The Problem with “Privileging” Marginalized Voices
The climate movement largely recognizes the disproportionate impact climate change has on the social, economical, political — even cultural — aspects of colored/Indigenous lives. Countries most Americans have never even heard of are sinking due to rising sea levels. Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa rely on rain to survive but are experiencing drought. Latin American coffee growers can’t afford drought-resistant seed, yet the coffee industry continues to exploit the poor. People dependent on exporting their crops have nothing left for themselves, a systemic issue that harks back to the Irish Famine. In India, temperatures are so extreme that they put those in agricultural areas at risk — yet comfortable politicians elsewhere ignorantly suggest they get credit cards (without credit) to pay for an A/C unit.
I specifically differentiate the marginalized as “colored/Indigenous” because it is important to realize not all Indigenous peoples are — literally at least — people of color. Look, as an example, at the Sámi in the Scandinavian Arctic Circle who are losing their reindeer culture due to rapid shifts in climate. Before Indigenous voices were centered on the climate stage, talks of “cultural loss and damage”, as I like to call it, were little spoken of because those speaking hadn’t experienced culture in the same way. In my own community, manoomin is threatened by warm rain, silt, and other conditions that may result in the wild rice population retreating into Canada. To continue the culture, people would have to move away from the Reservation. Migration was once common, but now it comes with a host of other issues, including protected rights and population decrease through blood quantum laws if people are scattered from one another.
So why is centering these marginalized voices a problem?
I mention “privileging” these voices for two reasons. 1) Making those voices central is a way of handing over the privilege other voices have previously experienced in such forums. But also 2) I’ve experienced those who don’t get that “privilege” — because they are privileged — may become a little bitter or salty over their silencing. It’s not meant to silence someone; it’s meant to give those who have historically been silenced a chance to share their unique experiences, things that others in the room maybe could never have imagined without such story-telling.
I fear this piece may come off as highly anecdotal, but then again don’t most issues start with a conversation of experience?
To begin, I want to make my first critique of “privileging” the marginalized: The complications around its intrinsic tendency towards tokenization.
I was selected to be a delegate to COP22 in Morocco in 2016. The news shocked me, although I had also recently been given a position on the EPA’s NEJAC Working Youth Group on Climate, the report from which was finally published last summer. In both instances — and in scholarship awards as well — I felt honored and also annoyed. Annoyed because I wasn’t sure if I had earned anything (as I felt I was green to the climate movement), and so I assumed my status as an enrolled tribal member had won me the titles. This feeling is what I mean about tokenization. The paradox embedded in centering marginalized voices while simultaneously privileging them to do so cannot be overlooked. Furthermore, it is a paradox that makes me feel obligated to show up in traditional dress or, at the very least, beaded earrings, almost as a way to justify an identity already justified by my enrollment card and census number.
I don’t know how to get around that paradox. Perhaps it is to relax the expectation on those participating that they’re allowed to talk about something other than Indigenous issues, and they’re allowed to come as they are. I actually had a dream once that I wore no beads and showed up to a presentation in my arisaidh — a traditional outfit I have always worn as a competitive dancer representing my Gaelic heritage. Can I not be all the things that I am without being pigeonholed by my tribal membership?
We can’t be ashamed of multi-ethnicity. To be ashamed is to perpetuate colonial impositions and exclusions of blood quantum and to buy in to the constructs of racial profiling.
My other critique of marginalized “privileging” is the (possibly anecdotal) backlash I sense I’ve experienced because of the use of my voice. When it comes to issues such as #NoDAPL or #NoLine3, I resent these issues being labeled as “climate issues”. To do so is to inadvertently overshadow Indigenous perspective, issues, and life-ways. Remember the concept of cultural loss and damage being rather exclusive to certain experiences? Those experiences are largely tied to sovereignty and self-determination, something to which dual-citizens in the US (specifically, Americans with tribal membership) are more likely exposed.
To utilize an Indigenous movement as the face of a climate campaign by those not from that community is to silence Indigenous voices and twist the narrative. Quite frankly, the irony to me is that it is also a drastic disadvantage to not use the argument of sovereignty to halt a pipeline. Certain up-and-coming climate movements have been very particular in their language, stating that they showed up to these climate fights and they inspired change. Not only are tribes ignored, but so is sovereignty. Yes, these issues are about climate, but they are first and foremost about the US imposing on sovereign lands with treaty rights to protect their culture and way of life.
Instead, I argue these fights are “fights about sovereignty with climate implications attached”.
Unfortunately, I felt further marginalized by certain groups I called out because, rather than addressing me and publicly apologizing, they simply changed the language on their website and social media pages. Clearly, they had gotten the message. Clearly, they wanted to avoid such accusations. And, clearly, they didn’t have the bollocks to admit their errors. Instead they chose to silence critics and move on, perpetuating their same exclusive linguistics.
You see, the more and more I tried to speak from an Indigenous perspective, the more and more I felt like I was being shoved aside by the very people who worked with me in the organization. How could you not feel tokenized when you’re there to speak about issues, but at the same time your criticism is under-rug-swept?
Back to COP22: The “people of color” in our delegation were invited to a small Indigenous resistance camp several hours outside of the city we were in. I wanted to experience COP, but I was willing to dedicate time to this cause — especially when the others turned it down and the North African delegation going informed me they needed another person capable of driving stick with a legal license in order to even attend. What would you have done? While at the camp, Trump was elected as President and I was black-listed, surrounded by military officers with AK-47s, and detained half a dozen times trying to return to the original city.
I had fulfilled a task I felt obligated to do for an Indigenous community with issues paralleling those in Native America.
When I had reception again on my phone, I also encountered many emails on a global climate youth chain discussing some demonstration about Trump being elected and how we have to resist. It grated me deeply. I don’t typically like replying, especially CC’ing everyone, but I felt compelled to after so many days in the desert with marginalized people reminding me that America needs to get off its high horse. I pointed out the arrogance that we speak of American elections but ignore suffering countries (media censorship); that we have always had bad leaders (Indigenous/POC suffering); and that Indigenous peoples shouldn’t even call Trump our President due to sovereignty — so could we back off?
Well, apparently that movement was started by my delegation. And the white girl who was behind it cried openly in a group meeting when I returned.
And I will never feel sympathy for that, because I spoke the truth. And our group demonstrated that I was, in fact, there as a model piece and not as a person allowed to have a truthful voice.
The ostracism of me in this organization has, in my opinion, continued since this pivotal moment.
Of all the times I have passionately applied to this delegation to return to another COP event, I have been denied. I only managed to reach leadership when separate delegation formed and the selection committee was unfamiliar with this “history”. Yet, during that delegation, I experienced continual issues of media overshadowing and the outright labeling me as someone who “likes to do things by [my]self rather than with the delegation”.
Y’all WANTED me to go to that camp! No one asked about my hospitalization and trauma as a result of having your life threatened.
I know exactly where that rumor started and why. And it was reinforced by those who subsequently founded a sister movement, the one taking claim to Indigenous work and ignoring sovereignty. The same circle responsible for the media overshadowing during my only opportunity of leadership. Except now even the “POC” in the organization have been leaving me on the sidelines. I’m less appalled by that than I am appalled by their silence in the issues they, at one-on-ones, agree with me on.
Why do we have to censor ourselves to maintain participation in a realm that seems desperate to include us?
In sum, the climate movement needs to keep a vigil eye on the way colored/Indigenous peoples are embraced in their organizations. There are so many conversations we need to have that are not presently being had. And I don’t find this argument to be pandering some hypersensitivity; I see it as a true systemic issue.
As they say, “System change, not climate change!” Right?
