Recommended by Ali

Waited too long to start this and then it was due back to the library; I will come back to it.

See also: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Quotes from Introduction/Nishnaabeg Brilliance:

It sounds idyllic, because compared to now it was idyllic. Our knowledge system, the education system, the economic system, and the political system of the Michi Saagiig Nishinaabeg were designed to promote more life. Our way of living was designed to generate life - not just human life but the life of all living things. (3)

Authoritarian power - aggressive power that comes from coercion and hierarchy - wasn't a part of the fabric of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg philosophy or governance, and so it wasn't a part of our families. (4)

Over the past 200 years, without our permission and without our consent, we have been systematically removed and dispossessed from most of our territory. (4)

...Kina Gchi Nishnaabeg-ogamig, the place where we all live and work together....is an ecology of intimacy....It is relationships based on deep reciprocity, respect, noninterference, self-determination, and freedom. (8)

We should give more than we take. (9)

This is what I understand our diplomats were negotiating when settlers first arrived in our territory....I believe my Ancestors expected the settler state to recognize my nation, our lands, and the political and cultural norms in our territory. (9)

This is the intense love of land, of family, and of our nations that has always been the spine of Indigenous resistance. (9)

The driving force of capitalism in our dispossession cannot be denied. (13)

Colonialism or settler colonialism or dispossession or displacement or capitalism didn't seem complicated anymore....It seemed simple. Colonizers wanted the land. (15)

...Indigenous thought systems, intelligence systems that are continually generated in relationship to place. (16)

It became clear to me that how we live....is the transformation. (19)

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's "As we have always done" provides the reader with an intersectional analysis for a radical resurgence that rejects the colonial politics of recognition and seeks Indigenous resurgence on Indigenous terms.

There are many strengths in this thesis, including critiques of capitalism and industrialism as they intersect with the settler colonial state to dispossess Indigenous peoples of land; critiques of patriarchy and gender stereotypes, and their intersection with law (i.e. the Indian Act); and critiques of legal constructions of recognition including reserve vs urban, status vs non-status. Through these critiques, Simpson offers the reader an alternative ideology, one that prioritizes Nishinaabewin, connections to land, community and culture, and alternative modes of production in line with these concepts that allow for an Indigenous resurgence.

A weakness in Simpson's work, however, is her choice of terminology when addressing LGBTQ2S+ issues and their intersections with Indigenous radical resurgence. In discussing the very important and very real oppressions that Indigenous LGBTQ2S+ people face, Simpson chooses to use the term "2SQ". This inadvertently excludes those who do not identify with either of those labels, but whom understand themselves to be a part of the group described. Indigenous Lesbians, Bisexuals, Gay men, and Trans people (among others) who do not view themselves as either Queer or Two-Spirit are incidentally left out, or applied a label they do not apply to themselves.

Overall, this is an excellent work that provides the reader with a fantastic starting point to further formulate grounded normativity and a radical resurgence as applicable to their particular situations. ( )

So many things to think about, so much to absorb and so many quotes to share from this book.

“We need to be willing to take on white supremacy, gender violence, heteropatriarchy, and anti-Blackness within our movement. We need to be willing to develop personal relationships with other communities of coresistors beyond white allies. We need to develop these as place-based constellations of theory and practice because when we put our energy into building constellations of coresistance within grounded normativity that refuse to center whiteness, our real white allies show up in solidarity anyway.” ( )