Introduction: Practices of Efflorescence

Gerald Roche

Whilst the broad, contextual developments discussed in Part One of this book have enabled and supported Indigenous efflorescence, it is important to acknowledge that what has actually brought it about are the tireless efforts of Indigenous peoples themselves. Indigenous efflorescence has been driven not only by structural change, but also by the hope, tenacity and effort of Indigenous people. The individuals bringing about Indigenous efflorescence come from all walks of life: nurses, farmers, teachers, artists, journalists, chefs, lawyers, activists, livestock herders, academics, politicians and others. What they all share is a common desire to see their languages and cultures flourish again, a conviction that this is possible, and a dedication to making it happen.

In the context of continuing structures of colonisation, and the continuing impacts of colonial trauma, it is important to acknowledge how much work goes in to doing even simple acts of Indigenous efflorescence. Indigenous scholars have begun giving theoretical attention to the embodied and quotidian politics of resurgence, of being Indigenous, of ‘thinking, speaking and acting with the conscious intent of regenerating one’s indigeneity’ (Alfred and Corntassel 2005: 614). This is often based in an acknowledgement of the ‘cunning’ of liberal multiculturalism (Povinelli 2002) as a ‘shape-shifting’ form of colonialism that seeks, through practices of recognition, the continued subjugation of Indigenous peoples (Coulthard 2013). What we therefore see emerging are approaches centred in the refusal of the liberal multicultural state and its practices of recognition (Simpson 2014), and a commitment to personal sovereignty. This requires continuous work by Indigenous people, to ‘diagnose, interrogate and eviscerate the insidious nature of conquest, empire, and imperial thought in every aspect of our lives’ (Simpson 2011: 18).

The psychologically invasive nature of colonisation, the ways in which it transforms the subjectivities of colonised peoples (Fanon 2004, 2008; Memmi 1990) make this a difficult task. It is therefore common to find numerous emotional and psychological tensions running through revitalisation work. A common experience is thus what Camilla Rindstedt and Karin Aronsson (2002) call the ‘revitalization paradox’—the stated desire to work for the revitalisation of language and culture, but accompanied by a certain indecision or paralysis that makes action impossible. Nora Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer (1998), in exploring language revitalisation, describe this as being the result of the ‘mixed messages’ that people receive—positive attitudes and ideologies about the language, on the one hand, but also deeply felt emotions of shame and anxiety about learning the language, as well as negative attitudes towards the language and its utility on the other. Rather than being failures to achieve ‘ideological clarification’ (Fishman 1991) about what the community really wants, the persistence of such tensions are more fruitfully viewed as the legacy of ongoing colonialism and expressions of intergenerational trauma.

All of the contributions in this section deal, in various ways, with the presence of ongoing colonialism and the ways it impacts on individual efforts to reclaim language, identity and culture, and to be Indigenous. We have organised contributions in this section according to two themes: subjectivities and quotidian practices. The first contribution on the theme of subjectivities, from Leena Huss and Sigrid Stånberg, looks at the strong affective contradictions present in language revitalisation: the ways in which an Indigenous language can be experienced simultaneously as a burden and a joy, for example. They see such tensions as the legacy of prior assimilationist policies and the way in which the stigmatisation of certain languages has been intergenerationally transmitted. Ryoko Tahara’s contribution on ‘Ainu Women in the Past and Now’, meanwhile, reminds us that neither the impacts nor the legacy of colonialism are distributed evenly amongst all Indigenous people, even within the same population. She describes how Ainu women have suffered from ‘double discrimination’, oppressed both by Japanese colonialism and patriarchy, and how this makes their contemporary predicament radically different from that of Ainu men.

The next contribution on the theme of efflorescence subjectivities, by Nobuko Tsuda, begins with a startling account of the author trying to remove her body hair, as ‘hairiness’ was taken as a sign of being not only Ainu, but also primitive and backwards. From this beginning, in a shame-driven attempt at identity erasure, the author describes her journey to being the first Ainu woman to be awarded a PhD, with a study of Ainu traditional clothing. Following Tsuda’s chapter, Mana Shinoda’s contribution tells a similar story of erasure and pride, rejecting the assumption that ‘real’ Ainu no longer exist, that their culture lives only in the past, and that they have no place in the present, let alone the future. She chronicles a variety of ways in which Ainu culture is changing and developing.

The final two contributions on efflorescence subjectivities once again remind us of the diversity of experiences of Indigenous efflorescence, this time by looking across the lifespan. In ‘A Quest for What We Ainu Are,’ 83-year-old Shizue Ukaji looks back on her life of activism and forward towards the afterlife when she will join her elder sister, parents and ancestors. In the following contribution, we hear the youthful voice of a young Sami female, describing her trip to a mountaintop, as part of a project aiming to help young Sami reconnect to the land and the traditional knowledge associated with it. Whereas Shizue Ukaji’s account is replete with memories from a long and eventful life, Jenny Virdi Kroik’s story presents vibrant but fragmented memories of the mountaintop experience. Together, these two accounts encourage us to consider the experience of engaging in efflorescence over a life span, and what that might feel like.

The following set of contributions, on the theme of quotidian practices of efflorescence, demonstrate how even simple, ‘banal’ actions are saturated with the legacy of historical process, and conditioned by systems and structures of ongoing domination and manifestations of power asymmetries. Kanako Uzawa looks at the predicament of Ainu living in Tokyo, and the practices of gathering, sharing food, and making art that they employ to create a sense of community. In doing so, she calls for a rethinking of how indigeneity exists away from, but not disconnected from, the land, through ‘everyday acts of resurgence’.

The next two contributions examine the intersection between Indigenous efflorescence and commerce, one with a brief look at Saami coffee culture, and the other describing a North American business that makes and sells traditional Sami dwellings. Chris Kolbu and Anne Wuolab’s chapter on coffee serves as a reminder of the complex historical threads that run through something as simple as a cup of coffee, whilst the contribution by Chris Pesklo shows the intricate considerations that go into balancing economic success with efforts to curtail cultural appropriation.

Finally, a contribution from Saami dancer Nils-Jonas Persson discusses sydisdans—a new traditional dance in Sapmi that draws attention, once again, to the creative, generative nature of Indigenous efflorescence, and the complex links between past, present and future that this entails.

References

Alfred, Taiaiake and Jeff Corntassel. 2005. ‘Being Indigenous: Resurgences against contemporary colonialism’. Government and Opposition 40(4): 597–614. doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2005.00166.x

Coulthard, Glen. 2013. Red Skins, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

Dauenhauer, Nora Marks and Richard Dauenhauer. 1998. ‘Technical, emotional, and ideological issues in reversing language shift: Examples from Southeast Alaska’. In Endangered Languages: Language Loss and Community Response, edited by Lenore Grenoble and Lindsay Whaley, 57–98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139166959.004

Fanon, Frantz (trans. Richard Philcox). 2004 [1963]. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.

Fanon, Frantz (trans. Richard Philcox). 2008 [1952]. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press.

Fishman, Joshua. 1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Memmi, Albert (trans. Howard Greenfeld). 1990 [1960]. The Colonizer and the Colonized. London: Earthscan Publications.

Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2002. The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism. Durham: Duke University Press. doi.org/10.1215/9780822383673

Rindstedt, Camilla and Karin Aronsson. 2002. ‘Growing up monolingual in a bilingual community: The Quichua revitalization paradox’. Language in Society 31(5): 721–42. doi.org/10.1017/S0047404502315033

Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham and London: Duke University Press. doi.org/10.1215/9780822376781

Simpson, Leanne. 2011. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing.