Tag: Nasa

Decolonizing History: Past, Present, Power

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Historiography is the study of history itself. It is a systematic study of what history is, how people have “done” history, and what role history plays in social systems. In other words, historiography is looking at the forces that determine how history has been told, what is told, and who gets to tell it. So, why is it important to think about historiography? How does it relate to decolonizing history? To Indigenous rights?
When we study history itself, we see its relationship to power and politics. History is a dynamic and subjective system by which communities remember the past and relate it to the present; history can serve to either enforce or dismantle systemic inequality. This is because, as scholar Joanne Rappaport writes, “Knowledge of the past is a fundamental component of land disputes, political agreements and arguments over inheritance. It is also central to efforts at strengthening a communal identity’ [1]. Here, Rappaport points out the inherently political aspect of history that is often made invisible. Many people tend to think of history as a fixed and objective account of the past that, because of these qualities, exists outside of socio political structures.
However, material and immaterial concerns are inextricable from history both in its production and its effects. What I mean is that material resources — such as money and access to formal education — impact who gets to be part of history telling processes. Similarly, immaterial concerns — like societal attitudes — play a role in who is included in telling history. This is the production side of things. In terms of history’s effects, materially, how history is told may impact the way that land and resource disputes are settled; immaterially, how we understand the past has an effect on forming identities and ideologies.
What does this all have to do with colonialism and decolonization? When we think of colonialism, we often think specifically of the political rule of one community over another. Colonialism, in this view, is a political and economic structure that terminates with the material “liberation” of the subaltern. However, when we consider the intimate social and ideological legacies of colonialism — how it fundamentally disrupts native conceptions of gender, of ethnicity, of history — we see coloniality as an ongoing problem.
One colonial legacy is the disruption and erasure of native-storytelling in favor of European tellings of history. When history is colonized in this way, it often throws a veil over the systemic violence that Indigenous people have faced. It also deprives Indigenous communities of the power to tell history in a way that accurately reflects their identities, experiences, and values.  
However, history can be transformed from a colonial legacy into a tool of resistance. Knowledge of the past can be “indispensable in the maintenance of autonomy in the face of European domination” [2]. When Indigenous people have the space to tell their own history, it can become an important means of forming and strengthening identities, making claims to land, and unlearning the European histories which often diminish Indigenous experience. What might this look like in practice? How might Indigenous knowledge systems differ from European ones?
For the Nasa (also called the Paez) people in Colombia, history is “difficult to locate […] in time and space” [3]. Nasa storytelling is non-linear, it includes mythic elements, and is episodic. This is not out of an inability to tell history in a European mode — “It is not that indigenous peoples have no sense of the flow of time, nor that they are unable to distinguish fact from fiction, […], but that fictive and fantastic images may help them to reflect more fully upon the real” [4].
This all might demonstrate why historiography and decolonizing history are so important when it comes to indigenous rights. If we do not study how history has been made, we cannot understand how history has been used to perpetuate inequality — or how it can be used to challenge that inequality.
Notes
[1] Rappaport, Joanne, The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes. (Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 1998), 11-12.
[2] Rappaport, Joanne. The Politics of Memory, 11-12.
[3] Rappaport, Joanne. The Politics of Memory, 11.
[4] Rappaport, Joanne. The Politics of Memory, 18.
Works Cited
Rappaport, Joanne. The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes. Chapel Hill: Duke University Press, 1998.
 

Nasa's Historical Consciousness Within Colombia

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Summary: This essay connects ideas of historical memory, historical consciousness and the Nasa people’s production of knowledge in Colombia to feminist and queer Chicanx theoretical frameworks to posit the complications that may arise in observing history that functions differently from standard western thought.
Incorporating the theme of historical memory into our syllabus allows for intimate interactions with the histories of the communities that it records, in this case, the histories of Indigenous Nasa communities that reside in the Colombian Andes. On another note, in one of our class discussions that occurred on April 24th, 2019, a fellow classmate argued that historians who specialize in Native studies must allow for the native subject’s specific-lived experience as a member of that particular society to take central focus in the historian’s writing as opposed to writing in seemingly objective traditional forms of linear observation and recording because if they don’t then they will be removing the native subject’s opportunity to speak on their truth for once. Moreover, the historian should self-reflect and explain the thought process they used to write about the subject. Explaining any type of discrepancy between the native communities and western ways of thinking allows for the westerner to be fully equipped to attempt to understand the specific-lived experience being described. This process of writing highlights one of the most essential aspects of history writing that deserves more attention, which is historical consciousness. Therefore, it is through the necessary modification of this historical-framework that allows indigenous communties to codify their memory into something more palpable, specific and legitimate to their community rather than to academia. For historians, this means essentially that they would avoid the critique of not only anthropologist research but also historian records. In short, historians must stray away from the jargon and elitist-like feeling that comes when discussing histories and introducing the person(s) rather than a conflated and generalized individual because by doing so it provides the flexibility necessary to sensibly engage in dialogue with oppressed communities. In addition, the text’s point on how the history of the Nasa is “not an event history but a feeling for the consequence of the past as they are lived today” is crucial to understanding how important it is to incorporate the theme of historical memory into methods of reading and writing history. [1]
For theoretical framework support, I point to feminism, in particular, pluralist feminism and a concept coined by Jose Estaban Munoz called disidentification. [2] I acknowledge the critiques on feminist works, particularly, the critique on how to apply western thought when discussing non-western societies and to that, I argue that we take these frameworks and dissect and rearrange them in a way that assists in deterring the plight of indigenous communities—or at least helping to understand their plight. The main take away from pluralist feminism’s argument, which focuses on the differences of each individual and as a result should be emphasized instead of being homogenized, is the concept of plurality.
Similarly, disidentifying with bits and pieces with one or more identity that a particular individual may simultaneously carry—paradoxically—provides wholeness to that identity. Through this Queer of Color lens combined with the pluralist feminist standpoint theory, we can begin to historically imagine what decolonization may look like for the indigenous communities of Latin America. For the sake of this assignment’s paragraph constraint I offer to delve further into the concept of how the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house which is basically saying that oppressed minorities—in this case, indigenous communities—can not use the tools of the oppressor that placed them in that position; instead, they must reclaim and redefine those tools so that they can become their own. [3] The tools in question for our syllabus that we would be redefining is the theme of historical memory and more importantly dissecting the term of historical consciousness. Also, when talking about decolonization I offer it as different from the decolonization that Evo Morales touches upon. Decolonization when viewed through a pluralist lens, supplies the movement with the ability to move away from making the struggle a class-based one—as we have learned fails—and instead toward one that considers the specific and different ways that certain oppressed communities in Latin America want their freedom to look like.
The essence of historical consciousness within an indigenous context is defined as “(…) the magical power of history that lies in the contrasts and contradictions between the past as it was experienced and the structure of the present world.” [4] This seeped into our discussions about how the Nasa’s history was atemporal, non-linear, and ahistorical and we kept crashing into this problem of trying to visualize their history since it did not follow western thought frameworks. However, the term historical consciousness in a Nasa context is forged by indigenous caudillos and this in and of itself is a marriage between memory and political leadership. [5] The necessity of historical memory and the historical consciousness framework in Colombia is epitomized by how the communist party failed to rise to success; their failure to work within that framework caused them to fall apart and initiated an era filled with violence. In response to that example then, we must respect and regard these frameworks as vital to building our syllabus.
[1] Joanne Rappaport, The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes (Northam: Duke University Press, 1998), 156.
[2] José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
[3] Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House (London: Penguin Modern, 2018).
[4] Rappaport, The Politics of Memory, 16.
[5] Rappaport, The Politics of Memory, 153.