Problematizing the Romanticization of Indigeneity in Coulthard’s “Red Skin, White Masks”
Coulthard’s “Red Skin, White Masks” explores the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people under colonialism, and seeks to find a solution through which Indigenous people can emancipate themselves from colonial oppression. This emancipation of Indigenous people from colonial institutions is essential in achieving universal emancipation for all. To this end, Coulthard proposes resurgence as the path through which Indigenous people can emancipate themselves from colonialism. Resurgence proposes that Indigenous people unite together to bring past Indigenous knowledges and practices into use today. However, the resurgence that Coulthard propose assumes that firstly, unity across Indigenous peoples is realistic and possible, and secondly, that Indigenous knowledges and practices are somehow stuck in the past and must now be brought into the present. Therefore, in this essay, I argue that Coulthard romanticizes Indigeneity. I use the term romanticization to refer to an idealized and glamorized understanding of Indigeneity. I find that the romanticization of Indigeneity in Coulthard’s conceptualization of resurgence can be partly overcome by eliminating the element of temporality in the definition of resurgence. As a result, resurgence would simply refer to the incorporation of indigenous practices and knowledges into political and social frameworks, without attention to when or how these indigenous knowledges first emerged.
What is resurgence?
Conventional definitions of resurgence define the term as “the return and growth of an activity that had stopped (“Resurgence”, 2021). This definition relates closely to Coulthard’s conceptualization of the term. In his work, Coulthard defines resurgence as an Indigenous path to self-liberation, where Indigenous people re-incorporate Indigenous knowledges and practices of the past into the present. In this way, resurgence uses knowledges and perspectives of the past to reshape the future for Indigenous people and their communities.
Coulthard explains the need for resurgence as a response to the ineffectiveness of more assertive Indigenous movements. For example, Coulthard highlights how the “Idle No More” movement ultimately failed in bringing reconciliation between Indigenous and settler communities. He explains that such bottom-up protest movements are complicated and slowed down by a diversity of voices. Additionally, he emphasizes that assertive forms of Indigenous protest are frequently met with criticism. Coulthard shares that critics of Indigenous forms of protest falsely assert that negotiations are more effective in securing the rights and advancing the interests of Indigenous communities, exclaim that protests disrupt the lives of non-Indigenous people and as a result alienate First Nations from the average working-class Canadians, or categorize a protest as a reactive event rather than an affirmative form, and advocate for finding an affirmative alternative to protests. Coulthard explains how all these assumptions are either completely false claims, double-standards, or misunderstandings. Despite this, Coulthard does not propose revolution as a path to self-liberation for Indigenous people.
Instead, he advocates for an intense, root-and-branch form of Indigenous protest and liberation, through resurgence. Coulthard emphasizes resurgence as the path through which Indigenous people can be liberated from colonialism. He explains resurgence as a process in which Indigenous groups build a certain solidarity amongst themselves and between Indigenous groups, and recreate and cultivate Indigenous practices to be incorporated into their current lives and communities. Resurgence understands that Indigenous liberation requires Indigenous peoples to separate and get away from the capitalist system and the current political economy, or else current issues that Indigenous people face will simply continue. In this way, Indigenous people seek to embody the practices of the past, to live them in the present and in the future.
Why is Coulthard’s resurgence problematic?
From this introduction, it seems that Coulthard’s concept of resurgence is a perfectly logical and reasonable path that can lead to Indigenous self-emancipation. Importantly however, the resurgence that Coulthard suggests romanticizes Indigenous practices and communities. Firstly, Coulthard’s resurgence assumes that it would be possible to shape or create a shared Indigenous solidarity across Indigenous peoples and communities. However, there is no evidence to support this fact. In contrast, there is historical evidence to question it. Secondly, Coulthard’s resurgence focuses on Indigenous practices of the past, but makes no space to recognize new or recent Indigenous practices that have emerged or continue to emerge within Indigenous communities and in its leadership. Therefore, I argue that Coulthard presents a romanticized and simplified version of Indigeneity in his conceptualization of resurgence.
Coulthard’s resurgence holds as one of its preconditions that Indigenous peoples and groups must reach a common solidarity to begin the process of Indigenous emancipation. However, Coulthard’s assumption that solidarity between Indigenous peoples and communities is a real possibility is a romanticization and idealization of Indigeneity. Explaining the need for solidarity in resurgence, Coulthard writes that “we [Indigenous people] need to find ways of bringing together through relations of solidarity and mutual aid “the strengths that urban and reserve-based Native people have developed in their different circumstances, in the interests of our mutual empowerment (176).” In this quote, Coulthard refers to the need of uniting rural and urban Indigenous communities in the effort of Indigenous emancipation. However, in his text “Red Skin, White Masks”, Coulthard is unable to present how such solidarity and unity should or could be achieved.
Similarly, when Coulthard explains his belief that solidarity is possible across Indigenous peoples because it has been done in past Indigenous movements, he fails to admit that this diversity of Indigenous voices is what limited and ultimately suffocated these Indigenous movements. Coulthard explains that “The initially rapid and relatively widespread support expressed both nationally and internationally for the Idle No More movement in spring 2013, and the solidarity generated around the Elsipogtog anti-fracking resistance in the fall and winter of 2013, gives me hope that establishing such relations are indeed possible (p. 173).” Therefore, Coulthard asserts his belief that solidarity between different indigenous peoples and communities is possible because it has been done during the Idle No More movement. However, Coulthard also explains in the same text that the Idle No More movement ultimately failed because of this diversity. He details that the Idle No More movement’s collapse came about as increasingly diverse people from different backgrounds and communities joined, and pushed the movement into too many directions. Therefore, the leaders of the movement were unable to both encourage diversity and promote a shared common goal within their movement. This fact seems to fully contradict Coulthard’s assumption that solidarity across Indigenous communities and peoples in the goal of resurgence can be realized.
Secondly, Coulthard’s conceptualization of resurgence understands Indigenous knowledges and practices as facts of the past. Here, Coulthard romanticizes indigeneity as being frozen in the past, and ignores the fact that culture, practices and knowledges are bound to change with time, with change, and with innovation. To visualize the extent to which Coulthard focuses on the past of Indigeneity, one can consider the fact that the word ‘past’ itself is mentioned 67 times in Coulthard’s text “Red Skin, White Masks”. Coulthard tends to link the word past with the Indigenous knowledges and practices that he emphasizes must be incorporated into the present and future of Indigeneity. Additionally, Coulthard writes: “… I explore a different way of understanding the significance of Indigenous cultural politics in our struggles for national liberation — a resurgent approach to Indigenous decolonization that builds on the value and insights of our past in our efforts to secure a non-colonial present and future (149).” In his definition of resurgence, Coulthard explains that Indigenous knowledges and practices of the past must be the building blocks that shape the future of Indigeneity. Importantly, Coulthard makes no references to how recent and emerging Indigenous knowledges and practices could be useful in the process of Indigenous emancipation through resurgence. Therefore, in this quote Coulthard seems to suggest that Indigenous values and insights are static and unchangeable. Coulthard conceptualizes Indigenous knowledge as an object of the past, and ignores that new Indigenous knowledges and insights may have arisen more recently. Additionally, Coulthard fails to acknowledge how Indigenous knowledge may have changed or expanded under the violent colonization process that Indigenous people were subject to, and the ongoing colonialism that Indigenous people face. However, including these new understandings and perspectives that emerged with colonialism may prove to be invaluable resources in navigating a hopefully post-colonialism world one day, and in shaping the path to such a world.
Could I have misinterpreted Coulthard?
When I proposed my understanding of Coulthard’s resurgence as a romanticization of Indigeneity, some suggested that I might just have misunderstood what Coulthard had meant by resurgence.
To this point, one could present the fact that Coulthard is not suggesting a complete ‘return’ to pre-colonial values and ideas, but encouraging Indigenous people to consider how the past could affect how they live in the present. As an example, Coulthard exclaims that “Resurgence does not ‘literally mean returning to the past […] but rather re-creating the cultural and political flourishment of the past to support the well being of our contemporary citizens. […] this requires that we reclaim “the fluidity of our traditions, not the rigidity of colonialism’” (Coulthard, 5). In other words, Coulthard is proposing that Indigenous people incorporate elements of past traditions into their current life. This would mean that rather than romanticizing Indigenous practices and communities, Coulthard actually emphasizes the need to preserve what is left of the past and bring it into the present.
However, I did not misinterpret Coulthard’s text, because I am not arguing that Coulthard is suggesting a full return to the past. Instead, I understand that Coulthard expresses that he wants to incorporate Indigenous knowledges into the present. I argue in response to this fact, that when expressing his conceptualization of resurgence, Coulthard speaks only on past Indigenous practices and knowledges without reference to how knowledge may have change or expanded with time. Therefore constructs Indigeneity as having solely a pre-colonial identity. However, this conceptualization of pure and untouched indigeneity fails to acknowledge that practices, cultures, and knowledges are not static in time. Therefore, I want to emphasize in this essay that Indigeneity is a current and ever-changing concept, identity, or cultural fact. Indigeneity changes, evolves, and expands in the present. That is why I focus so strongly on problematizing Coulthard’s focus on looking at past Indigenous knowledges to bring into the present, because this focus on the past fails to celebrate indigenous practices and knowledges that have emerged more recently and continue to emerge today.
Shifting the definition of resurgence
To address the romanticization of Indigeneity in Coulthard’s conceptualization of resurgence, I propose that the definition of resurgence be shifted to eliminate the idea of the past or present when referring to Indigenous knowledge. While this solution resolves only the romanticization of Indigenous knowledge but not the romanticization of Indigenous solidarity, redefining resurgence still reduces the extent of the problem of romanticization of Indigeneity in Coulthard’s work.
Coulthard writes that “For some communities, reinvigorating a mix of subsistence-based activities with more contemporary economic ventures is one alternative (chap. 7, page 14).” By this, he means that for some communities it may make more sense to mix the past with more recent and current institutions and systems. Here, Coulthard is able to reconcile the idea that resurgence can combine elements from different time periods.
Therefore, I propose that we should go beyond the idea of combining elements across time periods, and completely eliminate temporality from the concept of resurgence. In this sense, the concept of resurgence would not focus on incorporating elements of the past into the present and re-imagining Indigenous liberation and livelihood through this perspective. Rather, it would work to incorporate Indigenous elements and knowledge into Indigenous reality without concern for temporality. As a result, the concept of time would be eliminated from any conceptualization of Indigeneity or resurgence. This would ensure that Indigenous practices and knowledges could not be romanticized as being ‘pure’ or ‘ideal’ in the way they existed in the past.
Importantly, this solution reconciles the concept of resurgence with the romanticization of Indigenous values and practices in that it eliminates the assumption that Indigeneity is static or ‘stuck in the past’. Therefore, it offers the possibility of holding on to Coulthard’s resurgence while eliminating a certain romanticization of Indigeneity that existed in Coulthard’s definition of resurgence. However, simply redefining resurgence fails to challenge the assumption that solidarity amongst Indigenous peoples and communities is possible and realistic. Therefore, I find that it is not possible to fully eliminate the romanticization of indigeneity from the concept of resurgence, but instead, that this romanticization can only be partially reduced.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Coulthard’s conceptualization of resurgence romanticizes and idealizes indigeneity, firstly, by assuming that solidarity amongst indigenous peoples and groups is possible, and secondly, by understanding indigeneity as a concept stuck in the past that must be brought into the present. However, this romanticization of indigeneity within the definition of resurgence can be limited, by redefining resurgence to eliminate the element of temporality in understanding and referencing indigenous practices and knowledge. This solution presents a partial resolution of the issue of romanticization of Indigeneity in Coulthard’s “Red Skin, White Masks”, but does not abandon resurgence as a path to Indigenous emancipation.
References
Coulthard, G. S. (2014). Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Resurgence. (2021). Retrieved April 16, 2021, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/resurgence#:~:text=resurgence-,noun,an%20activity%20that%20had%20stopped
