[draft article submitted to a special issue of http://www.publicjournal.ca/ which will be published in September 2021] Conspicuous Consumption: economies of virtue and the commodification of Indigeneity Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti The growing pressure to decolonize and Indigenize cultural and educational organizations has exposed the paradoxes and difficulties of developing more generative relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, including non-Indigenous communities that are themselves targets of systemic violence. Our work examines the complexities and paradoxes of decolonization and Indigenization, including multiple understandings, conflicting aspirations, contradictory desires, institutional instrumentalizations, heterogeneity within and between Indigenous communities and enduring limitations of efforts in this area. This article offers an analysis of common harmful patterns of relationship that are often reproduced in efforts to “include” Indigenous peoples in non-Indigenous organizations. We emphasize that these patterns are difficult to communicate/translate to nonIndigenous audiences, and therefore we invite readers to engage with these patterns using different points of entry. We start with an overview of the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures arts/research/ecology collective and the “Towards Braiding” mode of inquiry, which provide the context for our work. Next, we use this mode of inquiry to present three telling scenarios that illustrate how Indigeneity is consumed in non-Indigenous contexts and institutions. We conclude the article with a reflection about the difficult path towards non-consumptive modes of engagement with Indigenous peoples grounded on long-term relations rooted in trust, respect, reciprocity, consent and accountabilityi and where difficult conversations can happen without relations falling apart. Containers of artistic, pedagogical and political practices The work presented in this article is situated both within the context of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) collective and the on-going artistic program “Towards Braiding” directed by Elwood Jimmy at the Musagetes Foundation. We have been heavily involved in both initiatives and coauthored a book (with Sharon Stein) called Towards Braiding about the difficult challenges and agonistic possibilities of encounters between Indigenous and settler communities in the arts sector. Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) GTDF is an inter-generational and trans-disciplinary collective of artists, researches, students and ancestral knowledge keepers that works at the interface of questions related to historical, systemic and ongoing violence, and questions related to the unsustainability of our modern/colonial habits of being. The work of the collective draws on academic literature related to psychoanalytic critiques of colonialism and we borrow the term modernity/coloniality from Latin American scholarsii who emphasize that the perceived benefits of modernity are inseparable from its underside of violence and unsustainability. The term draws attention to the fact that violence and unsustainability are not collateral damages of modernity, but rather what make modernity possible. Most importantly our work is also inspired by the analyses and political practices of “Teia das 5 Curas”, a network of Indigenous communities in Latin America and Canada with whom we collaborateiii. In these analyses, colonialism is seen and sensed as an onto-metaphysical problem – a problem of a harmful habit of being, rather than a problem of (a lack of) information, knowledge, methodology or representation. In this context, the occupation of lands and the subjugation and elimination of peoples are symptoms of a deeper predicament related to our sense of separation or “separability” from the living land, or what we have come to call “nature”, and what this separability does to our relationship with reality, time, knowledge, pain, life and death, and to our senses of being, belonging and worthiv. This sense of separability is based on human exceptionalism, anthropocentrism and a fundamental species-narcissism that manifests in different ways and that idealizes and romanticizes humanityv. In contemporary societies this narcissism is associated with a mode of relating to the world based on the compulsive consumption not only of material goods, but also of knowledge, relationships, experiences, art, critique, “nature”, attention, praise, sex, etc. In this mode of relationality, people feel a strong sense of entitlement and are libidinally attached to what is convenient, comfortable and consumablevi. The artistic, pedagogical and research-related experiments of the collective attempt to re-arrange harmful modern/colonial/narcissistic desires noncoercivelyvii in order to open up more accountable possibilities for existence that are viable, but as-yet unimaginable in our enduring modern/colonial mode of existenceviii. This work is also inspired by Indigenous practices that offer what could be called a non-Western and non-anthropocentric form of psychoanalysis where un/consciousness is located on the land itself as a living entity, as well as the humans and other-than-human beings that are also a part of it. One entry point of this analysis is the identification of four socially sanctioned and rewarded denials within modernity/coloniality: 1. the denial of systemic, historical and ongoing violence and of complicity in harm (the fact that our comforts, securities and enjoyments are subsidized by expropriation and exploitation here and somewhere else); 2. the denial of the limits of the planet and of the unsustainability of modernity/coloniality (the fact that the finite earth-metabolism cannot sustain exponential growth, consumption, extraction, exploitation and expropriation indefinitely); 3. the denial of entanglement (our insistence in seeing ourselves as separate from each other and the land, rather than “entangled” within a living wider metabolism that is bio-intelligent); and, 4. the denial of the magnitude and the complexity of the problems we need to face together (the tendency to look for simplistic solutions that make us feel and look good and that may address symptoms, but not the root causes of our collective complex predicament)ix These denials point to the fact that our modern/colonial habits of being have created a situation where our hopes and aspirations are grounded on illusions that fail to take account of the complex layered material reality that in which we are embedded. Even the ways that many calls for social justice are mobilized in within modernity/coloniality reproduce one or more of the denials outlined above. One of the most difficult conversations we need to have is about how our forms of resistance to the multiple forms of violence and unsustainability of modernity/coloniality, although important and necessary, are still mostly implicated in the presumption of continued violence and unsustainability. For example, the mobilization of critique towards wider representation based on standpoints of historically and systemically marginalized populations is often still based on separability and on modes of political engagement grounded on exceptionalism, entitlements and exaltedness that are rooted in modernity/coloniality and that systemically reproduce the same habits of being. In this context, we may find ourselves, as Indigenous, Black and people of color, pitched against each other, fighting for crumbs of a cake that is toxic, but presented and perceived as the only desirable option for nourishment. Towards Braiding The four denials also inform our work in the “Towards Braiding” mode of inquiry in the context of the artistic program and the book (and book series) with the same title. Different from, but complementary to “Braiding Sweetgrass”x, our conceptualization of braiding focuses on the difficulties and challenges of ethically bringing together different senses and sensibilities on uneven settler/Indigenous grounds. In this book, we proposed a pedagogical and strategic distinction between “brick” and “thread” sensibilities. That is, sensibilities resonant with the textures and movements of brick layering and sensibilities resonant with the textures and movements of thread weavingxi. Brick layering evokes working toward a preconceived outcome using rigid building blocks, with the intention of arriving at a state of completion that is higher and stronger than the original state and that can withstand considerable pressures, and stand the test of time (e.g. a magnificent building). Thread weaving evokes the repurposing and bringing together of flexible strands of fibre for different practical purposes that emerge through relational processes within a particular context and have a strategic purpose and a limited temporality (e.g. weaving a basket). We also suggested that a politics based on brick-layering is often based on entitlements, visibility and exceptionality (e.g. heroic protagonism), whereas a politics based on thread weaving is grounded on relational accountability, gift giving/receiving, and nonexceptionality (e.g. work in the background, often centering non-human relations). We defined braiding as a practice yet-to-come, located in a space in-between and at the edges of different sensibilities that aims to calibrate each sensibility towards a generative orientation and interweave their strands to create something new and contextually relevant, while not erasing the differences, historical and systemic violences between the sensibilities, or the uncertainty, conflict, paradoxes and contradictions involved in braiding work. Braiding is different from established understandings and practices of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) that aim to offer visibility and widen access and opportunities for social mobility within modernity/coloniality for historically and systemically marginalised communities. The fantasy of a ladder of social mobility for all hides the costs of the expansion of modernity/coloniality and the limits of the planet. This has several implications. For example, while EDI can have the effect of addressing some disparities in the short term, EDI capitalism will by definition support the expansion rather than the interruption of colonial entitlements. EDI is also often mobilized by institutions to protect business as usual. In this case, EDI strategies are employed to protect the interests and futurity of institutions and to uphold the status quo by lifting and rewarding only IBPOC people whose agendas are compatible with modern/colonial interests and futurity and who will not offer a substantial or effective challenge to these ideals. The kind of braiding we are proposing requires a disruption of the currencies and economies that sustain business-as-usual and the activation of very different forms of affective, intellectual and relational orientations, commitments and practicesxii. This work starts with “decluttering” the different layers of our existence. We define decluttering as a practice of interrupting our satisfaction with harmful colonial desires and perceived entitlements, including desires for certainty, innocence and control of processes and outcomes, and perceived entitlements for uncontested authority, unaccountable autonomy and unlimited consumption. Decluttering is neither comfortable nor easy, it is not an event, but an on-going process of dis-investment in harmful desires that are normalized, encouraged and rewarded in modernity/coloniality and that offer us enjoyments and satisfactions. Decluttering is necessary for “getting to zero”, which is where relationships rooted in trust, respect, reciprocity, consent and accountabilityxiii become possible. In this orientation and practice, “zero” is a time and space where the land is centered as a living metabolism (that we are part of), where we are not acting from insecurities and projections, and where there is a shared orientation away from systemic narcissistic tendencies, towards depth, maturity, sobriety and accountability, as we face the realness of humanity in all of us: the good, the bad, the ugly, the broken and the messed up. Since our social environment (e.g. social media) and institutions (including formal education) have wired us for consuming what is comfortable and convenient, we have not developed the practices that would give us the stamina, capacity and resilience to work collectively with what is complex, layered, paradoxical, uncertain, ambivalent, agonistic and hard. The work of facing systemic, historical, and ongoing violence, especially since we are all implicated in that violence, is particularly difficult without these dispositions. That is why most people would not choose to do the decluttering work that is necessary for getting to zero. Since this work is hard and counter-intuitive to what we are rewarded for in modernity/coloniality, people who are genuinely willing to take the steps are those who cannot numb to the collective pain and who have already interrupted their hope and investments in the promises and satisfactions of business as usual. The first step for those who feel called to move in this direction is developing capacities and dispositions to hold space for difficult and painful things without feeling immobilized, overwhelmed or wanting to be coddled and rescued from discomfort. In this spirit, the next section of this article was written with the pedagogical intent to expand our collective capacity to have difficult conversations without relationships falling apart. Enduring harmful patterns in Indigenization and decolonization efforts Inspired by the problematizations of inclusion offered by Sara Ahmedxiv, part of the work of GTDF and Towards Braiding has been to problematize approaches to inclusion, Indigenization and decolonization in what is currently known as Canada, which are based on the formula: (modern/colonial) business-asusual (plus) selective Indigenous content (minus) colonial guilt or bad press. This business-as-usual formula reflects the fact that Indigeneity has been commodified within modernity/coloniality and has become an exchange-value currency in modern/colonial economies of virtue. In these economies, Indigenous peoples are “consumed” in at least three different ways: through extraction, paternalism and aggressive projection. Extraction happens when Indigenous peoples’ bodies and labor are perceived to be at the service of non-Indigenous peoples’ self-actualization or reconciliation efforts (“YOU help ME achieve my goals and secure the futurity/continuity of my perceived entitlements”). Paternalism happens when Indigenous peoples are perceived to have a deficit that needs to be fixed by non-Indigenous people (“I help YOU achieve goals I have predetermined for you and, in return, you should be grateful for my efforts”). Projective aggression happens when Indigenous peoples are perceived to be a threat to the comfort, status, self-images, security or futurity of non-Indigenous people or the systems and institutions that they want to uphold (“How dare YOU challenge ME or my hope of futurity”). All these forms of consumption serve to reclaim the sense of authority, autonomy and arbitration of non-Indigenous peoples. These patterns are complex, happen mostly unconsciously and have an enormous negative impact on Indigenous peoples’ health and wellbeing. When Indigenous individuals attempt to make this impact visible, the patterns play up again, often more violently than before. This happens because organizations involved in these forms of consumptions prioritize the optics of the engagement according to their interests rather than the quality and ethics of relationships. In this context of historical trauma and systemic re-traumatization, it is understandable that Indigenous people who experience this on an ongoing basis develop coping languages that can only be shared with people who “get it”: who can relate through their own experiences of similar forms of pain. Part of our work has been to attempt to translate these languages of coping with continuous trauma in ways that make the impact of colonialism on Indigenous bodies, minds, and communities intelligible to nonIndigenous people. This type of translation aims to visibilize normalized patterns of consumption of Indigeneity and to develop collective capacity to address this enduring dynamic, which cannot be stopped with the intellect alone. As an illustration of this type of translation we reproduce an excerpt of the poem “Why I can’t hold space for you anymore?”xv below. The poem is accompanied by an exercise that invites non-Indigenous people to notice the ways that even seemingly benevolent forms of engagement can reproduce extraction and exploitation in ways that are socially sanctioned. Do you really want to know why I can’t hold space for you anymore? Because you see my body as an extension of your entitlements Because I have held space for you before and every time, the same thing happens You take up all the space and expect me to use my time, energy and emotion in service of fulfilling your desires: to validate you as someone who is good and innocent to be the appreciative audience for your self-expression to provide the content of a transformative learning experience to perform my trauma to affirm your innocence to celebrate your self-image to center your feelings to absolve you from guilt to be always generous and generative to filter what I say in order not to make you feel uncomfortable to make you feel loved, important, special and safe and you don’t even realize you are doing itxvi However, the practice of translation that is illustrated in this poem is not meant to mobilize critique to establish a new standard of wokeness or moral authority – neither is it meant to contribute to “cancel culture”. Instead, this practice of translation can help us to dissolve fragilities, to unlearn harmful patterns and to enable more generative and ethical responses, especially in situations where we feel the discomfort of having our self-images challenged. Our invitation is for a political practice of decluttering and getting to zero, of healing and wellbeing where the call for maturity, sobriety and accountability is for everyone: where no one is off the hook. Next, we offer three scenarios to illustrate a practice of translation that can potentially enable the possibility of different forms of engagement with Indigeneity. Scenario 1: Losing hope Imagine a room where all the three patterns of consumption of Indigeneity (extraction, paternalism and aggressive projection) are at work. An Indigenous person whose sense-making and sensibility does not conform to settler expectations of aspirations for upward mobility was asked whether they felt their institution was making strides towards reconciliation: Indigenous person (gentle ironic tone): I am trying to get rid of hope [unspoken subtext: the usual hope of business-as-usual that is actually a barrier to any genuine reconciliation: interrupting settler’s hope of transcending colonial privilege without giving anything up] Non-Indigenous person (enthusiastic paternalistic tone): Oh no! I am so sorry you feel that way! Let me know if you need to talk. I am always here for you! Don’t be hopeless! Indigenous person (another attempt at gentle irony): People sometimes cannot hear what I say. I think I do not express myself very clearly [unspoken subtext: you have clearly missed my point] Non-Indigenous person (even more enthusiastic paternalistic tone): Don’t worry, when you find your voice and your stories we will be here to listen to you. I have a son with a disability and I understand you really well: my son took a long time to speak, but eventually he found his beautiful voice and I was there to listen to him! Indigenous person (sarcastic tone, speaking only to themselves): That is it. There really is no hope that they will ever get it. What would be the risks for the Indigenous person to expose this dynamic in the room, for instance by actually speaking the unspoken subtext? What if this Indigenous person said: “You don’t really get it, do you? You don’t even know how much harm you have caused or the harm you are causing right now. You don’t know that your ‘success’ as a settler or an immigrant happens at the expense of my body, of my people and of the land. You don’t know that your hope is the hope of the continuity of violence and unsustainability. Your deficit theorization of me cannot even fathom that I can use irony, let alone sarcasm.” Consider what would happen next: who would feel attacked or offended; who and what would take up most of the space; what tropes of defensiveness or virtue signalling would be playing out; who would seek validation; who would be accused of not playing by the rules or of creating a “toxic environment”; who would have to bear the collective emotional load of this situation? If you consider the cost/benefit calculation happening for the Indigenous person in this scenario or similar ones, you might understand why the last comment was kept to themselves, and why the subtext often remains unspoken. Pause. We invite you to hold space for your own responses to this scenario: don’t invest or judge, just observe the conversations that are happening within you now. We often use the GTDF “bus methodology”xvii for this process – imagine there is a bus of people within you, people at the front (who you know), in the middle (who rarely speak) and at the back (who you don’t even know). Choose three passengers and just observe what they are saying, thinking, feeling, their insecurities, perceived entitlements and vulnerabilities, how old they are, what hopes and aspirations they hold, how their fragilities manifest and how these hopes and aspirations can be harmful for others. Remember that if you do not have the capacity to hold space for your own complexities and paradoxes, there is no chance you will be able to hold space for the complexities and paradoxes around you. Now let’s center the Indigenous person’s body and their experience for a minute. Although the subtext ended up with a layer of humour for the Indigenous person, and keeping it unspoken ‘protected’ them from (more) potential backlash, our collective incapacity to even notice the affective dynamics of the conversation and the fact that the subtext is unintelligible for most people involved in this scenario has an enormous cost. The Indigenous person’s silence is usually perceived as an inability to communicate rather than a careful calculation of how to keep the integrity of one’s body and being in a historically and systemically harmful normalized situation. Indigenous bodies that have been exposed to this continuous violence, particularly bodies that are visibly racialized and that do not conform with normalized notions of ability or aspirations for upward mobility, are conditioned and expected to absorb the impact of this violence. The fact that these expectations are often unspoken does not make them, or the consequences of failing to meet them, any less real. In this case, reading the room and calculating risk at every second is an exhausting practice of both safety and survival. Meanwhile, non-Indigenous bodies, particularly, but not exclusively, white bodies, are conditioned to expect appeasement and deference to their authority, unrestricted autonomy and arbitration. For many non-Indigenous people, this expectation is so normalized that they don’t even consciously notice it. In this context, they do not have to learn to “read the room”, to consider how they are being “read” by others (especially systemically marginalized others), or to pay attention to what is present in the space but not being said (which is actually much more important than what is being said). We have an internal joke that says that when non-Indigenous people can see the eyes of Indigenous people rolling out of their sockets even when their actual eye-balls and faces remain unphased, that is when people may be starting to “get it”. This joke also illustrates that an important part of the coping language of trauma is to process things through humor, including self-deprecating humor, which desensitizes these Indigenous peoples to the systemic belittlement and arrogance that they face on a daily basis. This strategy is a double-edged sword, though. On the one hand, this form of self-regulation and ability to laugh at oneself and at one’s context can create more empathy, humility, self-reflexivity, generosity and resilience. On the other hand, these traits can be abused by non-Indigenous people when Indigenous people are perceived to be wise, resilient, “strong” and able to take on more (emotional) labor. In fact, this can be weaponized by non-Indigenous people as an alibi to claim that they could not possibly have known about these costs because Indigenous peoples do not make them visible; in some cases, non-Indigenous people even deny that the costs exist at all. Scenario 2: condescending tea Imagine the following scenario happening in the current context of a global pandemic. An Indigenous person was invited to give an online seminar about Indigenous practices of relationality at a university to a group of 20 people. The Indigenous person accepted the invitation on the condition that the number of people did not increase. The Indigenous person expressed that this was a requirement related to their cultural safety and wellbeing. They also noted that it was important for the integrity of the pedagogical process to have a small group of people. The Indigenous person was reassured by the university that their needs would be met. Three days before the event, without any advance warning, the Indigenous person was told, with enthusiasm, that there were one hundred people already registered for the event. The assumption was that Indigenous person would be very happy that their audience had grown exponentially. The Indigenous person expressed that the number of people was not what had been agreed. The response from the university was that perhaps only 50 would show up. The Indigenous person reiterated the reasons why, for their cultural safety and wellbeing, the expansion of the event was inappropriate. The response from the university was that the Indigenous person should step up into the role of a celebrity and be grateful for the platform, the opportunity to disseminate ideas and help people to get along. The Indigenous person felt like cancelling the event, but sought mentorship from other Indigenous people who advised them that it was clear that it was important to bring a message that could interrupt the harmful patterns that were happening in that context. The session went ahead. There were more than one hundred people present and the event was also broadcast on Facebook without the Indigenous person’s consent. In their talk, the Indigenous person used the scenario as an example of common patterns of consumption and instrumentalization of Indigenous bodies and ways of knowing. Three weeks later, the Indigenous person received a package in the post from the university. In the package there were three bags of tea and an empty card with a printed note with the word “thank you” on it. On the same day that the package arrived the same university published a press release about a prominent Indigenous artist donating a body of their work to the university and endorsing the university’s efforts in settler-Indigenous relations. The email centered the university’s benevolent role in creating visibility for Indigenous people. In attempting to translate the frustrations involved in this event and the patterns of consumption in which it is embedded, we came to a framework that tried to make visible how the three forms of consumption of Indigeneity described previously could map onto three “flavours” of Indigeneity being offered in a supermarket shelf: sweet, savory or sour. Sweet Indigeneity celebrates efforts of reconciliation and is projected onto (and enacted by) the “grateful Indian” who is thankful for opportunities for inclusion, or the “guru Indian” who bridges cultures, heals historical wounds, and leads everyone in the path of oneness and integration. Savory Indigeneity offers accounts of colonial trauma that absolve those who listen to them from the guilt of colonialism. Savory Indigeneity is projected onto (and enacted by) either the “sad Indian” who is grateful for your acknowledgment of harm, or the “ecowarrior Indian” who will fight against pipelines and connect you with “nature” again. Both sweet and savory Indigeneity are easily romanticized. Romanticization is a double-edged sword that is ultimately unsustainable. On the one hand, it can mobilize interest, enthusiasm, and “investment” in these forms of Indigeneity; on the other hand, romanticized projections are quickly undone when those who hold them are confronted with the diversity, complexities and paradoxes of Indigenous peoples and contexts. Sour Indigeneity breaks romanticizations and pushes the comfort zones further, offering an opportunity for consumers to touch pain in a rewarding way. It is expressed in the “angry Indian” who will help you prove to yourself that, by listening to traumatic stories, you are a virtuous ally, different from the “other” settlers. In this market, the vulnerability of Indigenous individuals is unevenly distributed. In general, the more an Indigenous person’s physiology (body type, shape, skin color, neuro-typicality, gender identification), aesthetics, aspirations, language, communication, sense making and sensibilities aligns with settler upwardly mobile (white or multicultural) aesthetics and aspirations, the less vulnerability this individual will face, since their body will not be immediately perceived as a threat and pre-emptively activate fragilities, insecurities and passive or active aggression. On the other hand, institutions may also fetishize non-normative bodies (that look very different) in order to meet their desired projection of having their brand “look diverse”. In this case the pressure to conform to expectations and place one’s body in display and at the service of institutional branding is even higher. While Indigeneity can be either romanticized, instrumentalized, deficit theorized, or perceived as a threat, there is no market for the unsavory flavours of the realness of colonial violence or the realness of humanity for that matter – the exhaustion, the frustration, the boredom, the bitterness, the beautiful mixed with the ugly, the broken and the messed up in everything and everyone. However, there is an important gift in this realness that we would like to highlight in the braiding inquiries and practices that we aim to support. This gift yet to be gifted has a message that we don’t want to hear: it asks us all to “grow up” in a society that offers no incentives for that to happen: a society that promises the colonial entitlement to a continuous coddled childhood of consumption of pleasures and avoidance and numbing of pain. Thus, the gift of realness cannot “land”: it cannot be received, because there is an insatiable hunger for consumption, because there is already too much clutter, and because we see ourselves as too fragile and unable to bear the pain of this gift. The phrase “cannot land” also points to the fact that it is the land, more than human bodies, that is bearing the costs of our immaturity, our insobriety and our incapacity to interrupt the violence and to heal together. Therefore, the gift of the real still needs to be offered, continuously, despite the costs and the risks of backlash and weaponization. We talk more about this gift in the final scenario. Scenario 3: Refusal and resistance Imagine a scenario where an Indigenous person spent a number of hours over weeks supporting a racialized colleague to debrief the forms of violence that continue to happen through process of “inclusion” in this colleague’s organization. The Indigenous person did this in their spare time, out of solidarity, without any compensation. The collaboration focused particularly on the need for the visibilization of the emotional labor that is placed on IBPOC bodies and that goes unrecognized. The racialized colleague decided to create a list of people whose emotional labor they felt was invizibilized within and beyond the organization they worked in order to acknowledge their labor. The list was created by the racialized colleague, however, the name of the Indigenous person who helped identify the problem was not in the list: their labor went unrecognized. Next, the racialized colleague sent an email requesting more “help”, more time, more labor, that would also go unrecognized. The Indigenous person decided not to respond to this email and many other emails that followed. The racialized colleague became upset and believed he deserved an explanation. The Indigenous person felt that these demands for care and service (that go unrecognized) indicate that the other person was overestimating the tether of the relationship – in other words, the Indigenous person does not feel that the feelings and perceived entitlements of the racialized colleague are their problem to solve. The “silent treatment” in this case can be interpreted as both refusal and resistance. It is refusal to have one’s labor exploited further and it is resistance to the perceived entitlement and demand for care and service. In institutional contexts, informed refusal is often interpreted as informational or capacity deficit, and passive resistance, that can happen in many forms, is often interpreted as incompetence. However, when sitting with this issue, we felt that “labour” in this case was not the best framing to explain the problem. The mode of non-consumptive relationality that the Indigenous person was honoring was not a calculated transaction that expects recognition or capital as a form of payment in return for services. In the modern/colonial economy of worth, invisibilized labor should be recognized, rewarded and exalted, but the Indigenous person in this scenario was not interested in recognition, affirmation, validation or compensation. Instead, the Indigenous person felt that generosity had been abused, reflecting a systemic pattern. However, this generosity is not offered as service, but as a gift. Not recognizing this gift not only dishonors and invizibilizes the pain and burden of carrying the gift, but also the care and regard that are also offered by those who give the gift to those who receive it. Modernity/coloniality recognizes that the Indigenous mode of relationality based on gift giving is dangerous because it has the power to crash modern/colonial economiesxviii. Thus, historically, governments have tried to curb or shut down these practices, for example, when potlaches were forbidden by law. If gift giving as a mode of relationality, has been exiled by modernity, it is understandable that that we have lost the ability to “sense” the ethical imperatives involved in this practice that were invisibilized in this situation and that are unimaginable in mainstream institutions. Translating the expectations involved in this context is a long and layered process that starts with small steps. The first relevant question in this case would be “What are our obligations when a gift is offered?” Reciprocity is the usual answer, but in a metabolic sense, reciprocity is not a return or direct repayment of a favor, but a form of honoring a relationship (that requires an acknowledgement of the gift and of the gift carrier) and the obligations that come with it by “returning” a commitment to the metabolic movement towards the healing and wellbeing of everything. Perhaps it would be useful to reflect on how we can gift our gifts with trust, respect, consent, reciprocity and accountability as suggested by Kyle Whytexix. What would each of these words mean, not just in theory but also in practice, and how would they manifest in this context of gift giving? And what would these words mean and how would they manifest in the context of gift receiving? What about their meanings and manifestations in relation to the gift itself as a living entity? And how would questions of costs, burden and pain feature in this “protocol” (which, like “labour” is also a problematic word)? Perhaps, instead of protocol a better word here would be “ethical imperative”. The ethical imperatives of gift exchanges would require a transition away from modern/colonial economies of worth and exchange-value towards a form of visceral responsibility that is not an intellectual choice or a matter of convenience. This is where the work of “getting to zero” manifests, where affective economies of scarcity and accumulation are interrupted. This is also where braiding becomes possible, as an opening that can enable the possibility of a new form of entangled coexistence. This orientation requires gradually moving relationship building: Away from entitlements, towards accountabilities Away from cost/benefit calculations, towards honoring gifts Away from transactions, towards gratitude and reciprocity Away from projections, towards facing realness (the good, the bad, the broken and the messed up within and around us) Away from accumulation, towards decluttering Away from playing to score, towards renouncing the game Away from being coddled, towards being coached Away from seeking drama, towards seeking depth Away from hope and hopelessness, towards trust in moving together Away from separability, towards entanglement Away from centering humanity, towards centering the unbound metabolism of the land Conclusion Many people who encounter this work for the first time have asked us for checklists of what to do in the work towards braiding. This suggests to us that while there is often a genuine desire to develop different kinds of relationships between different sensibilities, this is often accompanied by impatience for the long-term, non-linear, process-oriented work that is actually required if we want to learn to live together differently. While we find the desire for checklists problematic, we have also tried to come up with a checklist that gestures towards the commitments that braiding entails. However, unlike most checklists, we emphasize that these are not one-time actions or procedures, but rather a set of difficultto-develop dispositions that can help people strengthen and deepen a sustained orientation to braiding work. As a pedagogical strategy, this list contrasts the work towards braiding with normalized desires to “feel good, look good, do good and move forward” that we have often encountered in mainstream circles and institutionsxx. We reproduce the checklist here as an illustration of the orientation of this work, which applies to all sensibilities. We suggest that: 1. Instead of expecting to “feel good”, try un-numbing to the collective pain of the historical and systemic violence that subsidizes our comforts; sensitizing yourself to your complicity and responsibilities in relation to historical/systemic harm and the pain of the land-metabolism we are part of; 2. Instead of expecting to “look good”, try interrupting our socially conditioned narcissism and “grow up”: embrace the responsibility for composting your insecurities, projections, fragilities, harmful entitlements and aspirations, and desires for certainty, innocence, authority, autonomy, protagonism, praise, attention and validation; 3. Instead of expecting to “do good”, try showing up differently to the collective work: doing what is needed and you can do, rather than what you want to do; develop stamina for the mess, the frustrations and the storms ahead; 4. Instead of expecting to “move forward”, try digging deeper and relating wider: learning to sense and stay at the edge, learning from failure and from mistakesxxi, mapping the ditches; emphasizing the integrity of the process and maintenance of ethical relationships, rather than the pace or the destinationxxii. Acknowledgements: We would like to acknowledge the land as a living entity, its invisibilized gifts and the violence it suffers continuously as a result of our collective immaturity. We also acknowledge the Indigenous peoples on whose territories we live and work. We are particularly grateful to the Musqueam people and the people of the Dish With One Spoon Territory: the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas and Haudenosaunee; as well as our collaborators in the “Teia das 5 Curas” Indigenous network in the global south, and those who have offered invaluable comments to earlier versions of this article. We recognise the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Musagetes Foundation for the inquiries and initiatives that inform this article. Whyte, Kyle. "Too late for indigenous climate justice: Ecological and relational tipping points." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11, no. 1 (2020): 1-7. ii See the works of Anibal Quijano, Walter Mignolo, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Arturo Escobar, and Maldonado Torres iii Stein, Sharon., Andreotti, Vanessa., Suša, Rene., Amsler, Sarah., Hunt, Dallas., Ahenakew, Cash., Jimmy, Elwood., Cardoso, Camilla., Pitaguary, Benicio., Pitaguary, Rosa. & Siwek, Dino. 2020. “Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures: Lessons learned thus far”. Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE), 4(1), 43-65; Stein, Sharon, Vanessa Andreotti, Rene Suša, Cash Ahenakew, and Tereza Čajková. 2020. "From “education for sustainable development” to “education for the end of the world as we know it”." Educational Philosophy and Theory: 1-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1835646 iv Ahenakew, Cash. Towards Scarring Our Collective Soul Wound. Musagetes, 2019; Mika, Carl, Vanessa Andreotti, Garrick Cooper, Cash Ahenakew, and Denise Silva. "The ontological differences between wording and worlding the world." Language Discourse & Society 8, no. 1 (2020): 17-32. v Andreotti, Vanessa. Hospicing Modernity: Partying with harmful ways of living. North Atlantic Books, 2021. vi Jimmy, Elwood, Andreotti, Vanessa, Stein, Sharon. 2019. Towards Braiding. Guelph: Musagetes; Kapoor, Ilan. 2020. Confronting Desire: Psychoanalysis and International Development, Cornell University Press. vii Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Righting wrongs." The South Atlantic Quarterly 103, no. 2 (2004): 523-581. viii Andreotti, Vanessa. Hospicing Modernity: Partying with harmful ways of living. North Atlantic Books, 2021. ix Andreotti, Vanessa. In press. Depth Education. Journal of educational ethics and philosophy. x Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013. xi Jimmy, Elwood, Andreotti, Vanessa, Stein, Sharon. Towards Braiding. Musagetes, 2019. xii We have been working on a draft social cartography that maps the differences of brick, EDI, thread and braiding approaches in relation to artistic practices. You will find our work in progress here: decolonialfutures.net/braidingtable xiii Whyte, Kyle. "Too late for indigenous climate justice: Ecological and relational tipping points." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11, no. 1 (2020): 1-7. xiv Ahmed, Sara. On being included: Racism and diversity in institutional life. Duke University Press, 2012. xv https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/why-i-cant-hold-space-for-you-anymore/ xvi For the full text and exercise, go to: https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/why-i-cant-hold-space-for-youanymore/ xvii See https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/the-bus/ i Kuokkanen, Rauna. Reshaping the university: Responsibility, Indigenous epistemes, and the logic of the gift. ubc Press, 2011; Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013. xix Whyte, Kyle. "Too late for indigenous climate justice: Ecological and relational tipping points." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11, no. 1 (2020): 1-7. xx Ahenakew, Cash. Towards Scarring Our Collective Soul Wound. Musagetes, 2019. xxi See https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/the-gifts-of-failure/ xxii The poem “Wanna be an ally” offers examples of how these dispositions may manifest in practice: https://decolonialfutures.net/portfolio/wanna-be-an-ally/ xviii