MASCULINIDANS-16

11 February 2011

The majority of this conversation occurred over the telephone between Taiaiake Alfred in Victoria, British Columbia, and Sam McKegney in Kingston, Ontario. It is supplemented by comments from a discussion between the two in Alfred’s office at the University of Victoria on 23 April 2007.

TAIAIAKE ALFRED (Bear Clan, Mohawk) is a Professor of Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria. Born in Montreal and raised in the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, he currently lives in Wsanec Nation Territory on the Saanich peninsula. He is the author of dozens of articles, essays, research reports, and stories, as well as three scholarly books: Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Broadview 2005), Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (Oxford University Press, 1999/2009), and Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors (Oxford University Press, 1995).

SAM MCKEGNEY: In my understanding as a settler scholar living in Haudenosaunee Territory, there are ethics in traditional Haudenosaunee society that promote balance in all things, including gender relations. I was wondering if you could reflect upon what sort of political, spiritual, and linguistic foundations create that form of balance?

TAIAIAKE ALFRED: Well, for me it’s woven in everything, in all of our ceremonies and songs and dances, and in the Longhouse. And, not only that, but in how the culture has functioned for so long. We’ve been out of that whole classical, traditional mode for a long time now, but that doesn’t mean that everything was wiped out and that patriarchy was imposed outright. I think a lot of stuff in our communities is based on the traditional, pre-contact situation we had. One of those is the role of women, at least in the social and cultural life of the community, if not the political. I mean, you grow up in that kind of environment, and then it gets enforced when you learn more about the traditional teachings, whether it’s in governance or any other area. The notion of balance you’re talking about is pretty fundamental, and you could pick pretty much any aspect of Iroquoian culture and you’d find it as a central theme in there.

SM: Why was it viewed as crucial to the colonial project to remove that sense of balance from Indigenous communities?

TA: Well, I think there’s two main reasons—I guess you’d need to ask a colonizer for the real truth on this—but from our perspective anyways, you look at it in a historical context and there’s two reasons. One is that the central objective of colonization, as it was practised in our part of the world, was to impose cultural practices and to impose worldviews that come from Europe on Indigenous peoples. It just so happens that at the time that this project was in full force, doing its business, patriarchy and the subjugation of women were at the forefront of that culture, so I think that was one of the driving forces. It was part of the package of European civilization. So, that’s one reason. The other reason is that the particularities of the Haudenosaunee, and a lot of other Indigenous peoples in our part of the world, made it necessary to attack the power of women in the community in terms of decision making—when it came to making war, and making decisions on trade, and economic decisions and so forth—and also the fact that they were the title holders to the land. If you’re trying to steal somebody’s land, you have to go after the owners, and in the Haudenosaunee community, the owners, it so happened, were the females. So you put those two together, and it’s a pretty compelling reason to go after the traditional roles of women in our society.

SM: The way that that was carried out in a political fashion—through the imposition of the Indian Act, and the band council system, and of course residential schools and other forms of dispossession, as well as the encroachment of capitalism—all of this seemed to be going along contemporaneously with cultural production that would re-imagine gender relations among Indigenous peoples. I’m thinking about the way that first literature and now film—and even newspapers and music—have created simulations of what constitutes Indigenous womanhood and what constitutes Indigenous manhood. And, I’m wondering about your analysis of these, particularly of simulations of hypermasculinity, in film and in literature, about Indigenous men.

TA: Well, the first thing, reflecting on what you just said, is that I think it started much earlier than the Indian Act and all that. The first instance when people changed their worldviews, or rejected their traditional worldviews and took on a Christian perspective of relationships of humans to the universe, you’ve done the deed then, and the ground is laid, so to speak, for the destruction of our societies. Because it’s based on balance, and it is necessary to understand that balance from our teachings, and from the ceremonies and songs and so forth, and if you take on a Christian worldview you forget that. And not only that, you get the implicit bias towards the male that comes from the Bible. So I think it happened pretty early on. The Indian Act and residential schools and all that, to me was kind of the “final solution,” so to speak, and it put a capstone on something that had already been laid as a foundation much earlier.

But the other part of your question, about popular culture and its stereotyped images of Natives... I can only say—I haven’t studied this as a professional project or anything, that’s what you’re up to—in my own personal experience and that of my community, I can’t really say that the images have fundamentally affected our conceptions of ourselves. At least not me and the people that I know. The images of the buckskin warrior and the hypermasculine images that, like you said, are in film and books and so forth, to me those were there and people were aware of them, but we always thought, “that’s the way other Natives are.” It’s not anyone I know. We had hypermasculine guys and guys who were pretty tough, but they weren’t the kind of images that were reflected in movies. There weren’t many iron workers and all that in the movies when I was growing up. The images didn’t really resonate, and, therefore, they didn’t really connect.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the films and movies and the books tend to focus on Plains Indian culture, and we’re not Plains Indians, so there was no resonance there either. They were kind of a parody, at least I understood them to be a parody. You know, it’s not so much the image that’s being portrayed, it’s how people react to it. You see something like that on TV or in a movie, and prima facie, it’s not really insulting to me, because it’s not me. But if people are laughing at it, or if people are mistakenly expecting me to be that way, then it’s a problem. But to be honest, it wasn’t really an issue for me growing up, not so much in the community I come from anyways. I suppose it would be a lot different if you talked to people in the States or on the Plains.

SM: What then have been the influences of the dominant media-informed stereotypes of Indigenous masculinity—for example, the “bloodthirsty warrior,” the “noble savage,” and the “drunken absentee”?

TA: Well, I think that all of those stereotypes were instrumental to someone else’s agenda. For the violence of conquest you needed a violent opponent, so you created this image of the Native as violent warrior, the classic horseback opponent. And then you had all of these other things that were created completely out of context, usually. The way to confront that and to defeat it and to recover something meaningful for Natives is to put the image of the Native male back into its proper context, which is in the family. And so if the image of the Native male is defined in the context of a family with responsibilities to the family—to the parents, to the spouse, to the children (or nephews, nieces, or whatever, or even just youth in general)—if you put the person back into their proper context there are responsibilities that come with that, as opposed to just serving the one responsibility, which is as the foil for white conquest in North America.

THE WAY TO CONFRONT THAT AND TO DEFEAT IT AND TO RECOVER SOMETHING MEANINGFUL FOR NATIVES IS TO PUT THE IMAGE OF THE NATIVE MALE BACK INTO ITS PROPER CONTEXT, WHICH IS IN THE FAMILY.

So there’s no winning in that one for Natives because, firstly, there’s just no winning in that kind of power struggle, and secondly, if you construct yourself to serve that role, there may some pride in physicality, and so forth, but there’s no living with it because it’s not meant to be lived with; it’s meant to be killed, every single time. They’re images to be slain by the white conqueror. And now that they don’t slay them, most of the time, openly, you know, what’s the role of the Native male? And they haven’t really constructed a role for themselves because they haven’t really been put back into the proper context because the communities are still reeling from the conquest.

So the Native family structure, I think, is the most important thing to foster, because then men will recognize that there’s just as much pride to be taken in a family role as there is in the Hollywood Indian. So right now a lot of these Natives, they still want to live the Hollywood Indian because it’s the only source of pride that they have, the only image that they have. There’s no channel, I guess, for productive masculinity in a productive way. You still constantly reproduce the image of all of those four that you talked about—the absentee, the drunk, the tough guy, the warrior—and those are all anti-family messages. They may be good for the man, maybe, for a short time, but they’re not good overall for the man in the long term. And they’re certainly not good for the family. And so I think a focus on rebuilding the foundations of Native communities in terms of looking at responsibility to the community, as opposed to living out someone else’s fantasy, is the first thing.

SM: You’ve included youth voices in much of your work. I’m thinking of some of the interviews from Wasáse, for instance, and your co-authorship of the article on the meaning of political participation for Indigenous youth.1 What factors inform what you describe as the cynicism of a lot of Indigenous youth towards political processes? What creates that sense of disenfranchisement and alienation?

TA: I think first of all, it’s a general thing having to do with their age. They tend to be more romantic in their notion of politics, and then they are easily crushed when they find out that politicians lie, and that it’s really all about the money and there’s no integrity in the process, whether it is Native or non-Native. I think that when they start to see the reality-when they get to an age where they can appreciate the reality of what politics is and how it works, and what their elders are doing in the political process-it breeds a cynicism because they have such high ideals given that they’re young. I think that’s part of it. I think the other part is that they are part of a generation—it’s kind of a paradox—our people are getting more and more urbanized, and more and more assimilated, and more and more integrated into technological society, more and more dependent, less and less linguistically and culturally oriented, but at the same time youth are being told that they need to be more Aboriginal, more First Nations. They get on the Internet, or in these seminars, or in counselling or whatever, all these so called “teachings”... so they get these “teachings” and this notion of what it means to be Native in a theoretical sense, and then they turn around and look at the lives that their leaders and their parents and everyone is leading, and they see such a disconnection.

You know, teenagers are always hyper in-tune to hypocrisy to begin with. I don’t know if you’ve experienced it, if you’ve raised any teenagers, but if you’ve been in that situation you know that kids from the time they are pre-teens until late-teens, they’re looking to catch adults on their hypocrisy every single day. And I think that is a big part of it; it’s so easy to see the hypocrisy of what’s going on. When you get older, if you enter politics you have to willfully ignore it in order to rationalize your participation in it. Whereas the kids, they don’t have any stake in rationalizing it, so they just see it for what it is. And then, sadly, they get turned off by it because they see nothing but hypocrisy. It’s very rare, I think, to find a leader that can motivate young people by being a role model in all of the ways that we expect our leaders to be in traditional senses—as a person, being consistent with the philosophy, being strong and courageous, all the things we write about and talk about. It’s very, very rare in terms of our leadership in Native communities. There are individuals who have different aspects of all of that, but, I don’t know... maybe if you threw some names at me I could respond, but I honestly can’t think of an individual who embodies the full spectrum, and is a person who is a leader in the full sense of the word.

SM: I’m thinking about the way in which getting turned off or disenchanted—I guess, what amounts to disappointment in the hypocrisy of the generation before—leads to a need for alternative kinds of communities. I’m thinking specifically of Indigenous male youth, about how gangs function, and what needs or desires are fostered, or can be worked through, with that kind of alternative community. Is that an oversimplification of what leads kids in that direction?

TA: I don’t think that is an oversimplification. The only critical response I would have to what you said is the linking of it to this kind of sense of disappointment at the behaviour of leaders because that assumes a foundation for critique where they know and expect some cultural integrity. Whereas, I would say 99 percent of the people involved in gangs, they don’t have a cultural background, they don’t have any sense of what it is to be Native, or part of a family, or anything. They’re just existing in a cultural and social vacuum, and the gang provides some structure in their life and provides an identity which is entirely lacking. So, once you sort of de-link it from culture, and a critique of culture, I think that, yeah, you’re right. It does provide something; it provides absolutely essential things. But, unfortunately, that explanation—I’m not saying you’re doing this, but I’ve heard it before—if you go too far with it, it releases gang members from their own responsibility, and it really underplays the significance of the attraction of violence and greed and sheer laziness—intellectual and physical—on their part, to do the hard work to actually make a life. Sure, it operates and it fulfills a function that all humans need, especially these people here who are living the lives they lead, where it’s almost entirely absent, that basic family. But on the other hand, they are all acting like greedy pigs, and they’re all abusing women and killing and doing violence. So, yeah, they’ve made those choices. There are a lot of people who need culture who don’t go into gangs. It’s all about balance. I think that explanation makes sense, but I think it needs to be paired immediately with self-responsibility as well.

SM: In analyzing experiences like that, far too often people find themselves coming down on one or the other side: it’s either all the individual’s fault or it’s all this absence that is political and beyond the individual, when of course they’re always interwoven, right? Those things can’t function without each other.

TA: Yeah, that’s for sure. I think you’re absolutely right. Most people pick a side, one or the other, because that’s the way most of our learning and most of our policy and most of our law operates, right?

SM: That makes me think—speaking to you from Kingston, the prison capital of Canada—about incarceration, and ways in which masculine identities are moulded in prison settings. I know a few elders in this area who conduct cultural teachings in the different prisons. For many inmates, they haven’t had the chance to learn about their cultures until they’re in this place, but it’s a place that exists as an instrument of ongoing state coercion and violence. So, I guess I’m just asking you to reflect on what these tensions produce or what they can produce.

TA: I don’t really know. I don’t have any experience, I’ve never really worked in that context. Of course I know people who have gone into prison and who’ve gotten out, and who’ve been involved in trying to learn cultural teachings and doing ceremonies and stuff while they were in prison. But to be honest, I haven’t seen it operate in any transformative function… I suppose there are some aspects of traditional Indigenous philosophies and teachings which are personal, which you can take and use to steel yourself, or help yourself survive in that environment. But as for the major thrust of those teachings and so forth, they are all communal and participatory, and they take place either on the land or in the community... It seems to me that what you’re getting when you teach in that environment is really one slice of what traditional teachings are—those that are applicable to the kind of environment that those guys are living in. Or women.

It’s the same thing—I mean, it’s a different environment—but it’s a similar problem that you face with trying to teach it in a university, really. You’re not out on the land, you’re not in a community, and you have kind of a transient population, and so the kinds of things you do in a university tend to be things that are attractive to those people. They tend to be things to just help them maintain themselves while they’re here. There’s not really a level of commitment to actually living through those teachings, so much as using the teachings in order to make the experiences more palatable or to survive the experience. I suppose it’s just that much more heightened for prisoners.

SM: I wanted to ask you also about what Mohawk psychiatrist Clare Brant has called “the ethic of non-interference.” I’ve been thinking lately in some of my work about how traditional ethics of non-interference can become, I guess co-opted might be the right word, by capitalist individualism. In other words, how traditional ethics that support the autonomy of Indigenous individuals can become misconstrued in a capitalist environment that wants the individual to see himself as sort of unmoored from communal responsibility.

TECHNOLOGY HAS REALLY SUPPLANTED THE COMMUNITY AND PEOPLE FEEL LIKE THEY’RE PART OF A LARGER GLOBAL CAPITALISM. THAT’S MUCH MORE REAL TO THEM THAN THEIR LITTLE RESERVE COMMUNITIES WHICH THEY CAN AFFORD TO IGNORE.

TA: Yeah, well, Clare, he was on to something, and I think did a good job of abstracting a key component of Indigenous culture. But, in relation to the question you’re asking, there’s a big difference between the two because, as it was described by Clare, the ethic of non-interference operates in a larger context of pretty strict rules, and a pretty unified worldview, and a pretty solid sense that is shared among all the people of the community as to what is right and wrong in the end. And, we’ll call that a culture, an Indigenous culture and worldview. And, that’s a lot different than not giving a damn, and just playing with your iTunes all day long, and not bothering with your neighbour in the context of global capital, where global capitalism seeks to atomize individuals and seeks to communicate with individuals only through advertising—implanted advertising these days, or subliminal advertising—and seeks to control that individual from a corporate perspective, right? They look the same, I guess, when you’re walking around.

You could see an individual concerned only with him-or herself, and maybe confuse that with a traditional-minded individual forty years earlier in that community, not judging, or not interfering with what is going on in his neighbour’s yard, trusting that either from a spiritual perspective, or that the larger community will right things in the end, that things will be right and balance will come to the community. That’s a big difference in terms of the intention and the self-awareness of those two individuals. And, yeah, I just think it’s a very precarious state in our communities now, especially since the nineties, or maybe even in the last ten years or fifteen years, with personal technology—omnipresent television, computerization, Facebook, all that kind of stuff—where there is really no accountability to community anymore. It’s increasingly becoming a situation where technology has really supplanted the community and people feel like they’re part of a larger global capitalism. That’s much more real to them than their little reserve communities which they can afford to ignore.

SM: Yeah, I suppose things like Facebook constitute a form of narcosis, right, if they take people away from recognizing the reality around them. And, of course, that’s why they’re attractive, because they render what might otherwise be untenable conditions tenable, because they can then be ignored.

TA: That’s exactly right. And the way out? I don’t know. Most people, sadly, are quite willing to accept a level of gratification that goes only so deep as physicality, or maybe the first layer of psychology, and capitalism gives them that. But, you know, for those individuals who need a level of gratification that goes beyond that to the spiritual, the deeper levels of psychology—whose soul is a bit more attuned to the need for spiritual and psychological fulfillment—then, you know, you have someone you can talk to in terms of being critical of all this, and looking at spirituality and traditional teachings as an alternative. But, to be honest, there are very few individuals who are swayed by that argument.

I find that at the university here we teach the traditional line, and we get people who’ve been through crisis—either intellectually, psychologically, or sometimes spiritually—they’ve been part of the capitalist machine and it has harmed them, and they’re looking for an alternative. And unfortunately I think our people, at least in Kahnawake where I’m from, they were denied the access to capitalist fulfillment for so long that now they’re just tasting it for the first time and they think it’s great. But, I already see signs of it cracking. It really is the role of intellectuals and artists and writers to explain for people what it is they’re feeling and what’s happening to them. There’s a lot of people in Kahnawake right now who are in crisis, psychologically and spiritually, because they have too much money. Capitalism is not doing anything for them, it’s harming them.

SM: I want to talk a little bit about re-imagining warrior ethics, which you’ve written about powerfully. To start with, the concept of “carrying the burden of peace”—rotiskenhrakete. In Kanien’kehaka society, how do you conceptualize the qualities of men charged with that burden?

TA: First of all, I don’t know if that’s the actual translation of the word. I know there’s debate in our communities as to what that means. I think I’ve used both... I think I’ve maybe self-consciously chosen to use that translation a couple of times, because it sounds as compelling as the other one. The other one... are you aware of the other?

SM: I haven’t heard it translated differently, so no.

TA: Well, you know, the verb, the central part of the word you’re saying is “skenhra,” rotiskenhrakete. But if you look at it from a linguistic perspective, it’s not actually right to translate it that way, because it would be rotiskenhrakete: “they’re carrying the peace.” But, when it’s pronounced and when it’s written it’s not rotiskenhrakete, it’s rotishrakete. There’s not “skenhra” in there, and that literally just means “carrying the burden,” or “carrying something heavy,” I believe. Some older guys said it could originally be derived from carrying a rifle, because there’s a word there, the middle word, might be for iron or steel or something heavy, a burden. So maybe the rust from a rifle or something like that? So there’s two different opinions as to what that means, and it’s important to make that distinction, because you know, in the territory you live, most of the people there are Handsome Lake followers and they don’t really believe in the warrior ethic in the way that it operates in Akwesasne or Kahnawake, so of course they use that translation without question, whereas in Kahnawake they use the other one. It’s carrying something, it’s carrying a burden, which is good enough for me. Being peaceful is a big enough burden. So I just wanted to make that clarification.

The key characteristic, the key defining characteristic of a warrior is someone who is putting his life at risk, right? It’s not so much a set of skills or even traits, it’s people who have decided that they’re as good as dead, you know? And they are going to go out and do what it takes and fulfill the mandate of that community in terms of defending it, or projecting its power, or going on a spiritual quest. It’s a spiritual sense, a spiritually defined role, as opposed to a more political or social role. I think it’s not only Indigenous people who have that sense of it. The philosophical—they wouldn’t say spiritual there so much as philosophical—the philosophical notion of the role that the Samurai is playing in Japanese society: it’s someone who is as good as dead, who is fulfilling the mandate of his retainer, and who is quite willing, and not only willing but savouring, the ability to fulfill that role.

I was in the Marine Corps, and you know, there’s a lot of assholes in the Marine Corps, but there’s a lot of warriors too who see it as their sacred responsibility to carry on and defend the 236 years of tradition that they are now a part of. It has very little to do with patriotism or anything like that. It’s a spiritual role that these guys think they are playing in relation to the Marine Corps and the sacrifices that have been made by previous Marines. And I think in the context of our community, it’s a lot better developed in terms of the teachings around it, the ceremonies around it, the history. I think it’s a universal thing across cultures where there are segments of the population who, because of their personality or because of their psychological makeup, have been selected and found to be the appropriate person to fulfill that role, serve in that role.

But I want to make a distinction between warrior soldiers or fighters, and having that warrior spirit in everything that you do as an Indigenous person. The essential characteristic is someone who is concerned, who is driven, by the need to satisfy that warrior ethic, and the demands of the warrior ethic, as opposed to someone who is living to satisfy the demands of a value system that is constructed out of capitalism, or Christianity, or anything else. It’s clearly for someone who is motivated by something other than success in terms of a mainstream definition. And someone who’s willing to sacrifice everything really, someone who’s willing to walk away and defend her or his—I don’t want to use the word “honour” too flippantly, because I think honour has been misused a lot—but when you think about it, someone who is willing to walk away from success in material terms in order to have respect as a warrior, as someone who has stood up and defended what was right. I think that is a warrior, someone who is embodying that warrior ethic. And, again, not to depress ourselves, but it’s a very rare thing these days for someone to want to turn their back on the capitalist rewards system in order to get gratification from the respect that people have for you as someone who is embodying traditional values and defending the truth.

...SOMEONE WHO IS WILLING TO WALK AWAY FROM SUCCESS IN MATERIAL TERMS IN ORDER TO HAVE RESPECT AS A WARRIOR, AS SOMEONE WHO HAS STOOD UP AND DEFENDED WHAT WAS RIGHT. I THINK THAT IS A WARRIOR.

SM: There’s a complicated relationship in a lot of your work between the role of the individual in making the decision to live an ethic of struggle, or a warrior ethic, and the need for community recognition and validation of that decision. I’m thinking specifically about a quote from a high-school student named Shana in Wasáse, who states, “I think it’s important to look at who designates himself as a ‘warrior,’ or who is designated as a warrior. They serve the people, so they should be chosen by the people. A lot of times, people self-designate themselves, and maybe they’re not serving the interests of the main community” (260). How can, at the unit of the individual, a person make the right ethical choices for struggle in positive ways when, of course, that requires a connection and a responsibility beyond the self?

TA: Yeah, well, they have to find a way to create for themselves a relationship, a set of relationships, where it involves them being accountable to respected people in the community they purport to be defending. They have to find a way, if they’re not born into that relationship, then they have “Job Number One”: put themselves in a position of dependency, so to speak—for their own legitimacy, for their own self-esteem, and their own reward—on people outside of themselves. And, I think in every Native community, fortunately, there are still individuals like that, whether they are elders or not, that are respected people who are happy to mentor younger people in order to teach them and to ensure that they’re heading in the right direction. It means putting aside your ego in a fundamental sense, and not being afraid to say, “I’m trusting you with my ego here, and I’m going to take direction from you to build myself up, and to follow through on the path that I’ve laid out for myself. And, if I go off in a different direction, and you say that that’s wrong, I’m going to take that seriously.”

In the end it’s still the individual. I think it’s a truly Native way of doing things because no one is going to come tell you that you’re not allowed to take that job, or to do this or say that or write that, but the respect or lack thereof, or mocking or lack thereof that you get from these individuals when you go into that community context is the end-all and be-all of your rewards system. That’s the way I operate. It doesn’t really mean anything to me at all what people think of me in an academic context, but it’s very important what people think when I go and talk about this stuff in a community, especially among the elders and the people who know the language and the culture, and who have experienced it. They’re the ones I look to for criticism or for reward, so to speak. And I think that every individual in the world that we live in today has to recreate that accountability structure that was there inherently in traditional communities before. Everybody operated in that kind of relationship without question a long time ago. Whereas now, you have to do the work of setting yourself up in that relationship yourself.

For me, the sacrifice is in limiting your life choices by that relationship, but the ultimate reward is that you’re living in an Indigenous way. And if we say that we want to remain Indigenous, the fundamental thing is being in a respectful relationship to Indigenous communities and being a full and contributing member of a community. You can’t do that in an atomized, self-accountable fashion. So there’s a price to be paid, but there’s also an immense reward.

EVERY INDIVIDUAL IN THE WORLD THAT WE LIVE IN TODAY HAS TO RECREATE THAT ACCOUNTABILITY STRUCTURE THAT WAS THERE INHERENTLY IN TRADITIONAL COMMUNITIES BEFORE.

SM: Do you see a role for art, and literature, and other forms of artistic creation, in creating ethical warrior paths, or ethics of struggle, that are accountable to community? And my other question with relation to that is, how can literature or other forms of art build up gendered roles and responsibilities that are again accountable and can be lived in good ways?

TA: Yeah, I agree. I would go so far as to say, part of the reason that we’re in the situation we’re in—the problematic situation we’re in—is that we don’t have enough serious art and literature that is subversive to capitalism and supportive of the worldviews and the senses of identity that are our own: Indigenous. I think most art is capitalist today, and most literature is very mainstream; it’s a typical kind of navel-gazing, middle-class, either feminist or politically correct multicultural Canadianism. Even among Native writers, where is the subversion? So I would go as far as to say that it is part of the problem. We don’t have that, and it’s part of the problem, a big part of the problem.

1.Taiaiake Alfred, Brock Pitawanakwat, and Jacki Price, “The Meaning of Political Participation for Indigenous Youth: Charting the Course of Youth Democratic and Political Participation,” Canadian Policy Research Network Research Report, 2007.