Tag: An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: “Ontology” Is Just Another Word For Colonialism

Partners in Art, LandMarks2017: Art + Places + Perspectives

This catalogue of the LandMarks2017 is the homework assigned for this weekend by the professor in the course I’m taking this month. It begins (after greetings from funders) with a curatorial statement, co-authored by David Divney, Ariella Pahlke & Melinda Spooner, Natalia Lebedinskaia, Véronique Leblanc, Kathleen Ritter, and Tania Willard. “Landmarks are meeting places,” they begin, noting that landmarks can be natural features or part of the built environment that “define boundaries and echo multiple histories, stories and beliefs. They give shape to our collective memories. A landmark is a turning point for change and a legacy for future generations. Landmarks help us find our way. To mark is to act” (10). That statement describes the curators’ theme, the way they are defining the key term in the show.

LandMarks2017 was a network of collaborative, contemporary art projects installed in national parks on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Confederation. “The anniversary marks an occasion to reflect on a land much older than 150 years,” the curators state, “and to address the legacies of colonialism, the complex relationship to nationhood and cultural identity, as well as our relationship to nature in the face of present-day environmental and climatic crises” (10). The show looks at art “as a catalyst for discourse and social change,” and “provides an opportunity to imagine, to speculate and to invent our futures through the eyes of aratists, art students, communities, and through the spirit of the land” (10). Given the diversity of Canada, the show spoke “from multiple positions using difference, rather than unified national identity, as a starting point,” and it recognized “Indigenous Nations and relationships to land as foundational”: “Our shared stories are, at their heart, about land, belonging, languages and cultures that stem from our interconnectedness with the earth” (10). That curatorial position is rooted in Indigenous understandings of and relationships with land.

In her introduction, curator Candice Hopkins, a member of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, begins with the genocide of the Beothuk in what is now Newfoundland. She writes, “we know that one of the defining characteristics of the colonial frontier is its extraordinary imbalance of power and its incredible violence” (13). The history that Canada celebrates “is a distinctly settler history, borne out of the tenacity of those first non-Indigenous people who came to make their homes in these lands,” although even that history leaves out the experiences of many newcomers (13). It also, she implies, leaves out stories like the story of the Beothuk.

LandMarks2017, Hopkins continues, may have been “the largest exhibition to take place in Canada,” and for that reason, “it had the ability to engage with markedly different communities and landscapes, many of which were situated far from major urban centres,” far from the southern border where most Canadians live (13). “What does it mean to consider a nation, not only through its official narratives, but through its unofficial ones as well?” she asks. “How can an exhibition uphold those places and people whose histories and stories fly under the radar?” (13). The show “sought to make space to see beyond the celebratory acts undertaken in the country to recognize its 150th anniversary since Confederation, and mark instead those complicated and often lesser-known histories that inevitably accompany national formations,” she writes. “it did this by placing an emphasis not necessarily on people, but on the land, the water and the environment, and our relationships to it—however complicated and complicit” (13). 

LandMarks2017 brought together works by 12 artists, “many of them collaborative, process-based, ephemeral and often made with the things of nature,” and it “made space for the questioning of official narratives and deeply held personal narratives as well” (14). She suggests that Rebecca Belmore’s sculptures included in the show, Wave Sound, which represented listening devices, “posit a necessary shift in our collective consciousness”: “We are at a tipping point ecologically and environmentally,” she writes, and Wave Sound suggests the importance of listening to the sounds of the land (14). Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Camille Turner also produced “something of an auditory work” in their collaboration, Freedom Tours, which “engaged a host of collaborators on a tour boat in the waterway of Thousand Islands national Park and as a procession in Rouge National Urban Park, situated near the borderlands of Canada and the United States” (14). That project “created a platform for the sharing of stories, knowledge and songs” from Indigenous people and people who are part of the African diaspora, descendants of those who fled north during the time of slavery (14). That project asked “Whose stories are missing when we speak about land and freedom?” and “What do we do with this new-found knowledge and these new-found stories?” Hopkins states (14). 

Hopkins devotes a paragraph to Maureen Gruben’s metaphorical intervention, in which “she threaded hundreds of feet of bright red broadcloth across the ice in a precise zigzag,” where each ‘suture connected holes drilled in the ice, the kind made for thousands of years by people in the Univialuit region for fishing and sealing” (14). The work referred to the decorative trim on parkas, and was thus “a monument to women’s work, their skill and aesthetics,” skills that kept people alive in the arctic (14). 

“Other projects were subject to the ever-changing conditions of the environment,” Hopkins continues. Michael Belmore’s sculpture of copper-inlaid stones remains in Churchill, Manitoba, although it was originally intended to be installed in parks in southern Manitoba (14). The stones couldn’t be transported south because the railway to Churchill was damaged by flooding (14). 

Hopkins notes that LandMarks2017 “took place in the age of reconciliation,” which has changed this country, even if the emotional labour was carried out by Indigenous people and if Canada considers the reconciliation process concluded, rather than just begun (15). “In its deep questioning of official histories and national narratives, LandMarks did not replicate binary or reductive relationships between peoples, between settler (as one all-too-often reductive category) and Indigenous (an equally reductive category)” (15). Instead, it “demonstrated the potential of anti-colonial methodologies,” such as 

L’Hirondelle and Turner’s insistence on giving voice to birds (the winged ones) as part of their project; Rebecca Belmore’s call to listen to the water; Ursula Johnson’s ‘gift’ of an image of the Cape Breton forest, one that can be used to decorate the home; Raphaëlle De Groot’s bringing people together to learn from the land, its narratives, and Innu and settler customs in the Côte-Nord region; Jin Me Yon’s haunting image of herself, an immigrant Canadian, disappearing into a hole in the sand; Chris Clarke’s and Bo Yeung’s emphasis not on what they had made, but on their ability to create a place for the sharing of knowledge of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in people; Douglas Scholes’ call that we look deeply at the history of infrastructure like canals, which have radically transformed the waterways; and Jeneen Frei Njootli’s making place for the invention of tradition, though the creation of beautifully adorned blankets for the modern sled-dog, the Ski-Doo. (15)

Along with those works, the project shared knowledge and mentored younger artists and scholars. “Let’s hope that LandMarks is one template for future practices, not with regard to scale, but at least with regard to method,” Hopkins states (15).

Next, the catalogue presents descriptions and images of specific works included in LandMarks, beginning with Jeneen Frei Njootli’s short experimental film Being Skidoo, which in part, it seems, documents a trip into Vuntut National Park, a caribou calving ground co-managed by the Gwitchin First Nation. “The project profiles the art of ski-dog blankets, wherein traditionally adorned dog blankets were adapted by the artist for use on snowmobiles,” curator Tania Willard writes. “The ski-dog blankets were designed in collaboration with community members and given to elders and others as gifts, allowing the work to circulate in the artist’s home community and honouring the practice of gift-giving in Gwitchin culture” (21). So the blanket part of the project is collaborative, community art; the film, though, sets out to obscure “the colonial gaze of the landscape in Canada” through abstraction, constructing “an experience of movement, bodies and aesthetics as a journey through the land” (21). Rather than “profiling Indigenous communities through a lens of the past or as framed by the colonial experience,” Njootli’s film “presents an experience of being out on the land, an experience that speaks to Indigenous knowledge, tenacity and a land-rights-based relationship to traditional territories” (21). “The film is imbued with a continuum of tradition and relationship with the land that is opaque rather than overt; we have to look closely and with our hearts,” Willard continues. “In obscuring our gaze, Njootli asks us how we are entitled to see and how far we can see in what is offered to us” (22).

After that comes Weaving Voices, co-created by Chris Clarke and Bo Yeung, which was “a colaborative journey through Klondike National Historic sites on the traditional territory of Tr’onkëk Hwëchin,” consisting of a Truth and Reconciliation Walk and “two site-specific willow audio installations” (31). “Many hands and many hearts came together to reflect on the colonial roots of this community, and this country,” writes curator Kathleen Ritter (31). Clarke and Yeung are settlers who live in the Yukon, and in this work, they “acknowledge the deep ancestral roots of the land and reflect on the persistence of colonialism, the many privileges afforded and at what cost” (31).

The walk invited interpreters from both Parks Canada and the Dawson City Museum to speak about “the impacts of our colonial heritage as embodied in historic buildings” while leading community members through the area, “peeling back the layers of prejudice, segregation and discrimination, questioning the colonial attitudes that are still held” (31). The audio installations were the “other strand” of the project’s braid (31). One “living willow basked was planted by the Yukon River at Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre, and the other was placed in the rear of the Commissioner’s Residence” (31). Those willows were harvested, replanted, and “woven collectively with the intention to create space for Indigenous voices. Community members and visitors came to listen to Tr’onkëk Hwëchin people sharing their reflections on past, present and future relationships between settlers, the First Peoples and the land” (31). 

Stitching My Landscape, Inuvialuit artist Maureen Gruben’s large-scale work of land art, is deeply tied to memory, family and healing,” writes curator Tania Willard. “The core visual element of the installation—bolts of red material stretched across the ice—is related to a memory of Gruben’s: as her brother harvested a seal, a long, vivid, red string of fresh gut was strung out taught against the white snow” (41). The work consisted of 111 ice holes connected with red broadcloth; it stretched for nearly 1,000 feet on the frozen ocean around Ibyuq Pingo (41). A pingo is an ice-filled hill created by permafrost; they “have functioned as navigational aids and hunting lookouts for generations of Inuvialuit people” (41). This particular pingo is part of the Pingo Canadian National Landmark near Tuktoyaktuk (41). “Ibyuq Pingo is a sentient and living being in the cultural memory and daily landscape of Inuvialuit, contrasting the many Indigenous places in the Canadian landscape whose names have become superimposed by settler histories,” Willard writes. “Stitching My Landscape as an installation was viewed mainly by Inuvialuit people and drew on community assistance to come to fruition” (41). Thus is was a collaborative, community-focused project. It was documented through an experimental film (41).  It was also an example of what David Garneau calls “irreconcilable spaces of Aboriginality” (33).

“In cultural skills-based arts, the act of making something beautiful becomes about valuing what you have—the gifts and harvests from the land, and the safety and security of family and loved ones,” Willard continues. “Stitching My Landscape simultaneously evoked traditional clothing patterns, like the delta time pattern on parkas, as well as the importance of subsistence, the strength of community, and the potential for healing—and being healed by—the land” (42).

In Jin-me Yoon’s Long View, the artist, known for her introspective photography, video work and installations,  “turned her gaze outward in a year-long investigation at Pacific Rim National Park Reserve,” creating a series of staged photographs in which the artist disappears into the sand (53). In the accompanying video, the artist’s family members dig a hole into which she steps (53). Then, viewers see “a montage of flickering archival images from the near and distant past”—fragments of the entangled military, cultural, and Indigenous histories that have shaped the history of this region (53-54).

The work “also resulted in a series of community-engagement events that brought into dialogue Indigenous conceptions of land and place within the context of inherited histories of colonialism, in both Canada and Korea,” the curator, Kathleen Ritter, states (54). “Long View invites us to project our gaze alongside the artist’s, at a point on the open ocean with a speculative view across the Pacific, a place to ponder past and future relations on Indigenous lands between Canada and Asia” (54).

Following is Rebecca Belmore’s Wave Sound project, “conceived as an invitation to listen to the land,” according to curator Kathleen Ritter. “Belmore created a series of temporary sculptures that were situated in national park sites across the country—Banff national Park, Pukaskwa National Park and Gros Morne National Park—and on Chimnissing Island, home to the Beausoleil First Nation,” Ritter writes. “The sculptures functioned as listening devices and took for form of large cones—a shape that allowed them to naturally amplify ambient sound in the surrounding locations” (63). Each sculpture “conformed to the shape of the different rock surfaces found on the land,” and each was situated “on the land facing out toward the water, positioned in such a way to invite people to approach” (63). “As people engaged with the artwork, they would take time to rest, be attentive and hear the sound of the land and, especially, the water,” Ritter explains (63). The sculptures were created over the course of a year, during which Belmore visited the sites and documented the shapes of the rocks at each one (63). Then these impressions were cast in aluminum cones at a foundry (63). “The artwork encompassed both an object and an action, mobilizing individuals and communities to listen to the land as an act of respect, commemoration and understanding,” Ritter concludes. “At the root of Belmore’s inquiry is the land itself and how we envision our relationship with it” (63).

Michael Belmore’s Coalescence is described next. It was “conceived as a single sculpture in four parts,” writes curator Natalia Lebedinskaia. “Sixteen stones, ranging in weight from 300 to 1,200 pounds, are fitted together and inlaid with copper, then situated to frame the vast distance between the southernmost boundary of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, near Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan, to one of its points of drainage into Hudson Bay in Churchill, Manitoba” (81). Places in Riding Mountain National Park and The Forks National Historic Site “punctuate the stones’ migration” (81). Those four sites “mark meeting points between water and land: ancient shorelines, trade routes and meeting places, sites of annual mass migrations of animals and forced displacement of peoples” (81). Belmore uses copper to give the stones labour and value (81). They are shaped so that they fit together perfectly, and the surfaces where they meet are covered in copper, reflecting light (81). “Each crevice is filled with a fire that will be extinguished with age, turning brown, then black, and reaching a luminous green hue as it settles into the landscape,” Lebedinskaia continues. “The sculpture is a marker of how everything comes from the ground and returns to it, and how these processes stretch far beyond human understanding of time” (81). The work is “a moment of connection between deep geological time of stone and the linear human time of labour,” a reminder of “the timelines of the land” (81). 

In response to Belmore’s installation, Leanne Zacharias’s Sounding the Wake of the Glacier is a sound work that weaves together the environments where the stones were located, “through field recordings, transcription of animal calls and musical interpretation of climatic maps of the four regions” (82).

Freedom Tours, a collaboration between Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Camille Turner, follows. It was “an intervention at and through the waters of Thousand Islands National Park and Rouge National Urban Park by land,” according to curator Tania Willard (97). The work centred Indigenous and Black “stories untold and songs unsung,” thus decentring white settler narratives (97). At Thousand Islands National Park, it began with the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving address, the Ohen:ton Karihwatehkwen, delivered by Janice Hill; then two cruise ships carried passengers while “the artists sought to address these lesser-known histories in public with restorative interventions” (97). At Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto, the work took the form of a walking tour “that asked members of the public to stand in for, and pledge their commitment to, the different species within the park ecosystem” and “to make freedom flags and to march to celebrate the park’s varied species and diversity, as well as their own identities and political contexts” (98). Both “actions and engagements” ended in round-dances (98). 

Douglas Scholes Wander: (re)Marking, “a series of walks and interventions in the public space along 15 kilometres of the Lachine Canal National Historic Site,” was a “response to the canal’s environment, history, and current presence in the city of Montreal” (111). Scholes collaborated with writers, visual artists, sound artists, and videographers (111). According to curator Véronique Leblanc, “He approached the Lachine Canal as an entity, seen through the eyes of the character that he had created, the wanderer, and those of his contributor” (111). “In order to multiply ways to see, listen to and experience the site, Scholes endowed the canal with a necessarily plural conscience, which was left to blossom,” Leblanc continues. “His first intervention was sculptural: 100 replicas of bollards made of beeswax were placed on the site in June 2017. Their fragility embodied a posture of humility toward the territory through a dispersed, discrete and transitory presence” (111). The work also involved a musical composition, “a quadrophonic electro-acoustic piece,” an alternative tourist map, and “a series of photographs and films showing the wanderer’s activities from season to season”; those works were “presented in the public space through exhibitions, screenings, walking tours, readings and a floating concerts,” and were “collected in their most rudimentary forms (vinyl record, sheet music, flipbook and so on) in a time capsule” (111). “Allowing for the cohabitation of different temporalities, they offer multiple interpretations of invisible and inaudible phenomena of the canal, real or fictional,” Leblanc writes. “Through both their materiality and their evanescence, the works will now be propelled into the city of the future” (111).

Raphaëlle de Groot’s Subsistences, located in Mingan Archipelago National Park Reserve, follows. That project was the result of a year of “conversations with people living in the region and explorations of the area’s unique natural phenomena,” and it took the form of “a ‘bivouac-exhibition’ that stopped over in seven villages” in the area (131). That bivouac consisted of a pickup truck and an Innu tent (131). In each community, de Groot “asked people to share their experience of the territory—defined as the Mingan Archipelago—the sea, or the land of forest and bog” (131). A film made of the journey “reveals relationships that de Groot created among the different elements, as well as stories, objects and images that she gathered over time” (131). The film thus “sketches out a documentary and a poetic path leading to the essential challenges of living in the region: exploitation of its resources, the cohabitation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, the impact of human activity on the environment and the transmission of cultures and practices” (131).

(re)al-location, by Ursula Johnson, located in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, “engaged in the Mi’kmaw philosophy of Netukulimk, or self-sustainability, in a shared examination of the natural and cultural ecologies” of the park’s past, present, and future, the co-curators, David Diviney, Ariella Pahlke and Melinda Spooner, tell us (147). The work “reflected upon the memory that the forest carries of interaction between species, and interaction between people” (147). “Through community engagement and self-directed research, Johnson sought to make visible the links between the park, its natural resources and the people living in the surrounding area,” the co-curators write (147). Johnson photographed the forest over a year, exploring its seasonal changes, and engaged in “several interactive forums that promoted a more sustainable relationship with the environment and one another” (147). “The resulting dialogue and photo documentation led to the design of a camouflage pattern—a gift to the community—based upon the unique forest ecosystem of the Cape Breton Highlands,” the co-curators state (147). Garments made with this pattern were worn “during a participatory performance event in the form of a celebratory feast at MacIntosh Brook titled The Festival of Stewards. In this context, the wearing of the clothing served as a physical embodiment of the artwork, as did the eating of food. In sharing a meal, a commonality was reignited and interpersonal connections emerged” (147). The Festival of Stewards was a collaboration with students from a local school (148). “By working in conversation with, and across, diverse communities, Johnson aimed to (re)locate local knowledge and traditions to collectively address concerns related to the stewardship of the land. Thus, (re)al-location can be looked at as a catalyst for discourse and social change,” the co-curators conclude (148).

In “Pedagogies of the Land,” Vladimir Spicanovic, the project’s lead advisor of curriculum and curatorial engagement, cites familiar names: David Garneau; Miwon Kwon; McCoy, Tuck, and McKenzie; and Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. He also notes that university and college courses came out of the activity—an interesting (and perhaps unusual) outcome. Those courses are described in detail over the following pages. One of those courses, taught by Megan Smith, happened at the University of Regina (183). Some of those courses commissioned professional artists to make work as well. 

In “Epilogue: On Land and Time,” the curatorial team reflects on the event. They note that recalling 150 and more years of complex, contested history “is not simple. It is layered, complex, political, celebratory, empowering, contradictory and visionary all at once” (232). “It is not just artists making objects,” they continue. “It is collaborative and active, requiring dialogue, shared conversation and a deeper investment to explore the relationship with, and interconnectedness to, the land, Indigenous territories and diverse communities and cultures (232). They note that, collectively, they decided “to take a lead from Indigenous epistemologies, in which time is deep, land is central and rights are unresolved” and to “witness lesser-known stories and non-linear histories that connect us more strongly to the land and its multiplicity of voices” (232). The projects of LandMarks2017 

propose intersections between bodies and territories, whether through the works themselves or by the artists being in or becoming the land. They draw on personal and familial histories as a valid way to think about the intersection of disparate identities. They inhabit the land, initiate movements and seek a coexistence of different temporalities. They care for and nurture sites on both concrete and symbolic levels. They consider nature as an interlocutor—the water, the plants and the animals (the winged and the swimmers). They allow for a sensorial experience of the land. They are presented to us in ways that are collaborative rather than singular, ephemeral rather than monumental, and process-driven rather than predetermined. They act as markers for the need for humility before nature and communities, and a consciousness of the circumstantial and partisan writings of history that can be challenged by many forms of social engagement. Discrete, subversive, accessible and thoughtful, the resulting works are extremely rich in the ways they come together conceptually, thematically and aesthetically. (232-33)

The curatorial team concludes with questions raised by the project, which include “What can we learn from the blood of a caribou on the ancient rocks of an ancient river?” and “What do we owe for our experiences within Indigenous lands and diverse communities?” (233). These are important questions for which answers are difficult and elusive. “Rather than concrete answers, what remains most important is that we centre our connection to the land, its veins—rivers and tributaries—its breath—the winds—our bodies and our waters,” they state. “Through this exchange, we can begin to re-examine our relationship with the land and with one another” (233).

This summary misses the many photographs, mostly (but I don’t think entirely) made by the project’s photographer, Kyra Kordoski. Those photographs are the point of the catalogue, of course; they are a more visceral form of documentation than the words I’ve summarized and quoted here. I have to admit that I was somewhat surprised at the predominance of social or relational aesthetics in the work included in the event, and in its pedagogical focus (which is, perhaps, another format in which relational aesthetics takes shape). I wonder if that’s the case throughout the art world now—if what was perhaps a marginal activity 30 years ago is now at the centre. What does that mean? Will relational aesthetics end up being itself decentred in favour of work that isn’t collaborative, that focuses on objects? Eventually, I suppose, that’s bound to happen. The wheel turns. In the mean time, I will have to get past the scars left by all those collaborative projects in school, the ones my students complain about, the ones where a small group does all the work while the others sit by and do nothing, the ones where everyone shares the outcome regardless of their effort or engagement, or where bullies demand an A—or else. Oh, I hated that. I’d rather work by myself. But in the contemporary art world, collaboration is everywhere and everything. Sigh. 

Aside from that complaint, I also found it interesting that the project centred Indigenous ideas about land. To what extent can settlers engage in that kind of work without being accused of cultural appropriation? That’s always a question for me—mostly because I’ve been told that my walking practice appropriates Indigenous culture and land. So I’m cautious, at best. I might find that settler theoretical frameworks will end up being easier to manage for my project, if only to avoid that kind of accusation. And yet, I think that Métis anthropologist Zoe Todd’s suggestion that those theories refuse to engage with Indigenous thinking that goes further and pre-existed the Ontological Turn is probably correct. What to do, then? Engage—at least theoretically—with Indigenous thinkers and be accused of cultural appropriation? Or ignore those thinkers and, well, remain ignorant? There’s nothing like a Catch-22, is there?

Works Cited

Garneau, David. “Imaginary Spaces of Conciliation and Reconciliation.” West Coast Line, no. 74, 2012, pp. 28-38.

Partners in Art. LandMarks2017: Art + Places+ Perspectives,Magenta Foundation, 2018. https://partnersinart.ca/projects/landmarks2017-reperes2017/.

Todd, Zoe. “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word For Colonialism.” Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 29, no. 1, 2016, 4-22. DOI: 10.1111/johs.12124

125. Zoe Todd, “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word For Colonialism”

zoe todd

I ran across a reference to Métis anthropologist Zoe Todd’s essay “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word For Colonialism” in Stephanie Springgay’s and Sarah E. Truman’s Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World: Walking Lab. Their summary of her argument states that Todd, “like other Indigenous scholars, insist[s] that ontological discussions of matter must take into consideration not only Indigenous worldviews but material legal struggles over matter and sovereignty” (9). When I read Bruno Latour’s book, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, I found myself wondering if Todd would consider his approach to the vitality of things to be colonial. Well, let’s take a look at Todd’s argument and see.

Well, the essay begins with a memoir of going to see “the great Latour” give a lecture in Edinburgh in 2013. “I was giddy with excitement: a talk by the Great Latour, live and in colour!” she writes. “Bruno Latour’s work was, in part, the reason that I switched my focus away from a pure science degree in Biology in my undergraduate studies. . . . Latour was (and is) very much a personal hero of mine” (4). Okay, I’m confused by Todd’s apparent sarcasm, directed either at Latour or her younger self’s credulity. Bruno was talking about “Natural Religion,” and he suggested that climate was “a matter of ‘common cosmological concern’” (5). He mentioned the notion of Gaia, and Todd expected that “he would reference Sila, the well-known Inuit concept that is today translated by many non-Inuit as climate but Sila is also ‘the breathe [sic] that circulates into and out of every living thing” (Qitsualik, qtd. 5). (Well-known? I had never heard of it, but it sounds interesting, and Qitsualik’s account might be worth reading.) “The infinitesimal bit of the concept of Sila that I can claim to understand is that it is bound with life, with climate, with knowing, and with the very existence of being(s),” Todd continues. “And, in some respects, it sounds an awful lot like the idea of Gaia to my Métis ears” (5). Todd notes the contributions of Inuit people to activism about and awareness of climate change, and, she writes, “I waited through the whole talk, to hear the Great Latour credit Indigenous thinkers for their millennia of engagement with sentient environments, with cosmologies that enmesh people into complex relationships between themselves and all relations, and with climates and atmospheres as important points of organization and action” (6-7). 

She waited in vain, of course (her narrative foreshadows that conclusion): Latour didn’t discuss Indigenous thinkers or worldviews. “I was left wondering, when will I hear someone reference Indigenous thinkers in a direct, contemporary and meaningful way in European lecture halls?” she recalls:

Without filtering ideas through white intermediaries—apologies to the vast majority of my anthropology colleagues—but by citing and quoting Indigenous thinkers directly, unambiguously and generously. As thinkers in their own right, not just disembodied representatives of an amorphous Indigeneity that serves European intellectual or political purposes, and not just as research subjects or vaguely defined “collaborators.” As dynamic Philosophers and Intellectuals, full stop. Rather than bequeathing climate activism to the Al Gores of the world, when will Euro-American scholarship take the intellectual labour of Inuit women like Rosemarie Kuptana and Sheila Watt-Clouthier seriously? (7)

Todd left before the end of the question period:

it appeared that another Euro-Western academic narrative, in this case the trendy and dominant Ontological Turn (and/or post-humanism, and/or cosmopolitics—all three of which share tangled roots, and can be mobilised distinctly or collectively, depending on who you ask), and discourses of how to organise ourselves around and communicate with the constituents of complex and contested world(s) (or multiverses, if you’re into the whole brevity thing)—was spinning itself on the backs of non-European thinkers. And again, the ones we credited for these incredible insights into the “more-than-human,” sentience and agency, and the ways through which to imagine our “common cosmological concerns” were not the people who built and maintain the knowledge systems that European and North American anthropologists and philosophers have been studying for over a hundred years, and predicating many of their current “aha” ontological moments (or re-imaginings of the discipline upon). No, here we were celebrating and worshipping a European thinker for “discovering,” or newly articulating by drawing on a European intellectual heritage, what many an Indigenous thinker around the world could have told you for millennia: the climate is a common organizing force! (7-8)

Todd states that what struck her about Latour’s talk was “the unintential (even ironic) evocation of theories about the climate as a form of aer nullius”—in an endnote, she states that this Latin term means “it belongs to no one (20)—“which it often becomes in Euro-Western academic discourses: where the climate acts as a blank commons to be populated by very Euro-Western theories of resilience, the Anthropocene, Actor Network Theory and other ideas that dominate the anthropological and climate change arenas of the moment” (8). 

Her concern, she continues, is less with Latour than with his audience, which “consumes Latour’s argument (and the arguments of others writing and thinking about the climate, ontologies, our shared engagements with the world) without being aware of competing or similar discourses happening outside of the rock-star arenas of Euro-Western thought” (8). “Was it entirely Latour’s fault, therefore, that he did not mention Inuit?” she asks:

If a European audience is not familiar with the breadth and depth of Indigenous thinking and how strongly it influences many of the current strands of post-humanism and the Ontological Turn, can a speaker be blamed for side-stepping a nod towards Inuit climate advocacy in a discussion of the “climate as common cosmological turn”? Should I welcome his silence: better that he not address Indigenous thinking than to misinterpret it or distort it? (8-9)

She cites Vanessa Watts’s article (which I blogged about here) as both a source for her claim that Indigenous thinking influences current thinking about post-humanism and the ontological turn (I’m not sure, though, that Watts’s essay establishes a chain of influence) and cites Watts’s argument that 

the appropriation of Indigenous thinking in European contexts without Indigenous interlocutors present to hold the use of Indigenous stories and laws to account flattens, distorts and erases the embodied, legal-governance and spiritual aspects of Indigenous thinking. So there is a very real risk to Indigenous thinking being used by non-Indigenous scholars who apply it to Actor Network Theory, cosmopolitics, ontological and posthumanist threads without contending with the embodied expressions of stories, laws, and songs as bound with Indigenous-Place Thought. (9)

She has observed, in the academy, Indigenous stories being “employed without Indigenous peoples present to engage in the application of them in European work” (9). Yet, she continues, “there is a risk as well, to Indigenous thinking not being acknowledged at all. How do we hold these two issues in tension and apply the accountably in anthropology?” (9). That’s a good question, and not just for anthropology as a discipline: what Todd describes as “tension” could quite easily slide into a double-bind, in which non-Indigenous thinkers are damned for not drawing upon Indigenous knowledge (assuming that they have any clue of its depth and breadth, or that they know the names of the thinkers Todd cites—we all have our blindnesses, even the great Latour) and then damned for appropriating that knowledge if they do draw upon it. Nobody wants to occupy that kind of space, or be forced into it, and if all you can offer someone is a space of negation, they will simply refuse to occupy it, and rightly so.

“I concede that there are elements of post-humanism, cosmopolitics and the Ontological Turn that could potentially be promising tools in the decolonial project, if approached with an attention to the structural realities of the academy,” Todd continues (9). She cites the work of Juanita Sundberg, who tries to use post-humanism “as a decolonizing tool kit” while acknowledging its Eurocentrism (9). Sundberg sounds like someone I will have to read: Todd suggests that Sundberg and Watts “both provide Euro-Western scholars with practical tools for employing Indigenous ontologies in their work with care and respect” (9). I’m not convinced that’s true of Watts, who (in my reading of her essay) would bristle at Todd’s use of the term “ontology,” but perhaps Sundberg’s notion of accounting for location would be useful. Or, to be fair, perhaps I will need to return to Watts’s essay and think further about her idea, “Indigenous Place-Thought” (9). 

According to Todd, the issue is structural: 

it is a critique of systems and practices that culminate in events such as the one I attended. It is a critique of a discipline and intellectual environment that currently claims to be striving for the worthy goal of “ontological self-determination” but failing to create the conditions wherein many of its practitioners respect our physical self-determination (and right to ensure Indigenous thinking is employed accountably) and intellectual presence as Indigenous peoples within its very own bricks-and-mortar institutions. (9-10)

Yes, there aren’t enough Indigenous scholars (yet) to establish an intellectual presence within the academy (although I would venture that the only people guaranteed of getting tenure-track jobs in Canada at the moment are Indigenous), and decolonization or self-determination are mere dreams in this country, given the progress that has been made (almost none) towards so-called “reconciliation” since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report almost five years ago. I completely agree. Helpfully, Todd eventually gives her readers a list of Indigenous thinkers they should be reading; without that list, many of us môniyâw wouldn’t know where to begin. 

Next, Todd tells another story to assure her readers “that the problem outlined in this essay is deeper than any single scholar associated with dominant thought in the European academy at the moment . . . but is due, rather, to the European academy’s continued, collective reticence to address its own racist and colonial roots, and debt to Indigenous thinkers in a meaningful and structural way” (10). She notes that on the day in 2014 that a grand jury decided not to indict the police officer who shot black teenager Mike Brown, the American Anthropological Association issued a press release calling for more discussion of structural racism in the United States. What, she wondered, is the Association of Social Anthropologists of the U.K. and Commonwealth up to? She discovered that the call for papers for the association’s upcoming conference used the phrase “going native” (10). She complained, and “a footnote clarifying the use of this term as intended to spark critical debate around historical relationships between anthropologists and the people they researched was added to the website” (10). But the experience left her thinking about how often she “witnessed racially charged phrases used in day-to-day exchanges in the UK academy” (10): all the time is the answer. 

Todd cites the idea of “anthropology as white public space” articulated by Karen Brodkin, Sandra Morgen and Janis Hutchinson in their work on racism in anthropology—an idea that has become central to Todd’s own work (10). “I experience anthropology as white public space,” she writes: “in the subtle but pervasive power afforded to white scholarship that distorts or erases or homogenises distinct Indigenous voices” (11). She notes that she is “a white-passing Indigenous woman” and therefore has “a curious access into spaces where people ‘say what they really think’ about Indigenous issues or People of Colour when they assume everyone in the room is Caucasian”: 

This is a space that must be acknowledged and problematised, for it is a space that deeply influences how Euro-Western thought is produced within the academy. the vast gulf between “what is” and “what can be” within a discipline like anthropology lies within those spaces where whiteness protects itself when it assumes there are no POC (and/or Indigenous peoples) to bear witness to its insecurities, hostilities. (12)

She has seen the ways that “‘white fragility’ manifests and pities and consoles itself when white supremacy is challenged within the academy” (12). This situation gives her “a front seat to the whole spectacle of whiteness—how it is practiced when it claims to be dismantling itself and in turn how it is practiced when it shores itself up against necessary critiques from Indigenous scholars and Scholars of Colour” (12). In such “underacknowledged spaces,” she continues, “official academic discourse and promises of decolonial ethos” mingle with “with the real practice, and prejudice, of our disciplines. Where racism and whiteness are reinforced and reproduced (but also where they can be challenged and dismantled)” (12). She cites Sara Ahmed’s claim that the term “white men” describes an institution “that reproduces itself in its own image” (12-13). She notes that “a critique of whiteness is meant to draw attention to the structural, routinised aspects of ‘white public space’” (13). According to Todd, Ahmed suggests that the reproduction of “white men” as an institution is citational: “one must cite white men to get ahead. In this way, we are conditioned to cite Al Gore before Sheila Watt-Cloutier; to reference Irving Hallowell before we engage with and acknowledge contemporary Anishinaabeg thinkers like John Borrows” (13). Okay, but that’s not my experience: I’ve never heard of Irving Hallowell, but I think John Borrows is fantastic. Perhaps I can credit my supervisors for that fact.

Todd notes that courses in Black Studies are absent in the UK; universities believe that they lack the ability to offer such programs because of a lack of black faculty. “But the inevitable postponing of critical scholarship about race, racialisation and racism forestalls the ability of Indigenous scholars and POC to invest our careers in these topics within the academy,” she writes. “If Universities are not yet ready to challenge white supremacy, will they ever be? And if a program on critical race thinking is not supported today, how can White Scholars advance claims that the academy is in fact a safe space for Indigenous scholars, let along claim that decolonisation is occurring within the halls of the academy itself?” (13). Todd suggests that she has developed coping strategies to deal with the “colonial and racist trends” she encounters “as an Indigenous person infiltrating the British academy” (13):

Therefore, as an Indigenous woman, I have tried, over the last few years, to find thinkers who engage with Indigenous thought respectfully; who give full credit to Indigenous laws, stories and epistemologies; who quote and cite Indigenous people rather than citing anthropologists who studied Indigenous people 80 years ago. This is not always easy. (13-14)

She names scholars who fit that description and thanks them for giving her hope “amidst the despair I’ve felt as the ‘Ontological Turn’ gains steam on both sides of the Atlantic” (14). 

In fact, she continues, “I think it is time we take the Ontological Turn, and the European academy more broadly, head on”:

To accomplish this, I want to direct you to Indigenous thinkers who have been writing about Indigenous legal theory, human-animal relations and multiple epistemologies/ontologies for decades. Consider the Indigenous and/or POC scholars referred to within this piece as a “cite this, not that” cheat-sheet for people who feel dissatisfied with the current Euro (and white, and quite often, male) centric discourse taking place in our disciplines, departments, conferences and journals. (14)

This shift in attention is important because of colonialism, which continues in Canada. “Canada is only now coming around to the realisation that through things like residential schools, and the deeply racist—and still legislated(!) Indian Act—that it, as a nation was built on cultural genocide and dispossession,” she writes. “Ask any Indigenous person, and you will hear that nobody from an Indigenous Nation has ever laboured under the fantasy that Canada is post-colonial, or benevolent” (15). British institutions, including universities, are still benefitting from colonialism. “We are enmeshed, across the Atlantic, in ongoing colonial legacies,” she continues. “And in order to dismantle those legacies, we must face our complicity head on. I firmly believe we can confront these legacies with a great deal of love and accountability, and build processes and structures that are attentive to and accountable for the ongoing impacts of colonial rule” (15). European thinkers are also “embedded in systems that uphold the exploitation and dispossession of Indigenous peoples,” and “[t]he academy plays a role in shaping the narratives that erase ongoing colonial violence” (15).

Can Europeans simply absolve themselves from any guilt over the genocide of Indigenous people, “[a]nd then . . . turn around and use Indigenous cosmologies and knowledge systems in a so-called new intellectual ‘turn,’ all the while ignoring the contemporary realities of Indigenous people vis-à-vis colonial nation-states, or the many Indigenous thinkers who are themselves writing about these issues?” (15-16). The answer to this rhetorical question is obviously “no”—but that’s what’s happening, according to Todd. I would still need to see evidence that the contemporary intellectual currents she is addressing are actually based on Indigenous knowledge systems and cosmologies; after all, it’s not impossible that systems of thought that begin in different places could arrive at similar conclusions. Todd’s reference to Watts isn’t enough for me. Of course, she could argue that the failure or refusal to cite Indigenous thinkers hides the origins of post-humanist thought, but there evidence for influence (or plagiarism) must be there somewhere. I’m not sure one can attack Eurowestern scholars for ignoring Indigenous thinkers and also attack them for borrowing from Indigenous thinkers without giving credit. Perhaps I’m misreading Todd, and that’s not what she’s doing.

Todd cites Zygmunt Bauman’s attack on sociology’s “role in narrating the Holocaust, and its role in erasing our collective guilt in the possibility for a future Holocaust to emerge” (16). The rhetoric of post-colonialism is as complacent as sociology:

it absolves the present generation of thinkers, politicians, lawyers, and policy wonks for their duty to acknowledge what came before, and, in keeping with Bauman’s insights, the possibility it could happen again—that within all societies lurk the “two faces” of humanity that can either facilitate or quash systemic and calculated human suffering and exploitation. The reality is, as Bauman asserts, that humanity is responsible, and humanity must be willing to face itself and acknowledge its role in these horrors. We must do so in order to ensure we never tread the path of such destruction again. (16)

Todd takes Bauman’s words to heart, she writes, and she asks her “non-Indigenous peers to consider their roles in the ongoing colonial oppression of Indigenous peoples” (16):

The colonial moment has not passed. The conditions that fostered it have not suddenly disappeared. We talk of neo-colonialism, neo-Imperialism, but it is as if these are far away things (these days these accusations are often mounted with terse suspicion against the BRIC countries, as though the members of the G8 have not already colonised the globe through neo-liberal economic and political policies). The reality is that we are just an invasion or economic policy away from re-colonising at any moment. (16)

Therefore, she continues, “it is so important to think, deeply, about how the Ontological Turn—with its breathless ‘realisations’ that animals, the climate, water, ‘atmospheres,’ and non-human presences like ancestors and spirits are sentient and possess agency, that ‘nature’ and ‘culture,’ ‘human’ and ‘animal’ may not be so separate after all—is itself perpetrating the exploitation of Indigenous peoples” (16). Can thought be decolonized if “the academic structures through which this decolonisation of thought is being carried out continue to reproduce the white supremacy of the academy” (16)? No: “the proponents of the discipline themselves” must be “willing to engage in the decolonial project in a substantive and structural and physical way, and willing to acknowledge that the colonial is an extant, ongoing reality” (17). 

“What I am critiquing here then, really, are the silences,” Todd writes:

It is not that current trends in the discipline of anthropology or the Euro-academy more broadly are wrong. It is that they do not currently live up to the promises they make. I do think many people making claims regarding the promise of current turns in anthropology have very good intentions. However, these cannot always easily translate into long-term structural change. Our interventions as Indigenous feminists are thus necessary to hold our colleagues up to the goals they define for themselves. (17)

“Why is there still a bias towards citing white male scholars?” she asks. “What are the political-legal implications for Indigenous peoples when our stories, our laws, our philosophies are used by European scholars without explicit credit to the political, legal, social and cultural (and colonial!) contexts these stories are formulated and shared within?” (17). She cites the work of Sarah Hunt on the “epistemic violence” of the use of Indigenous ontologies in erasing “the embodied, practiced, and legal-governance aspects of Indigenous ontologies as they are enacted by Indigenous actors” (17). In other words, “Indigenous thinking must be seen as not just a well of ideas to draw form but as a body of thinking that is living and practiced by peoples with whom we all share reciprocal duties as citizens of shared territories (be they physical or the ephemeral)” (17). She cites Borrows, Kahente Horn-Miller, Tracey Lindberg, and Val Napoleon to argue that “Indigenous thought is not just about social relations and philosophical anecdotes” (17). Rather, “Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies” represent “legal orders, legal orders through which Indigenous peoples throughout the world are fighting for self-determination, sovereignty” (18). Colonial dispossession is still happening: “It did not end with repatriation of constitutions or independence from colonial rule. Europe is still implicated in colonial exploitation, whether it likes it or not” (18).

Her argument, she continues, is “that Indigenous peoples, throughout the world, are fighting for recognition-fighting to assert their laws, philosophies and stories on their own terms” (18). When they pick and choose the parts of Indigenous thought that appeal to them “without engaging directly in (or unambiguously acknowledging) the political situation, agency, legal orders and relationality of both Indigenous people and scholars,” social scientists (including anthropologists) “become complicit in colonial violence” (18). When European thinkers “who discuss the ‘more-than-human’” are cited, but “their Indigenous contemporaries who are writing on the exact same topics” are not, “we perpetuate the white supremacy of the academy” (18). “In order for the Ontological Turn, post-humanism, cosmopolitics to live up to their potential,” Todd writes,

they must heed the teachings of North American Indigenous scholars who engage similar issues such as Dwayne Donald, John Borrows, Val Napoleon, Audra Simpson, Kim TallBear, Chris Anderson, Rob Innes, Tracey Lindberg, Sarah Hunt, Vanessa Watts, Glen Coulthard, Leanne Simpson, Eve Tuck, Cutcha Risling Baldy, Violet Lee and so many other brilliant thinkers (this list is not exhaustive!). And they must heed the teachings of Indigenous and racialised scholars from all around the globe. (18)

Non-Indigenous thinkers “would do well” to incorporate Dwayne Donald’s notion of reciprocity, which he outlines in his work on “ethical relationality,” which “invokes a reciprocity of thought” (18-19). “Reciprocity of thinking,” she continues, “requires us to pay attention to who else is speaking alongside us. It also positions us, first and foremost, as citizens embedded in dynamic legal orders and systems of relations that require us to work constantly and thoughtfully across the myriad systems of thinking, acting, and governance within which we find ourselves enmeshed” (19). This ethical relationality, she writes, “means that more than just the Indigenous scholar in the room would have expected Latour to reference his Indigenous interlocutors on a topic as broadly discussed and publicised, and as intimately linked to political claims by many Indigenous nations and peoples, as climate change” (19). 

So, she concludes, “for every time you want to cite a Great Thinker who is on the public speaking circuit these days, consider digging around for others who are discussing the same topics in other ways” (19). Decolonizing the academy means considering our own prejudices and biases as expressed in systems like peer review and hiring processes. “Consider why it is okay for our departments to remain so undeniably white,” she writes. “And then, familiarise yourself with the Indigenous thinkers (and more!) I reference here and broaden the spectrum of who you cite and who you reaffirm as ‘knowledgeable’” (19).

I’m glad I read Todd’s article, and not only because it provides a starting point for reading Indigenous thinkers (some of whom I’ve already read or heard about, and some of whom are new to me). That reading list is a little daunting. Here I am, at the end of the reading for my comprehensive examinations, and yet there is so much I have not read or even known that I should read. I also appreciate the permission to read and think about Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies that she grants her readers—with the proviso that we acknowledge the political situation, agency, laws, and relationality of Indigenous peoples. I don’t think that means that Indigenous methodologies are simply available to Settler scholars; I agree with Kathleen Absolon that they aren’t. However, while I agree that scholars should read the work of Indigenous thinkers who are writing on topics related to their research, I’m not convinced that someone like Bruno Latour (or name some other post-humanist scholars) is borrowing from Indigenous thinkers without citing their work—plagiarizing them, to be blunt. I don’t think you can argue that someone is both ignorant of a body of scholarship and that they are stealing from it. But perhaps that’s not Todd’s argument; as with everything I read, I would have to go over it again to get the nuances. In many ways, this project has been a first attempt at understanding a broad range of texts, and a process of identifying what I want to go back to. Maybe that’s its purpose. In any case, I plan to take the weekend off; the semester begins on Monday and I’m still exhausted from the last one.

Works Cited

Absolon, Kathleen E. Kaandossiwin: How We Come to Know, Fernwood, 2011.

Latour, Bruno. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, translated by Catherine Porter, Polity, 2018.

Springgay, Stephanie, and Sarah E. Truman. Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World: WalkingLab, Routledge, 2018.

Todd, Zoe. “An Indigenous Feminist’s Take On The Ontological Turn: ‘Ontology’ Is Just Another Word For Colonialism.” Journal of Historical Sociology, vol. 29, no. 1, 2016, 4-22. DOI: 10.1111/johs.12124