When Indigenous peoples fight against giant telescopes or oil pipelines on sacred lands, we are not obstructing “progress” or “inventing traditions.” Such stereotypes affirm white capitalist heteropatriarchy in America by casting defiant Indigenous peoples as backwards-looking, trapped in a romanticized past, irrational, or criminal. This happens across the empire, from Mauna a Wākea to Oceti Sakowin, Iroquoia to Guahan: erasures, distortions, and mythmaking that trivialize and prevent Native survival abound. But, when Native peoples refuse settler colonial erasures, it is not because we are “dwelling in the past” or conjuring “authenticity.” We are building futures rooted in a continuum of Indigenous becomings. “We live in the future. Come join us.”
Casumbal-Salazar is an assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity (CSCRE).
This presentation is part of the CSCRE Discussion Series "ON NATIVE LANDS Decolonization, Solidarity & Resurgence."