Making kin: Indigenous relationality in promoting public and political knowledge about religion

Abstract

Religion is a problematic category when understanding the different sociopolitical dynamics that impact and influence settler Canadian identity and society. However, against the modern western struggles around religion, like that of religion and non-religion, anti-Indigenous racism and Indigenous elimination remain a constant and unifying factor of settler colonialism. Yet Indigenous knowledges are framed by what is called religion through relationality, which informs situated knowledges, the ethos and world views, and the governance of distinct yet related nations/peoples who are human and other-than-human. The problem is that discussions on the intersectional nature of religion and relationality fall short of a critical treatment. This article outlines the issues of settler colonialism in perpetrating Indigenous dispossession, and asks scholars of religion to focus on how ‘making kin’ supports a critical disruption to settler-colonial definitions of religion that promotes public and political understandings of Indigenous relational knowledges.

As a critical Indigenous studies scholar and Indigenous person who studies religion, when asked to respond to the question ‘Does the scholar of religion have a particular role in promoting public and political knowledge and understanding of religion(s)?’, I would say, ‘Unequivocally. Scholars have an active role to play’.

Growing up in the Batoche Homeland in Saskatchewan at the intersections of Michif/Métis relational and French Canadian settler perspectives, I have experienced first-hand how religion has served as a cohesive as well as coercive force in people’s lives. Religion has an explicit and implicit sociopolitical influence that drives public discourse, sociopolitical movements and economic forces at the same time as it shapes personal and/or community identity. For Indigenous nations/peoples, it is more complicated. Indigenous knowledges are framed by questions of religion (i.e. metaphysics, traditional spirituality or lifeways) where kinship informs the situated ethos, world views and governance based in collective identity, as well as co-constitutive relations with other humans and other-than-human nations/peoples in a personable universe (Deloria and Wildcat, 2001: 23). What is complicated is that, against the variable, situated and collective experiences of Indigenous nations/peoples, religion often represents a hegemonizing and homogenizing force for settler colonialism and identity formation, which has resulted in a manifold dispossession of Indigenous sociopolitical relations.

Indigenous dispossession is rooted in structural racism and sexism, misrecognition of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, and misunderstanding of Indigenous knowledges – that is, onto-epistemologies or ways of being and knowing (Million, 2015; Smith, 2006). This is driven by the colonial logics of white possessiveness and Indigenous elimination built on the ideals and promise of western European civilization, which was equally deployed through Christian denominational proselytization and the Enlightenment project (Moreton-Robinson, 2015, 2021). This modern battlefield was one where religious and secular factions fought to establish and maintain truth claims and knowledge; it paired exceptionally well, however, with colonial expansion and nation-building, capitalism and resource extraction. Against a backdrop of seemingly irrevocable sociopolitical conflict between the religious and the secular, settler nation states like Canada were nevertheless built on a unifying discourse of Indigenous elimination (Gareau, 2021). This reality makes the question of promoting public and political knowledge about religion crucial in order to understand the sociopolitical discursive forces that impact the sovereignty of Indigenous nations/peoples. This becomes a matter of engaging in a critical Indigenous theory that disrupts settler colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous sociopolitical relations.

Within settler society – and especially within the academy with regard to epistemology – anti-Indigenous values and norms are pervasive to the point of institutional cognitive dissonance and confusion as to how Indigenous knowledges work, their relevance to normative society, and their coherence as a way of understanding the world. As Tanana Athabaskan scholar Dian Million (2015: 339) explains: ‘This Western sense of epistemology denotes a foundational belief in its own superior way of knowing while denying other societies the human act of world creation and interpretation’. Million describes how this exclusivist discourse views Indigenous nations/peoples as powerless before the dominant influence of modern western thought, world views, sociality, governance and material culture. This world view is informed by modern western epistemology, which is largely about striving for unitive truth or dominant truth claims as a pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment (Hall, 2006; Million, 2015: 340). Knowledge in a modern western context is largely about thinking alone, thinking as exclusive, thinking as authoritative, thinking as hierarchical, thinking as institutional, thinking as discovery, thinking as possessive, thinking as extractive and thinking as superiority; or, as Siksiká/Blackfoot scholar Leroy Little Bear (2000: 82) summarizes: ‘Singularity manifests itself in the thinking processes of Western Europeans in concepts such as one true god, one true answer, and one right way’. And this singular focus becomes an impediment to Indigenous engagement in modern western thought, mirroring the larger anti-Indigenous discourse of the settler nation state. This represents an attempt to reify Indigenous nations/peoples into unitive categories of race and cultural ethnicities, rather than clustered, intersectional and radiating circles of kinship relations with situated knowledges in storied place(s).

Indigenous scholars and communities/collectivities therefore have to continually resist this racializing and reifying discourse, and advocate for the fact that Indigenous nations/peoples are alive, aware, relevant and engaged as collective nations/peoples with and within settler societies. Indigenous nations/peoples are not stuck in the past and are not obsolete. They are not erased or disappeared, or racial minorities within a multicultural mosaic of ethno-cultural categories. Indigenous knowledges are informed by an ethic of relationality, the situated knowledges of nations/peoples in storied place(s), the capacity to make and manage relations with multiple truths, and co-constitutive relations between nations/peoples who are human and other-than-human (Gareau and Swain, in press). Knowledge, for Indigenous nations/peoples, is always co-constituted with multiple situated relations, which are everywhere and present in the everyday. Indigenous nations/peoples are constantly thinking with, thinking through and negotiating different collectivities of kinship relations informed by a value of non-directiveness and driven by the self-determination and sovereignty of different nations, both human and other-than-human. Indigenous nations/peoples are never alone; they are always being and knowing with their collective nations/peoples – who are human and other-than-human nations/peoples – and their co-constitutive relations. And spirituality and religion are operational factors in mobilizing the infinite diversity of collective and co-constitutive relations in a personable universe. This situated and universalizing/generalizing element of Indigenous knowledges is a way of knowing that is deeply misunderstood by settler scholars and the general public. Ultimately, it is a matter of unpacking questions of religion through the concept of relationality.

Our work as scholars in promoting public and political knowledge of religion with regard to Indigenous nations/peoples is to make space for and acknowledge Indigenous relations as situated knowledges on traditional territories, and assert an ethos of non-interference while still affirming consensual, diplomatic, and co-constitutive relations between nations/peoples who are human and other-than-human. As Sisseton Dakota scholar Kim TallBear (2017: 81) states, it is about ‘standing with’ Indigenous nations/peoples and working towards their flourishing. Scholars of religion in settler societies like Canada – especially non-Indigenous settler scholars who wish to engage in questions of promoting public and political knowledge about religion and relationality – have a key role to play and a responsibility to stand with Indigenous nations/peoples. They must (1) employ self-reflexivity with regard to the history, legacy, and continued impact of settler colonialism and white supremacy on the racialization and dispossession of Indigenous nations/peoples, and (2) deploy an ethic of relationality, which constitutes non-possessive, co-constitutive relations between collectivities/communities and nations/peoples who are human and other-than-human Indigenous and settler individuals and communities. Indigenous scholars like TallBear (2019) understand this as ‘making kin’ or ‘making people into familiars in order to relate’ (37). TallBear affirms that making kin can effectuate structural change by calling ‘non-Indigenous people (including those who do not fit well into the “settler” category) to be more accountable to Indigenous lifeways long constituted in intimate relation with this place’ (38). Indigenous nations/peoples and settlers are therefore called on to be good relatives in this engagement in public and political knowledge about religion.

Here are some reflections on how to operationalize these kinship relations with regard to the question of promoting public and political knowledge, and understanding religion and relationality in public discourse (Gareau and LeBlanc, 2021):

1. Centring relationality in our thinking, teaching, research and writing on religion:

2. • Indigenous ways of thinking and knowing: focusing on and relinquishing space for Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies (i.e. onto-epistemologies), Indigenous scholars and scholarship, and community knowledges and experiences (i.e. land-based learning).

3. • Indigenous sovereignties: focusing on Indigenous self-determination, nationhood/peoplehood and kinship relations rather than reifying the power and interpretations of settler institutions in discussions on religion in our classrooms and public spaces.

4. • Situated thinking and being: focusing on multidisciplinary approaches to thinking, research and dissemination that include arts-based research and art creation.

5. • Co-constituted relations: deploying decolonization and indigenization in how we centre and make space for Indigenous perspectives and experiences of religion in our classrooms and public spaces.

Positionality: Who are you from and where are you positioned?

• Relational positionality: How does the world see you? Who are you and where are you from? Or, better: Who are you from? Who are your collective relations? Are you engaging in possessive relations?

• Relations matter: knowing your relations (collective co-constitutive relations) or lack of relations (individual connections or disconnection) to human and other-than-human nations/peoples.

• Ethos of self-reflexivity: owning your power and privilege – that is, knowing how you code and your privilege, recognizing gendered and racializing discourse, and acknowledging microaggression and overt forms of violence.

• Subjectivity(ies): knowing that your subjectivity is not individuality but related to sociopolitical collectivities that are co-constitutive (i.e. collective and defined by relations with others).

• Triggers: knowing your implicit biases related to structural issues that are deployed as explicit and implicit racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, and so on.

‘The Visiting Way’ (Gaudet, 2019) – sharing spaces for knowing and relating to each other:

• Doing relationality: consensual relating to one another without possessing each other, affirming collectivity instead of centring individual identity.

• Visiting spaces: generating safe spaces online or in our classrooms that people can visit and get to know and relate to each other.

• Nationhood visiting: affirming the importance of internal relations and separate spaces where Indigenous nations/peoples can be together to talk to each other regarding common experiences, thinking, histories, world view and connections.

• Peoplehood visiting: generating spaces where different nations/peoples can come together to see and understand each other as self-determined, collective peoples (human and more-than-human), both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

• Responsible relating: knowing that relations take dedication, commitment and care; relations require maintenance; and reciprocity means showing up and standing with our different relatives.

Kinship relations and being good relatives are key to engaging with the question of promoting public and political knowledge and understanding of religion(s) for Indigenous nations/peoples. This must be done in ways that are not exploitative, extractive, appropriative or paternalistic. You do not speak for Indigenous nations/peoples, but stand with these relations. However, relationships take time. They also require a willingness for people to divest themselves of the sociopolitical discourses of institutional power, privilege and possessiveness in order to make space for collective kinship relations that are consensual, self-determined and situated, and based on an ethos of non-interference and diplomacy. Therefore, to talk about religion is to make kin. And to make kin means to move forward together as distinct but related communities and nations/peoples in the promotion of public and political understandings of Indigenous relational knowledges.