grafted ways of being
be the future
How do I perceive the world? My frame of reference is by default a colonial one. I often think and speak in English, which is a language not native to the land I live on. My parents and most of my family members are not white. We belong to many communities with their own cultural markers. But my schools were white-dominant spaces. Many of my workplaces were white-dominant. A dominating chunk of the world uses practices born from white dominant cultures. This means I've lived my entire life with white dominant culture seeping in all around me. Even as I try to be aware of and disrupt that cultural understanding, I still may not notice it all. When I make sense of a story, I filter it through these lenses. Unless I am present and fully mindful, I apply colonial sensibilities to whatever you tell me.
Dr. Cash Ahenakew writes about this in his paper, Grafting Indigenous Ways of Knowing Onto Non-Indigenous Ways of Being. Dr. Ahenakew is a Cree scholar. He's also an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. He notes as one example the pressure that Indigenous academics face in their careers. He includes in his paper an excerpt of a poem he wrote about this experience. In the poem he pretends to write a job description for an Indian Academic such as himself.
Academic Indian Job Description: Have To Know [Excerpt]
have to know
western knowledge and education
plus the critique of
western knowledge and education
have to know
indigenous ‘culture’ and education
plus the critique and the critique of the critique of
indigenous ‘culture’ and education
I can't find the full version of this poem online, but I recommend reading the whole excerpt.
In the same poem, Ahenakew later writes, "have to know / when and how to perform at the same time / competence, confidence, boldness, heroic rebelliousness / and humility, compliance and gratitude for the opportunity". I don't know his life experience, but I know how this stanza makes me feel. I draw on my own identities as a Brown and queer man to relate to the poem's message. But his experience and mine could never overlap completely. Our neighboring colonial empires, the u.s. and canada, are not that much different from each other. But our experiences interacting with those empires could still be worlds apart.
What is it like to try teasing out the differences in how I see the world as a non-Indigenous person? I can be aware of the differences that writers and speakers have named. I may be aware of the vast ecosystems that surround me; that I'm a part of. But do I still think of humans as having "dominion over" rather than "existence with" other beings? Can I tell the difference between saying I understand versus actually understanding it?
Dr. Ahenakew describes a term called "abyssal thinking". Boaventura de Sousa Santos coined this term in his own paper, Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges. Ahenakew writes, "on one side of the abyssal line, there is knowledge considered to be objective and to have universal worth; on the other side there are values and traditions with only local (if any) value."
Dr. Ahenakew makes note of this phenomenon in his poem above. The job posting, as written by an academic institution, sees its own culture as real. Indigenous 'culture' in the poem, from their perspective, isn't real culture. People (who see themselves) on the "universal" side may try to expand their mind to other modes of thought. But when we do it, Santos would say we're peering over the line from the safety of what we feel is the "correct" side.
What must it be like to feel surrounded by a culture that's entirely alien to us? A culture that to its very core feels like it doesn't fit? And what must it feel like to encounter a culture that sees the world around it as mere resources to plunder? I have read stories and heard descriptions of what it's like. But if I wanted to adopt that mindset I would be reprogramming how I've thought for decades.
from the dominant culture
My way of thinking feels neutral—it feels universal—because of the culture I'm in. I can see the jagged edges only when I view them through my non-mainstream identities. I notice the cracks in the nuclear family when I project it through my queerness. I can sense the harms of white culture when I feel the places where that culture doesn't fit on my skin. But what about the parts of the mainstream that I don't notice?
Dr. Ahenakew argues that including non-western voices in western spaces has little effect on the empire. When people try to bring "them" into "our" world, it positions us as the neutral or natural entity. Our overwhelming dominance of these spaces makes it hard for both sides to act as equals. This is what Ahenakew describes in his poem above. Indigenous scholars must know non-Indigenous academia culture if they want to navigate it. They must hold on to their own culture if they want to maintain it. Dr. Ahenakew writes that inclusion doesn't pose a threat to dominant culture. The power dynamics are too strong. He writes, "indigeneity is a difference that makes no difference to business as usual."
Dr. Ahenakew describes the effort as "grafting" Indigenous ways onto non-Indigenous cultures. His research on Indigenous cultures happens within the confines of the empire. Canada funds it. He documents his finding in English so that other academics will read it and take it seriously. But we don't always notice what's lost in translation.
what can we do about it?
Dr. Ahenakew imagines some ways that true exchange could begin.
Make grafting visible. Recognize that so-called universal truths are not universal. Call attention to it. Make statements that are "contingent, contextual, tentative, and incomplete." Acknowledge that there's no one way of doing things, but also say why that is.
Encourage sense-sensing, not sense-making. Dr. Ahenakew includes poetry and art in his journal article. Making sense of an issue is incomplete without feeling that issue, too. The piece otherwise reflects all the trappings of a journal article. There's the structure, the academic citations, an abstract. It's published in a international journal. Even so, it still contains things like poems that aren't always found in academic writing.
Remember that Western ways of thinking didn't spring from nowhere. When a way of thinking becomes universal, its history gets lost or disconnected. Reattach those histories to remind the reader they aren't universal. They have origins too. There was a time when those ways of thinking were not the norm. There may be a time when they too fall out of the mainstream.
my own cracked lens
From time to time I try to dissect publications and essays outside of my experience. This article was a real challenge for me to digest. Dr. Ahenakew's treatment of the topic and its presentation wasn't the issue for me. Instead, I had a hard time finding something to hold on to. Concepts and ideas are often easy to grasp; it's our ways of thinking that give them context. Reading this paper and spinning off into several other papers gave me a real sense of overwhelm. In some ways, the hard time I had finding my bearing is part of what makes these ideas so compelling. And, to take a lesson from the paper itself, I may not need to make sense of the paper so much as sense-sense. What if part of my work is letting go of trying to apply my western sensibilities into understanding it?
I opened this essay asking how I perceive the world. The question is important. It's a reminder that my perception isn't the only one that matters. This is a lifelong process. A topic too big for this essay is how casually people use the term "decolonize" when they mean "alter somewhat". Actions like decolonization aren’t easy to do. They demand the uprooting, not adapting, not rephrasing, of a colonial project that has lasted centuries. It’s work that must happen. Our current ways of life are killing us. The empire will end one day. Today, how can I even imagine what will replace it?
my name is josh martinez. i have always loved trying to understand systems, and the systems that built those systems. i spend a lot of time thinking about how to get there from here.
i own and operate a consulting practice, Future Emergent.
say hello! josh@bethefuture.space
sometimes i go back and edit these posts after i publish them. you can always visit bethefuture.space for the most up-to-date version of this post.
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