Who Needs Decolonization?

Following a decade of heightened Indigenous anticolonial struggles—from Wet’suwet’en to Standing Rock, Elsipogtog to Mauna Kea, and Nuluujaat to Bolivia—decolonization has become a watchword in scholarly and popular political analyses. This places the term at risk of misappropriation and defanging by academics, publishers, and politicians. Nevertheless, Indigenous scholars and movement actors have developed the concept as a theory of radical social transformation, producing an important and vital literature. The scholarly understanding of decolonization can be extended through dialogic engagement with an activist archive of “movement memos” that critique Canadian colonialism. These memos help to conceptualize decolonization as produced within, by, and for grassroots anticolonial movements. By taking movement actors seriously as both political actors and theorists, such dialogic engagement contributes to an ongoing shift in scholarly approaches to the anticolonial archive and canon.