Comments on: Tending to duties across legal orders: committing anthropology while Indigenous

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 20 May 2015 20:39:47 +0000

Thanks for this post Zoe. There’s a lot to think about here. Several of your lines from this post have been on my mind all week.

There’s something about an expressed desire by anthros to “create the conditions of the…ontological self-determination of people” that is deeply ironic, if not paternalistic (all things considered). You make that very point when you write, “In North America, it is almost funny to imagine anthropology creating the conditions for self-determination considering the often negative connotations and legacies it carries for so many Indigenous peoples.”

There’s a certain amount of speaking for others (in the name of those others, for their supposed best interests) that has been ongoing for a long, long time in anthropology. The issue of citation practices that you mention gets at the heart of the matter, at least in terms of practices within the academy/anthropology.

Your post also has me thinking back to some of the core issues and contradictions of the whole “ontological turn” in anthropology.

By: The We and Them of Anthropology » Antropologia Masterra

The We and Them of Anthropology » Antropologia Masterra — Mon, 18 May 2015 20:48:55 +0000

[…] anthropology, broadly, sees itself describing–never gave away the ontological? As I said in my previous post, indigenous self-determination in my home territory of amiskwaciwâskahikan/pêhonan/Treaty Six […]

By: The We and Them of Anthropology | Savage Minds

The We and Them of Anthropology | Savage Minds — Sat, 16 May 2015 19:22:40 +0000

[…] anthropology, broadly, sees itself describing–never gave away the ontological? As I said in my previous post, indigenous self-determination in my home territory of amiswaciwâskahikan/pêhonan/Treaty Six […]

By: camigp

camigp — Wed, 13 May 2015 12:50:14 +0000

Thanks for your reply and the excerpt from your forthcoming article. I’ll try to get familiar with this literature.
I imagined – but again I don’t know discussions being made by Indigenous Studies scholars – that ideas such as “law” and “legal orders” would be as ethnocentric and Eurocentric as “ontology”. I guess I was wrong.

By: Zoe Todd

Zoe Todd — Tue, 12 May 2015 23:45:02 +0000

Thanks for the comment. You’re right–it would be great to see discussions within anthropological circles that encompass the issues raised by Indigenous nations/peoples around the globe. In fact, this is what is already happening within contexts such as Indigenous Studies and/or Indigenous legal and literary scholarship where scholars are working across continents to examine the divergent and convergent experiences of different Indigenous peoples vis-a-vis past and present colonialism. Indigenous legal orders are a well-established line of thinking and inquiry that Indigenous scholars in Canada such as James Tully, John Borrows and Val Napoleon have written extensively about. Here’s an excerpt from an forthcoming article about Val Napoleon’s legal work that I wrote for the Canadian art Magazine C Magazine (issue 126) that explains why I choose to think with Indigenous scholarship and why I centre Indigenous framings of our thinking, sovereignty and engagement with the human and non-human world in my writing:

“So, what is Indigenous law, for those who are not familiar with this work? Through her work, Val demonstrates that Indigenous law is dynamic, alive, robust and integral to the assertion of Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty in Canada. It is also, as Val points out, a set of processes that require constant intellectual engagement. It allows Indigenous peoples to tackle complex internal community issues as well, from how to address intersections of violence and gender to the management of watersheds and lands in the context of extractive economies. It is the set of processes through which Indigenous peoples actively engage and shape the world. Indigenous legal orders “describe law that is embedded in social, political, economic, and spiritual institutions,” as Val writes in a 2007 paper for the National Centre for First Nations Governance.[3] It is from reading and engaging with Val’s work and the work of other Indigenous legal scholars that I have come to prefer to use Indigenous legal orders in my own work over the far trendier Eurocentric notion of ontology (so common in anthropology and art scholarship at the moment). As Val’s work teaches me, Indigenous legal orders centre action and engagement and unambiguous confrontation with colonial realities rather than simply acknowledging that other ways of being exist. Legal orders place the onus on an active engagement across difference and sameness rather than just describing difference or alterity. As Val articulates, “law is a verb.””

By: camigp

camigp — Tue, 12 May 2015 17:30:21 +0000

Once again content in this blog is too centered in North-American debates. I am glad the post is written by an Indigenous scholar. However, it’d be much more interesting to be able to understand the debate fully. Reading you from Brazil (as a non-Indigenous graduate student), I can’t quite understand what “Indigenous legal orders” are. I know you listed bibliography at the end of you post (a rather large list for I blog, I must say), but since I read you on a blog, I wonder whether you could explain it in a way those not familiar with the concept/idea/theory/notion could follow the argument.
I found you piece on indigenous scholars and feminists and ontological turn (in your blog) to be centered in debates more anthropologists could understand, independently of they being or not familiar with Native North-American debates. I and other colleagues of mine working with Indigenous peoples in South America are very interested in learning how Native scholar from other parts of America relate to contemporary anthropological theories and debates. I am certainly looking forward to reading you again.