Celeste V. Pedri-Spade
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Not For Sale

11/1/2017

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One of the topics I enjoy learning and teaching about is the relationship between material culture and settler colonialism. Specifically, the ways in which settler colonialism materializes Indigenous Peoples in distinct ways.

The other week in my "Living with Things" course,  I was discussing Marx's theoretical contributions to the field of material culture studies. I introduced my undergraduate students to important concepts including consumption and commodification. As a group we explored how Marx’s approach was highly critical of production and consumption  because, to him, these activities took place within a capitalist paradigm whereby the production and subsequent consumption of things participated in the exploitation of human labour and the unequal distribution of power between "upper" and "lower" classes. 

Later on in the day, I sat thinking about the much talked about and 'tweeted' issue of coming into one's "Indigeneity" through this "Ancestry.com" business. I began to think about all of this related to what I had went through with my students earlier in class that day. And because writing is often a way in which I work through and materialize my ideas and emotions I prepared the following piece:



Settler colonialism
                                
                                            commodifies
                                                                                      ancestry 

Settler colonialism shouts
                              
                                                        spit on this and for $199 plus tax
                                                                        
                                                                                                                      we will ship you an ancestor

Settler colonialism tempts
                                                  
                                             in exchange for an ancestor
                                                                                          
                                                                                            we will validate your Indigenous parking permit

Settler colonialism shouts

                                               Your paper ancestry is a ticket
                                                                                               to a whole new world

​of rights and resources

But

Anishinabe kinship orders tell us 

                                                     Our ancestors gift us
                                                                                               relational intelligence

Anishinabe kinship orders tell us

It isn't about "claiming" your ancestors

it is about

honouring them
knowing them
loving them

Anishinabe kinship orders tell us 

Love, honour and come to know your ancestors

by

looking after

remaining accountable to

relationships with sisters, mothers, aunties, babies, land, water, animal and plant relations 

each and every day

Anishinabe kinship orders enact

responsibility and reciprocity

                                                                         Not rights or resources

Refuse settler colonialism
                                         the way it          commodifies
                                                                                            claims 
                                                                                                               cannibalizes
our ancestors 

Embrace 
Anishinabe kinship orders 

to live respectfully

intelligently 

relationally 
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