Microsoft Word - Wong_Indigeniety_numbered.docx CARIBBEAN QUILT 2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 125 Indigenous Erasure and Resistance in the Caribbean Elizabeth Wong Centre for Caribbean Studies Faculty of Arts & Science, University of Toronto Elizabeth is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto majoring in Diaspora and Transnational Studies and Ethics, Society, and Law. She was previously an undergraduate fellow at Victoria College's Northrop Frye Centre. Her work is interdisciplinary, often drawing on philosophy, an- thropology, and cultural studies to think through the intersections of race, culture, and colonialism in Toronto and abroad. KEYWORDS: Indigeneity Resistance Colonialism Dispossession Belize Diaspora Entanglement Caribbean ABSTRACT Indigeneity has, for the most part, been absent in literature on the Caribbean, even in decolonial writing. Writing on the Caribbean has often portrayed Indigenous people as extinct and thus irrelevant to contemporary life in the Caribbean. However, Indigenous peoples have played and continue to play a central role in Caribbean politics. This essay discusses how and why Indigenous people have been erased from discourse on the contemporary Caribbean. I argue that Indigenous erasure is a longstanding colonial tactic still used to justify the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Drawing on the case of the Maya peoples’ struggle for land in Belize, I describe how Indigenous people resist colonial and capitalist violence. Having identified and historicized the myth of Indigenous erasure in the Caribbean, I sketch possibilities for shifting the discourse on the Caribbean to highlight rather than ignore the historic and ongoing contributions of Indigenous communities to the Caribbean. I suggest that diaspora and entanglement are two concepts that may help clarify the Caribbean’s complex colonial histories in a way that underscores the importance of Indigenous peoples to the Caribbean. I. Introduction Indigeneity has largely been ignored in Caribbean litera- ture, political discourse, and law. If Indigenous people fig- ure in discussions on the Caribbean, they are usually only considered victims of Europe's imperial conquest. Portray- ing Indigenous peoples as relics from a pre-colonial past obscures the fact that many Indigenous communities have survived colonial genocide and continue to resist ongoing oppression. In this essay, I aim to answer the following questions: How and why have Indigenous peoples been erased from discourse on the contemporary Caribbean? How can we invalidate the myth that Indigenous people no longer exist in the Caribbean and highlight their continued resistance to colonial and capitalist violence? I will argue that Indigenous erasure is a longstanding tactic of colonial Caribbean Quilt Journal Homepage: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/index CARIBBEAN QUILT 2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 126 domination entrenched in scholarship about the Caribbean, even in decolonial writing. I will highlight ongoing Indig- enous resistance projects that remain central to Caribbean politics to undermine the imperial myth of Indigenous erasure. In addition, I will suggest that diaspora and entan- glement are two concepts that can shift the discourse on the Caribbean to understand complex colonial histories better and foreground Indigenous peoples’ continued pres- ence in the Caribbean. This essay proceeds in four parts. In part II, I historicize the myth of Indigenous erasure within Europe’s colonial invasion of the Caribbean and explain how it remains sali- ent in recent literature. I detail how anti-colonial scholar- ship often ignores or marginalizes Indigenous communi- ties. In part III, I challenge the idea that Indigenous com- munities are non-existent or irrelevant to the modern-day Caribbean by describing how Indigenous communities work together to contest dispossession and harmful capi- talist extraction. In part IV, I draw on Stuart Hall and Édou- ard Glissant to sketch how the concepts of diaspora and entanglement might reframe discourse on the Caribbean in a way that does not erase Indigenous peoples. Finally, in part V, I offer concluding remarks on dismantling the myth of Indigenous erasure. II. Indigenous Erasure as Continuing Colonial Violence The myth of Indigenous erasure began with Europe’s col- onization of the Caribbean. To take control of Indigenous lands, colonizers invoked the principle of terra nullius, meaning empty land or land belonging to nobody.1 Colo- nizers declared they could claim ownership of Caribbean islands because these lands were unoccupied. Indigenous dispossession and erasure have always been central to Eu- rope's imperial projects. 2 Colonizers dehumanized 1 Filiberto Penados, Levi Gahman, and Shelda-Jane Smith, “Land, race, and (slow) violence: Indigenous resistance to racial capitalism and the coloniality of development in the Caribbean,” Geoforum (2022): 8. 2 Gabrielle Hosein, “Indigenous Geographies and Carib- bean Feminisms,” Stabroek News, 2017, https://www.sta- broeknews.com/2017/04/10/features/indigenous- Indigenous peoples, describing them as soulless, subhu- man beasts to justify stealing, enslaving, and killing their lands.3 This colonial logic of doubting the humanity of In- digenous peoples to justify their dispossession, subjuga- tion, and decimation constitutes “misanthropic skepti- cism.”4 Dispossessing and dehumanizing Indigenous peo- ples erase their histories and deny them their rights to life and land. European colonizers committed genocide against Indige- nous peoples and thus attempted to erase Indigenous knowledge and cultures; nevertheless, Indigenous people fought back, and some survived. Indigenous communities remain in the Caribbean, yet settler colonial governments deny their existence and disregard their rights claims. In the anglophone Caribbean, for instance, only Belize, Guy- ana, and Dominica recognize the rights of Indigenous com- munities in their national law.5 The myth that Indigenous people are extinct is closely bound to the colonial idea that Indigenous people, their histories, and their land rights are insignificant. This myth has persisted––it bleeds into a contemporary discourse on the Caribbean, even anti-colo- nial discourse. Caribbean thinkers, politicians, and activists have often ig- nored Indigenous peoples or reduced Indigenous history to colonial genocide, portraying Indigenous peoples as ex- tinct. Melanie Newton observes that if Caribbean authors mention Indigenous peoples, it is often only to note that “Europeans murdered them all.”6 While recognizing In- digenous genocide is imperative, it is equally important to acknowledge the resilience of Indigenous peoples and their ongoing struggles against neocolonial capitalist extraction. Newton argues that the idea that Indigenous people no longer exist is a form of colonial knowledge and power that has infiltrated Caribbean scholars’ anti-colonial projects.7 geographies-caribbean-feminisms/ 3 Penados, Gahman, Smith, “Land, race, and (slow) violence,” 8. 4 Ibid., 2. 5 Melanie J. Newton, “Returns to a Native Land: Indige- neity and Decolonization in the Anglophone Caribbean,” Small Axe 41 (2013): 108. 6 Ibid., 118. 7 Ibid., 109. CARIBBEAN QUILT 2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 127 Hence, those writing in and about the Caribbean misstep when they fail to challenge the assumption that Indigenous violence is a thing of the past. In The Pleasures of Exile, a series of essays on colonization and decolonization in the Caribbean, George Lamming re- fers to Indigenous people only once, describing them as part of a tragic, lost past: “indigenous Carib and Arawak Indians, living by their own lights long before the Euro- pean adventure, gradually disappear in a blind, wild forest of blood.”8 Other prominent scholars of Caribbean history, including Sidney Mintz, C.L.R. James, and Eric Williams, offer valuable yet limited critiques of colonization because they ignore Indigenous peoples' role in the decolonial struggle.9 My aim here is not to discredit the writers I have cited; they have generated profound insights into the work- ings of colonialism. Instead, I aim to reveal that the myth of Indigenous erasure is deeply entrenched in perceptions of the Caribbean––even in critical and revolutionary thought. Caribbean history has thus been marked by "abo- riginal absence." As a result, Caribbean scholarship has implicitly forwarded the colonial, imperial, and capitalist aim of annihilating Indigenous peoples.10 On Newton’s account, the descendants of enslaved people and indentured labourers transported to the Caribbean from Africa or Asia are often described as 'Indigenous' to the Caribbean. This misuse of Indigeneity occurs both in literature and in everyday discourse. Sylvia Wynter, for ex- ample, claims that Afro-Caribbean culture had "become in- digenous” because pre-colonial Indigenous cultures were lost when the “Arawak Indians died out.”11 Here, Wynter wrongly reduces Indigenous peoples and cultures to histor- ical relics, denying their continued presence in the Carib- bean. According to Michelle Hosein, Caribbean people have claimed Indigeneity to assert their belonging to the region after years of being devalued under colonialism.12 This misuse of Indigeneity, however, obscures Indigenous 8 George Lamming, The Pleasures of Exile (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 13. 9 Newton, “Returns to a Native Land,” 110. 10 Ibid., 109. 11 Ibid., 117. 12 Hosein, “Indigenous Geographies and Caribbean Femi- nisms.” peoples’ histories and their ongoing resistance to oppres- sion. The imperial myth of Indigenous erasure also underlies creolization theory. Caribbean scholars developed the no- tion of creolization to refute the colonial idea that Caribbe- ans are primitive and instead recast Caribbeans as modern people. This theory held that the mixture of African, Euro- pean, and Asian cultures in the post-colonial Caribbean generated creole identities that afforded Caribbeans a mod- ern, globalized subjectivity. Though creolization was a rec- lamation of power for descendants of enslaved people and indentured labourers, it implicitly excluded Indigenous peoples from modernity. Indigeneity is, in many respects, the antithesis of creolization. Following this theory, Indig- enous people are not modern or relevant to the globalized world because they are not creolized.13 Creolization thus further obscures Indigenous presence in the contemporary Caribbean. III. Indigenous Communities’ Ongoing Resistance Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean have remained resili- ent despite neo-colonial violence. As Hosein writes, "In- digenous people didn't become extinct. They don't belong to a time past.”14 Indigenous communities resist colonial oppression, which takes shape today as the state-sponsored expropriation, privatization, and destruction of Indigenous lands for capitalist profit.15 The land has always been and continues to be at the center of colonial violence.16 The dispossession of Indigenous communities is a form of “structural violence” because it endangers Indigenous lives through neutral-seeming institutions, such as private prop- erty law.17 These institutions normalize Indigenous precar- ity. Even though colonial violence is deeply entrenched in contemporary institutions and cultures, Indigenous peoples tirelessly struggle against dispossession. A striking example of Indigenous resistance is the Maya Land Struggle in what is now known as Belize. Since 13 Newton, “Returns to a Native Land,” 111. 14 Hosein, “Indigenous Geographies and Caribbean Femi- nisms.” 15 Ibid. 16 Penados, Gahman, Smith, “Land, race, and (slow) violence,” 1. 17 Ibid., 3. CARIBBEAN QUILT 2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 128 contact with colonial powers, the Q’echi and Mopan Maya peoples have fought to regain their lands and protect their livelihoods.18 In the mid-1990s, the Belizean state granted corporations access to Maya lands for timber extraction.19 Like in the colonial era, the state denied that the Maya peo- ple were Indigenous to Belize, thereby denying them their land rights. Misanthropic skepticism and the myth of In- digenous erasure were again at work for (neo-)colonial capitalist profit. In 2007, after many years of an arduous legal battle with the Belizean state, the Supreme Court of Belize recognized the Maya people as Indigenous and thus as bearing land rights. The court mandated that the state obtain the Maya community's informed consent before al- lowing corporations to develop on their land. The state, however, violated the court order to respect Maya land rights for 37 out of the 39 Maya communities.20 After launching and winning another court case and subsequent appeals, the remaining 37 Maya communities won legal recognition of their right to ancestral lands. This case un- derscores that Indigenous communities continue to strug- gle against neo-colonial exploitation, and their relentless efforts yield essential gains. Moreover, this case demon- strates the strength of Indigenous governance systems and Indigenous nations' power when they stand in solidarity. Indigenous peoples often band together to plan and carry out resistance projects because the oppressive states and corporations they oppose have abundant economic re- sources and political power. Hosein describes a conference titled "Indigenous geographies and Caribbean feminisms: Common struggles against global capitalism," which brought together women leaders from many Indigenous nations in the Caribbean, including Akawaio, Garifuna, Kalinago, Lokono Arawak, Macushi, Maho, Mopan Maya, Q’eqchi Maya, Wapichan, and Warrau First Peoples.21 At the conference, these leaders discussed the possibilities for 18 Ibid., 4. 19 Ibid., 5. 20 Ibid. 21 Hosein, “Indigenous Geographies and Caribbean Femi- nisms.” 22 Ibid. 23 Beatriz Felipe Pérez and Alexandra Tomaselli, “Indige- nous Peoples and climate-induced relocation in Latin America and the Caribbean: managed retreat as a tool or a joining their local efforts to disrupt the capitalist, neo-co- lonial extraction that threatens their communities. In de- tailing this conference, Hosein highlights that Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of struggles against state pro- jects to generate profit by privatizing water and clearing forests to make space for other development.22 Indigenous peoples are spearheading these battles against unsustainable capitalist extraction in part because they are disproportionately affected by climate change.23 Rising sea levels, water shortages, and extreme weather events in the Caribbean have displaced many Indigenous peoples.24 The economic subordination and political marginalization that Indigenous people have suffered since contact with colonizers has left Indigenous nations in the Caribbean with little land and few resources. This deficiency, in turn, made Indigenous people more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.25 Indigenous sovereignty is, therefore, in- extricably tied to climate change, among other justice is- sues. The examples of Indigenous resistance I have sketched re- veal that the myth of Indigenous erasure allows capitalist states and corporations to steal Indigenous lands, deplete their resources, and ultimately endanger Indigenous lives. These examples elucidate the pressing need to debunk the erroneous belief that Indigenous people no longer exist in the Caribbean and that colonial violence has ended. Indi- geneity must be central in discussions on global capitalism, climate change, and the possibilities for creating a sustain- able and just future. Anyone who lives on stolen lands and benefits from the destruction of Indigenous lives is respon- sible for working towards the end of colonial violence. A critical step in reducing the harm done to the Indigenous communities of the Caribbean is to disrupt the myth of In- digenous erasure. We must instead shift the discourse to threat?” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 11, no. 3 (2021): 353. 24 Ibid. 25 Rose-Ann J. Smith and Kevin Rhiney, “Climate (in)jus- tice, vulnerability and livelihoods in the Caribbean: The case of the indigenous Caribs in northeastern St. Vincent,” Geoforum 73 (2016): 22. CARIBBEAN QUILT 2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 129 highlight the centrality of Indigenous justice projects to contemporary Caribbean politics. This can be done, I argue, by reframing the Caribbean––its history and current state– –using the concepts of diaspora and entanglement. IV. Diaspora and Entanglement for Reframing the Caribbean To close her essay on Indigenous absence in Caribbean anti-colonial writing, Newton identifies that diaspora has the potential to be a “liberating concept,” and she sees a similar value in the idea of entanglement.26 She does not, however, expand on how we might use these concepts go- ing forward. Here, I will elaborate on the concepts of dias- pora and entanglement and clarify their usefulness for dis- pelling the myth of Indigenous erasure. The idea of diaspora conveys the dispersal of people from a homeland. The term is often associated with exile and forced migration, like the movement of slaves and inden- tured labourers from Africa and Asia to the Caribbean.27 Writing from his experience as a Black Jamaican who lived in the Caribbean and the UK, Stuart Hall describes dias- pora as a “scattering” that leaves migrants and their de- scendants unable to “ever [go] home in exactly the same way as you left it.”28 For Hall, diaspora produces hybrid cultural identities continuously "producing and reproduc- ing themselves anew" through influences from the home- land and host land.29 Hence, the diaspora does not essen- tialize Caribbean identities by claiming that Caribbean people retain an inherent African-ness at their core; instead, diaspora takes seriously that migration fundamentally al- ters our identity and worldview. Reading the contemporary Caribbean through the concept of diaspora sheds light on the fact that Caribbeans with lin- eage to Africa or Asia are not Indigenous to the Caribbean, nor are they Indigenous to Africa or Asia. Instead, due to 26 Newton, “Returns to a Native Land,” 119. 27 Robin Cohen, “Diasporas and the nation-state: from victims to challengers,” International Affairs 72, no. 3 (1996): 507. 28 Stuart Hall, “Through the Prism of an Intellectual Life,” in Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity and Diaspora, ed. David Morley (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 317. 29 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in the Atlantic slave trade, they are diasporic people uniquely positioned between their homeland and host land. They cannot claim the host land as their own or return to an an- cestral homeland. Diaspora thus offers a means of under- standing and communicating the differences between In- digenous Caribbean people and Caribbeans with African or Asian heritage. Moreover, highlighting diaspora clarifies that not all those who moved to the Caribbean during the colonial era were responsible for Indigenous genocide. Distinguishing between Indigenous and diasporic Caribbe- ans is critical to dispelling the myth of Indigenous erasure. Framing the Caribbean population as diasporic opens the possibility of discussing the complexity of the histories of enslavement, including Indigenous peoples’ historical and continued resistance to colonialism. Taking up the lan- guage of diaspora alongside Indigeneity creates a space for discussing the potential for collaboration between Indige- nous communities and diasporic Caribbeans to decolonize the Caribbean and end capitalist exploitation. Furthermore, because diaspora challenges the rigidity of national bor- ders, which often cut through Indigenous lands, diaspora is a subversive tool that can call into question the authority of the nation-state to control land and define belonging. Thinking through diaspora primes us to consider Indige- nous peoples' rights to land and self-government critically. Like diaspora, entanglement helps call attention to the Car- ibbean's colonial foundations and lasting impact on con- temporary Caribbean society. Édouard Glissant puts for- ward the idea of entanglement in Caribbean Discourse. Recognizing the impossibility of returning to the homeland, Glissant argues that Caribbean people must “return to the point of entanglement, from which we were forcefully turned away.”30 The point of entanglement is, for Glissant, the Caribbean itself––its complex cultural and political history. Glissant uses entanglement to describe the Carib- bean as a society formed through a mesh of Indigenous, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 401. 30 Édouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse: Selected Es- says, trans. J. Michael Dash. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992), 25. CARIBBEAN QUILT 2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 130 African, Asian, and European cultures, thoughts, and lan- guages. As a lens through which to read the contemporary Caribbean, entanglement foregrounds the region’s com- plex and violent colonial history. At the same time, entan- glement produces beauty and creative potential, and there- fore it can act as a guiding principle for imagining a future free of exploitation. Entanglement is a rejection of the misconception that co- lonialism is a phenomenon of the past that has no bearing on contemporary society. Suppose we return to the point of entanglement by drawing attention to the Caribbean's com- plex histories. In that case, we will be better positioned to understand that Indigenous peoples continue to be a vital part of the Caribbean's entanglement. To say that the Car- ibbean remains entangled is also to wrestle with the fact that Indigenous and diasporic Caribbean people can have conflicting needs and interests.31 Taken together, diaspora and entanglement offer us a way of reconceptualizing Car- ibbean histories without erasing Indigenous communities’ historical and ongoing resistance to colonialism. V. Conclusion In this essay, I have described the colonial tactic of claim- ing that Indigenous peoples are absent or extinct. Indige- nous absence has persisted over time: scholarship on the Caribbean, even at its most revolutionary, has reinforced the idea that Indigenous peoples existed only before colo- nization and are irrelevant to present-day decolonial strug- gle. States continue invoking the myth of Indigenous eras- ure, denying Indigenous peoples' status and land rights to facilitate capitalist resource extraction. Indigenous peoples, however, resist this neo-colonial oppression, often collab- oratively. Their projects to reclaim land intersects with cli- mate justice because harmful extractivist practices are premised on Indigenous dispossession. Finally, I have sug- gested dismantling the myth of Indigenous erasure by re- framing the Caribbean as a locale of diaspora and entan- glement. Shifting discourse on Indigeneity is necessary because the myth of Indigenous erasure continues to be taken up by states to justify dispossession; however, changing 31 Newton, “Returns to a Native Land,” 121. discourse only has limited effects on material and legal conflict. Even if we eradicate the myth of Indigenous eras- ure, land reform will remain rife with tensions. Indigenous communities must still appeal to the state to respect their rights to land, engaging with the state on its terms. If, as Hosein suggests, seeking recourse for Indigenous oppres- sion through global institutions operated by the Global North, such as the UN, reinscribes rather than dismantles colonial relations, we face the challenge of finding better solutions that call state power into question. Though erad- icating the myth of Indigenous erasure is not a panacea for Indigenous violence, it is essential for validating Indige- nous rights claims. It must be accompanied by localized, community-based justice projects that support Indigenous sovereignty. CARIBBEAN QUILT 2023 VOL. 7 NO. 1 131 BIBILIOGRAPHY Cohen, Robin. 1996. “Diasporas and the nation-state: from victims to challengers.” International Affairs 72, no. 3: 507–520. https://doi.org/10.2307/2625554. Glissant, Édouard. 1992. Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays, translated by J. Michael Dash. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Hall, Stuart. 2013. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. Abingdon: Routledge. Hall, Stuart. 2018. “Through the Prism of an Intellectual Life.” In Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity and Diaspora, edited by David Morley. Durham: Duke University Press. Hosein, Gabrielle. 2017. “Indigenous Geographies and Caribbean Feminisms.” Stabroek News. https://www.sta- broeknews.com/2017/04/10/features/indigenous-geographies-caribbean-feminisms/ Lamming, George. 1992. The Pleasures of Exile. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Newton, Melanie J. 2013. “Returns to a Native Land: Indigeneity and Decolonization in the Anglophone Caribbean.” Small Axe 41: 108–122. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-2323346. Penados, Filiberto, Levi Gahman, and Shelda-Jane Smith. 2022. “Land, race, and (slow) violence: Indigenous resistance to racial capitalism and the coloniality of development in the Caribbean.” Geoforum: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geofo- rum.2022.07.004. Pérez, Beatriz Felipe and Alexandra Tomaselli. 2021. “Indigenous Peoples and climate-induced relocation in Latin America and the Caribbean: managed retreat as a tool or a threat?” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 11, no. 3: 352– 364. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-021-00693-2. Smith, Rose-Ann J. and Kevin Rhiney. 2016. “Climate (in)justice, vulnerability and livelihoods in the Caribbean: The case of the indigenous Caribs in northeastern St. Vincent.” Geoforum 73: 22–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.11.008.