Not a Metaphor: Immigrant of Color Autoethnography as a Decolonial Move. (February 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chandrashekar, Santhosh
• Other Names: Chawla Devika guest-editor.; Atay Ahmet guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Cultural studies, critical methodologies. Volume 18:Number 1(2018)
• Page Start: 72
• Page End: 79
• Publication Date: 2018-02
• Subjects: autoethnography -- decoloniality -- immigrant of color autoethnography -- settler colonialism -- border town violence -- coalition building; Culture -- Research -- Periodicals; Popular culture -- Research -- Periodicals; 306.05
• DOI: 10.1177/1532708617728953
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1532-7086

Abstract

This essay argues that if "decolonization in the settler colonial context must involve the repatriation of (Native) land"(p. 7), then autoethnography committed to decolonization should first and foremost center Native struggles over land and life. For this task and given my own position as a postcolonial immigrant on Native lands, I elaborate an immigrant of color autoethnography to demystify the discourses that privilege select postcolonial immigrants such as myself over Indigenous people and render me as a desirable minority and settler. I start this project unpacking my journey as an international student through the higher education apparatus in the United States as I narrate how the material structures and academic knowledge that circulate within the university (re)produce the devaluation of indigeneity. Then I shift my attention to my time in Albuquerque, a border city that excludes Indigenous people through a host of policies even as international students are welcomed to make home in the city. Against these two sites, I turn to (un)Occupy Albuquerque to map coalition possibilities between postcolonial immigrants and Indigenous people. Together, these three sites allow for an understanding of the ideological and material structures that rationalize (and disrupt) settler colonialism and Native dispossession.