Reference no: EM133351409

Question: Simpson's Chapter 10 ("I See Your Light") is not about comparison in the study of religion. However, she does discuss "the confines of Western thought" (175), "recognition from the state of our cultural distinctiveness (176), refusal of "the state's framing of the issues we organize around" (176), "refusal of settler colonialism coupled with the embodiment of the alternative" (177-178), "refus[ing] settler colonialism and its many manifestations...[and]...not allow[ing] settler colonialism to frame the issues facing Indigenous peoples" (178), "reject[ing] the politics of recognition" (178), "refusing the framings, the constraints, and the outright lies, and misinformation of the academy" (179), and more. We could replace "state" with "academy" and "settler colonialism" the "comparative religion" and we could see a refusal to submit to the lens of Western scholarship. Given what you have read of Simpson, do you think that, if the Western study of religion learned anything from Indigenous knowledges (say, Nishnaabeg intelligence and grounded normativity), it would have to be the total and complete decolonization of scholarship and undoing of current systems of exploitation, capitalism, land dispossession and more? What can we learn from Indigenous theory aside from "stop colonizing us!"?