Constructing Indigeneity

Preparing to Meet the Conditions

Hatueyael José Barreiro

        I first heard the term Indigeneity from the Seneca Nation philosopher, Sotsisowah, also known as Dr. John Mohawk.

        It was John that recruited me early (1974) to write for the national and vibrant Mohawk newspaper, Akwesasne Notes. He was my editor and I was his, for several decades. He was a dear teacher, true man of knowledge. Ongwehonwe: true human being, he planted useful thinking lessons along the way of the Native movement.

        Once in spring 1991, as the upcoming “celebration” of the 1992 Columbus Quincentenary, an Indigenous Voices gathering was convoked to strategize for a strong Indigenous people representation.

        While discussing “Indianness,” an even older expression, Mohawk used the word-concept Indigeneity as descriptive of the culture of indigenous primary relationship with the natural world. Mohawk introduced a definition based on the idea of a community’s local-specific production and its quotient as foundational in the use of ecosystemic materials to undergird levels of self-sufficient economy, what he liked to call central to Indigeneity, Domestic Mode of Production [DMP].

        What John called “thinking in Indian” involved several areas of conceptual understanding that traditional Indian people shared. Mohawk’s thinking on land-based, Indigenous economics is pronounced. Utilizing old and new technologies, he pursued the question of proper and autochthonous attachment to place. Mohawk defined as the main vein of Indian thinking a philosophy and practice of self-sufficiency on local, community, and regional trade levels.

        Although there are examples of Indigenous communities depleting natural resources, a strong ethic of natural world adaptation—seeking an appreciative, reciprocal, and productive relationship with “the land,” or the natural world—is a recognizable current of traditional American Indigenous thinking.

There is an appreciation for the “place-based” knowledge of the generations. “Costumbres y saberes” is a pseudo-legal phrase and framework in Latin America. In John Mohawk’s Haudenosaunee intellectual tradition, this thinking often emerges to centrality and is a constant discussion. Among Indigenous peoples generally, these conceptions are often upheld in spiritual ceremony. They ground a practical and always-evolving tradition for creating economic value and prescribing the sustenance of a safety net of food, fuel, and medicine (healing) for communities.

Mohawk’s definition of Indigeneity carries a genuine Indigenous perception about living on the earth. The definition was not at all intended as a limitation or imposition of “primitivism” on Indigenous peoples or any human society, but rather as liberation from the impositions and vagaries of globalized petrochemical systems. This is particularly relevant as humankind enters the post-petrochemical era and its resulting condition of severe climate change.

Sotsiwowah’s concept of Indigeneity as perceived in material culture can engender a broad national and yet locally specific approach to community and movement. Academically, within a multidisciplinary methodology, it provides an approach to the study of genuine and vital continuities and adaptations of Indigenous thought and practice among the many mostly transcultured American populations of today.

The prism of Indigeneity—its markers, quotient, principles, tenets, practices, trends, movements, and objectives—grows from the inside out; in concentric circles and cross-directional, this conscience of ecosystemic techniques of local-regional survivals is in the context and the pursuit of Indigeneity.