Being Indigenous in an Indigenous Course

I believe is is important to address one of the most basic experiences of an Indigenous student at university in the process of engaging with Indigenous studies: being Indigenous in an Indigenous course. I’ve read many articles and essays throughout my research that touched upon the general experience of being Indigenous in a classroom, but I want to write about what it is to be the subject of your peers’ study. There are many things one could assume about the experience as a whole. I assumed I would always have something to say, that I would always be heard, and that my life as an Indigenous woman would be integral to the conversation. For this note I want to break down the experience of being in a classroom, both physically and mentally, and being a minority discussing your own history, culture and values so show how different it is from the expectations. I want to discuss the body language, the relation to material and the relation to others in the room, especially the instructor, but I also want to discuss the potential for self-discovery. .

First, before I elaborate on the physical experience, I must situate myself as a Black-coded Indigenous woman. In other words, most do not expect me to be a subject of what will be discussed throughout the course. This in turn has created troubling scenarios where what I say is ignored or tossed aside for other points that seem more “academic.” I will expand on this point in a bit, but for now, I wish to convey the frustration of being in a small group of people, all there to earn a grade on how well they can speak about the struggle of your people, only for these non-Indigenous people to clock out in a very obvious way while you are speaking. It is demeaning and there is no way to be prepared for it. Of course you know it will happen because it happens all the time. Yet, I still find myself on the verge of tears and feeling lesser for it. When Indigenous people speak on the hostility of academic institutions, it is of the highest importance to recognize that this hostility is not confined to the cerebral. Hostility plays out in body language, in body count, and in the physical violence of being seen as invisible and/or expendable. The physical violence of invisibility within an Indigenous course setting? Yes. The first class session of Critical Indigenous Theory I remember distinctly watching a white male attempt to rush out of class, and in doing so, the man plowed into my Kanaka co-president, causing her head to jolt forward as she exclaimed, “Ow!” There was no apology. While this may seem like a coincidence, I can honestly say that aside from Indigenous people, the act of excusing oneself is quite important to the Black community as a recognition of humanity and because, as a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, manners are drilled into Black children to a certain extent as an act of self-preservation. A couple years ago there was an internet video that went viral where a White woman had attempted to shove past a Black woman without excusing herself. The Black woman went on to become vocal, calling out the White woman for essentially ignoring her humanity by walking through her without any acknowledgment of wrongdoing. As I watched this similar circumstance play out in the university classroom, I could not help but be puzzled at the irony of it all. This young man chose to take a course concerning the violence enacted against Indigeneity, and yet, here he was, bruising an actual Indigenous person for the sake of making it to his next class. Situations like this don’t occur very often and it is highly unlikely that the man targeted my friend for a daily act of violence, but the scene I have described to you does an excellent job of demonstrating the physical manifestation of white male entitlement, even spaces that are meant to prioritize people of color such as a course on Critical Indigenous Theory. And again, I commonly see the actions described prior to that of the head smacking incident. Body language wise, lack of attention manifests itself in glazed-over eyes, posture turned away from the speaker, and multitasking that isn’t really multitasking, but preparing what you are wishing to say next that could have little to no relevance to what is currently being said. As I begin to move into discussion of the less physical aspects of this classroom experience it is important to keep in mind that the physical and the non-physical interact with each other to deliver a toxic message to the Indigenous student: you do not matter and your culture is for our consumption. The paragraph above covers several topics.  Consider breaking it into two or three different paragraphs each of which present a single topic?

There have not been many occasions where I have had a dissociative experience, yet I find myself constantly dissociating in Indigenous courses. I just cannot find another way to describe the phenomenon of hearing hour long discussions where people mull over theories about you and your community as though you are not present in the room. In my case, there’s something uniquely triggering about hearing about my communities in the third person as though they are in some distant time and place battling a cruel megapower as total and complete underdogs. Then there is the process of hearing my peers dissect my lived experience in the loftiest academic jargon while attempting to convey themselves as revolutionary. Within the first couple of weeks of my Critical Indigenous Theory course, we were discussing the book From a Native Daughter written by Haunani Kay-Trask, a revolutionary Hawaiian activist and scholar. H.K. also happened to be the aunt of one of my dear friends, Khaila’s longtime boyfriend, and a mentor of the instructor of the course. The class had an entire discussion centered around the accessibility of H.K.’s book, the language, the structure, etc. They loved that she was able to portray the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement in terms that were not just for academics. However, as they gushed over this “easy read,” they used only theoretical jargon and SJW catch phrase, essentially reversing the accessibility of the text to something that could make them look impressive as students. This comes from a Eurocentric style of education and knowledge transfer that emphasises eloquent inaccessibility over substance. This too is a common occurrence amongst my Indigenous scholar friends as we sit and listen to people speak on concepts that supposedly explain our political situations in this world.

It’s difficult to explain, but there simply is a disconnect between myself and my peers concerning even the basics of Indigenous theory. Aside from needing a dictionary to interpret what my peers are saying, I often relate to the materials differently than they do. In our third Critical Indigenous Theory class, we read a Patrick Wolfe essay on Settler-Colonialism. When we broke into small groups to discuss the text, my classmates kept referring to the text to relay their thoughts on the subject whereas I referred to personal experience. This was one of those many instances where my thoughts on the subject were obviously ignored. Our small group was comprised entirely of social and ethnic minorities, but these classifications and willingness to “decolonize” were not enough to give everyone in the group an equal experience, obviously. Indigenous courses generally have the powers to draw out minorities and activists simply looking to propel their education in resistance.The nicer members of our group would nod their heads when I finished speaking, as they did with everyone,  then revert to the text instead of engaging with what I had said. The others refused to acknowledge that I had spoken. I will say that there was one individual in the group that attempted to continuously highlight what I had said and tie it into the conversation, but they too were relatively ignored. In fact, myself and the individual I speak of who identifies as non-binary, both bonded over the fact that our identities were cast aside in a way. My Indigenous knowledge was ignored and, right as we began our discussion, the individual was misgendered though they had identified themselves at the beginning of the course. In retrospect, I appreciate this individual deeply because I feel that they understood the dynamics of the conversation better than the others, The dynamics being: when an Indigenous person is speaking on Indigeneity within the context of coursework written by a non-Indigenous person, the Indigenous person automatically becomes the primary source and the coursework becomes the secondary source if we are looking at the hierarchy of knowledge on the subject. This however, was not how my peers saw the situation as they continued to cling to the words of the text as explanation for the phenomenon of settler-colonialism and structural genocide. Just as my peers had valued jargon when speaking on H.K.’s work, they valued the dense theory of Patrick Wolfe for its highly “academic” nature. Essentially their actions go against their reasoning for engaging in the course, but I think Daniel Heath Justice says it best when he writes, “Sixteen weeks isn’t much time to reeducate someone who’s been miseducated for a lifetime.” In other words, my peer will not be able to break their habits easily, and thus, we are stuck trying to find common ground for the time being. I do not foresee any change, however. The satisfaction of superiority, whether constructed by white supremacist ideals or not, remain to great a prize within academia for my peers to break from it for the sake of actually connecting with Indigenous knowledge systems.

All the bad experiences aside, Indigenous courses can be quite useful for the Indigenous student when the course material is centered on Indigenous scholarship and moderated by a professor that, in the very least, has an understanding of Indigeneity as a way of being. Indigenous coursework written by Indigenous scholars often interacts not only with alternative histories, but alternative ways of knowing and being that resonate with the Indigenous student. If you pair this with a professor that is savvy in Indigenous theory beyond simple concepts of settler-colonialism, it is not impossible for an Indigenous student to experience a breakthrough about their personal lives. I experienced a break through of this sort only a couple of weeks ago when our class was discussing Patrick Wolfe in comparison with H.K. This was the same week as the small group incident I discussed earlier. Our class was having a conversation on the effects of structural genocide, food scarcity, and capitalism. At one point in the conversation, the professor said something about tradition Hawaiian culture that struck me. He said that prior to colonisation, Hawaiians were able to work the land somewhere around 12 hours a week because they knew the land so well that they were able to work with it in ways more effective than settlers could ever imagine. The conversation went on from there about GMO products currently being grown on the land,artificial scarcity, and the previous fertility of the Lenape Trail but I was struck by the thought that my ancestors, though not Hawaiian nor Lenape, were most likely not working 40-hour work weeks for their food. I thought on how, throughout my college career, I had a longing to be home, to pick tafvmpuce, and to have the time to enjoy the land around me. I got a glimpse of this in Sydney, Australia while hiking the Blue Mountains where I was able to pick tea tree and eucalyptus. There was an intense draw to the work of gathering what I needed. Furthermore, I’ve been very vocal about my weariness of the hustle New York City requires, it all seems so pointless. But it was not until I was in this course, pondering these ideas facilitated by my professor that I realized that I am not lazy, nor do I simply not lack the fortitude for city life. Rather, my issue is that I want to live as an Indigenous person on my ancestral land, but in order to do so and to help my people do so, I must first engage with the systems put in place by colonial powers. Sure I could go try and camp in a field, but I have not been educated in ways to live off the land because that knowledge is not valued by the system. It’s a dreary realization, and yet I found such relief in it. The course had given me the tools to self-diagnose the ailments imposed upon me by colonization. I cannot say that this has happened in every Indigenous course I’ve taken, but I can say that having the opportunity to learn from Indigenous scholars makes the field ripe for similar breakthroughs and genuinely makes Indigenous courses worth the frustration.