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1) Tuck & Yang argue against the use of the term "decolonization" for non-indigenous social justice as such use detracts from the actual problem of physical colonization, through moves to innocence. Can you think of any examples from your own experience where decolonization was used as a metaphor rather than to refer to the physical decolonization of settlers from Indigenous land? Use Tuck & Yang's examples of moves to innocence to help you here (e.x settler nativism, fantasizing adoption, colonial equivocation, conscientization, at risk-ing/asterisking Indigenous peoples, re-occupation and urban homesteading.)

2) The article, "How a Fitxsan community fought back against an epidemic of youth suicide," describe how an Indigenous community responded to the high rate of youth suicide and attempted suicide. Think of the varying interventions outlined in the article, including the immediate response when someone is found on the bridge, and consider how Simpson's ideas about Indigenous nation hood could inform enabling interventions for this and other indigenous communities to circumvent suicide. Consider how the Indigenous interventions discussed in the article may (or may not) help in supporting Indigenous nationhood.

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Animiki. A. (2018). First Contact (Trailer). Video File. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPivaI8-dvc

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Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G., Tiffin, H. (2007) Post-Colonial Studies. The Key Concepts Second Edition. Retrieved from: http://staff.uny.ac.id/sites/default/files/pendidikan/else-liliani-ssmhum/postcolonialstudiesthekeyconceptsroutledgekeyguides.pdf

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Eggertson, L. (2015, October) How a Gitxsan community fought back against an epidemic

of youth suicideUC Observerp. 1. Retrieved from https://www.ucobserver.org/justice/2015/10/bridge/

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Themes That Connect to Post-Colonial Approach 

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Themes That Connect to Post-Colonial Approach 

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CHARLES OSEI
IRENE PAUL
LAURA PERALTA
SHAUNA-LEE RERRIE

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Identity

Anti-Oppression

Leadership & Community

Race & Nationality

Power & Control

White Supremacy

Dispossession

Social Justice

Decolonization

Tribal Sovereignty

Tuck & Yang, 2012)

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Siegel,K.(2006) Introduction to Modern Literary Theory. Retrieved from http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm#post

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Tuck, E. and Yang, K. W. (2012) Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 1-40

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Simpson, L. (2017)Introduction: My radical resurgent present. In as we have always done: Indigenousfreedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 1-10

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A critical approach that examines the previously existing native or pre-settler/colonist area, cultures and political practices. (Siegel, 2006)

Post colonial approach significantly plays a role of constructing attitudes towards different groups and settlement of the colonized. (Ashcroft, B., Griffiths, G. Tiffin, 2007))

The works of post-colonial theory also correspond to several aspects of concept of identity, difference and of the interpellation of the subject by a dominant discourse, it also helps to offer several methodologies of resistance to such domination. (Ashcroft, et al. 2007)

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SUBMITTED TO:                  TRACEY EDELIST PhD

Ryerson University

February 26, 2019

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Believes that the Indigenous people are still in existence as a result of their resistance, reaffirming Indigenous resilience. (Simpson, 2017)

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Demands a holistic transformation, freedom, reclaiming of nationhood and eradicating domination and pillars of settle colonialism.

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Decolonization is threatened by 3 components:

1) World Decolonization
2) Acts of Abolition
3) Educating of Critical Space-Place pedagogies

These discourses do little to disrupt existing disparities while endorsing pre-existing tropes of colonialism. (Tuck & Yang, 2012).

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Key Concepts Connected to Decolonization

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Key Concepts Connected to Decolonization

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1) Power mode of exploitation, colonialism is a phenomena impact of the global geopolitics
2) Metaphorization of decolonization
3) Settlers move to innocence as an evasion of settler guilt
4) Settler appropriated wealth
5) Self positioning of the oppressors as the oppressed
6) Incommensurability
7) Immigration leads to reoccupation and resettlement that furthers settler colonialism
8) Decolonization
9) Settler Colonialism
(Tuck & Yang, 2012).

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2013, Idle No More Toronto organizers launched a dialogue called "Nation to Nation Now"

Creation of Nishnaabeg futures that categorically rejection of dispossession and settle colonialism and the violence of capitalism, heterosexual-patriachy and white supremacy.

Creating a network of reciprocal resurgent movement to radically imagine their ways out.

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Independence - Haitian Revolution

Occupy Movements

Critical Pedagogies

Tribal Native Sovereignty

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"You can never be lost; you are seed down." This theory speaks of a belief that individuals are directly descended from above (Heaven) and going back to the beginning of time. We all have traditions that make up the way we see the world, the way we organize ourselves,the kind of questions we ask others and the remedies we wish to find. There is more to our history under colonialism or our desire to bring back what we have lost. (L.Smith, 2000, p.230)

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The Post Colonial Approach identifies that, Decolonization is a multilayered political process, one that needs to be framed through a justice model as to not dilute or misdirect the action of repatriation of Indigenous land and life (Tuck & Yang 2012). Reconciliation rescues the settler future effectively move the settler into innocence.

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FIRST CONTACT Available Online at www.aptn.ca Premiered on APTN / Sept 11-13, 2018 First Contact takes six Canadians, each with stereotypical opinions about Indigenous People, on an unforgettable 28-day exploration of Indigenous Canada. It's a journey that will turn their lives upside down, challenging perceptions and confronting prejudices about a world they never imagined they would see.

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"First Contact takes six Canadians, each with stereotypical opinions about Indigenous People, on an unforgettable 28-day exploration of Indigenous Canada. It’s a journey that will turn their lives upside down, challenging perceptions and confronting prejudices about a world they never imagined they would see. This exploration of the true Indigenous experience in Canada will change the participants’ lives forever." (Animiki, 2018, Youtube).

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By: Laura Eggertson

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By July 2012, team members had intervened in 94 calls from people threatening to take their own lives. The team didn't lose a single person.

The crisis sometimes took one or more team members back to the Hagwilget Canyon Bridge. Once, it was another young man threatening to end his life. This time, the RCMP allowed both Stevens and Guerra Mella, who had forged a relationship with the officers, to get close enough to support family members.

"I had one of this young gentleman's relatives beside me, and she was standing there hollering and crying and calling her cousin by name," Stevens says. "So I stood beside her, and I encouraged her. I told her, 'Just keep letting him hear your voice. Just keep telling him his family is here.' He was listening to her voice." After a time, the young man backed away from the edge and came to his waiting family.

On another occasion, an intoxicated young woman climbed over the railing. A call brought Guerra Mella and Stevens to the scene, where the woman's mother and other family members gathered. Guerra Mella helped the family talk to the young woman. Eventually, she moved close enough that people could pull her back.

In a July 2012 interview, Guerra Mella described the way he coaxed suicidal young people off the bridge or away from the river. He began by asking them about the pain that brought them there.

The people he counselled told him about physical, sexual and emotional abuse, staggering levels of unemployment, alcohol and drug addiction, and underlying mental health problems. They spoke of what therapist Darien Thira, who offered a mentoring workshop to the youth, calls the "soul wounds" of colonization and residential school trauma.

"The questions that I ask them are, 'When was the last time you slept? How come you are here? Have you been drinking? Who do you miss the most?' Just any question that I see might fit," said Guerra Mella. "Because the contact is not intellectual. . . . It comes from the heart."

Then Guerra Mella would offer his cellphone so the youth could call someone important to them. But they had to come close enough to use it. "I usually say, 'You have to get off the edge. I am not walking towards you - you have to walk towards me. And they start walking."

Most of the young people who ended up on the bridge went there during the day, when they would be spotted, rather than at night, when they could have jumped undetected, Stevens points out. "They know that there are people that will try to stop them. And they're saying, 'Help.' They're calling 'Help,' even though they're saying the words, 'I'm going to jump,'" she says.

What they need is someone to listen to and acknowledge their pain, she continues. "Because when people are on the verge of suicide, they are believing they are rejected people."

For both Stevens and Guerra Mella, responding to the crisis calls was frightening. "When you're doing it, you're actually sweating bullets. Because you know - if you say one thing wrong, they're gone," Guerra Mella said, choking up.

Once the crisis team had averted an incident, though, Guerra Mella felt another emotion replace the fear. Responding became addictive. "There's a rush of adrenalin, once you take them off and drive them to a hospital. . . . The adrenalin is so strong that when I'm driving away from the hospital, I'm saying, 'When is the next one? When is the next one coming up?'"

Other communities can learn from the experience in the Hazeltons. Julie Morrison, executive director of the Gitxsan Health Society, says community involvement in prioritizing suicide prevention and wellness activities, including crisis response teams, is paramount. "If the community is involved in the process and the healing and rebuilding, it's going to be more successful than having people coming in and telling us what to do."

One of the more sobering lessons is that the 24-7 approach to suicide prevention can take a toll on team members themselves. Eventually, the long unpaid hours and the emotional strain burned Guerra Mella out. He quit and left the community in late 2012. Stevens, ill from repeated bouts of cancer, had already retired. Without its strongest personalities and champions, the crisis response team disbanded.

"Trying to engage in that kind of supportive activity over a long period of time is hugely demanding and wearing," says Newbery, the hospital medical director. "I don't know of many people who are able to carry it on for more than a couple of years before they get burned out, particularly if they are trying to deal with people in their own small village and community."

Youth suicide remains a persistent threat in the Hazeltons, but attempts are "down significantly" from the levels that brought the teams into existence, says Newbery. Today, FAST members and the Gitxsan Health Society's counsellors intervene in crises when they can. But FAST does not respond to scenes at all hours like Guerra Mella's team did. "It came down to liability issues," says Veronica Green, its current co-ordinator.

Six years after Shaun Webber died, his mother still catches herself looking for him as she passes the high school. On the anniversary of his death, she walks to the bridge. She remembers the little boy who loved watching Franklin the turtle cartoons. "Sometimes I look to the side and try to imagine him there," she says.

For years after Webber's death, Guerra Mella, too, asked himself, "What if?" He takes some comfort in the way Webber's death galvanized the community. Still, in the years following that crisis on the Hagwilget Canyon Bridge, he used to speed across it in his red Hummer.

"Because I don't want to be there. It brings back too many memories."

Laura Eggertson is a writer and editor in Ottawa.

This story originally appeared in the October 2015 issue of The Observer with the title "The bridge." For more award-winning content, subscribe to the magazine today.

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How a Gitxsan community fought back against an epidemic of youth suicide

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Whenever Gloria Stevens drives across the Hagwilget Canyon Bridge, she focuses on its beauty, not its deadly allure. Suspended 80 metres above the fast-flowing Bulkley River, carved out of the Roche de Boule mountain range in northwestern British Columbia's Gitxsan...

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Decolonization should not be used in all social justice movements regarding sovereignty and independence as this often leads to the metaphorization of the act. Decolonization is appropriate regarding Indigenous sovereignty and must include repatriation of land and life. It’s incommensurability comes from the complexities that arise out of the settler-native-slave triad, which proves to entangle oppressed people to further settler colonization and colonial desires (Tuck & Yang, 2012).

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Any questions & comments will be answered on the discussion board alongside Tracey!