MEDIA INDIGENA
Media Indigena, hosted by Rick Harp, offers a weekly roundtable focusing on Indigenous issues and current events occurring across North America. Episodes are diverse in content, and cover topics include contemporary issues of Indigenous justice, sovereignty, and resistance. Episodes frequently host guests, creating space for a variety of Indigenous voices, perspectives, and lived experiences.
Episode Discussion| transcript | audio
“The Supreme Court Case You’ve Likely Heard Zero About(but ought to)”
The episode titled “The Supreme Court Case You’ve Likely Heard Zero About (but ought to)” dives deep into issues of Indigenous justice and ways that settler nation-states seek to erode and erase Indigenous sovereignty. Specifically, this episode chronicles an ongoing court case on Canada’s Supreme Court docket concerning the sovereignty of the Sinixt tribe, a nation that spills across the borders of modern day Canada and the USA. In 2010, Rick Desautel, a member of the Sinixt tribe living within the settler territory of Washington state, went hunting and shot an Elk on the Canadian side of the border. Canadian law states that hunters must be licensed, except for Indigenous hunters who retain the right to hunt within their territorial nation. Although Desautel is an Indigenous man, Canada has declared the Sinixt tribe extinct, meaning his right to hunt is not protected without a license.
This court case exemplifies an attempt by the settler Canadian government to erase Indigenous sovereignty by deciding who exists and who doesn’t. It is a reminder that settler borders outlining the perimeter of the US and Canada are colonial artifacts that seek to undermine the territorial sovereignty of Indigenous nations, especially those that don’t cleanly lie within the settler lines. As Rick outlines, the burden of proof now lies on Rick and the Sinixt tribe to show that they do exist and are not an extinct nation. Indigenous sovereignty is inherent and is not something that is granted by settler colonists or anyone. The mere fact that the Canadian government somehow assumes the role of determining who exists and who does not underlines the endurance of colonial oppression.
In “Acknowledging the im/possible”, Ruffo addresses ongoing Canadian colonization as a conquest with two major thrusts: the starvation of Indigenous groups, and the attempt to erase Indigenous cultural practices.1 Declaring the Sinixt peoples extinct seeks to achieve both of these things: it cuts off access to hunting, jeopardizing Sinixt food sovereignty, and tries to systematically erase Sinixt traditions and actual existence.
Indigenous communities should never have to prove that they exist. Rick Harp, alongside Kim TallBear and Ken Williams, explore the details of this case as a modern manifestation of efforts to destroy and confiscate Indigenous sovereignty. In addition to the Sinixt, the territories of numerous Indigenous nations straddle colonial borders, placing the practice of Indigenous sovereignty at risk. Episodes like this are key to raising awareness around these injustices and inspiring greater resistance.
1: Robinson, Hill. “Rethinking the Practice and Performance of Indigenous Land Acknowledgement.” Canadian Theatre Review 177 (January 2019): 20–30. https://doi.org/10.3138/ctr.177.004.