Jeff Corntassel | University of Victoria (original) (raw)

Journal Articles by Jeff Corntassel

BIG Review, 2024

For Indigenous peoples, boundaries on homelands and waterways often denote places for family, cla... more For Indigenous peoples, boundaries on homelands and waterways often
denote places for family, clan and/or community responsibilities regarding
stewardship or protection and are not merely lines of exclusion on a map. In this essay I begin by reflecting on the teachings of the late master carver and artist TEMOSEṈŦET (Dr. Charles Elliott from Tsartlip First Nation) and discuss how his artistry embodies Indigenous internationalism and intimate relationships to W̱SÁNEĆ lands and waters. Indigenous internationalism is practiced through diplomacies, activism, trade relations, treaties, solidarities, and other forms of Indigenous international relations which precede the formation of states. In this
essay—introducing the Special Section: Honouring Indigenous Land and Water Defenders—I look at the deeper meaning behind the Cherokee word for nation, ayetli, and discuss how Indigenous internationalism and land/water defense are expressed through stories, activism, and everyday actions that renew relational responsibilities to lands, waters, and more-than-human kin.

Langscape Magazine, 2023

Can we have rights without responsibilities? Is today’s predominant focus on rights distracting u... more Can we have rights without responsibilities? Is today’s predominant focus on rights distracting us from paying attention to the other side of the coin: our fundamental responsibilities toward one another and toward the earth? Can we achieve a biocultural resurgence — a renewed flourishing of life’s diversity in nature and culture — by claiming our rights alone? Or do we need to reconnect to an ethic of responsibility that once was the hallmark of human communities all over the world?

Rooted: A Publication on Indigenous Law, 2022

Acts of reclamation, such as PKOLS, embody community resurgence. Indigenous Resurgence is ultimat... more Acts of reclamation, such as PKOLS, embody community resurgence. Indigenous Resurgence is ultimately about turning away from the state in order to engage more fully with the complex interrelationships of land/water relationships, Indigenous languages, and cultural practices that reinvigorate everyday acts of renewal and regeneration. It is rooted in counter-colonial struggles to revitalize languages, artistry such as carving and weaving, fish-ins, and land reclamations. In this article I examine expressions of “creative combat” by four Indigenous artists: Hayalthkin'geme (Carey Newman), the late Shan Goshorn, 'Tayagila'ogwa (Marianne Nicolson), and Yéil Ya-Tseen (Nicholas Galanin), whose work expands understandings of resurgence. In the concluding section, I look at some future directions for reclaiming, renaming and re-occupying.

Rooted: A Publication on Indigenous Law, 2021

Findings from the Yellowhead Institute’s Land Back report highlight the pattern and impacts of se... more Findings from the Yellowhead Institute’s Land Back report highlight the pattern and impacts of settler colonial land theft: “If Indigenous legal traditions are not recognized to have standing in decision-making on resource management, the result is alienation; a non-consensual land theft that structures much of Indigenous-state relations into the present.” This article looks at some of the ways that the “land back” movement creates new spaces for community resurgence. Additionally, I examine how land back relates more specifically to Cherokee values and practices.

Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, 2021

Amidst the ever-changing terrain of contemporary shape-shifting colonization, this article discus... more Amidst the ever-changing terrain of contemporary shape-shifting colonization, this article discusses how Indigenous peoples engage in turning away from the state and the ways these movements take place in unexpected and everyday ways. I will examine three examples of ways that Indigenous international relations are being practiced
so as to bypass states and create new forms of solidarity across colonial borders: "Indigenous Women of the Americas Defenders of Mother Earth Treaty Compact (2015) that spans from Turtle Island to South America; the Haida and Heiltsuk Treaty of Peace, Respect and Responsibility (2015) initiated to protect their relationship
with herring; and the Tyendinaga Mohawk blockade of the VIA rail in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en (2020).

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2020

For Indigenous Nations on Turtle Island (Canada and the USA), the onset of COVID-19 has exacerbat... more For Indigenous Nations on Turtle Island (Canada and the USA), the onset of COVID-19 has exacerbated food insecurity and adverse health outcomes. This situation report examines ways that Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island have met the challenges of the pandemic in their communities and their daily practices of community resurgence through social media. Drawing on the lived experiences of four Indigenous land-based practitioners, we found that social media can offer new forms of connection for Indigenous peoples relating to our foods, lands, waterways, languages, and our living histories.

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2019

The modern-day reinvigoration of individual Indigenous nations around the world is connected to b... more The modern-day reinvigoration of individual Indigenous nations around the world is connected to broader simultaneous movements of Indigenous nationhood worldwide. The origins, implications, philosophies, and diversities of Indigenous resurgences and resistances continue to be discussed in the growing body of literature on Indigenous governance.This article builds on these discussions by focusing on the applied tools and strategies of Indigenous resurgence. In the context of the Pacific herring fishery in British Columbia, Canada, this research explores the strategies and tools used by three Indigenous coastal nations to apply pressure on the colonial government to abdicate its asserted authority over herring governance. Motivated by a time-honored relationship to herring, we discuss how these Indigenous nations have strategized to try to regain authority over herring governance to protect species and Indigenous access to the fishery. We then discuss this ocean-based resurgence in the context of global Indigenous movements for the reassertion of self-determining authority.

International Review of Education, 2019

Indigenous youth today are in a precarious position. The elders who guided their grandparents and... more Indigenous youth today are in a precarious position. The elders who guided their grandparents and parents often suffered from direct racism and dislocation from cultural practices, land, medicine, language, knowledge and traditional lifeways. Family and community kinship networks that provided emotional, spiritual and physical support have been brutally and systematically dismantled. When perpetuation is
discussed within an Indigenous context, it often refers to the transmission of Indigenous knowledge to future generations and how they act on and regenerate it. This perpetuation of Indigenous knowledge and nationhood occurs every day, often in the shape of unnoticed or unacknowledged actions carried out within intimate settings, such as homes, ceremonies and communities. Focusing on everyday acts of resurgence shifts the analysis of the situation away from the state-centred, colonial manifestations of power to the relational, experiential and dynamic nature of Indigenous cultural heritage, which offers important implications for re-thinking gendered relationships, community health and sustainable practices. The authors of this article examine ways in which land-based pedagogies can challenge colonial systems of power at multiple levels, while being critical sites of education and transformative change. Drawing on a multi-component study of community practices in the Cherokee Nation conducted by the second author, this article examines strategies for fostering what have been termed “land-centred literacies” as pathways to community resurgence and sustainability. The findings from this research have important implications for Indigenous notions of sustainability, health and well-being and ways in which Indigenous knowledge can be perpetuated by future generations.

New Diversities, 2017

Indigenous activism and resurgence are often analyzed at the state or macro-level because of the ... more Indigenous activism and resurgence are often analyzed at the state or macro-level because of the high visibility and large-scale nature of these actions. However, as Kwakwaka'wakw scholar Sarah Hunt and Cindy Holmes observe in their 2015 article, " …the daily actions undertaken by individual Indigenous people, families, and communities often go unacknowledged but are no less vital to decolonial processes. " These are challenges that we take up in examining the " everyday " – those often unseen, unacknowledged actions that renew our peoplehood and generate community resurgence. This holds important implications for decolonizing our notions of time and place and increasingly Indigenous scholars, such as Maori scholar Brendan Hokowhitu (2009), find that Indigenous discussions of the everyday tend to be framed either in terms of " Indigenous political struggles, especially in regard to jurisprudence, or in terms of 'victimhood' conceived of as the genealogical descendent of the trauma of colonization ". How then can we re-imagine and reassert Indigenous everyday actions that emphasize the intimate, lived experiences of Indigenous peoples? This article examines how the everyday can be an important emancipatory site for Indigenous resurgence against colonial power. Focusing on fatherhood and the everyday shifts our analysis away from the state-centered, colonial manifestations of power to the relational, experiential, and dynamic nature of Indigenous resurgence, which offers important implications for rethinking gendered relationships, family health and well-being, and governance. These daily acts of resurgence, at the community, family and personal levels, can be critical sites of resistance, education, and transformative change.

Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2014

Increasingly, researchers recognize that the same forces that threaten biodiversity also threaten... more Increasingly, researchers recognize that the same forces that threaten biodiversity also threaten indigenous peoples’ long-standing relationships with their homelands and the
health and well-being of Native nations. However, amidst calls for a “green economy” and carbon trading schemes such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation (REDD), it is evident that there are competing conceptions of what sustainability entails. This paper will examine how sustainability has been portrayed
by international legal instruments, such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and compare that with how sustainability has been conceptualized and practiced by indigenous nations, leaders and scholars

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2014

Our goal in this article is to intervene and disrupt current contentious debates regarding the pr... more Our goal in this article is to intervene and disrupt current contentious debates regarding the predominant lines of inquiry bourgeoning in settler colonial studies, the use of ‘settler’, and the politics of building solidarities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Settler colonial
studies, ‘settler’, and solidarity, then, operate as the central themes of this paper. While somewhat jarring, our assessment of the debates is interspersed with our discussions in their original form, as we seek to explore possible lines of solidarity, accountability, and relationality
to one another and to decolonization struggles both locally and globally. Our overall conclusion is that without centering Indigenous peoples’ articulations, without deploying a relational approach to settler colonial power, and without paying attention to the conditions and
contingency of settler colonialism, studies of settler colonialism and practices of solidarity run the risk of reifying (and possibly replicating) settler colonial as well as other modes of domination.

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2012

Amidst ongoing, contemporary colonialism, this article explores Indigenous pathways to decoloniza... more Amidst ongoing, contemporary colonialism, this article explores Indigenous pathways to decolonization and resurgence with an emphasis on identifying everyday practices of renewal and responsibility within native communities today. How are decolonization and resurgence interrelated in struggles for Indigenous freedom? By drawing on several comparative examples of resurgence from Cherokees in Kituwah, Lekwungen protection of camas, the Nishnaabe-kwewag “Water Walkers” movement, and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) revitalization of kalo, this article provides some insights into contemporary decolonization movements. The politics of distraction is operationalized here as a potential threat to Indigenous homelands, cultures and communities, and the harmful aspects of the rights discourse, reconciliation, and resource extraction are identified, discussed, and countered with Indigenous approaches centered on responsibilities, resurgence and relationships. Overall, findings from this research offer theoretical and applied understandings for regenerating Indigenous nationhood and restoring sustainable relationships with Indigenous homelands.

The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 2012

T indigenous people living in over 70 states throughout the world, constituting ve percent of the... more T indigenous people living in over 70 states throughout the world, constituting ve percent of the global population. Eighty percent of all biodiversity on the planet thrives in the twenty-two percent of global territories home to indigenous peoples. 1 Increasingly, researchers recognize that the same forces that threaten biodiversity also threaten indigenous peoples' longstanding relationships with their homelands and the health and well-being of native communities. Ongoing environmental destruction jeopardizes the sustainable relationships indigenous nations have practiced for thousands of years, including land-based and water-based cultural practices such as gathering medicines, hunting, shing, and farming. As the late geographer Bernard Nietschmann observed:

Canadian Journal of Human Rights, 2012

How are land-based and water-based cultural harms addressed and remedied for Indigenous peoples? ... more How are land-based and water-based cultural harms addressed and remedied for Indigenous peoples? Under existing international legal norms, states and other non-state entities have a duty to provide redress for the harms of colonialism and occupation, and this obligation extends to the recognition and protection of Indigenous territories as well as regenerating subsistence living through land-based and water-based cultural practices. What role do international treaties and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples play in terms of promoting comprehensive restorative justice for Indigenous communities? Given that the rights discourse can take Indigenous peoples only so far in this struggle for the reclamation and regeneration of Indigenous traditional lifestyles, what are some strategies that other Indigenous peoples have utilized to promote sustainable self-determination? Overall, findings from this research offer theoretical and applied understandings for regenerating indigenous nationhood and restoring sustainable relationships on indigenous homelands.

For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook (Waziyatawin & Yellow Bird), 2012

ESC English Studies in Canada, 2009

Human Rights Review , 2008

Official apologies and truth commissions are increasingly utilized as mechanisms to address human... more Official apologies and truth commissions are increasingly utilized as mechanisms to address human rights abuses. Both are intended to transform inter-group relations by marking an end point to a history of wrongdoing and providing the means for political and social relations to move beyond that history. However, state-dominated reconciliation mechanisms are inherently problematic for indigenous communities. In this paper, we examine the use of apologies, and truth and reconciliation commissions in four countries with significant indigenous populations: Canada, Australia, Peru, and Guatemala. In each case, the reconciliation mechanism differentiated the goal of reconciliation from an indigenous self-determination agenda. The resulting state-centered strategies ultimately failed to hold states fully accountable for past wrongs and, because of this, failed to transform inter-group relations.

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 2008

More than eighty years since Chief Deskaheh petitioned the League of Nations for Haudenosaunee se... more More than eighty years since Chief Deskaheh petitioned the League of Nations for Haudenosaunee self-determination, it is becoming clearer that the existing rights discourse can take indigenous peoples only so far. States and global/regional forums have framed self-determination rights that deemphasize the responsibilities and relationships that indigenous peoples have with their families and the natural world (homelands, plant life, animal life, etc.) that are critical for the health and well-being of future generations. What is needed is a more holistic and dynamic approach to regenerating indigenous nations, and I propose the concept of sustainable self-determination as a benchmark for future indigenous political mobilization. Utilizing case studies of indigenous community regeneration such as the Native Federation of Madre de Dios (FENAMAD) in Peru and the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) on Turtle Island as well as analyzing the existing research on rights, political mobilization, and ecosystems, this article identifies alternatives to the existing rights discourse that can facilitate a meaningful and sustainable self-determination process for indigenous peoples around the world. Overall, findings from this research offer theoretical and applied understandings for regenerating indigenous nationhood and restoring sustainable relationships on indigenous homelands.

Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2009

Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, Jan 1, 2007

BIG Review, 2024

Langscape Magazine, 2023

Rooted: A Publication on Indigenous Law, 2022

Rooted: A Publication on Indigenous Law, 2021

Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies, 2021

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2020

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2019

International Review of Education, 2019

New Diversities, 2017

Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2014

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2014

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2012

The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 2012

Canadian Journal of Human Rights, 2012

For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook (Waziyatawin & Yellow Bird), 2012

ESC English Studies in Canada, 2009

Human Rights Review , 2008

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 2008

Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy, 2009

Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, Jan 1, 2007

Savages and Citizens: How Indigeneity Shapes the State, 2024

Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages ... more Although Indigenous peoples are often perceived as standing outside political modernity, Savages and Citizens takes the provocative view that Indigenous people have been fundamental to how contemporary state sovereignty was imagined, theorized, and practiced.

Delving into European political philosophy, comparative politics, and contemporary international law, the book shows how the concept of indigeneity has shaped the development of the modern state. The exclusion of Indigenous people was not a collateral by product; it was a political project in its own right. The book argues that indigeneity is a political identity relational to modern nation-states and that Indigenous politics, although marking the boundary of the state, are co-constitutive of colonial processes of state-making. In showing how indigeneity is central to how the international system of states operates, the book forefronts Indigenous peoples as political actors to reject essentializing views that reduce them to cultural “survivors” rooted in the past.

With insights drawn from diverse global contexts and empirical research from Bolivia and Ecuador, this work advocates for the relevance of Indigenous studies within political science and argues for an ethnography of sovereignty in anthropology. Savages and Citizens makes a compelling case for the centrality of Indigenous perspectives to understand the modern state from political theory to international studies.

Daykeeper Press, 2018

This edited volume emerged from powerful collaborations with Indigenous peoples across the Pacifi... more This edited volume emerged from powerful collaborations with Indigenous peoples across the Pacific and a series of international exchanges between the faculty and students of Indigenous Governance (IGOV) at the University of Victoria and the Indigenous Politics Program (UHIP) at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa. We challenged each contributor to discuss their experiences with Indigenous resurgence in “everyday” settings – those often unseen, unacknowledged actions that renew our communities and relationships that promote our health and well-being. The twenty-two contributors to this book demonstrate that focusing on everyday actions can be an important emancipatory site for highlighting the relational, experiential and dynamic nature of Indigenous resurgence. Overall, these daily acts of resurgence, at the community, family and personal levels, can be critical sites of resistance, education, and transformative change. We hope you enjoy these compact, powerful works that challenge our ways of looking at people, places and practices in an everyday context.

E-International Relations Publishing, 2015

What are the sources of self-determining authority for Indigenous nations and peoples? How one re... more What are the sources of self-determining authority for Indigenous nations and peoples? How one responds to this question reveals competing narratives and worldviews relating to the self-determination discourse. These are some of the topics addressed in Woons’ edited volume, which also serves as an important primer on the global self-determination
discourse.

University of Oklahoma Press, 2008

Over the past twenty years, American Indian policy has shifted from self-determination to “forced... more Over the past twenty years, American Indian policy has shifted from self-determination to “forced federalism,” as indigenous nations in the United States have encountered new threats from state and local governments over such issues as taxation, gaming, and homeland security. During the forced federalism era (1988–present), public perceptions of indigenous peoples as “rich Indians” have been just as damaging to Native nations as anti-sovereignty legislation. This book examines how state governments have manipulated “rich Indian” images when setting policies targeting indigenous peoples and discusses how indigenous nations have responded politically to these contemporary threats to their nationhood.
Drawing on original survey data collected from Native governments from 1994 to 2000 and on interviews with Chief Chad Smith of the Cherokee Nation as well as other indigenous leaders, Corntassel examines the power dynamics of the indigenous-state compacting system, and show how electoral activism among indigenous peoples has increased their political power while also giving rise to “rich Indian racism” among non-Indians—especially in the wake of the Indian Gaming and Regulatory Act.
The authors warn that current widespread Native participation in non-Native politics is undermining both the political and the cultural foundations of indigenous nationhood, especially as the American culture of money gains influence in Native politics. They also offer specific strategies for regenerating indigenous communities in order to meet future challenges to their nationhood.

Intercontinental Cry Magazine, 2014

Indigenous Resurgence in an Age of Reconciliation, 2023

How is Indigenous self-determination asserted amidst reconciliation discourses? This chapter demo... more How is Indigenous self-determination asserted amidst reconciliation discourses? This chapter demonstrates how witnessing and storytelling offer different but overlapping directions for sustainable self-determination and ways to enable the transmission and production of Indigenous knowledges for future generations.

Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education, 2022

We apply two Indigenous concepts in this chapter. The first, cultural resilience theory, means to... more We apply two Indigenous concepts in this chapter. The first, cultural resilience theory, means to use strengths-based, cultural factors to situate and ground us as relatives to the land (Drywater-Whitekiller, 2017). The second concept, community resurgence, is related to the first in that it speaks to the reattachment of our bodies, minds and spirits to the land (Simpson, 2017). Indigenous land-based relationships are central to community knowledge systems, stories, governance, economies, languages, ceremonies, food sovereignty and sacred living histories.

Plants, People & Places: The Role of Ethnobotany and Ethnoecology in Indigenous Peoples' Land Rights in Canada and Beyond, 2020

For millennia, plants and their habitats have been fundamental to the lives of Indigenous Peoples... more For millennia, plants and their habitats have been fundamental to the lives of Indigenous Peoples - as sources of food and nutrition, medicines, and technological materials - and central to ceremonial traditions, spiritual beliefs, narratives, and language. While the First Peoples of Canada and other parts of the world have developed deep cultural understandings of plants and their environments, this knowledge is often underrecognized in debates about land rights and title, reconciliation, treaty negotiations, and traditional territories.

International Relations Theory, 2018

New Diversities , 2017

Indigenous experiences complement official national histories with forgotten narratives; in the p... more Indigenous experiences complement official national histories with forgotten narratives; in the process, they contribute new epistemologies. Rather than expanding history; they revert it, destabilizing state-centric conceptualizations of the political. This special issue explores the complexity and diversity of indigenous resistance to argue that the vibrancy of Indigenous resistance today is testimony to ongoing forms of colonial dispossession. Contributions range from Australia to Bolivia, cover the USA - Canada border, and put Zapatista interventions in dialogue with resistance in Amazonia. Their interdisciplinary perspective show that Indigenous politics may contribute singular, radical critiques because they are co-constitutive of state-formation.

Daykeeper Press, 2018