“Dibaajimowinan as Data”: Decolonizing American Indian Identity Through Storytelling

• In Event: 20410 - Unsettling Race and Gender Through Indigenous Sociologies

Abstract

If settler colonialism operates on a logic of elimination, what accounts for the explosion of the American Indian census category in recent decades? How does sovereignty influence and impact the availability of the American Indian (AI) identity? This study approaches these questions from a Du Boisian epistemological perspective, looking towards contextual specificity and community agency for answers. Drawing from 81 dibaajimowinan–or stories of lived experience–belonging to multiple generations of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, this study constructs a historical and phenomenological account of the community’s application for and utilization of sovereignty and the impact these events had on community members’ perceptions of self in relation to the AI identity. By revealing the multi-generational process through which this community achieved their sovereignty and utilized it to increasingly decolonize the self-perceptions of subsequent generations, the elders’ stories demonstrate the ways in which settler colonialism changes over time, differently impacting the lived experiences of sequential generations. Additionally, their story exposes the generational nature of resistance efforts to the structures of settler colonialism. I argue that these findings demonstrate the necessity of incorporating a Du Boisian epistemology into sociological work relating to AI identity and indigenous communities, because it is through acknowledging the unique histories and specificities of the 574 federally recognized tribes and recognizing the agentic acts of their communities that we can begin to decolonize our understandings of this identity and these communities.

Author

• Billie Sams, Brown University