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Responding to the Indigenous Call — Transcript

by Nordic Animism · 1,848 words · 297 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:01[Music]
0:12well
0:15[Music]
0:28Street
0:30Nordic animism is a response to what you
0:33could call an indigenous call or an
0:37indigenous request a call that goes into
0:40a global cultural dialogue that is
0:43playing out between colonized and
0:46colonizer groups as I've been trying to
0:48make clear many times this does not
0:51imply any becoming indigenous because
0:54indigenous is a label that uh should be
0:57reserved for the empowerment struggles
0:59of those peoples whose traditional
1:02culture and life ways are some and
1:04sometimes their physical existence is
1:07under Colonial attack that is a slightly
1:10longer argument and I have made video
1:13about it but those of us who belong to
1:15majority populations should not I think
1:18self-identify as indigenous but that
1:20doesn't mean that we can't use
1:22indigenous knowledge on ourselves and
1:25decolonizing knowledge in that case I
1:28choose to label this kind of knowledge
1:31traditional knowledge which means
1:33basically the same kind of knowledge
1:35just in the context of people who
1:38haven't been the victims of colonization
1:41and who often have undergone more
1:44intensive modernization now thinking in
1:47this way thinking with traditional
1:50knowledge on Euro descended cultural
1:53heritage that that is actually a
1:56response to this widespread call which
2:00is going out from indigenous spaces
2:02directed at majority populations in so
2:05many different ways this call can take
2:08many many forms but often uh indigenous
2:12thinkers Elders voices individuals plead
2:17for your major majorities to start
2:20thinking in some kind of indigenous ways
2:22about themselves in order to one learn
2:26less destructive ways of being in the
2:28world just in general and to stop
2:31leeching on indigenous culture
2:33indigenous authors such as Robin wal
2:35kimra T Tyson jort and others all
2:39encourage majority populations to
2:41somehow ret retrieve indigeny or qu
2:45qualities of indigenous ways of being in
2:48the world indigenous ways of knowing for
2:50instance many have experienced this call
2:53in very direct ways both on the personal
2:56level or in the public media you know
2:59this can be indigenous friends who are
3:01encouraging you to find your own tribe
3:04or ancestrality or tradition you know or
3:08you know sometimes go in the forest and
3:11find the witches even or can be books
3:14that you've read from indigenous authors
3:16that encourages uh indigenous ways of
3:19thinking even Sometimes using the
3:21Expressions becoming indigenous to place
3:24or so uh or something of that sort even
3:27though I don't think we should use that
3:28formulation uh but that's yeah a bit of
3:31a dis different discussion so a host of
3:33Euro majority producers of culture are
3:37inspired by this call many people you
3:40know like the Irish journalist and
3:42author Manan McAn it's just one example
3:45the author Peggy aers the Norwegian
3:48scholar uh Professor uh P Ina huland in
3:52in Norway these are just a couple of of
3:56uh kind of pro prominent examples but
3:58there are many many others in the US uh
4:01as it's often the case uh people are a
4:03little bit ahead of the game uh and this
4:06dialogue is today basically being
4:07formalized by some people who are
4:09running a very successful and wellth
4:12thought out course uh program which is
4:14called White awake uh I've given classes
4:17there myself uh and an important part of
4:20this course is basically platforming
4:23indigenous voices uh who are making the
4:28indigenous call in the form of basically
4:30indigenous teachers directly guiding
4:33white people to to WS ways of thinking
4:37about their own Roots I met the
4:39indigenous call myself uh for the first
4:41time uh I think when I was around 16
4:43years old and I was briefly involved
4:45with an indigenous Mexican activist
4:48organization that was working on uh
4:50repatriation of some cultural heritage
4:53and the leader of uh this organization
4:56was a man called shos Gora and he he was
4:59working giving lectures all over Europe
5:02back in the 1990s and gorah um
5:06consistently encouraged audiences to
5:09recover contact with their own cultural
5:11Roots I discussed this uh with um this
5:15Irish uh scholar named Jimmy O'Brien uh
5:18he is working on decolonizing from an
5:21Irish perspective uh and and dealing a
5:24lot with whiteness and these kind of
5:25things and his his ass assessment is
5:28that this indigenous call and the
5:31non-indigenous response is very
5:33widespread as a form of exch exchange
5:37there are people that you mean meet in
5:38all kinds of situations who are in some
5:41way of other shaping their life for
5:44their voice as a response to the
5:46indigenous call from rock stars to
5:48decolonial Scholars to spiritual hippies
5:51to homesteaders at some point uh I put
5:54out a post asking followers uh for the
5:57experience of this in indigenous call
5:59and I was immediately given a lot of
6:02these personal experiences where many
6:05have directly uh been been told you know
6:09to look for their Euro tradition by
6:12indigenous relations or friends and it's
6:14really important to set majority
6:16traditional knowledge like Nordic
6:18animism into this context of this
6:21dialogue between indigenous and
6:23colonizer group this context is
6:25important because if you just look at it
6:28from the outside for from a scholarly
6:30perspective then it could be rather easy
6:32to fall into this kind of
6:34run-of-the-mill scholarship that would
6:36see any kind of Engagement of white
6:39people with indigenous culture as in
6:42itself inherently problematic
6:45appropriative romanticizing exoticising
6:49or even worse stuff that produces white
6:51power nativism but symptomatically such
6:54Trends tend themselves I think to move
6:59into unfortunate basis uh I have
7:01encountered the scholarly critiques of
7:04the settlers move to innocence for
7:06instance uh which I think is a deeply
7:09problematic concept which understates
7:11the guilt innocence as the dimension as
7:15the for for the foundation for validity
7:18right are you guilty or are you innocent
7:21and then that goes on to assume a state
7:24of guilt which is it is then problematic
7:26to want to escape now imposing those
7:30assumptions on people in general but
7:34most definitely on white people is a
7:37complete ethical traffic accident it's
7:40an absolutely horrible concept uh I have
7:43a I recommend that you see a video that
7:45I have on this exact exact topic the
7:47Protestant interiorized ideas of guilt
7:50and how they are being reproduced in
7:52harmful ways uh when we're talking about
7:55white people now often the problem of
7:57these kinds of critiques of EUR
7:59descendant thinking with indigen is that
8:02they include or they Bypass or they
8:05leave in obscurity you know uh this uh
8:11this
8:12dialogue a t this this macroc cultural
8:16dialogue where there is a widespread
8:19indigenous called and there is a
8:22widespread will to respond to it but a
8:24critique of Eur traditional thinking
8:26that doesn't pay heed to this dialogue
8:29also entails a problem in how it frames
8:33these indigenous voices themselves
8:36because if you make invisible the
8:38dialogue uh you are obviously also
8:40making invisible the indigenous voices
8:43in that dialogue the IND those
8:45indigenous voices that you could say
8:46they're opening the dialogue and when
8:49you are making the indigenous voices
8:51invisible you are including the
8:53indigenous agency that is exerted
8:57through this dialogue you you're not
8:59respecting or allowing for the fact that
9:02indigenous voices are inspiring and
9:05thereby contributing to uh individual uh
9:09voices like nautic animism but also on a
9:13macro level in impacting uh Global
9:16culture today and something slightly
9:19like that actually happened to me some
9:20time ago where I was uh granted the
9:23dubious honor of being studied there was
9:27actually a scholar who had studied
9:29Nordic animism and in the abstract for
9:32his paper he indicated that uh Nordic
9:37animist Nordic animism perhaps tended to
9:40develop an exotic image of indigenous
9:44religiosi as a positive other now when
9:48the scholar then gave his paper uh he
9:50had uh done his homework more properly
9:53so he actually didn't make that claim
9:56but I found it very telling that this
9:58would be the need jerk reaction because
10:01Nordic animism is built on very concrete
10:05real dialoguing with indigenous voices
10:08like Tyson yaport jungl Swani Kura Frank
10:13others you know and getting to know
10:15these people platforming their voices
10:18referencing these specific thinkers by
10:20name of course all the time that's just
10:22a fact but reducing that to an
10:26exotify imagination of a positive other
10:30then in a weird inversion he The Scholar
10:34is actually the one who's reducing these
10:36indigenous voices to my white
10:38imagination you see that all that
10:41concrete real indigenous relation
10:43building and inspirational dialogue is
10:47becoming reduced to my white imagination
10:50and this is a really it's a more serious
10:53problem than that I think it looks I
10:55think it is structural racism it
10:58includes the indigenous voices in an
11:01agency in favor of maintaining this
11:05seclusion of the EUR descendant thinking
11:08in this closed secluded space of
11:12whiteness and in my view that actually
11:15implies white exceptionalism white
11:18people as that exception that exception
11:22who who has to be encased in modernity
11:25and who's not allowed to build relation
11:28out of uh this SE seclusion into
11:31modernity so this is just to say uh
11:34please do acknowledge these attempts as
11:38at a positive respectful cultural
11:41exchange and dialogue between uh
11:44indigenous colonized groups and uh your
11:47majority ways of knowing and thinking
11:49please do criticize when stuff is
11:51developing in bad ways becoming
11:53disrespectful neoliberal liberal
11:56co-opting toxic stuff but it is real
11:59really important to also not just brush
12:02off this really Central contemporary
12:06cultural dialogue because that is the
12:08easy way it is sort of you know it's
12:11it's the easy way for contemporary
12:13scholarship I recently came across a
12:15book uh called becoming indigenous which
12:18points uh out this problem of how why
12:22people are using and sometimes abusing
12:25indigenous culture uh and uh I think
12:28some really important points are uh are
12:32being made in there however it's also
12:35really important to point out that a
12:37strict scholarly perspective that for
12:40instance
12:41accuses Nordic animism or other like for
12:45exotify that includes that Nordic
12:48animism or other kinds of white
12:51decolonizing or practices of traditional
12:53knowledge you know thinking on your
12:55descended people that that it includes
12:58that it's not just wavering in a
13:00contextual limbo it is a contextual
13:03response to this kind of dialogue and I
13:07would like to put this to the the the
13:09people who are starting to study uh
13:12these kind of things to the writers of
13:14this this book here for instance if you
13:16completely ignore bypass sidestep the
13:21positive agency of indigenous voices in
13:25reciprocal uh relation making with white
13:28people in these cultural dialogues then
13:31I think you're making indigenous voices
13:33and the agency invisible in order to
13:36contribute to the upholding of this
13:40exceptional status of white people as
13:43encased in modernity so including what
13:47indigenous
13:48agency in order to uphold white
13:51exceptionalism it doesn't sound good
13:53right and it's important that you do not
13:57fall into that mode of thinking about uh
14:01how your descendant people are producing
14:03their culture today thanks a lot and see
14:05you
14:13[Music]
14:27around
14:32[Music]
14:57oh
15:03oh

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