Revisiting "Shut Up and Paddle" as an Ongoing Negotiation of Indigenous Feminisms

• In Event: Re-Creating and Reimagining Spaces for Indigenous Feminisms: Case Studies From Five Cultural Contexts

Abstract

Reading journal articles and book chapters in isolation, then meeting in a room where the chairs are bolted to the ground to discuss ‘what we learned’ seemed a wildly inappropriate approach for a group of Indigenous women to learn about Indigenous Feminisms. In our final paper, we argued
“In the first few weeks of our course….much of our time and attention was spent establishing the basics of critical race theory, intersectionality, and privilege for our non-racialized classmates, leaving little time for analysis or synthesis that could benefit the racialized students….As Indigenous women, we wanted to draw from relational and embodied ways of knowing in order to better understand how Indigenous Feminisms related to us personally, academically, and professionally.” (names withheld, 2012, p. 91)
In this paper, I reflect on the work of a collaborative project developed amongst a diverse group of Native women learning Indigenous Feminisms through a process of being, becoming, and creative play. In addition to the expected text-based approach to learning, we decided to decolonize our learning practice and understand Indigenous Feminisms intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually as Indigenous women.
Centering my own experience and distinct positionality in the group affords a valuable perspective for understanding. I am a visitor to the Canada US border from my ancestral home on the US Mexico border. Drawing on Indigenous educational practices (Archibald, 2008; Grande, 2004), critical race theory (Nayak, 2011; Urrieta, 2003), and border writings (Castillo & Tabuenca Cordoba, 2002, Saavedra & Nymark, 2008), my understandings of Indigenous Feminisms were different than those of my Canadian colleagues. Positionality matters. Battiste writes,
“The task for Indigenous academics has been to affirm and activate the holistic paradigm of Indigenous knowledge to reveal the wealth and richness of Indigenous languages, worldviews, teachings, and experiences, all of which have been systematically excluded from contemporary educational institutions and from Eurocentric knowledge systems. Through this act of intellectual self-determination, Indigenous academics are developing new analyses and methodologies to decolonize themselves, their communities, and their institutions.” (2005, p. 1)
Reflecting on our engagement with Indigenous Feminisms, I am less invested in the decolonization of feminism. What use is adding an Indigenous layer within the colonial sandwich? To do so would occupy my time and energy in the endless complications that center settler society and continue to invisiblize my own communities. Instead, I am interested in the creative building of something new that embodies traditional ways of being in the work for justice, and to revitalize Indigenous communities in the global context.
The most valuable aspect of the project has been the process of becoming. In choosing to honor a collaboration amongst Indigenous ladies, in practicing self-determination in our learning process, we built a decolonized and embodied pedagogy, reclaiming our voices through movement, drawing, sound, and play. Looking back over our work, this project models a powerful approach to Indigenous feminist ways of knowing and being that centers traditional and ancestral knowledges as a strategy for navigating academic institutions.

Author

• Marissa Munoz, The University of British Columbia