Second Mini-reflection paper
INDG 258
October 4th, 2005
Labeling Terminology: What Is In a Name?
This week’s readings were powerful for me; I was impacted not only by the subject matter concerning ‘two-spirited’ and ‘multi-gendered’ positions, but at the ever-increasing ability that the over-all process of colonialism (which includes capitalism) has to continue to assimilate the worldviews of all persons marginalized through the evoluted process of ‘intellectual colonialism.’ In this reflection paper, I will first give a summation of the unrest that I walked away with after reading all the articles before I move into some specific analysis of the individual readings.
Overall, I feel humbled at the re-occurring process of colonialism that continues through intellectual colonialism, which emphasizes the definition, categorization, and then labeling of humans and their histories into stagnant tropes of understanding that have no animated function within the larger process of their colonial intentions. Colonialism is concerned with funneling power to a small and elite group, with that power being utilized to achieve their goals and intentions, while ‘stamping’ it as a universalized expression of the masses that make up humanity as a ‘globalized village.’ The process of intellectual colonialism is masked under the term of ‘post-colonialism’ and still has power over interpretation within academic settings and within the marginalized groups that colonialism impacts.
Intellectual colonialism takes control (which means takes the power) of the marginalized by constructing ideology that then affects them en-masse. These ‘products’ then focus the attention of individuals away from the privilege’s targets, much like reserves were the products of earlier colonialism that focused the attention of Indigenous peoples while the Eurocultures continued to rob them of their land and physical resources. While the Indigenous peoples struggled with physical survival, the ones in power imposed their actions and obtained their results, which still impact Indigenous groups to this day. In intellectual colonialism, Indigenous peoples are tricked into concentrating on their identity survival. The individual arguments about any specific subject are important in analysis, whether concerning Indigenous gender roles or the more specific issues of gender variance within the two-spirited community, but are utilized as blinders by the elite in power to allow the continued functioning of the more destructive re-conceptualization processes that are being matured without our recognition and knowledge. The subject of knowledge orientation is the key to recognizing the trans-subject condition that colors our interpretive lenses; intellectual colonialism keeps us so busy in the topic of our identity so that we can never fully grasp at the processes that are occurring while we are being distracted on other topics.
Take for example the point addressed in class that some Indigenous groups do not have separate words or categories for the two-spirited; rather, the two-spirited is not addressed with a name, but with processes that empower the individual’s identity within the collective whole. These processes have been defined as gender roles by the privileged eurocultural community, and have been written into products to be sold so that the processes are overlooked and the impact of terminology becomes the target of our attention. A nuance to this assertion is that these products, such as ‘berdache,’ were first obtained by eurocentric specialists that then become our focal point when we want to reclaim identity from knowledge systems that never had this as an intended categorization within the language and worldview of the peoples. Now, contemporary scholars, including and maybe especially the Indigenous scholars, try to derive their identity from within the ancestral roots of their traditional knowledge system without realizing they are ‘buying into’ the intellectual colonialism, the modern-day gold-mining of the Indigenous landscape.
We have to recognize that we are appropriating Indigenous knowledge systems in the same way as those privileged eurospecialists did. Rather than looking for the processes found within the Indigenous traditional knowledge systems that organized that knowledge (with most Indigenous knowledge’s focus around verb-based action that shows the internal focus of these languages and worldviews), we are using the definitions and classifications of the eurocultural specialists to assign meaning to the products we find there.
These components are then added to the product exchange that eurocultural specialists can then transform into marketable forms for distribution and profit. Take for example the privilege-derived term of ‘berdache.’ Many of the authors in the assigned readings emphasized variant terms and presented counter-arguments concerning this eurocentric-positioned term. The process of definition that created this term is still left unaddressed and uncritically assessed while new terms are being added to keep the focus off the process behind the confusion.
The argument that has been given, that differing knowledge system have their own Indigenous terms, have addressed this issue (see every one of the authors in this assignment) and has the focus of delimiting the power through its response. Rather than resting with this ambiguity, which traditional knowledge systems have incorporated the ability to do through channels of respect for other knowledge systems as having their own process that does not inflict on the one being interpreted through, scholars then begin to react through bringing these cultural items out of their process construction and turning them into products. This reaction then returns the eurocentric focus back toward defining and categorizing, rather than learning further from the traditional knowledge system how to release this need to make products and begin to realign to the process-orientation of the traditionalist.
Wesley Thomas especially falls into this intellectual colonial trap as he sets up charts and models of typology. People are herded into categories as products of intellectual stimulation, rather than recognizing that people are limit-less, thus in process of identity. For example, his conceptualization of five tropes of Navajo people: the traditionalist may have to have employment in the city, yet still retains fluency in language and in cultural transmission. This type of person does not fit the trope limits of living on the reservation, and further, s/he may have some monetary wealth while retaining cultural wealth as well (165). This category is not very practical but shows another stereotype that may have been influenced by the Christian component of early colonialism, whereby holy, religious, or spiritual persons must be poor to be endowed religiously/culturally. This construct allows those in the privileged power spheres to continue their existence without economic, intellectual, or physical challenge from the marginalized since the marginalized will monitor their own groups through their own derived position of traditional/christian/euro
That is another nuance to intellectual colonialism, that of the use of the traditional worldviews of the marginalized to maximize control over them. My favorite article was the last in the package because the transcriptions were in alignment with traditional knowledge systems by allowing the orality to show forth in print, thus not allowing academic construction to control the results of the conference in printed products void of process. The emotion, the ambiguity of the topics, and the nuances of individual characters was retained to show a process-orientation rather than a product-orientation. Here is where traditional knowledge was escaping the conference’s structural boundaries that was causing the frustration of the participants and allowing traditional knowledge identity to relate with the eurocultural identity of the conference, with dialogue and monologue, listening and talking, feeling and intellectual ponderance unifying into a process that can bridge the conflicts under discussion. Acceptance was found in agreeing to disagree (297) and animation (which can be seen as power, spirit, life through conversational sharing) was allowed flow into the space of the conference. This is a reflection of the traditional ways of knowing that the Elder’s and knowledge keepers of Indigenous knowledges are striving for, rather than the product focus of academic linear processes. “Word walls” (297) were not attacked but simply put aside and the discussion was allowed to transcend into the constructs of Indigenous knowledge systems by bringing personal experience into the collective proceedings.
Interesting to note is the smudging ritual’s position and power in transforming the situation (298). Arnold started it off with “I do not need to be very vocal about who I am or how I am. I just live my life and allow that to be whatever it is” (299). This is an attitude that storytellers and Elders constantly are trying to impact over the focus of analysis and terminology. Words are needed, analysis are needed, but they are tools in the toolbox in order to handle life and its processes rather than becoming life themselves. The finger pointing to the moon was not mistaken for the moon in this statement. This resulted in traditional knowledge processes to empower most of the participants and allowed the frustration to ebb; this frustration may not have been so much of a result of the past successes of colonialism so much as the result of intellectual colonialism from the conferences own domination of control over the topics and their expression.
All of these topics such as two-spirited and Indigenous gender roles must be examined, but the interpretive lenses must first be analyzed as to see their function in the problems trying to be addressed. Intellectual colonialism has terminated many oral societies, especially my own Irish one, and I continue to see the process within my children’s First Nations culture as well. The writings of Indigenous peoples are creating an impact in the eurocultural setting of academia, but, as some nēhiyāwak (Cree) knowledge keepers state, are creating pāstāhowin, or spiritual consequences for the future generations by their work. This critique is important to look at since it arises from within the traditional knowledge systems themselves; these keepers of the worldviews are being consulted, but the lessons they teach are subtle and need the context of other components of the traditional knowledge system in order for understanding to surface within academics who are already within another influential, and must be recognized privileged, worldview. The protocol of academia is recognized in our writings and scholars must learn to reason with the protocols and constructs of their own, or other, traditional knowledge systems if they intend to do justice to the systems themselves and not become additional exploiters for the purpose of intellectual colonialism. The assimilation techniques are most successful when intellectual colonialism utilizes the marginalization against themselves, thus shielding the real issues behind the smoke screen of identity theft from within. While multi-gendered individuals are focused on their terminology and classifications, this may negatively impact the Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) more than they could realize. Rather than search for terms and roles within the IKS, maybe a transitional focus could be to the values expounded in the process-orientation of the IKS, such as acceptance (of oneself, not of systemized prejudice), respect (and its relationship with ambiguity), interrelationship (rather than classifications and tropes), and more.
