On a rainy April
day about a year ago, I was scrolling through Facebook when I came across a page
entitled "Decolonizing Yoga". I scrolled through some of their posts,
posts about the lack of diversity in yoga studios, posts about how to make yoga
more welcoming for larger bodies, posts linking gender/queer and race issues
with yoga. I was in love, someone had read my mind and created a blog voicing
all the things I kept bottled up inside me every time I went to go teach a yoga
class. And it has the word decolonize in the title, one of my primary academic
intersts. What more could I possibly want from a blog?
An
acknowledgement of ongoing settler colonialism in North America, aka Turtle
Island, would be nice.
Don't get me
wrong, it's been a year, and Decolonizing Yoga is still my favorite yoga blog
out there. As a yoga teacher who firmly supports the growing yoga and diversity
movement, Decolonizing Yoga is a fantastic resource. However, it seems to me
that a self-proclaimed movement called Decolonizing
Yoga based in Turtle Island that to date has no posts on the issues specifically
faced by Native American and Aboriginal peoples is missing something important.
That's not to
say that "Decolonizing Yoga" doesn't address issues of colonialism
and attempt to decolonize yoga. There are multiple experiences of colonialism.
People in India experienced one form of colonialism (white people came in, took
over administration, screwed things up and left), while the many different
African peoples who were brought to the Americas as slaves experienced another
form of colonialism (white people took them away from their homelands and
continues to screw them over while acting like everything is cool). "Decolonizing
Yoga" does address those experiences and how they relate to the modern,
North American yoga culture.
There is
however, a third experience of colonialism: Settler colonialism. In settler
colonialism, indigenous peoples have their land taken and occupied by settlers
(who do not have to be of European descent) who create a new society on the
stolen land. In order to support the project of settler colonialism, Indigenous
nations must be eliminated through genocide, containment and assimilation. The
mere existence of indigenous peoples is counterproductive to the colonial
project. The poverty of Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island is a deliberate
part of settler colonialism. Ongoing environmental degradation is a deliberate
part of settler colonialism. The estimated 800+ missing and murdered Indigenouswomen is a result of the deliberate use of patriarchy in settler colonialism. Settler
colonialism in Turtle Island isn't just a thing of the past, settler
colonialism, as one of my professors, Scott Morgenson puts it, is happening
right here, right now.
In the year that
I've been following "Decolonizing Yoga" there has only been one Facebook post
that has anything to do with settler colonialism: A mixtape on soundcloud
featuring indigenous artists. Not a single blog post or shared article that
directly addresses settler colonialism. I have a problem with that. As a yoga
teacher in Kingston ON, I have had more students identify to me as being or
having Indigenous heritage (which is ultimately determined by the government)
than I have had of other visible minority demographics combined. Where are my
students and their experiences of racism, colonialism and oppression in "Decolonizing
Yoga"? Erased.
It's not unusual
for Indigenous peoples and their experiences of settler colonialism to be
missing in social justice circles as Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua describe:
"Settler states in the Americas are
founded on, and maintained through, policies of direct extermination,
displacement, or assimilation. The premise of each is to ensure that Indigenous
peoples ultimately disappear as peoples, so that settler nations can seamlessly
take their place. Because of the intensity of genocidal policies that
Indigenous people have faced and continue to face, a common error on the part
of antiracist and postcolonial theorists is to assume that genocide has been
virtually complete, that Indigenous peoples, however unfortunately, have been
'consigned to the dustbin of history" (Spivak, 1994) and no longer need to
be taken into account. Yet such assumptions are scarcely different from settler
nation-building myths, whereby "Indians" become unreal figures,
rooted in the nation's prehistory, who died out and no longer need to be taken
seriously.
"Being consigned to a mythic past or
"the dustbin of history" means being precluded from changing and
existing a real people in the present. It also means being denied even the
possibility of regenerating nationhood. If Indigenous nationhood is seen as
something of the past, the present becomes a site in which Indigenous peoples
are reduced to small groups of racially and culturally defined and marginalized
individuals drowning in a sea of settlers-- who needn't be taken seriously."
Decolonization
in a settler colonial context, such as the one we have here in Turtle Island,
cannot ignore Indigenous peoples or their experiences. Decolonization in Turtle
Island cannot be reduced to a metaphor for generalized anti-oppression
movements. It needs to take Indigenous nationhood seriously; it needs to be
unsettling for settlers regardless of whether they're white, black, brown or
purple. Unfortunately, "Decolonizing Yoga" fails to do both.
Yoga has come
into contact with multiple forms of colonialism, therefore if yoga is to be
decolonized that decolonization needs to address multiple experiences of
colonialism. In this series of posts I will be exploring what a more holistic
view of what decolonizing yoga could look like. In Part 2 Extreme Makeover:
Yoga in the British Empire Edition I examine how British colonialism in India
influenced yoga. In Part 3 Settling Yoga, I explore settler colonialism further
and examine how yoga has become complicit with ongoing settler colonialism. In
the final part Yoga as an Unsettling Practice I explore some of the potential
ways yoga can help the decolonization process.
For more
information check out
"Decolonizing
Antiracism" by Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua
"In Canadaevery system of oppression is organized around settler colonialism" an interview
with Harshia Walia
"The
Biopolitics of Settler Colonialism: Right Here, Right Now" by Scott
Morgenson
"Decolonization
is not a metaphor" by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang
"Why theterm settler needs to stick" by Corey Snelgrove and Klara Woldenga
"I am not a nation-State" by Leanne Simpson