Theorizing Native Studies Quotes

“To encourage “cultural diversity” requires not the separation of culture and politics, but their marriage and to insist on that separation is to destroy, or attempt to destroy culture. —Dene Nation, quoted in Gurston Dacks, A Choice of Futures: Politics in the Canadian”
― Audra Simpson, Theorizing Native Studies

“Among Banabans, it is common for adults to be adopted as children, and for adults to be adopted as siblings. What seals the deal in an adoption is the allocation of land to the adopted person. In our knowledge system, land is equivalent to blood.”
― Audra Simpson, Theorizing Native Studies

“We are living in a time when the most vulnerable die (this includes many, many life-forms), a worldwide experience that affects our vital relations with life itself. There is a struggle against the capitalization, the commoditization of life even as it is happening.”
― Audra Simpson, Theorizing Native Studies

“The state is not only repressive; it is also educative—shaping common sense through ideological state apparatuses (such as the academy) that normalize the rule of settler colonialism.”
― Audra Simpson, Theorizing Native Studies