Moves Towards Innocence
You have encountered a Great White Beast!
“It is precisely by denying culpability or assuming that one is not implicated in violent relations toward others, that one is outside them, that violence can be perpetuated. Violence, especially of the liberal varieties, is often most easily perpetrated in the spaces and places where its possibility is unequivocally denounced”[1].
The purpose of reconciliation is not to reinscribe settler virtues, nor cater to comfortable narratives of innocence.
It should rather be contemplated alongside the concepts of implication, responsibilities to unsettle settler innocence, and to inspire action [2].
Part of doing so around Gjoa Haven's Voices of Thunder, is by re-inserting our bodies back into political landscape, rather than merely deflecting them elsewhere, by merely "passing on" the message under the obscured positionality of "solidarity".
The fallacy of imagining there is an easy road to reconciliation leading to superficial actions that alleviate settler guilt, but do nothing to repatriate land, or undo settler power, coloniality or privilege - and is also referred to as a "move towards innocence" [3].
The challenge of conducting a testimonial reading, is that it requires us to face the "Great White Beasts" of our own distorted reflections. A necessary discomfort before we can contemplate the full implications of acting as allies (especially from within institutions rooted in western-based thinking).[4].
- ↑ Berlant in Rothberg, M. (2019 p.49) The implicated subject. Stanford University Press.
- ↑ Grundy, M., Jiang, J., & Niiya, M. (2019). Solidarity as a settler move to innocence. Race in the Americas
- ↑ Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society, 1(1), 1-40
- ↑ Rothberg, M. (2019 p.87) The implicated subject. Stanford University Press.