The Activist Polis: Topologies of Conflict in Indigenous Solidarity Activism

Abstract

Interpersonal conflict poses a serious threat to social justice activism. In the context of indigenous solidarity activism in southern Arizona, conflicts are often born of the challenges accompanying differentials in social privilege due to differences in race and ethnicity relative to white supremacist settler colonialism. This paper examines activist collaboration between Tohono O'odham and non-Native anarchist activists in southern Arizona, arguing that a topological activist polis is a useful lens through which we can better understand the roots of conflict in social justice activism. Non-Native activists are often aware of the ways white supremacist settler colonial society privileges particular identities while marginalizing others. Nonetheless, settler and white privilege give rise to tensions which can be seen topologically through the very different relationships non-Native and indigenous activists have to ongoing processes of white supremacy and to histories of the genocide of indigenous peoples.

Political geographical perspectives on settler colonialism

“…Geographical work on biopolitics remains focused on overt physical forms of violence, confinement, bordering and erasure (Plonski, ; Schofield, ; Smith & Isleem, ) as well as the political technologies they rely on like security and surveillance practices (Bastos, ; Machold, ; Shalhoub‐Kevorkian, ; Zureik, Lyon, & Abu‐Laban, ), risk and supply chain management (Pasternak & Dafnos, ) and juridical innovations (Gordon & Ram, ; Hunt, ; Pasternak, , ; Tawil‐Souri, ). Here studies focus centrally on theorizing the connections between race, white supremacy, and settler colonialism (Bonds & Inwood, ; Clarno, ; Eastwood, ; Inwood & Bonds, ; Mott, , ; Tatour, ). In addition to linking the growth of borderings in settler contexts with biopolitical imperatives (Dodds, ; Topak, Bracken‐Roche, Saulnier, & Lyon, ), studies link the rise of new border regimes and “internal colonialisms” in nonsettler contexts with settler logics (Giglioli, ).…”

“…While discussions about race and racism by geographers have engaged with settler colonial theory for some time (Lloyd & Pulido, ; Pulido, ), more recent work has much more centrally theorized the connections between white supremacy and settler colonialism both spatially and temporally. The concept of settler colonialism as an ongoing modality of empire is highly instructive to the geographical study of race and racialized geographies because it draws attention to the material conditions underpinning white supremacy, but also attends to how white supremacy and settler colonialism work together in practice (Bhandar, ; Bonds & Inwood, ; Moreton‐Robinson, ; Mott, ; Quijano, ) and how multiple colonial histories and racialized subjects intersect (Farrales, ; Kauanui, ; Pulido, ; TallBear, ; Trask, ). The linkage of white supremacy with settler colonialism further enables geographical thinking on race and racism to relocate the idea of white supremacy as lurking in the past and contend with how it is continuously remade in the present (McKittrick, ; Bonds & Inwood, ; also see Mott, , ).…”

Historicising geographies of solidarity

“…Geographers and others concerned with “decolonizing solidarity” have sought to understand how such practices of solidarity can be developed in ways that allow for more equitable relationships, particularly across racialised differences (Land, ; Mott, ; Sundberg, ). There has been an emphasis in some of this work on support from whites/settlers for indigenous peoples in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand/Aotearoa, considering how to negotiate relationships which “are fraught with power asymmetries” (Sundberg, , p. 114).…”

“…Similarly, for Mott (), it is necessary to counteract the purposeful forgetting of Native American genocide if settlers are to act in solidarity. Mott argues for a topological approach to understanding divisions among solidarity activists, which she describes as “an understanding that phenomena which might appear distant in time or space in a Cartesian paradigm are actually localized in the subject through memories, lived experience, and emotional attachments.” As a result, “as activists struggle to work together despite social differences, topological connections to things outside individual experience or understanding become intimately personal, such as white supremacy and the history of Native American genocide” (Mott, , p. 194). The past, then, is not dead.…”

Constructing a Culture of Solidarity: London and the British Coalfields in the Long 1970s

“…Recent work on decolonising solidarity, however, has highlighted some of the difficulties in organising across difference, particularly where relationships “are fraught with power asymmetries” (Sundberg :145). Mott (:197) argues in relation to white/settler support for indigenous struggles in North America that it is crucial “to allow the indigenous partners in multiracial projects to take the lead”. Gould (:157) suggests that this principle of “deference”, defined as a requirement to allow those receiving solidarity “to determine the forms of aid or support most beneficial to them”, is necessary “to avoid the imposition on the others of the customary expectations and practices of those offering aid”.…”