgence have already begun. There are people in all communities who understand that a true decolonization movement can emerge only when we shift our politics from articulating grievances to pursuing an organized and political battle for the cause of our freedom. These new warriors understand the need to refuse any further disconnection from their heritage and the need to reconnect with the spiritual bases of their existences as Onkwehonwe. There is a solid theory of change in this concept of an indigenous peoples’ movement. The theory of change is the lived experience of our warriors. Their lives are a dynamic of power generated by creative energy flowing from their heritage through their courageous and unwavering determination to recreate themselves and act together to meet the challenges of their day.
Despite the visible and public victories in court cases and casino profits, neither of these strategies generates the transformative experience that recreates people like spiritual-cultural resurgences can do. The truly revolutionary goal is to transform disconnection and fear into connection and to transcend colonial culture and institutions. Onkwehonwe have been successful on personal and collective levels by rejecting extremism on both ends of the spectrum between the reformist urgings of tame legalists and the unfocused rage of armed insurgents.
The experience of resurgence and regeneration in Onkwehonwe communities thus far proves that change cannot be made from within the colonial structure. Institutions and ideas that are the creation of the colonial relationship are not capable of ensuring our survival; this has been amply proven as well by the absolute failure of institutional and legalist strategies to protect our lands and our rights, as well as in their failure to motivate younger generations of Onkwehonwe to action.
In the face of the strong renewed push by the state for the legal and political assimilation of our peoples, as well as a rising tide of consumerist materialism making its way into our communities, the last remaining remnants of distinctive Onkwehonwe values and culture are being wiped out. The situation is urgent and calls for even more intensive and profound resurgences on even more levels, certainly not moderation. Many people are paralyzed by fear or idled by complacency and will sit passively and watch destruction consume our people. But I am writing for those of us who prefer a dangerous dignity to safe self-preservation.
People have always faced these challenges. None of what I am saying is new, either to people’s experiences in the world or to political philosophy. What is emerging in our communities is a renewed respect for indigenous knowledge and Onkwehonwe ways of thinking. Onkwehonwe are linked in spirit and strategy with other indigenous peoples confronting empire throughout the world. When we look into the heart of our own communities, we can relate to the struggles of peoples in Africa or Asia and appreciate the North African scholar Albert Memmi’s thoughts in his book The Colonizer and the Colonized on how, in the language of his day, colonized peoples respond to oppression: “One can be reconciled to every situation, and the colonized can wait a long time to live. But, regardless of how soon or how violently the colonized rejects his situation, he will one day begin to overthrow his unliveable existence with the whole force of his oppressed personality.” The question facing us is this one: For us today, here in this land, how will the overthrow of our unliveable existence come about?
The colonizers stand on guard for their ill-gotten privileges using highly advanced techniques, mainly co-optation, division, and, when required, physical repression. The weak people in the power equation help the colonizers too, with their self-doubts, laziness, and unfortunate insistence on their own disorganization!
Challenging all of this means even redefining the terminology of our existence. Take the word, “colonization,” which is actually a way of seeing and explaining what has happened to us. We cannot allow that word to be the story of our lives, because it is a narrative that in its use privileges the colonizer’s power and inherently limits our freedom, logically and mentally imposing a perpetual colonized victim way of life and view on the world.
Onkwehonwe are faced not with the same adversary their ancestors confronted, but with a colonization that has recently morphed into a kind of post-modern imperialism that is more difficult to target than the previous and more obvious impositions of force and control over the structures of government within their communities. The challenge is to reframe revolt.
To remain true to a struggle conceived within Onkwehonwe values, the end goal of our Wasáse – our warrior’s dance – must be formulated as a spiritual revolution, a culturally rooted social movement that transforms the whole of society and a political action that seeks to remake the entire landscape of power and relationship to truly reflect a liberated post-imperial vision.
Wasáse is spiritual revolution and contention. It is not a path of violence. And yet, this commitment to non-violence is not pacifism either. This is an important point to make clear: I believe there is a need for morally grounded defiance and non-violent agitation combined with the development of a collective capacity for self-defence, so as to generate within the Settler society a reason and incentive to negotiate constructively in the interest of achieving a respectful coexistence.
Following an awakening among the people and cultural redefinition, after social agitation, after engaging in a politics of contention, after creative confrontation, we will be free to determine our own existences. Wasáse, struggle in all of its forms, truly defines an authentic existence. This is why I speak of warriors. To be Onkwehonwe, to be fully human, is to be living the ethic of courage and to be involved in a struggle for personal transformation and freedom from the dominance of imperial ideas and powers – especially facing the challenges in our lives today. Any other path or posture is surrender or complicity.
Some people believe in the promise of what they call “traditional government” as the ultimate solution to our problems, as if just getting rid of the imposed corrupt band or tribal governments and resurrecting old laws and structures would solve everything. I used to believe that myself. But there is a problem with this way of thinking, too. The traditional governments and laws we hold out as the pure good alternatives to the imposed colonial systems were developed at a time when people were different than we are now; they were people who were confidently rooted in their culture, bodily and spiritually strong, and capable of surviving independently in their natural environments. Regretfully, the levels of participation in social and political life, the physical fitness, and the cultural skills these models require are far beyond our weakened and dispirited people right now.
And though I am speaking non-violently of a creative reinterpretation of what it is to be a warrior, I am doing so in full reverence and honour of the essence of the ancient warrior spirit, because a warrior makes a stand facing danger with courage and integrity. The warrior spirit is the strong medicine we need to cure the European disease. But, drawing on the old spirit, we need to create something new for ourselves and think through the reality of the present to design an appropriate strategy, use fresh tactics, and acquire new skills.
If non-indigenous readers are capable of listening, they will learn from these words, and they will discover that while we are envisioning a new relationship between Onkwehonwe and the land, we are at the same time offering a decolonized alternative to the Settler by inviting them to share our vision of respect and peaceful coexistence.
The time to change direction is now. Signs of defeat have been showing on the faces of our people for too long. Young people, those who have not yet learned to accommodate to the fact that they are expected to accept their lesser status quietly, are especially hard hit by defeatism and alienation. Youth in our communities and in urban centres are suffering. Suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, cultural confusion, sexual violence, obesity: they suffer these scourges worse than anyone else.
It is not because they lack money or jobs in the mainstream society (we shouldn’t forget that our people have always been “poor” as consumers in comparison to white people). It is because their identities, their cultures, and their rights are under attack by a racist government. The wounds suffered by young Onkwehonwe people in battle are given little succour by their own leaders, and they find only scorn or condescension in the larger world. These young people are fighting raging battles for their own survival every day, and when they become convinced that to fight is futile and the battle likely to be lost, they retreat. Yet they have pride, and rather than submit to the enemy, they sacrifice themselves, sometimes using mercifully quick and sometimes painfully slow methods.
Some people may find it shocking or absurd for me to suggest that an Onkwehonwe community is a kind of war zone. But anyone who has actually lived on a reserve will agree with this tragic analogy on some level. Make no mistake about it, Brothers and Sisters: the war is on. There is no post-colonial situation; the invaders our ancestors fought against are still here, for they have not yet rooted themselves and been transformed into real people of this homeland. Onkwehonwe must find a way to triumph over notions of history that relegate our existence to the past by preserving ourselves in this hostile and disintegrating environment. To do so, we must regenerate ourselves through action because living the white man’s vision of an Indian or an aboriginal will just not do it for us.
We are each facing modernity’s attempt to conquer our souls. The conquest is happening as weak, cowardly, stupid, petty, and greedy ways worm themselves into our lives and take the place of the beauty, sharing, and harmony that defined life in our communities for previous generations. Territorial losses and political disempowerment are secondary conquests compared to that first, spiritual cause of discontent. The challenge is to find a way to regenerate ourselves and take back our dignity. Then, meaningful change will be possible, and it will be a new existence, one of possibility, where Onkwehonwe will have the ability to make the kinds of choices we need to make concerning the quality of our lives and begin to recover a truly human way of life.
