Toward Sustainable Self-Determination: Rethinking the Contemporary Indigenous-Rights Discourse

Corntassel, Jeff

doi:10.1177/030437540803300106

Cited by 214 publications

(160 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…In order to decolonize, he contends, Indigenous peoples need to direct change from within and through action, change, strategies, and policies working toward becoming "sustainable" self-determining nations. Corntassel maintains that "the existing rights discourse can only take indigenous peoples so far" through its emphasis on Settler state political and legal recognition of Indigenous rights, which ignores the cultural responsibilities and relationships -Indigenous peoples have with the land, water, plants, and animals that have sustained their cultures ( [42], pp. 105-9).…”

Section: Globalization and Neoliberal Food Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Without the ability of community members to continuously renew their relationships with the natural world (i.e., gathering medicines, hunting and fishing, basket-making, etc. ), indigenous languages, traditional teachings, family structures, and livelihoods of that community are all jeopardized ( [42], p. 118).…”

Section: Globalization and Neoliberal Food Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Indigenizing” Food Sovereignty. Revitalizing Indigenous Food Practices and Ecological Knowledges in Canada and the United States

2016

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Abstract:The food sovereignty movement initiated in 1996 by a transnational organization of peasants, La Via Campesina, representing 148 organizations from 69 countries, became central to self-determination and decolonial mobilization embodied by Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Utilizing the framework of decolonization and sustainable self-determination, this article analyzes the concept of food sovereignty to articulate an understanding of its potential for action in revitalizing Indigenous food practices and ecological knowledge in the United States and Canada. The food sovereignty movement challenged the hegemony of the globalized, neoliberal, industrial, capital-intensive, corporate-led model of agriculture that created destructive economic policies that marginalized small-scale farmers, removed them from their land, and forced them into the global market economy as wage laborers. Framed within a larger rights discourse, the food sovereignty movement called for the right of all peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food and the right to define their own food and agricultural systems. "Indigenizing" food sovereignty moves beyond a rights based discourse by emphasizing the cultural responsibilities and relationships Indigenous peoples have with their environment and the efforts being made by Indigenous communities to restore these relationships through the revitalization of Indigenous foods and ecological knowledge systems as they assert control over their own foods and practices.Keywords: Indigenous; decolonization; food sovereignty; sustainable self-determination; colonization; globalization; ecological knowledge; colonialism Children, language, lands; almost everything was stripped away, stolen when you weren't looking because you were trying to stay alive. In the face of such loss, one thing our people could not surrender was the meaning of land. In the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital, or natural resources. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold ([1], p. 17).In Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous botanist Robin Kimmerer summons readers to imagine a different relationship with the land, water, plants, and animals; to rebuild a sustainable relationship where people and the land are good medicine for each other; to open minds and hearts to the gifts they provide, which will be returned in a circle of reciprocity. She writes,In the indigenous worldview, a healthy landscape is understood to be whole and generous enough to be able to sustain its partners. It engages land not as a machine but as a community of respected non-human persons to whom we humans have a responsibility...reconnecting people and the landscape is as essential as reestablishing proper hydrology or cle...

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Section: Globalization and Neoliberal Food Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Globalization and Neoliberal Food Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Indigenizing” Food Sovereignty. Revitalizing Indigenous Food Practices and Ecological Knowledges in Canada and the United States

2016

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“…This could include compensatory payments for past use or possibly offering a share of relevant patent-related profits. New, stronger laws need to be created to protect traditional knowledge and natural resources from firms desiring to use them to secure profits not shared with the native groups affected (Corntassel, 2008). Moreover, communal indigenous knowledge must be allowed to continue as a shared cultural practice between generations if it is to survive (Ibid).…”

Section: Counter-hegemonic Possibilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

RE: Reflections and Explorations A Forum for Deliberative Dialogue

Stephenson

Kirakosyan

2017

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“…The liberal democratic political, legal, judicial, and police institutions are the colonial institutions of the settler state whose legitimacy is being challenged and whose existence is predicated on the elimination of Indigenous societies. Indigenous scholars such as Monture-Angus (1999), Henderson (2002), Alfred (2005), Coulthard (2007), and Corntassel (2008), have emphasized that the arena of liberal rights-based discourse works to limit self-determination in ways that reproduce and reinforce these colonial institutions.…”

Section: Policing Security and Liberal Legalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pacification and Indigenous Struggles in Canada

Dafnos¹

2013

SS/ES

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Front-line police operations are deeply entwined with less visible activities -or practices not commonly identified as policing -that are carried out by a wide range of participants as strategies of settler-colonial pacification operating through the organizing logics of security and liberal legalism. Using open source texts and records obtained through access to information requests, this article unmaps some of the contemporary strategies employed by Canadian institutions to pacify Indigenous resistance. As a contribution to the body of work seeking to develop the politics of anti-security, the analysis disrupts the binary categories that animate security logic by examining the public order policing approach of the Ontario Provincial Police, the framing of Indigenous resistance as a security threat, and the integral role of Indian Affairs in securing the settler-state.

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Toward Sustainable Self-Determination: Rethinking the Contemporary Indigenous-Rights Discourse

Cited by 214 publications

References 13 publications

“Indigenizing” Food Sovereignty. Revitalizing Indigenous Food Practices and Ecological Knowledges in Canada and the United States

“Indigenizing” Food Sovereignty. Revitalizing Indigenous Food Practices and Ecological Knowledges in Canada and the United States

RE: Reflections and Explorations A Forum for Deliberative Dialogue

Pacification and Indigenous Struggles in Canada

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