By aligning with policy frameworks, such as UNDRIP, that assume colonial states as conveyors of authority, it is then, predominantly, that state and state ideologies which determine who creates and maintains ‘peace’ and who creates terror, or is a terrorist.
Looking at America, Israel and Russia, they are currently committing acts of war against Indigenous peoples under the guise of stories specific to their collective political imagination, or the beliefs of leaders.
Is it, then, so surprising that in a state that has now adopted actions aligned with UNDRIP (the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), which openly states in Article 46 — a contentious last-minute
addition — that while it supports expressions of Indigenous identity, UNDRIP in no way condones or supports actions “which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states.”
When I wrote about this last year, I had a hard time drawing expressions relatable to most people why this language is so important, and problematic. But we’re seeing land defenders charged as terrorists, and journalist Brandi Morin charged while covering these stories — stories of the people of this land, regardless of what you call it, and who you consider yourself or these individuals to be.
This is the function of journalism and the media: to tell people’s stories, to demand transparency from authorities, and creating a go between for citizens and the governing bodies who house them. Ideally, anyways.
If global nations have shared political narratives which are soft in the face of apparent genocide, is it possible that even their most radical frameworks adhere to similar state politics where legal language is deterred by the oppressors, as opposed to creating state narratives, which radicalize collective politics through assuming narratives of liberation. The latter necessarily dismantles who gets to determine who is working to “dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states” — Article 46.1 of UNDRIP.
That begs the question: Whose state? Whose political unity?
As I asked last year, and I ask again here, according to the UN, who is legally defined as the “independent state” in which we reside? According to international law and colonial state politics, we, as Indigenous peoples, are supposed to be supported, celebrated even, in accessing funds for researching our place names, our Indigenous environmental knowledge, our cultural knowledge and arts.
But according to international laws that define our social systems and day-to-day existence, we live in a recognized state called Canada, and even if we choose to express ourselves as Dene people, as Indigenous peoples, we better not be rebel rousers to rock the boat of Canada’s sense of “territorial integrity” or “political unity.” Or as the State of Canada worded it during counter-arguments for the Mackenzie Pipeline during the 1970s when the Dene Nation challenged the building of this project across sacred lands, disrupting the “harmony of the state.”
We must be careful, in these days of possible evolution, to not assume too quickly to celebrate that which seems to rescue us from ideological darkness. UNDRIP, while an evolutionary work of decades of Indigenous advocacy and decolonial politics, is not perfect. I often wonder what our world would look like if we did not speak or think in black and white: UNDRIP good; land defenders, bad. For, as Obi Wan reminds us in the Star Wars saga, “only the Sith deal in absolutes.”
UNDRIP, article 46, and what we are seeing as Indigenous peoples are more commonly being named as terrorists in this land, are all best to be observed, considered and integrated into one’s liberation consciousness — for we are the people.
Citizens should not fear speaking truth to power or demanding change or evolution of their leaders. This is the very nature, and power, ideally, of the democratic process — this great imperfect project we call being human.