S2, E8 40 Acres Ain't Praxis

Zora's Daughters

We're giving you notes from the shoal! In our last episode of the semester, Alyssa and Brendane are joined by the brilliant Amber Starks AKA Melanin Mvskoke to talk about blackness, indigeneity, the im/possibility of solidarity, and so much more!

What's the Word? Praxis. A commonly used (and perhaps abused!) term in conversations around activism and solidarity that we historicize and define as ethical and accountable action.

What We're Reading. “Every Day We Must Get Up and Relearn the World,” an Interview with Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. In this interview, Maynard and Simpson discuss their process of writing letters back and forth during the early days of pandemic and how that pushed them read and deepen their thinking on what it means to get free, which they call a politics and praxis of rehearsal. Throughout the interview, they reflect on topics like the violence of normality, the politics of recognition and respectability, the issue with apocalyptic rhetoric, disrupting linear temporality, the way state violence is inherently gendered, among others.

What in the World?! In this segment, we have Amber Starks AKA Melanin Mvskoke to discuss enculturation, the hypervisibility of blackness and hyperinvisibility of indigeneity, that "Land Back" does not mean an eviction notice, the ways we can think Black liberation and Native sovereignty together and in community, that the land recognizes the indigeneity of African descendants, and how Black folks risk participating in Native erasure. We also discuss the accusations of anti-indigeneity against Black anthropologists and the piggybacking of other causes onto Black people's and why Brendane does not believe in solidarity.

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Discussed in this episode:

Every Day We Must Get Up and Relearn the World (Robyn Maynard, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Hannah Voegele, Chris Griffin, 2021)
White Supremacy Culture (Tema Okun, 2001)
Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (Kim TallBear, 2013)
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States (Kyle T. Mays, 2021)

ZD merch available here and the syllabus for ZD 201 is here!

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Transcript will be available on our website here.