Bodies, Colonialism, & Health

Bodies, Colonialism, & Health

By: Rachael Robertson

When Gurr discusses bodies as a site for colonialism to play out, I kept thinking of ties to ecofeminism and the ties between the earth and body as feminine entities.  Racism and colonialism permeate far further than interpersonal relations.  These ideologies are built into the structures and ways of being that make up our world and the lives that we live.  Our health is also determined by how valuable our bodies and populations are considered.  Native lands are disproportionately used as sites for nuclear waste and dumping grounds in ways that continue the genocide brought upon these people.  The continuing erasure of culture and devaluing of land and of people perpetuates the racism that the United States is built upon.  Viewing Native lands as waste sites - places for both unwanted waste and unwanted reminders about the many diverse peoples who were, and are, treated as disposable.  Native bodies and Native land stand counter to the oppressive regimes that have created this nation.

In this respect, Native bodies are political; when a country is built on the subjugation of Native bodies, their continued existence goes against the narrative that the United States wishes to promote.  The preferred narrative of the U.S. is one of starting from scratch, of individualism, of escaping oppression, of fresh starts, when in actuality it is one of genocide and slavery.  I was struck by Gurr’s discussion of the structural erasure of Native bodies, land, and culture because it captured many of these tensions.  She talks about the U.S. in terms of purity and cleanliness in which those constructed to be Other or non-normative risk contaminating the broader culture.  These terms are coded to stand for non-white bodies, but considering Native populations’ implicitly acting as reminders of the not-so-clean aspects of history, their bodies and stories pose a particular threat to the untainted image of society we wish to portray.  Because of this threat, the structural devaluing of Native culture and people continues the genocide brought upon these people that forcibly strips them of their value.

“The settler State thereby enacts an unending performance of genocide:  Native people are always in the process of disappearing but never quite gone completely, for if the violable bodies disappeared completely and the pollution were permanently removed, then how would the settler State determine its ideological boundaries?  How would the collective body be defined without a challenge against which to define - and defend - itself?” (Gurr 108).

This quote reasserts the notion that Native bodies are posed in opposition to the narrative of the United States.  Bodies are a site for argument and are inherently political when a the dominant story is one of erasure.  However, bodies are also inseparable from health and from personhood; the systematic devaluing of Native bodies does not only reflect an unspoken political agenda, but an institutional threat to the health of Native people.  In many ways, health is determined by the condition of the body.  Of course it is more complex than simply physical - mental and environmental health contribute to the overall well-being of a person and community.  Yet as much as the body defines our health status, I can’t help but think that we don’t think enough about the complex ways in which it contributes to our lives and is affected by our cultures.  It is extremely privileged to be able to not think about your own health, the accessibility of health care around you, or the systems in place that contribute to the availability of health services near you and for you.

Gurr argues that the inadequate health services available to Native people are part of the violent erasure of Native people and that we need to view this erasure as being, “reinforced through and reproduced by the physical violence against Native communities and particularly against Native women” (Gurr 109).  Re-thinking violence as being structural, personal, and political - as something that can affect communities, history, and individuals - can help to conceptualize the forces that continually work against the health of Native people.  This can incorporate the environmental racism, the issues within Indian Health Services, the lack of health and reproductive health resources for women, and explicit violence against women.  While using the term violence seems extreme, the historical devaluing of Native people is extreme.  Situating violence in the present while rooting it in the colonial and racist logics that have contributed to the current moment reveals the severity of health disparities for Native populations.  

Pictured below:  Graphic of native lands situated near Nuclear power sites – just one of many of the ways that environmental racism takes shape

Source: http://www.nrc.gov/images/reading-rm/doc-collections/maps/emergency-native-american-reservations.png

Reference:

Gurr, Barabara. Reproductive Justice.  New jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2015.  Print.