a conversation with Christine Nobiss
Christine Nobiss, Decolonizer - Iowa Land Decolonization Project and SHIFT Project.
Christine Nobiss is Plains Cree-Saulteaux of the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Not only is she a Decolonizer with Seeding Sovereignty, but founder of Indigenous Iowa and Little Creek Camp.
Indigenous and environmental justice has always been a passion for Christine--her first job at the age of nineteen was working for the New Brunswick Aboriginal Peoples Council. She is a speaker, writer, artist, organizer and movement mentor in Iowa, and across the nation and is focused on dismantling colonial-imperialist institutions, and replacing them with Indigenous practices created in synchronicity with this land.
Christine graduated from the University of Iowa with a Masters Degree in Religious Studies (with a focus on Native American Religion and Culture) and a Graduate Minor in American Indian Native Studies. She fights for a better future for her two small children.
For Seeding Sovereignty, Christine directs the Iowa Land Decolonization Project, the SHIFT project and is a prolific writer of in-depth articles, blog posts and zines of current events. Recently, Christine created the Riverland Native Voter Project, which is a joint effort between Indigenous Iowa and Seeding Sovereignty. For 2019, Christine is co-organizing the first ever Iowa Water Festival in Des Moines, curating Indigenous@SOCAP19 in San Francisco, speaking at Kent State University, presenting a paper at the 40th American Indian Workshop in Poznań, Poland and much more.
She is particularly honored to attend, as a delegate, the 18th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to be held in New York City this year. In Iowa and beyond, she works hard to build unity with other organizations like the Indian Problem, Women’s Indigenous Media, Bold Iowa, The Possibility Alliance, Midwest Telegraph, 100 Grannies, and many more. Unity, she believes, is key to overcoming the heteropatriarchy and to combating climate change in the next 12 years.
In this episode Christine updates us on her current work with Seeding Sovereignty and the SHIFT Project, speaks on her experience as working with multiple communities and organizations in a graceful, impactful way, and she answers our questions about the role settler-descendants can play as allies to the work of Native communities. In this episode we touch upon topics such as the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s Movement (MMIW), pipelines and their relation to increased sex trafficking, Christine’s experiences at Standing Rock, and what Native Communities and organizations need to succeed (spoiler alert—FUNDING to finance the work they have already been doing for decades). Christine’s fierce passion and graceful ability make her one of the greatest community organizers and activists of our time and we are grateful she has taken the time to speak with us on some very emotionally difficult topics.
K: So tell us about your work right now with Seeding Sovereignty. Tell us a little bit about the organization and some of your projects that are going on like SHIFT.
C: Seeding Sovereignty is an Indigenous woman-led nonprofit organization that doesn’t really have a home, necessarily. I mean, we are technically based out of New York City in Brooklyn, actually, but that’s where Janet lives, who founded Seeding Sovereignty. But, I’m in Iowa and Erin’s in New Mexico and then we have interns elsewhere and people that work with us on different projects all over the country and in Canada. In fact, we have somebody coming on board very soon, I hope, to work on a project that is in Canada in the Tar Sands, so that’s a project that we’re ramping up right now concerning solar power. And what I do with Seeding Sovereignty is decolonize, I guess my title on my business card says decolonizer. I chose that title simply because Janet, our Executive Director, was asking me for a title for a long time, just something to put on the business card and I just kept not wanting to do that because I do so much of everything—what you consider organizing and that was hard because, you know, I write about a lot of different issues and I do it in many different ways. Yeah, I don’t just write, I speak, I do art, and I organize events and protects and all sorts of stuff, even lobby. So, finally, I just thought about it and I just…it’s really that I really try to do is decolonize the world. So, I just called myself Decolonizer and I have two main focuses right now: one is SHIFT, which is a program that I kind of re-vamped that we were working on with some youth and it stands for Seeding the Hill with Indigenous Free Thinkers (SHIFT) and I, basically, I’m trying to get the Indigenous perspective in this race going on because, as you know, that rarely happens. I’ve been bird-dogging candidates. I’ve talked to about eight of them so far and then I have an interview with Castro coming up on the 14th and then with Bernie on the 21st. I just asked them like why don’t you hear the word “Indigenous” in any of these National platforms? And why, you know, what do you think of the Green New Deal and why is there not more language pertaining to Indigenous sovereignty. I can’t imagine moving forward on something like this with like, you know, such a lofty idea, philosophy ideas, and not talk about Native sovereignty as all of these issues absolutely pertain to us and our sovereignty. The other project I’m working on has sort of just been just ongoing, will be ongoing, is (I am still looking for a good title) but right now, I just call it the land decolonization project and the focus is really on Iowa, but I use the work in Iowa to also take a look what’s going on all over Turtle Island and the world—even to Indigenous communities in particular when it comes to Big Ag or Agribusiness because I see that actually as a far more detrimental contributor to environmental crisis. And then also it is a massive contributor to climate change and Iowa is a big sacrifice zone. It’s the most biologically colonized state in the Country because of it. And we have a lot of issues here, I could go on and on. But that’s basically why I feel really passionate about this land decolonization project.
K: So, you also were heavily involved with the Dakota Access Pipeline and trying to work to prevent that from being built. How did that experience at Standing Rock and with the Dakota Access Pipeline, how did that influence your work?
C: It influenced it a lot because it opened up a lot of doorways. Basically, what it did was a lot of people had no idea what was going on with Indigenous people before Standing Rock or they did and they just didn’t care or whatever. I’m talking about Settler-Descendants and mainstream society and I think that changed some people’s minds about things. It’s a confluence of climate change and environmental issues and environmental injustice and Indigenous people rising up to say what we need to say because we have been fighting these things for a very long time as, you know, since we probably Invaders first stepped foot on this Shore. We’ve been giving warnings and telling people, “you can’t treat the Earth this way and so Standing Rock created a lot of visibility for the work that I have been doing for over twenty years. And that was really cool because I had been loosely organized in this system, kind of these meetings every once in a while with, you know, Indigenous people that would come in and around the state to Iowa City just to meet and talk about issues. I’ve been doing that for a few years and, you know, I kept saying I need to start this organization that is for Indigenous people in Iowa because it’s like 90% White here and then there’s some Sasketchewan Nation, but they’re like an hour away from here and they’re doing their own thing and they’re doing amazing things, but there’s a lot of us in Iowa that don’t have, you know, we’re not Sasketchewan and, you know, 70% of Natives now live off the Reservation, so I felt a great need to start something for Natives that aren’t living on the Reservation because we need those ties because it can be quite lonely. So I guess what Standing Rock allowed me to do was just really apply my thoughts into action. Indigenous Iowa was founded through my work at Standing Rock and I was able to get a lot of support from people. It was amazing, actually. I never knew that…I never thought that would ever happen. I’ve been doing this work for a long time. My first job with the New Brunswick Aboriginal People Council in New Brunswick where I was fighting for fishery rights, but like, you know, I just, I never thought that people would be so…that we would wake up to that extent. And there’s just been some great support from local people all over the state for Indigenous Iowa and then I heard about Little Creek Camp, which was a continuation of the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The camps were closed in February 2016 up in Standing Rock and continued the fight here in Iowa for another 6 months so that’s how Standing Rock affected my work.
K: Yeah, and through all of the work you are doing, it clearly requires you to work with many different groups and different coalitions. Whenever Carolyn Raffensperger, our Executive Director at SEHN< talks about you, she consistently brings up the fact that you move with so much grace in the world and you’re so skilled at working with all of these different groups, but that’s a difficult skill to learn. I think that working in coalitions can be incredible, but it can also be very difficult and a lot of the work that you are doing, tensions can be very high..can you tell us a little bit how you learned to do that so well?
C: I don’t think it’s something learned for me, I really don’t. I just…
K: Maybe a gift?
C: Well, I don’t know if you call it a gift, I don’t even know if it’s a gift so much, I just see people as people and, you know, I of course have trouble working with certain White-led organizations because of the extractive nature of what they do, but I have no problem having a diplomatic conversation with them and letting them know why it is that I’m not happy with what they are doing. And then I just see everything as an opportunity to learn and to build bridges rather than burn them because, you know, change is not easy—real change is not easy. I mean, ideally, the kind of change we’d be having right now is a revolution, but that’s not going to happen any time soon because things won’t happen until people are extremely uncomfortable, and hurting, and worried, and dying, to be honest. And that’s just not happening in the United States right now…I mean people are dying at the birders, Indigenous women, we are dying at very high rates, it’s a crisis. Not only do we have the highest missing and murdered rate in the country, we have the highest suicide rate, which blew up in the past three years like a 139%, whereas the White population is like 33%. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that we have our issues and I can be angry sometimes, but that’s not going to get anywhere if I’m angry at people and walk away, you know? And I just truly believe that healing comes both with Indigenous People and People of Color, like the black populations, all have been affected by oppression and genocide, racism and misogyny. It comes with us healing, of course, and that comes with reparations and a atonement from, you know, the population that has benefited off of all this death and mayhem, I guess you could say. But then also, that Settler-Descendant population, at the same time, not only do they have to atone and acknowledge and to provide reparations, they also need to heal from the notions of white supremacy that have been ingrained in them and also the White Guilt. So, that’s why I’m always interested in just having conversations with people. I would have a conversation with the most backwards, White Supremacist in the country if I was given the opportunity and I would do my best to keep my temper.
K: Yeah, that’s not something a lot of us could say. Maybe you don’t see it as a skill, but it’s just something that you do so well and that is just something that is so great about you and your work because you clearly put a lot of thought into this and everything that you do, which is incredible. One of the projects you sort of mentioned is working in the intersection is pipelines and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. So that’s a situation where you’ve had to work with a bunch of different coalitions and groups and do that well…but can you tell is a little bit about the current work in that sphere?
C: Yeah, I basically write a lot because I don’t think there’s enough articles and scholarly papers and books out there covering the subject, in particular. And so I just wrote a few articles in the past year and one of them, of course, was specifically on this issue and then one was on VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act, which I feel needs a lot more attention because Trump is trying to gut that right now. And then I just wrote an article on the Abortion Bans, which actually does relate to this, as well…And I speak a lot with grassroots people on the ground that are doing this work first-hand. You know, there’s some people I know that, like, just go out and search for people. I’ve been on a search and it’s really weird. It’s really weird to be thinking to yourself, “I’m looking for, you know, a dead body. And then you’re like, oh I really want to find this person, but you know that you’re looking for a dead body, actually. And then you’re like “wow. What if I’m the person that finds that…like do you want to be the person that finds that…?” You know, like It’s a real….it really twists your mind around. I’m really close with Matthew Moon-Bear who lost his sister Olivia and I’ve talked to him for hours about what they went through searching for her and it’s just absolutely heartbreaking. And the powers-that-be they don’t have…they either…it’s a combination of racism and like lack of resources to get the job done on Reservations, in particular. And so I just try to bring attention to all these issues. I’m more interested in talking about why this is happening so that we can find, you know, the source of the problem and then like cut it off right there.
K: Yeah. And so I know that there was just a pipeline that was approved by Trudeau in Canada that you guys have been speaking our against as the Seeding Sovereignty group…and has there been any discussion of man camps and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement?
C: I forgot you mentioned pipelines, yes. So, some of the work I’ve done…okay, so you want me to respond to the pipelines and the increase in Indigenous violence in communities?
K: Oh, absolutely. I mean any information you can give us and everyone listening. I think you have incredible insight and knowledge of this sphere. So, yes, please.
C: So what’s happening with these man camps and if they’re near any Indigenous communities there is most often an increase in violence in these areas. This is nothing new to what we’ve been experiencing, you know, the relentless colonization of or territories, you know, obviously has a direct correlation to increase in the rates of violence to our people. That just goes hand in hand, of course. And so there are studies now that have come out, finally, that have proven that there is a correlation. There’s one study in Canada that examined the potential impacts associated with the Mountain Milligan Mine in British Columbia on the (insert tribe names here First Nations), it was nearby there and they found that the local community experienced a 48% increase in assaults with a weapon, 50% increase in aggravated assaults, and a 38% increase in sexual assaults, and a 37% increase in missing persons reports. I mean those are not small numbers. There’s also a report that recently came out in 2017 on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, which of course is located in the middle of the Bakken Oil Fields, and there has been a 70% increase of federal case filings since the boom, you know? And the report states that since the boom, Native American communities have reported increased rates of human trafficking, specifically sex trafficking and missing and murdered Indigenous women in their communities. And so I wrote an intervention on this, actually when I was at the UN as a representative of Seeding Sovereignty. I was at the United Nations (permanent? Check) Forum on Indigenous Issues and I was lucky enough to write an intervention while I was there and presented on this particular issue and you can actually see that intervention on our Facebook page is you scroll back to our videos in April, or actually May. It was on May 1st. I believe you can see that and the written version is also on our blog on our Seeding Sovereignty page. And, yes, there absolutely is a correlation between increased violence and Indigenous communities and the establishment of man camps and the stories…I don’t want to tell right now because sometimes they just create too much pain for me, but the stories of, you know, what they’re doing to even children—like 3-year old first, for instance, is really horrid and hard to hear.
K: definitely.
C: In terms of working with people, I work with all sorts of people. I was recently at a meeting that Carolyn had actually put on in Minneapolis and I was really honored to be invited. We spent the whole day talking about this and, you know, there were just experts from all sorts of different areas talking about this issue and seeing what it is we can do to make a difference.
Christine on art in her work:
C: Oh, boy. Yeah. Art is extremely important in presenting a message to people about what it is we are doing…because it’s vibrant and it can really affect you and it can say a message sometimes much more clearly than just words. And Indigenous People, I don’t know what it is, but we have a real talent for art and we have amazing artists in our community and it’s just something I’m really proud of. And I work with some resistance artists on different projects and it’s really an empowering feeling to be able to not just write or speak the message into a form that’s going to really show what’s going on. One of the last art builds I organized was in Des Moines and we were protesting the Wells Fargo shareholder meeting and I made sure that (I think it was the Sierra Club), I made sure that they were able to bring up one of my favorite artists. His name is Remy and he and I managed an art build where we put together pieces of art portraying the issues that Wells Fargo has created in out communities. I just remember one of them is a hung long banner, it’s like 20 feet long and it says “Stop Banking on Stolen Land” and has the Wells Fargo logo with the carriage running with the horses and rich being shot with arrows…
K: It’s a very powerful piece.
C: I just love it. And then there’s another…we made another huge banner for that march that says, “Wells Fargo Murders Communities? And that goes right to the heart of the man camps. Because if they’re funding or if they’re in bed with oil companies, then they are funding man camps and that is, essentially, murdering our communities. And [the banner] has handprints all over it and it was very visceral and provides that experience that we need sometimes in order to kind of get the picture home, get the idea home to people.
K: yeah, that connection between feeling and seeing and, you know, making sure that people are experiencing on more of a physical level the words you are putting in front of them.
C: Yeah, and I think about Seeding Sovereignty and Jackie Fawn (check spelling) who works with us from time to time and her amazing art and how that captured people’s attention quite a lot with the work we do. She actually created a piece for me for my work here in Iowa fighting Big Ag, not just like farmers, you know, corporate farmers, but CAFOS, concentrated animal feeding operations…and so, yeah, it’s a really powerful piece. It gets quite a lot of attention.
K: Yeah, she’s incredible. I do have a poster of an image she created on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Movement.
C: Oh! I think I gave you that!
K: Yes, yes you did. It’s great—it’s a very powerful and haunting, yet equally just beautiful and important image that is so inspiring and also kind of grounding at the same time.
K: So, one of the questions I was given to ask you because of its importance, and we talked a little bit about this in your bio & introduction, we talked about the fact that you are Cree, Plains Cree. If there’s one piece of Cree worldview and wisdom that you would want us to understand, deep in our bones, what would it be?
C: I don’t know why, but the first thing that popped into my head was we had more than two genders.
K: I think this is the first year that I have seen Two Spirits be represented in Pride. And I don’t know, it’s probably been touched on before and been more visible in the public, but it’s just the first year that I noticed Two Spirits being mentioned and acknowledged in Pride festivals and parades across the country.
C: Yeah, I mean they’ve been around for a bit now, but yeah, it’s becoming more prominent for sure and that’s fantastic. But, yeah, that’s the first thing that came to my mind for some reason…The way people view it varies, but generally like with Cree people, from what I’ve been told, from my people, is there were five genders, but that varies…so generally there was more than just this two gender binary thing going on. The other thing that always comes to mind right away for me is just the way I was brought up. The very different understanding of how important it is to listen to what your elders are saying and how you treat them. That seems to me, that’s huge, actually, that dictates a lot of the way I act in this world. I have mad respect for people that have been in this world for a long time and that have wisdom and away of being that needs to be emulated. So that’s another thing that really dictates how I work and I think it’s one of the reasons why I get along with a lot of people, like you said, because there are a lot of people I work with that are older than me and have a lot of time invested in their fields of work and so I just, I respect that and I never want to act like I know more than anybody else. I just really want to learn and that’s important to me.
K: yeah. And so, I guess in that same vein, what advice do you have for others who are looking to not only pursue this similar work that you are doing, but people who are looking to be effective allies in this work?
C: Hmm. That’s such a hard question. Yeah, I think…Okay, so you’re speaking particularly about…
K: Your work as a Decolonizer
C: Yeah, you’re speaking about Settler-Descendant society like allies, right?
K: Yes, yes.
C: Okay. You know, often when people ask what my mind goes right away to which is called “Accomplices not Allies” which I’ve handed out hundreds of times. I printed out so many of those and I just think it’s a really helpful piece. It basically talks about the different ways that White-led organizations or just White people in general have meddled with the stuff we’re doing and so it talks about “parachuting in” and “gatekeeping” and, you know, like trying to be one of us, which is really strange. And I think that’s a great resource right there, it’s online so it can be looked up and it’s a really short read. The other thing I tell people, so I regularly seem to get asked by White Churches and like Mennonite groups what what-have-you, to go speak and talk about like, say, the Doctrine of Discovery or like to let them know what they can do to help and what they can do to decolonize themselves and that’s always really interesting because what I always find myself saying at the very end of like the most Christian thing a Christian person can do is to give up Christianity.
K: Yeah, so that’s a hard pill to swallow.
C: And that’s a situation, yeah, I think it’s time for Christianity to go. You know, religions come and go in this world and ideologies come and go, philosophies come and go and, in my opinion, Christianity should just be on its way out now. I really don’t think Jesus would want his name being used this way. His name was used to kill, you know, millions if not a billion people around the world for the sake of land. The process of colonization is to take land and in that process mitigate the local population either through annihilation, assimilation, or slavery. And so all of this has been done, like all of this has been done because of this superiority complex created by Christianity and this….this is really silly. Like the crazy idea of the Doctrine of Discovery or Manifest Destiny or the White Man’s Burden, or whatever you want to call it, that you know, White people have this calling to go out into the world and gentrify the land and Christianize the savages so that they would be saved. I mean, how crazy is that?! And that’s still happening, regardless of what these people say. Like regardless of what the Mennonites say, “well, we don’t proselytize, we just you know, when we go on our missions to Africa, we’re just there to help.” I’m like, “no, you’re just perpetuating the same bullshit that you guys have been doing for hundreds of years. You’re just going there and you may not be killing them or threatening violence unless they decide to be a Christian, but you’re giving them things and you’re doing things with them during a time of crisis which then creates this trauma-bond with you and then they essentially, you know, they become a Christian. Right now in Africa the Mennonite religion is increasing line exponentially and why is that? Because, you know, more and more Africans are dropping their religions, their own cultural and traditional beliefs and attitudes and converting…and that’s really scary to me. So basically what I tell them is like can you just not come into our communities, can you just like work on your own issues? Because you have a hell of a lot of issues in your own communities. Like, you guys gotta figure out what’s going on in your suburbs with the isolation and the nuclear families and you guys gotta go to the places of power like Wall Street and where all of these oil companies headquarters are and you need to be focusing on that. Those are your brothers and sisters that run that. You guys need to be going into White Supremacist communities and figuring out what’s going on there because those are your brothers and sisters. I do this work because I love my relatives, my Indigenous relatives. And White people? They need to start loving their relatives. And yeah, a lot of their relatives really suck. Because look at our administration right now, like look at who’s running the US government right now? That’s horrible. But you know, I really believe that if the White population of this country started to view themselves as relatives, then they would be more interested, perhaps, in building bridges and helping make change than continuously just like calling each other out and throwing each other under the bus and being divisive. It’s one of the reasons right now that, you know, I’m feeling really worried about the Democratic Party and their ability to take down Trump because I don’t see…I really don’t see people like working together. I just see people like just Crab Bucket Syndrome, just trying to see who’s going to come out on top. We really, they really should be working together in a much, much more massive way. Because, yeah, I’m just, I’m scared, to be honest, with what’s going on.
K: yeah, that makes sense. I’m scared, too.
K: I guess my question now is, and you can of course say “no” or whatever else, but do you think that there is any way to work together responsibly? I feel like…So I think that when people hear this, particularly who are Christian, and volunteer with churches…I happen to know there is a church group who sends, I don’t know how many people, they send, but they send a group of young people out in the summers to actually go work at Standing Rock for their youth summer camps…which, of course, for someone who is not new to this work, a lot of red flags pop up for me….As a White person, I wonder—is there a way, right now, that we can work together to support things like preventing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, is there a way we can support that responsibly and not come in with White person’s Guilt or the Savior Complex? I don’t know if my question makes sense, it’s more of like this feeling of I can see where people will want to help, other people who are scared who are seeing our time kind of running out in not only in this election cycle, but things are going in a terrible direction really quickly and so this process of kind of rebuilding and seeing each other as relatives, you know, that’s gonna take time and I think that with issues that are so big and so critical and people are suffering…people want to help directly. Does that make sense? Like I’m wondering if you think there’s a way to do that or not.
C: The best....what I tell people all the time is the best way to help an Indigenous Community or Indigenous Organization, or Indigenous grassroots organizers, or any other community like POC community working on issues is to basically just give us the resources. I mean that’s what it comes down to and stop putting all sorts of..you know, there’s always like some caveat when we get resources to what it has to be used for, right? Like they know better. You know, like the Lush Foundation is one of those…I LOVE the Lush Foundation, they’ve done amazing work, but it’s really hard to get a grant from them because it has to be very specific in what it is you’re doing. I say this over and over again…The best think you can do is to just give us the resources we need because Indigenous Women are the walking embodiment of a social impact strategy. And we’ve managed to make it through 500 years of colonization and genocide all while still raising our children and maintaining our cultures and traditions. Not saying our men haven’t, I’m just specifically talking about Indigenous Women because, you know, we are the caregivers and currently, right now, in this particular society that we’re living in, there are a lot of single moms and a lot of Indigenous Women taking on other children and men that just aren’t showing up. So we are really strong, resilient, and tenacious people and we know what’s going on firsthand on the ground…We are the people that need funding. 60 billion dollars of funding each year goes to white people, goes to White-led organizations. 95% White-led, and then 70-80% of those organizations and/or people are men. And so I just really want to change that…If that’s the one thing that I could say to people that want to help is give us resources. We have the ability to deal with the situation ourselves… Think about what Noam Chomsky has said and David Suzuki and the DrawDown team, they’ve said that Indigenous People can help combat climate change, Indigenous Peoples’ Traditional Ecological Knowledge can help save the world. We just need to be heard, but we’re still not being heard to the extent that we need to be heard. We’re still not at the table at some of the most important things that are going on in the United States.
Read more of Christine’s work on the Seeding Sovereignty website.