THE GRAMMAR OF RE-SURGENCE. MAPPING INDIGENOUS CONCEPTS IN MOTION

Abstract

The Resurgence of Indigenous movements across Turtle Island and around the world invites renewed reflection on the key-terms of the field. Concepts such as Indigenous, pan-Indigenous, trans-Indigenous (Allen 2012), and Indigenous internationalism (Simpson 2017a) are widely used in contemporary discourse. Yet we often remain at an impasse. Each time these topics are addressed, we must ask: who is Indigenous? (Clifford 2013) Which peoples worldwide can claim Indigeneity, while others are positioned as settlers? Is Indigeneity a matter of birthright, migration, mobility (or lack thereof), or ethnic identity? These ontological questions are, at least in part, a consequence of the highly interdisciplinary nature of Indigenous/Native studies, shaped since the late 1960s by the dominance of anthropology (Deloria 1969) and its entanglement with Red Power movements. The simultaneous upspring of the so-called Native American Renaissance – marked by the publication of N. Scott Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize-winning House Made of Dawn (1968) – added another critical layer by conceptualizing the canonization of a literary and scholarly tradition in which Native authors read, commented on, and were inspired by one another. Writers like Momaday (Kiowa/Cherokee), Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna), James Welch (Blackfeet), Gerald Vizenor (Chippewa), Louise Erdrich (Chippewa), and Thomas King (Cherokee) – among others – added nuance to an already intricate discussion, often addressing violence with humor and, above all, with irony – the true weapon of the postindian warrior (Vizenor 1999). Given these premises, this study examines the central terms of Resurgence along with the related influential theories that have emerged from the late 1960s to the present. Without claiming to resolve existing debates, this essay retraces the development of such ideas from the tumultuous years of the American Indian Movement – including episodes like the occupation of Alcatraz (1969-1971) and of the Wounded Knee site (1973), moving through the Native American Renaissance, the age of separatism (Womack 1999), and finally reaching to broader conversations on Resurgence. This approach allows us to read Resurgence(s) not as exceptional phenomena, but as the longue durée of Indigenous resistance against (neo)colonialism – both within the academy and in the streets. By grounding Resurgence in this broader historical arc, this study hopes to recenter the ongoing nature of ideas that did not arise in the past decade, but that are deeply rooted and cyclical in Indigenous thought and activism.