Representations and Indigenous voices

This chapter studies the creation and maintenance of representations from different insiders’ perspectives. Outsider representations stand in sharp contrast to the erased story of Indigenous peoples themselves. The importance of place for Indigenous peoples comes to the fore in creation histories, in place naming and in the building of identity. This chapter builds on the work of Durkheim, Said, and Stuart Hall for the needed corrections to emic and etic academic discourse on representations. Indigenous scholars Vanessa Watts and Zoe Todd show how the colonial process erased the Indigenous people’s own story and self-representations, which includes erasure and misrepresentation of the embodied legal-governance and spiritual aspects of Indigenous thinking. The authors of this chapter give room for Indigenous philosophies, for the native voice and for counternarratives. The authors show the enduring value of Indigenous storytelling and its power to challenge conventional ways of thinking and to enlarge their explanation.