Sketching Arrivantcy: Self-Naming toward Decolonized Solidarity across Indigenous and Black Divides

Abstract:Black and Indigenous solidarity is often challenging despite the shared intense focus on "getting' free." While these communities are often incorrectly discussed as mutually exclusive and have histories complicated by geopolitical antagonisms between them, Vine Deloria Jr.'s 1971 proclamation about the complex challenges of generating solidarity between Black and Indigenous movements still holds relevance. Forging coalition between the two without reliance on colonially defined personal and political subjectivities or the twin projects of whiteness and capitalism is prickly. If we are "to be free," then liberation may mean naming and claiming our own Selves, including our relationships to place and others, to signal a redefined/reassigned sociocultural fit with and in relation to one another. I posit Arrivantcy—a survivant-descendant status molded from Kamau Brathwaite's animation of the arrivant into a contemporary process of self-reflective recognition and self-identification—as vital to a decolonized solidarity that addresses the unrecognized anti-Blackness and anti-Indigenous relationality articulated for us through coloniality. This theoretical sketch presents Arrivantcy as a quotidian method of forging new relationships. Alongside reenvisioning Arrivant identity and arrivantcy work, the key components of naming and claiming are explored as viable means for recognizing our colonial pasts and their continued presence while resisting coloniality in our language, which deters "unbecoming" the colonial Black-Other, as well as complicity in Indigenous colonization and genocide. This interdisciplinary articulation interrogates how embracing Arrivantcy might address the complexity of US and diasporic non-Indigenous Blackness, the nuances of African American and Indigenous coalition-building, and how it operates in praxis.