How can settlers engage in right relations with Indigenous Peoples? As organizers with the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, we hear this question often. Many of us in North America are becoming aware of structural inequality that is an intrinsic element of settler colonialism1 , especially as we face the legacy of boarding schools.
Indigenous societies today find themselves without access to meaningful self-determination in the face of settler governments and economies.
Indigenous communities face contamination that comes with extraction on their lands and waters, continued large-scale child removal through the mechanisms of the child protection system, a lack of access to food security on Indigenous reserves and reservations with land-bases that are dwindling, mass incarceration, indifference to the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and a host of other social problems that result from the process of dismantling a civilization with the intention of replacing it.
Indigenous Peoples are Peoples under attack.
Given the context of all that is happening in Indigenous North America, addressing the topic of right relations feels like being offered the opportunity to explain what helpful neighbours or bystanders can do while watching a house on their street burn to the ground. When faced with full conflagration, what are neighbours to do?
At an individual level, bystanders could give the afflicted family shelter for the night in question. This attention offers no long-term solution but meets an immediate need. Certainly, at least one neighbour will call the fire department, and others could form a bucket brigade, and in so doing, try to halt the fire or at least slow its progress until help can arrive. This response requires collective action but does not address the displacement of the family once the fire is out.
Perhaps, then, neighbours might pass the hat or create a crowdfunding site, relying on the generosity of individual households to help the family build a new home. Yet none of these common types of aid address why the house is burning in the first place or provide a response that will actually rehouse the neighbour.
A holistic response would require a commitment to walk with the family through the traumatic night in question, hauling away the cinders and garbage left on the burn site, supporting them through an investigation into how the house was set ablaze, all the way to rebuilding a dwelling that is clean, safe, and habitable.
No individual action alone can do this—it would require the whole neighbourhood to respond collectively to find a common cause, which entails feeling the outcome personally, as though the fire were happening to one’s own kin.
For the sake of this example, let us now imagine that the house was burned intentionally: the house had been identified by the local municipality as a site that needs to be cleared because it is considered risky to the neighbourhood as a whole. Let us imagine that authorities intentionally set the fire, and it is considered legal and legitimate to do so.
Now, as neighbours watch the dwelling burn, they must also deal with the narrative that the house is burning for the well-being of the neighbourhood. It is pointless to call the authorities for help given this context because the authorities set the fire. What is an appropriate response under these conditions?
While the best-case scenario—collective action of the neighbourhood—is holistic in its response, it does not engage societal systems in acknowledging the universal human need for shelter. Nor does it commit to incorporating a provision for this need in the social contract, for to do so would require a systems-level response where the systems of a society that are willing to burn down a house are transformed to instead respond to human needs. This kind of response involves changing laws and policies or the rules that define reality within our societies.
Solidarity is about coming alongside oppressed peoples, and white, Christian-lineage people can leverage their power and voices to advocate for changing laws and policies. Putting pressure on lawmakers to honour the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples, de-incentivizing extraction, and creating jobs to regenerate ecosystems are actions consistent with moving towards an economic theology of integrity where all life matters.
This blog is an excerpt of an article originally published in Critical Theology’s Spring 2024 issue (Vol. 6 No. 3). Access the full article here.
Doe Hoyer is an organizer and songleader with the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, and coordinates the Repair Network. They have lived on Dakota homelands for most of their life, and are involved locally with the Twin Cities Repair Community for Makoce Ikikcupi (Dakota land recovery), as well as the Twin Cities Ceasefire Choir. Doe is working on completing their Master’s of Divinity in Social Transformation.
Sarah Augustine is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, author of The Land Is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery, and co-author of So We & Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis.
Read more about Sarah and Doe’s call for Economic Theologies.
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Footnote
1A system that aims to displace a population and replace it with a settler population. In a colonial system, the rules of reality reflect the presumed supremacy of the occupying society. The values, norms and culture of the occupying society transmit, affirm, and reinforce this supremacy.
