Undoing Border Imperialism. Harsha Walia
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fifteen grassroots NOII organizers to provide their own insights on some of these long-standing contentions. Their astute responses raise the level of consciousness on the nature of campaigning, organizational structure, alliances, and decolonization. Reflecting a diversity of (although not all) opinions within NOII groups, this roundtable disrupts conventional forms of writing that by privileging a single author, skew the collective and heterogeneous nature of movements. The roundtable holds the heart of this book.
The fifth and final chapter, “Journeys toward Decolonization,” discusses decolonization as a liberatory and prefigurative framework on which to base not only struggles against border imperialism but all social movements. Decolonization is rooted in dismantling the structures of border imperialism, settler colonialism, empire, capitalism, and oppression, while also being a generative praxis that creates the condition to grow and recenter alternatives to our current socioeconomic system. Decolonization necessitates a reconceptualization of the discursive and embodied borders within and between us by grounding us in the fundamental principles of mutual aid, collective liberation, and humility—not in isolation, but instead within our real and informed and sustained relationships with, and commitments to, each other and the Earth.
This book also weaves together short narratives from thirteen powerful voices of color. For many racialized people, sharing our narratives means much more than having a personal outlet. Narratives and stories are foundational to keeping our cultural practices alive and to rekindling our imaginations. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an Indigenous Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, describes storytelling as “a lens through which we can envision our way out of cognitive imperialism, where we can create models and mirrors where none existed, and where we can experience the spaces of freedom and justice. Storytelling becomes a space where we can escape the gaze around the cage of the Empire, even if it is just for a few minutes.”(21) The stories throughout this book are not only challenges to the norms of border imperialism and settler colonialism; they are also glimpses into envisioning and actualizing egalitarian social relations.
The inclusion of these thirteen narratives, all authored by racialized and predominantly women activists and writers, is a political act. In one of the most poignant affirmations of women of color solidarities ever depicted, poet Aurora Levins Morales writes, “This tribe called ‘Women of Color’ is not an ethnicity. It is one of the inventions of solidarity, an alliance, a political necessity that is not the given name of every female with dark skin and a colonized tongue, but rather a choice about how to resist and with whom.”(22) This describes more than a solidarity based on shared identity. Women of color solidarities are based on the recognition that since the subjectivities of women of color are the most impacted by systems of oppression and exploitation, we embody the pathways necessary to concurrently disrupt multiple layers of injustice.
The thirteen voices in this book refuse to be disappeared and defy surrender. These are the tongues that were never meant to survive, the stories that were meant to be stolen and silenced through centuries of annihilation and assimilation. The centrality of these voices to this book is an enactment of antioppressive leadership—a principle that this book calls on us to heed. Given that capitalist, white supremacist, and heteropatriarchal society has taught us to fear, judge, and compete with one another, facilitating space for other women of color warriors is an intentional political practice, an offering in the spirit of decolonization.
Acknowledgments
This book was written on Indigenous Coast Salish territories. The Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil Waututh peoples, who endure acts of genocide in order for us to live with amnesia about the histories of Turtle Island, have never surrendered these lands. This book also would not be possible without the toil of those, mostly immigrant workers locally and impoverished laborers across the globe, who daily work the fields and factories that produce my basic necessities, including my food and clothing. These are the founding conditions and violences of my intellectual labor.
I am indebted to Hari Alluri, Lisa Bhungalia, Fariah Chowdhury, Stefan Christoff, Nassim Elbardouh, Mary Foster, Harjap Grewal, Stefanie Gude, Alex Hundert, Andrew Loewen, Cecily Nicholson, Dana Olwan, Dawn Paley, Sozan Savehilaghi, Andréa Schmidt, Parul Sehgal, Naava Smolash, and Shayna Stock for their diligent comments and edits. Any errors within this book, however, are my own. Thank you to all the brilliant contributors for their wisdom, Andrea Smith for honoring the book with a foreword, Ashanti Alston, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Naomi Klein, and Vijay Prashad for humbling blurbs, Melanie Cervantes and Josh MacPhee of Justseeds for stunning design work, Zach Blue, Christa Daring, and Charles Weigl of AK Press for publishing this manuscript, and Chris Dixon and Cindy Milstein of the IAS for soliciting, encouraging, supporting, and editing this manuscript, and essentially being the backbone of this entire process. Gratitude to ancestors, family, comrades, elders, friends, and allies who light this journey. And to my brother, who always knew that living simply and loving deeply were interconnected.
“Pick One”: Self-determination and the Politics of Identity(ies)
“Pick one,” they said
North American. Indian?
But wait, I’m from Toronto.
Although that’s not where my family is from
And I don’t live there anymore
“Pick one,” they said
Young. Woman?
But I’m not a woman like you might think I am
I’m Two Spirit beyond the acronym of LGBT
And it’s more than a sexuality
“Pick one,” they said
I work in sexual and reproductive health?
But it’s about rights and justice over body and space
Even if we didn’t want to include environmental violence
We have to since that’s what’s happening to us.
Don’t worry—I’m not interested in winning the Oppression Olympics
I know I’m complicit too
But this isn’t a two-sided story
Since there aren’t always two sides
There could just be the truth, the reality
The fact that there’s a history to this continuing
The boxes, the borders, the lines being drawn
The refusal to accept that it’s on purpose
The disguise that it’s “so much better than it used to be”
While the roots remain too close for comfort
Now they say, “We’re inclusive!”
Even though I’m not actually interested in being included
After I had to be included because I wasn’t there to begin with
They’re not looking at the center where I was erased
To uphold what makes it easier to not deal with
Now they say, “I’m your ally!”
Even though I ain’t neva seen them where I live
I don’t remember being asked if that’s what I want
There’s this thing called free, prior, and informed consent
Which doesn’t seem to apply when it’s about titles
Now they say, “We’ll get there someday!”
Even though the same patterns of oppression keep repeating themselves
I don’t want to keep swallowing the pill of having to understand
It’s not only about a better policy, law, or elected official
In the same system, it still hurts.
Unless things are dismantled and deconstructed where there’s pain
Regrounded