Strategies of co-resistance: Indigenous and Black mobilizations to combat state-violence in Canada
Date
2020-06-08
Authors
Burgoyne-King, Jess
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Abstract
This paper offers a discussion on the spaces in which Queer Black and Indigenous folx come together and engage in co-resistance against state-sanctioned violence. I discuss the ways in which Black and Indigenous folx come together and engage in co-resistance against state-sanctioned violence. I discuss the ways in which Black and Indigenous folx mobilize through centering joy, imagining futurisms, and building relationships across community in order to resist settler-colonialism, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. The paper begins with three theoretical underpinnings that ground the paper in “refusals”, “the everyday”, and “futurisms”. These underpinnings root resistance, resurgence, and liberation in the intimate, everyday, relational spaces whereby sacred relationships are built, the state is refused, and futures without whiteness and settler-colonialism are created. These theoretical underpinnings lead into a poem constructed through interviews with Black and Indigenous community members on Lək̓ ʷəŋən and W̱ SÁNEĆ territories. The interviews are put into conversation with one another through a poem format—allowing for a grounding in a non-linear conversation where the magic of each interviewee’s words and stories are held. This poem highlights the connected struggle against oppressive forces by Black and Indigenous people, the decentering of whiteness, the centering of joy, the relationship building between communities and the land, and the creation of futures outside of settler-colonialism, white supremacy, and heteronormativity.
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Keywords
decolonization, liberation, Black Studies, Indigenous Studies, Queer theory, state-violence, resistance