Last Updated on March 18, 2025
if you are softer
than before
they came.
you
have been loved.
-Nayyirah Waheed
Colonialism is alive and well. Embedded within a politics of fear, racism and fossil fuel, colonial values situate the individual as an isolated figure within a hierarchy of power, privilege, and competition. The insidious effects of colonialism imprint themselves within a social psyche and colonialism itself is predicated on the erasure of Indigenous worldview and emergent Nationhoods. Perhaps it is useful to move beyond attempts to define colonialism and rather explore ideas which help us understand how colonialism defines us.
In the face of violent dispossession, explosive development and significant disruption of being Indigenous, many of us experience a profound rage against colonial projects in this work. It is not uncommon for us to witness or even channel this rage into our own relationships.
For many of us, colonial enterprise violently dispossesses Indigenous families and communities from our cultural birth-rites, governance protocols, languages and ceremonial life. Many of us are left picking up the pieces, and simultaneous are required to critically interrogate ongoing colonial projects as well as contribute to authentic efforts towards our own community’s cultural and political resurgence. This is not to discredit the power and possibilities of politics of our rightful rage, but to extend the conversation towards possibilities of other political emergencies of experience and emotion.
Indigenous love is alive and well. Love for our people. Love for the Lands and Waters that raised us, and love for emergent political imaginaries, beyond colonialism. In this way, Everyday Acts of Resurgence is a project of decolonial love. I consider the possibility of love, as a viable political mechanism within the larger movements towards Indigenous sovereignty, resurgence and regeneration. Can love, as connection, be a tangible tool for dismantling colonial violence inside of our own hearts and in the world around us? Finally, how can the notion of decolonial or Indigenized love speak to emerging global Indigenous nationalist consciousness?
While conversations about love often do not make their way into the political arena, I am interested in how the potential of decolonial love can guide our discussions and actions of resurgence and decolonization. Love teaches us to not only acknowledge interconnected relationships, but also how to enact a practice of accountability and respect to these relations.
Love is softness and patience with the other. Love demands truth and freedom from fear, but must first come from a place within and to ourselves. In this way, decolonial love is the enactment of conscious relationships to self, others, spirit and the Land and furthermore accountability to these relationships through patience, reciprocity and respect.
We know that this process must first come from the land.
Kitaskînaw î pî kiskinohamâkoya. Sâkihito-maskihkiy î pî Kiskinohamâkoya.
Our knowledge as a people (who relate to one another) come from the land. How we relate to the land, determines how we relate to one another. We know that our genealogy extends into the Land and in turn extends into one another.
The land gives us our knowledge. The land gives us our Love. Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua advocates “schools and educational systems that encourage our young people to fall in love with Ãina (the land)”. Similarly, in her piece entitled I am not a Nation State, Leanne Simpson describes her deep wishes to have her “great grandchildren to be able to fall in love with every piece of our territory”. Falling in love is a beautiful and creative journey. For anyone who has ever fallen in love knows that it requires patience, effort, time, honour and sometimes sacrifice. Both Goodyear- Ka’õpua and Simpson describe how love is born a creative force which inspires creativity, abundance, and promotes life itself.
Many of our songs, poems and stories proclaim the love and rapture we have for the land. Engaging with her as kã wee coma aski, Original Mother, we recognize her as the embodiment of abundance. Revitalizing air, invigorating fires, soothing waters and rich earth surround us with plentitude. In constant giving, the earth gives life and abundance as love. The blueprints for peace technologies are encoded in individual strands of grass, and stories which provide purpose and meaning for our lives imprinted on mountain faces. Everything we need to live a good life is in and from the earth.
The renewal of our understanding of love as action is necessary in the integrity of our efforts towards regenerative Indigenous resurgence. To practice love as a daily commitment available to us in every single moment, and one place we each can manifest this practice is in our immediate relationships of our family; or those we belong to/with. To love is to situate ourselves as Indigenous people from a place of strength, creativity and wisdom.
To Love.
For myself, one of the biggest challenges in my own decolonial unbecoming is to step away from the emphasis of I as individual or separate from another. It takes an incredible amount of effort to set aside the individual ego, pride and self-righteousness and embody values of our ancestors. Values which challenge us to position ourselves in wisdom, good-humour and realness.
When it is hard for me to be fully accountable for my own actions and privileges, I am required to take the time and effort to understand my own discomfort or challenges and allow it into my life. Perhaps when we reflect from a place of love, we can engage in meaningful discussions which focus on self-work and accountability rather than pointing out the flaws or imperfections of another. If we are able to move beyond these feelings of discord, perhaps we can experience a softening to first ourselves, and then eventually towards others. How interesting it would be if our collective conversations about accountability required us to first and foremost identify our own particular responsibilities and commitments to one another. How beautiful it would be to ask one another not how we define love, but rather how love defines us?
This will look different for each one of us, and we are accountable to ourselves to discern what self-love looks like. Just as the land embodies abundance, we are asked to be abundant in the way in which we relate to the world around us. This is an act of great courage. A commitment to truth. A quiet, intimate and everyday act of resurgence.
The prayer below is one sent to me from my Great Uncle Ted.
It asks the Creator for the courage to live in truth, seek wisdom and be of one mind.
Kisemanito. li kourawch miyinawn. Paray chee itayhtamawk. Kwayesh kapiouhtayhk. Marsee chee itwayak ka kishcheetayimoyak. Nitataminan.
Ayis kiyehewini Pimatisiwin. Sayweyiminan mena ota mamawai kayayahk. Meyinan, muskawisewin mena ayimesewin. Ta natohtamahk menata nehehtamahk. Meyinan asumena ta wapahatamahk Sakastiwewini mena ka nanskomitinanan. Hiy Hiy anaskomitinanan
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