Decolonizing Community Engagement in the ‘Era of Reconciliation’ Part 1: Why Researchers Need to Rethink How They Work With Indigenous Communities
Vlog with Dr. Derek Kornelsen
In November 2017, we posted Decolonizing Community Engagement, a guest blog where Derek broke down the meaning behind the ‘buzzwords’ decolonization and community engagement in the context of settler colonialism. That was our most-read piece in 2017. In this 2-part series, Derek takes us from print to video, to talk about settler colonialism and how this has impacted Indigenous nationhood.
Watch the video on YouTube (transcript below):
Transcript edited for clarity
[Start of recorded material]
With my experience in the last few years working in the area, looking at Indigenous health research, looking at development, resource development in communities, looking at political systems… there are two key things I think that are generally missed, and difficult for people to kind of wrap their heads around. One is the political identity side of it — that Indigenous people in Canada are nations within Canada. But even within [Canada] is tricky — because citizenship in Canada is not an assumption we can make. And I think that’s something that people, when you say that, they’re like “what?” — but no, Indigenous people have… there’s Indigenous nationhood, and the rights that Indigenous people have are not by virtue of them being citizens within a state called Canada. These are inherent rights that precede the development of the state. So we need to consider that, as it’s not a minority group of Canadian citizens that we’re dealing with; we’re dealing with nations.
To me, it’s a matter of understanding what colonialism is, and what settler colonialism is first, and then we can learn how to decolonize from that. It makes sense to me to kind of start from the bigger picture of colonialism, generally. I think most people understand colonialism as very basic: you have an external colonial entity that comes in, and dominates, exploits a particular region, people, extracting oil — for their own benefit. I think that’s a very standard kind of dictionary definition of colonialism, and in a lot of cases, that’s absolutely correct — but it doesn’t get us very far in terms of understanding our context here in Canada, and what decolonization might look like. And in that sense, I think settler colonialism, as a specific type that functions differently, is important to be aware of and understand.
Patrick Wolfe, who passed away a couple years ago now, was really at the forefront of sort of explaining settler colonialism as a different kind of practice — and you look at Canada, the US, Australia, and New Zealand as kind of the usual suspects. So where you would have places like India or South Africa, for example — those would be standard examples of colonialism, where you have an external entity that comes in and generally administers… but when you get to a post–colonial point, there’s always — those entities kind of go back home, you know? And there’s that post–colonial era where the original inhabitants of those places really take control of their systems and their governance and autonomy, that sort of thing.
One of the key things in explaining settler colonialism is — and to use the jargon — the ‘exogenous entity’ comes in and reproduces itself in a given place. And in order to do that, that entity must destroy to replace, and this is where it gets quite harsh, but it needs to be understood that there’s… Patrick Wolfe talks about the logic of elimination. So we talk about the whole logic of the colonial elimination of Indigenous peoples on this land, and we have the sort of overt genocide at the very early stages, moving towards residential schools and cultural genocide, and now in the modern, contemporary age we still have a denigration and even destruction of Indigenous cultures and ways of life. So that is continuing, and when you think about a colonial entity destroying to replace, you have to think about all the institutions you have — economic institutions, political institutions, legal institutions, health institutions, education institutions — these are all the Western institutions that are being reproduced in this place, and we need to recognize that Indigenous nations had those institutions, just not in the same kind of structure that we were familiar with. So the fact that Indigenous people here in Canada generally need to access Western institutions is testament to the fact that colonialism here is ongoing. And I think that’s one of the key points, is that we understand colonialism as something that happened in the past — which it did — but the fact that it is ongoing is very important to understand.
[End of recorded material]
Want to learn more? Check out Part 2 of the Video Series on Decolonization in Community Engagement here.
About the Author
Dr. Derek Kornelsen is a former Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba. His research focuses on examining/contrasting Western and Indigenous philosophies and institutional frameworks, with a particular emphasis on developing a theoretical framework grounded in an understanding of the dynamics and impacts of Settler Colonialism. This theoretical framework enables a sensitivity to 2 key under-researched areas in Indigenous health and wellness research: the impacts of the disruption of Indigenous peoples’ relationships with land and environment; and strategies for decolonizing key institutions that Indigenous peoples must access (health as well as political, legal, educational, economic institutions). Broadly speaking, this theoretical frame contributes to the development of robust Indigenous determinants of health and wellness. He is currently involved in developing a number of local, national, and international research projects and partnerships in areas of environmental health and Indigenous health and wellness.
