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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-25
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN17Os8JAr8
WNED WNED built you what the big one coming up that long when I who lack notebook I think Saddam if the six minimum is what US guy got to come home with that long black foot cream Nicole desoto Amy T. thoughts will come out the plus all our relations I'm from a hook that's my motherland on the cut out territory I'm fifty six my name's kicks
Allah I'm grateful to me with all of you here today animus which was guy gun the motherland in the gathering lands the plaque with the creamy than accorded the Soto and the meeting nations I I also want to acknowledge that we are here every single one of us is here and living our lives in the way that we are because those treaties to truly think that
allows us to be on these lands has been broken it's been broken countless times %HESITATION from the way that we drive our cars to a few of them to the way that we relate to each other to the way that we don't know how to properly pronounce I missed what she was guide so %HESITATION we're going to talk about aside from that I came in and
I kinda wanted to make everybody uncomfortable and I want to start with that broken treaties talk because we have all come here and we consented to share ideas and in that continue to share ideas were consenting to feel uncomfortable we're consenting to have those things in our perceptions question but I have a lot of history but I have a low tone of voice and it sounds
aggressive to some folks us so I had to do a lot of thinking of how my gonna talk about this and I do a lot of thinking about all the time because I'm also a teacher and an educator and so I'm always on my decolonization with folks with us in the streets or whether it's in front of a of a white board I'm always bring it
up and I have to wonder %HESITATION how can I do this in the kindest way so I called a good friend of mine even this morning %HESITATION and they are one of the most critical people I know and we met at a tradition going which is one of the largest camps of standing rock %HESITATION and while we were there we got to start a decomposition cost
was only for indigenous people and people of color %HESITATION and every other night I taught a class that was for absolutely all of the camp %HESITATION and at these lessons %HESITATION I got to like come up with a couple of like mantras a catch phrase of the people caught on to and one of them that even reminded me of today was panic is not fearful so
I brought that with me here and I brought my sister with me and we were sitting outside we came in during the first session I had started and were sitting outside I was with my laptop we were talking about the talks and security came up to us and asked us if we were loitering and like I don't know how to tell y'all and it's like a
a displays urban indigenous person whose displays in someone else's urban territory how many times that happen to me %HESITATION and it was mind blowing and I didn't know how to interact with it but then I remind myself penny's approval and I tried to gather my thoughts and try to say what am I gonna talk but today when my gonna bring up how far is it gonna
go and %HESITATION it's been really hard I'm gonna be honest with you all starting in that way and having what I'm gonna say to y'all police today because of the accountability that it brings but it's also a tremendous opportunity for me to talk to ya all about uncomfortable witty and how we can deal with accountability but I'm not gonna take that because I think that focusing
still on the people who are uncomfortable about this still recreating colonial violence is still create recreating sister privacy is still recreating what %HESITATION able supremacy if still recreating white supremacy so instead I'm gonna do what I usually do when I talk with classes is I try to weaponize everybody in there I don't try to talk to about what his colonialism how do we interact with it
how to engage with it and how do we combat it within ourselves within our families within our communities and how do we take that further what is Colonial violence and it's something that is like really easy to like for him in the past it's something that's really easy to frame as something that we don't participate in the really gonna violence is sitting in the seats right
now being comfortable colonial violence is the control of the elements that we have in being warm in this room I don't like colonial violence and understanding in that way is something that we can all do because we all have had the circumstance but we can all China understand what colonial violence means to us and how we act and how we are complicit in it %HESITATION I
don't talk about accountability but I don't talk about why it makes people uncomfortable and I think that I need to do like a whole overview of colonial violence through the years to do that %HESITATION so let's start with what is colonialism opcode realism is a another country %HESITATION or nation state come into a territory %HESITATION with the purpose of taking the resources of that territory and
appropriating had happened seems like a common story right like we know what how that goes but what happens when we come to these territories is that they also bring their axes all edgy which is a big word for how we quantify how we give value and how we prescribe worked things so when colonizers come upon contact they decide this is the worst of the people this
is the worst of the resources this is the worst of the land this is what we can pursue here and that becomes embedded in all of the institutions that create that nation state afterwards so when we get to post colonialism or settler colonialism all of our institutions all of our policies all of our governance structures are based off of those beliefs that were brought upon contact
and then that shapes how we how we could the chips how we talk about epistemology which is how we conceive knowledge and how we transfer knowledge and what knowledge we see is valid and we can see that in our institutions within our education institutions and our medical institutions how indigenous medicines are not a part of them at all but we're getting there but we're very slowly
getting there with indigenous people having to fight have their backs to the wall constantly and then and then what seller colonialism does to us is that it makes us exist within all of these institutions it makes us how ugly even from the way that we define our address in which the way that we define what we are indigenous sellers are immigrants to waive that we interact
with the health care and medical system all of that shapes how we perceive reality and how we understand every how we understand how everything is basically that's ontology an extra holiday epistemology and ontology come together for the state to create a narrative and to create what is normal and so that's why it's so painful that's why it's so painful to say to someone Hey you just
did something racist because that someone has like thought in that way and not question themselves for their whole life it's so painful to have these conversations were saying to a teacher Hey the way your teaching is pilot to the students because that teacher their whole life might've wanted to teach students and change their lives but I wanted to hold those hearts in their hand and guide
the students to be the best people they can be but they're not aware that they're doing and violent way so it's important to recall that these violence as we do it in a good way we do it in a nice way to do it in a kind way we do it in a loving way like justice homey backstage so we communally constructed ways of engaging in
combating colonial violence as this awesome community of anti colonial class that we had a tradition going someday as there was five months that we ended up just eating dinner my tent and some is there were three hundred of us in this massive don't like three weeks or three hundred must and I had to teach to class screaming at the top of my lungs in a circle
%HESITATION and it was tremendous and what we did there together it's come up with five different ways of engaging and combating colonial violence the first one is do nothing and be the best you can be and it's valid because it's not always safe it's not always safe for us to say you make with a security officer today it wasn't safe for me to say Hey it's
not okay for you to ask me if I'm loitering I'm here on the speaker we think offense in person today %HESITATION who because they had a position of power because the good until we hear not allowed to be heard I could not talk and in that lake deciding whether it's safe for us we also have to position ourselves and we get to see where are we
where my depressing whereby the oppressed what power do I have to wear my disempowered and how can engage with this the second one is a call out and call out we have to be really careful with because the call out sometimes people find inherent violence in it and the call out is where you say Hey this is what you did this is how it made me
feel this is why it's problematic may be tied to some systematic oppression and then you ask for the response what do you think where we at now how do we go forward together or you can just walk away if you need to depends on how safe you are but again with his collar culture we can get aggressive with each other and we need to make sure
that we keep everybody safe and the intended community that we're trying to keep safe safe an example of this is when white folks go Willy nilly Colin other white folks racist also if you prefer the term people with a color you like to use that what's inside of us from witness to %HESITATION but when white folks say to another white person Hey you're being racist that
other white person isn't going to think this way persons the worst they're very likely going to thank my community is being divided and attacked again so keep that in mind when you're talking to people in your calling them out the next option is call someone in build a relationship with them based on what you're saying to them tell them I learned this from my experience I
know this I too was you young padawan and I to hurt people's feelings I've never seen a star was over my life I'm surprised that reference %HESITATION and then the fourth one is asked for time within your being called out or whether you are calling someone out it's totally okay for you to ask for time a process to internalize to understand what's going on so that
you can come back in the best way possible other than this is bringing it home so when you learn when you have a relationship with someone where you have to call them out bring it with you where you go learn from that difficult well difficult badly how can you give people tools to engage with us in a good way to I started this talk by talking
about how panic is not prayerful and how we need to approach things in peaceful and loving ways but I recognize that unless we don't know what to do panic is our only response so I hope they're weaponized in some way against colonial violence I hope I have inspired you to love yourself and be yourself because you're the change %HESITATION and if you live here I work
