On Sunday, the reading group met and we together watched a webinar put on by the Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN), entitled “Violence on the Land is Violence on our Bodies: Criminalization, Incarceration and Resisting State Violence”, featuring speakers Erin Konsmo, Krysta Williams, Marmie Jotter, and Sarah Deer.
As mentioned in the previous blog post, this meet up was going to be based around resources by Winona Laduke, Chief Seattle and Elizabeth Castle and Madonna Thunderhawk, from the “Indigenous Resistance and the Colonization of North America” session of the Anne Braden Program.
However, as I was reading over the resources, I was finding myself feeling unsure about how to formulate questions based on these readings in a way that does not feel “anthropological” or like the group is “studying” Indigenous people but rather so that the group is listening to Indigenous voices speaking about the topics of Indigenous resistance and colonization (as all too often, white people speak for and about Indigenous people or are the only voices recognized as valid or “expert”).
I wanted to do this group as a way to share back the resources that I was privileged enough to have access to while attending the Anne Braden Program and as a way to practice how I as a white person can take responsibility for my own learning and for supporting the collective engagement, learning, and work of the people all around me, many of whom so generously share so much with community members all the time.
To me, it is critical that I be taking leadership from and holding up the voices of Indigenous people and people of color who speak, write and teach on the topics we are looking at in the group (as all too often, it is white people who receive credit for these ideas or are invited to speak, teach, write, etc. on topics such as anti-racism and anti-oppression, despite the many, many Indigenous and racialized authors, scholars, activists, community members, cultural workers, and more who do work on these topics (check out this blog post from the Becoming Collective for more in-depth thoughts on the phenomenon of “allies” getting more credit than the people who they are trying to be allied to)) – and , at the same time, I also don’t want to recreate the dynamic of Indigenous people and people of color always having to be educating on these topics.
So, instead of me deciding which questions to ask about the readings and our having a limited interaction with the resources (due to the questions coming from me and in this way limiting our conversation to my perspective on how to approach it), I felt it was more appropriate to find a way for people talking about these topics to speak for themselves and so when I saw that NYSHN was hosting a related webinar on the same day as the proposed meet-up, I, with feedback from participants, decided to center our reading group around the webinar instead of my questions about the readings.
I’m so glad that we watched this excellent webinar together. Erin Konsmo spoke about the powerful work that NYSHN is doing and gave many examples of the powerful work that many people and communities are making happen*. Krysta Williams described numerous critical frameworks and concepts, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent, consentual allyship, and the origins of policing and the prison system in what is now called north america (“serving and protecting colonialism since 1492”). Included as well were slides with artwork by Erin and other artists. After Krysta, Marmie Jotter spoke – Marmie is the sister of Dana Deegan, an Indigenous woman facing a long prison sentence for a supposed “crime”, when a non-Indigenous woman charged with the same thing will not face any prison time and was instead given probation only. Marmie and Sarah Deer, who is an Assistant Professor of Law at the William Mitchell College of Law, talked about Dana’s case and described some of the requests for support for Dana. One of our group members is hosting a letter-writing event at her home, so some of us are going to attend to follow up on the request for letters of support for Dana. You can also learn more about Dana’s case from this Youtube video, “Free Dana”.
*I was very fortunate to be able to interview Erin in 2012, about the impacts of resource extraction and reproductive health, which you can hear here on Terra Informa.
I often bookmark webinars but can honestly say that I don’t always watch them. It is different, to be invited to an online event than an in-person event, for me, and I realize that I don’t always treat webinars the same way that I treat, say, an in-person talk. This means that I miss out on incredible speakers like the line up of speakers on Sunday. To me, watching the webinar with the reading group meant that we consciously set aside time to watch this. It felt like important practice and a good reminder of the various tools available to enable collective learning like this.
I would highly recommend that folks check out the webinar here, which is now archived and available to watch anytime.
Our next reading group will focus on resources from the chapter, “White Supremacy, Capitalism and White Privilege” from the Anne Braden Program reader, as well as an article suggested by a group participant, entitled “Understanding Whiteness in the United States” by Judith N. Martin.
Noisy and Quiet 