#15 BIG Podcast – “Indigenous Resurgence and Indigenous Internationalism”

featuring Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel – Professor in Indigenous Studies & Associate Director of CIRCLE, Victoria, BC, Canada

Indigenous nationhood movements are taking place worldwide in multiple ways and are all connected with the Indigenous resurgence. Indigenous autonomy and self-determination are fundamental to Indigenous resurgence. What are the effects of the Doctrine of Discovery on Indigenous Peoples? What are the Indigenous perspectives on International Relations Theory? Between the Buffalo Treaty, and the role of Indigenous Peoples in the Columbia River treaty renegotiation, Indigenous Peoples are using their internal sovereignty and external sovereignty to establish a stronger political and juridical self-determination. Elements of response and reflection with the Indigenous Scholar Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel.

Dr. Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel is a writer, teacher and father from the Cherokee Nation. He is a Professor in Indigenous Studies, and cross-listed Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Victoria as well as Associate Director of the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-Led Engagement (CIRCLE). Corntassel is a Co-PI with Dr. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly on the 7-year SSHRC partnership grant entitled “21st Century Borders” and is the lead of Pillar 1 for that grant focusing on Indigenous Internationalism. Jeff’s research and teaching interests focus on “Everyday Acts of Resurgence” and the intersections between Indigenous internationalism, community resurgence, climate change, gender, and community well-being. situates his work at the grassroots with many Indigenous led community-based programs and initiatives ranging from local food movement initiatives, land-based renewal projects to gendered colonial violence and protection of homelands. He is currently completing work for his forthcoming book on Sustainable Self-Determination, which examines Indigenous climate justice, food security, and gender-based resurgence.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and the Podcast App!

Policy Partner – Headquartered in Germany

Transfrontier Euro-Institut Network

Primary Contact: Ann Thevenet

The Transfrontier Euro-Institut Network (TEIN), formed in 2010, now brings together 15 partners from 9 border regions in Europe. Its unique feature is that it consists of universities, research institutes and training centres, which are dedicated to the practical business of cross-border cooperation in Europe.TEIN is led by the Euro-Institut, created in 1993 in Kehl/Strasbourg on the French/German/Swiss border with the aim of facilitating cross-border cooperation.

TEIN partners come from maritime borders, old European borders, new eastern borders, post-conflict borders and external borders. Because of this, TEIN is able to measure the need for capacity building in cross-border cooperation throughout Europe. All members have subscribed to a common charter to ensure the organization of the network and the quality of its output.

TEIN’s objective is to build capacity in cross-border contexts to strengthen European integration. To that end, TEIN Members follow the aim of facilitating cross-border cooperation and providing practical solutions to European cross-border issues.

In that respect, TEIN Partners:

Develop training and mentoring that is ‘fit for purpose’ for cross-border issues and in cross-border contexts;
Capitalize on learning from the different regional initiatives;
Work on new products such as transferable training modules, methods, tools
Produce relevant research
Increase knowledge and awareness of cross-border issues (at local, regional, national and European level)

TEIN role in the 21^st Century Borders project

In the framework of the 21^st century borders project, TEIN will organize one conference per year (6 during the whole project) in the framework of the pillar 1 looking inside of states at how minorities (indigenous) awareness and resurgences along with increasingly prevalent politics of nationhood and nationalism affect, fragment, and re-draft intergovernmental relations. We will look at this through different angles (historical, political, legal, geographical, cultural etc.) in a transdisciplinary approach and at different European borders.

Graduate Student Fellow (PhD)

Shoukia van Beek

Borders in Globalization | Jean Monnet Human-to-Military Security Database Project

Shoukia van Beek (she/her) is a settler-scholar and graduate student at the University of Victoria, on W̱SÁNEĆ & Lək̓ʷəŋən territories. Shoukia was named after her late grandmother, a Frisian-Dutch immigrant, whose ferocity, compassion, and caring ways shaped Shoukia’s sense of self and community. Her lessons and love continue to inform Shoukia’s interests, worldview, and ultimately, her work. Shoukia’s research examines how borders, and their associated practices, function as a mechanism of settler-colonialism. Her work is rooted in, and takes place at the intersection of, literatures and theories of political ecology, border studies, and Indigenous sovereignty¾actively centring an anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and abolitionist legal-geographic analysis and epistemological commitment.

Shoukia joins the BIG team as a PhD Fellow and will be working with Jeff and Emmanuel on questions of Indigenous nationhood as well as with the BIG and JMN database teams!

21st Century Borders: Emergent Challenges Within & Among States

Program Overview

The 21^st Century Borders grant is a seven-year SSHRC Partnership Grant. The research program builds off the work of the previous Borders in Globalization SSHRC Partnership Grant (2013-2020) which sought to understand the changing nature of borders through six thematic areas in order to document how state-centred and territorially-fixated research limits our understanding of borders. 21^st Century Borders builds off the work done in the first grant with the goal of exploring and advancing the required epistemological shift from a state- centric and territorial logic to nodal and mobile logics that focus on both the internal and external forces that challenge the territorial integrity of states. While the first grant revealed the limitations of state-centred and territorially bound understanding of borders, this grant seeks to understand how we, as academics and policymakers, can move beyond that model.

We do this by focusing on three interrelated themes:

Pillar 1: Looking inside of states at how Indigenous awareness and resurgences, along with increasingly prevalent politics of nationhood and nationalism, affect, fragment, and re-draft intergovernmental relations.
Pillar 2: Examining the relationship between bordering processes and states’ territoriality, with particular attention paid to examining trade flows and human mobility – both within a states’ international boundaries and across international and transnational legal and regulatory regimes.
Comparing how the politics in both the above-mentioned cases affect the geopolitics of borders across global regimes.

Program Structure

The grant itself is comprised of two parallel research pillars. Pillar one, led by Jeff Corntassel, and pillar two, led by Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly. While these two pillars work parallel to each other within the grant, the conceptual knowledge base and program understandings will flow between the two pillars and through into country specific case-studies. The two vertical pillars are cross-sectioned by two overarching themes: ecology and security. These themes will address issues of both ecology and security from within the contexts of the two primary pillars. Additionally, partners in the grant may choose to use their expertise to focus on country-specific case studies.

Pillar 1

Nationhood & Nationalism

Pillar one explores how claims of nationhood and nationalism exist in the Indigenous and regionalist experiences in borderlands. There is a growing body of literature that examines Indigenous nationhood claims and another, separate, body literature that looks at regionalist and nationalist claims in Europe. The goal of this pillar is to bridge the gap between these two literatures and explore how claims of nationhood and nationalist claims are similar, how they are different, and how they factor into claims of Indigenous self-determination. Through the work done here, this project examines ways that Indigenous nations, communities, and peoples challenge the territoriality of states and other patriarchal institutions in order to generate new understandings of how Indigenous relationships develop and persist beyond boundaries. By interrogating terms such as nationhood, international, self-determination, and borders, this project seeks to advance a deeper understanding of how these terms and relationships are viewed from diverse Indigenous perspectives.

Pillar 2

Territory & Connectivity

While pillar one deals with issues of territory, pillar two deals with issues of human mobility and trade flows by identifying and examining the instruments and infrastructures of connectivity. This includes structures, regulations, and functions of borders. Research occurring in this pillar may focus on issues such as pre-border clearance mechanisms, the externalization of borders, state-to-state security agreements, integrated border management regimes, strategies for preserving life in cross-border regions during crises. (List is not exhaustive and new projects will be reviewed by the academic and international advisory boards annually).

Partnership Composition

21st Century Borders is funded by a seven-year Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Partnership Grant. In addition to funding from SSHRC, our academic partners contribute matching funding and our non-academic partners provide cash and in-kind support for research and knowledge mobilization activities. This project is directed by Dr. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly at the University of Victoria (Victoria, Canada) and co-lead by Dr. Jeffrey Corntassel (University of Victoria). The academic partnership consists of eight Canadian university partners: Carleton University, École Nationale d’Administration Publique, Royal Military College of Canada, Trent University, Université du Québec à Montréal, Laval, Flemming College, and the University of Victoria; and six international university partners: Radboud University (The Netherlands), Université de Grenoble (France), University of Southern Denmark, South Asia University (India); Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), and Western Washington University.

Our policy partners include: the Canada Border Services Agency, the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (USA/Canada), the Association of European Border Regions (Europe), the World Customs Organization (Brussels), Transfrontier Euro-Institut Network – TIEN (Europe), Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière – M.O.T (France).

Research Affiliates

The 21st Century Borders research partnerships includes a number of scholars from around the world working with us on a variety of different projects. This list is updated regularly as we add new projects and expand the partnership.

Aileen Espiritu (UiT The Arctic University of Norway); Alan Bersin (Harvard University); Alex Buhk (Victoria University of Wellington); Amael Cattaruzza (Institut Français de Géopolitique); Budd Hall (University of Victoria); Can Mutlu (Acadia University); Daniel Meier (PACTE); Eve Tuck (University of Toronto); Evert Lindquist (University of Victoria); Fabienne Leloup (UCLouvain); Francisco Lara-Valencia (Arizona State University); Frédérique Berrod (Université de Strasbourg); Glen Coulthard (University of British Columbia); Guadalupe Correo Cabrera (George Mason University); Heidi Stark (University of Victoria); Irasema Coronado (Arizona State University); Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez (University of Alberta); Jamie Ferrill (Charles Stuart University); Katy Hayward (Queen’s University Belfast); Michelle Daigle (University of British Columbia); Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman (Institute of Chinese Studies – Delhi); Naomi Chi (Hakkaido University); Said Saddiki (Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah); Simon Dalby (Wilfrid Laurier University); Tamara Krawchenko (University of Victoria); Whitney Lackenbauer (University of Waterloo).

Funding Partners

Co-Principle Investigator | Pillar 1: Indigenous Internationalism & Nationhood

Jeff Corntassel

2021-Present

Dr. Jeff Ganohalidoh Corntassel is a writer, teacher and father from the Cherokee Nation. He is a Professor in Indigenous Studies, and cross-listed Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Victoria as well as Associate Director of the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-Led Engagement (CIRCLE). Corntassel is a Co-PI with Dr. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly on the 7-year SSHRC partnership grant entitled “21^st Century Borders” and is the lead of Pillar 1 for that grant focusing on Indigenous Internationalism. Jeff’s research and teaching interests focus on “Everyday Acts of Resurgence” and the intersections between Indigenous internationalism, community resurgence, climate change, gender, and community well-being. situates his work at the grassroots with many Indigenous led community-based programs and initiatives ranging from local food movement initiatives, land-based renewal projects to gendered colonial violence and protection of homelands. He is currently completing work for his forthcoming book on Sustainable Self-Determination, which examines Indigenous climate justice, food security, and gender-based resurgence.

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Publication Highlights

AlterNative An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

Everyday Indigenous Resurgence During COVID-19: A Social Media Situation Report

For Indigenous Nations on Turtle Island (Canada and the USA), the onset of COVID-19 has exacerbated food insecurity and adverse health outcomes. This situation report examines ways that Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island have met the challenges of the pandemic in their communities and their daily practices of community resurgence through social media. Drawing on the lived experiences of four Indigenous land-based practitioners, we found that social media can offer new forms of connection for Indigenous peoples relating to our foods, lands, waterways, languages, and our living histories.

Learn More!

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society

Re-envisioning Resurgence: Indigenous Pathways to Decolonization and Sustainable Self-determination

By drawing on several comparative examples of resurgence from Cherokees in Kituwah, Lekwungen protection of camas, the Nishnaabe-kwewag “Water Walkers” movement, and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) revitalization of kalo, this article provides some insights into contemporary decolonization movements. The politics of distraction is operationalized here as a potential threat to Indigenous homelands, cultures and communities, and the harmful aspects of the rights discourse, reconciliation, and resource extraction are identified, discussed, and countered with Indigenous approaches centered on responsibilities, resurgence and relationships. Overall, findings from this research offer theoretical and applied understandings for regenerating Indigenous nationhood and restoring sustainable relationships with Indigenous homelands.

Read Here!

International Review of Education

Educate to Perpetuate: Land-based Pedagogies and Community Resurgence

The authors of this article examine ways in which land-based pedagogies can challenge colonial systems of power at multiple levels, while being critical sites of education and transformative change. Drawing on a multi-component study of community practices in the Cherokee Nation conducted by the second author, this article examines strategies for fostering what have been termed “land-centred literacies” as pathways to community resurgence and sustainability. The findings from this research have important implications for Indigenous notions of sustainability, health and well-being and ways in which Indigenous knowledge can be perpetuated by future generations.