Provost 2/19/2017- Mohawk Interruptus

2/19/2017- Mohawk Interruptus

In her book, Mohawk Interruptus, Audra Simpson outline settler colonialism in both her community as well as in methodologies and methods employed in many fields but anthropology, in particular. Simpson uses the framework of colonial projects to discuss internal and external effects and decisions on indigenous peoples and communities.

What is most interesting about her methodologies in her book is the reflection that she inserts throughout the entirety of the book. Part of this is what Simpson calls a “refusal” Simpson explains this in chapter four when she says “that was all interesting then but there were larger fields of articulation that these things were moving through: the ongoing conjunctures of historical and political conflict, the structural life of settler colonialism that authorized every conflict over interpretation that I know call a refusal” (114). This refusal is useful for thinking through the concepts that Simpson lays out for us, such as borders (Canada/U.S. and also reservations), sovereignty and the on-going political interventions of the colonial project.

When reading this book I found myself thinking about how Simpson largely takes the popularly used narrative of indigenous populations and turns it inside out. She walks through the nuances of the methodology that she employs in her research to unpack the topics discussed above, while contesting a monolithic assimilationist narrative. This was useful for thinking about the project of empire and colonialism, especially thinking about last week’s readings. For me, this is most explicit when Simpson unpacks the nuances of blood quantums and territories, as she does in several parts of the book. This gives the reader a fuller framework and more complex picture from which to understand borders, sovereignty and colonialism.

In reading this, especially reading the accounts of passing through the border, I thought often of our current political climate in regards to immigration and borders. In a moment where borders are hyper-visible and hyper-surveilled with the participation of many U.S. federal agencies, how does Simpsons’ book lend itself to discussing this, and enacting change?