Klee Benally talks with Kevin and Natasha Tucker of Primal Anarchy podcast (also black and green press) back in April 2021. Thinking about this part (starting 40:25) and my own positionality, how it impacts my thinking, fears, path forward, etc.:
"I think like, there's a lot of people, where they like sort of concretize concepts, ideas, they want to celebrate that, and sort of make something just of that moment. And that's why I don't like a lot of academics. I think these ideas become proprietary on some levels. They become a position where you stick a flag, and that idea, that, you know, dynamic, is something has always been colonial.
I'm not interested in decolonizing anarchism. I think... anybody who usually says 'let's decolonize anarchism, let's decolonize this.' usually like... you know what you're proposing, right? You know that like, these ideas and understandings are a sort of like an overall contradiction that, you know, is just gonna... is like a hamster wheel or something. I'm not interested in those conversations or proposals.
But I will say, you know, and I think this might be important for your listeners, just to continue a bit of like orientation in relation to my politics and maybe this is useful for this part of the conversation. Um, is that the matriarchs in Dziłíjiin, Black Mesa who are part of the ongoing resistance to forced relocation really have deeply shaped my approach and understanding the dominant social order and its politics. You know, I have a strong affinity with anarchism, but not anarchist identity.
As I mentioned, um, and it's not a position that, you know for me, it's not what white anarchism wasn't doing for me, you know. It's more about the propositions of mutual aid, direct action, voluntary association, um, are familiar with and translatable through it's geneaology-- though, I guess I should be clear, it's just like though anarchism's geneology is nothing I really desire to be tethered to, I further offer that this position of Indigenous anarchism, I guess, is just that there can be no law above nature. Um, and it's the most I think sort of simple way of communicating what Indigenous anarchism is and should be. Um, and I don't know how much there needs to be built around that, um, aside from, just understanding what our orientations from our original teachings are in relation to that. And what the existing, you know, problems that we're facing, how that could be then reconciled as potential solutions to address those problems."
https://primalanarchy.net/podcast/2021/4/18/episode-27-interview-with-klee-benally
#KleeBenally #AnarchoPrimitivism #IndigenousAnarchy #Unknowable #Autonomy #AntiColonial
**Edited to add correct spelling of Diné word, Dziłíjiin, for so-called Black Mesa
