“If you don’t want us there, you don’t get us”: A Statement on Indigenous Visibility and Reconciliation

Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society Mar 2022 RSS

“If you don’t want us there, you don’t get us”: A Statement on Indigenous Visibility and Reconciliation

Abstract

To clarify our opening, we don’t resent this essay. We resent that to make Indigenous space with a bunch of well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning folx is to brace ourselves for an act of settler colonial violence and white nonsense. Whether we are trying to do our own work and just need some damn permit approval, are staging institutional interventions, or invested in long-term collaboration, our everyday work feels like one meeting to get the task done and three meetings to educate settlers on Indigenous beliefs, practices, and communities. Or, we learn that people are trying to do this work on their own in the name of not putting more emotional labor on BIPOC and then they’ve gone and pissed off the elder they are working with or didn’t practice the right protocols for consultation and input and someone—whether it’s an Indigenous person or not, has reached out to us to come and fix it. Even aunties don’t got time for that shit. What follows are a series of statements, practices, and observations on how we want to move forward in regard to working or not working with settlers in our institutions and professions.

Journal: Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society
Published: 2022-03-01
Topics: race and writing multilingual writers

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