Neil made a remark about collective joy in his last essay, the precarity of it during a PRIDE march in which he was also hyper aware of his surroundings. It made me reflect again that we need more joy in our movements. I’m certainly not the first person to say this or make this observation, there is frequent lamentaion that we are a glum bunch and it’s no wonder that nobody wants to come to our meetings or hang out with us when we’re angry all the time. Sure we’ve got good reasons to be angry, but we’ve got good reasons for joy too. There’s a world full of relations and they’re worth saving and celebrating.
Thor: Ragnarok is a great example of this, and why it has replaced The Usual Suspects as my favourite move. That is one of those movies that plays with your head because did it even happen the way that Soze/Kint described it? How could it if he was making things up from the notice board, and yet some version of it must have because the ship did explode. But now it’s Ragnarok and for that I’ll blame Daniel Heath Justice.
Kerry and I interviewed Daniel for our podcast, Medicine for the Resistance, shortly after Black Panther had come out. I had made a remark that I wanted our Black Panther. We got Indian Horse, I told him, a story of sadness and trauma. A necessary story, but still. Kerry got Black Panther, a celebration of Blackness and future possibility that I both enjoyed and envied. Daniel suggested that Ragnarok was that movie, a joyful confrontation of colonialism and thus began my fixation on this movie.
There is something silly and joyful about this movie in the midst of the grief and loss. Earlier introductions to Thor were more serious and later outings would deal with the ensuing depression but in this movie Taika Waititi brought his cheekiness to a colonial narrative about who Asgardians are, about the difference between complicity and implication. The people are sympathetic, and yet we cannot escape their relative ease coming at the expense of those nine realms that Odin conquered and the history that he literally painted over. “Goblets and garden parties” Hela says derisively while smashing the ceiling, “proud to have it, ashamed of how he got it.”
She could have been talking about any of the colonial countries. Australia, Canada, the US. All proud to have it, ashamed of how they got it. Well, except for the far right. They have no shame at all about how they got it. Their objection to CRT isn’t telling the story of how things happened, it’s the perspective shift they don’t like. I think it’s mostly the center left who is ashamed of how they got it. Talking endlessly about their privilege, completely oblivious to how this lamenting of unearned social position keeps them in the center of any conversation.
There I go again, sliding into cynicism and anger. I was writing about joy and how we need more of it.
What gives me joy in movement spaces.
Well. Being with my drum group gives me complicated joy. I say complicated because we get asked to do performances and some of them are for people who think of us as ornaments, something like a land acknowledgement that they can add to their program and check off the box. We are, in the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore citing John LeCarre, decorative beasts. But we take what opportunities we can to speak truth when we suspect or know that we are being used. I’ve scolded politicians while introducing the group, explained by we didn’t stand for the anthem, reminded them to have relationships with Indigenous communities while they make decisions without us, commented that we are the only Indigenous people in a room full of decisions being made that will impact us. The joy is in our collective existence and the fact that we are still here despite everything the state tried to do. Even now, while they relegate us to the role of decorative beasts we can take our moments to be transgressive. I find complicated joy in that. But there’s lines I won’t cross, people I won’t sing for, events I won’t allow to use me. And there are times that I, feeling like we’ve been more decorative than transgressive, withdraw from these performances. Finding my joy in our existence as a group away from these other things. Singing for ourselves. I find joy in that circle and that community.
I find joy in the foundation I helped to found along with Nora Loreto and Terrill Tailfeathers. Born from a cheeky response to a particularly wearisome settler (I told him if he felt so bad he should pay some rent and then scarpered off to Patreon to set something up so he could) we now collect thousands of dollars every month and then turn around and give it away. We fund all kinds of things from basic food and shelter to beading circles and gardening groups and people helping people. One time when my kids were much younger we were talking about something I had donated money to and hubs lamented that my heart was so big and his wallet was so small. I like giving money away, and now I can do it without bankrupting us in the process.
A friend once asked me what we do in the face of all this. And I think about that a lot because it’s easy to be overwhelmed by everything that happens. And I told him that we build things. We build things. Yes we burn it all down, there’s a lot that needs to be taken down but we also need to build things because otherwise why bother with burning. Nobody wants to live in rubble. Going back to the M4R podcast, we also had a conversation with another Daniel, this one Delgado, a Quechua Jew and he talked about a Quechua belief in multiple worlds which isn’t that different from other cultures who have worlds ending and being replaced all the time. Even the Christian tradition has this, the flood story is arguably about a world ending and a new one coming into existence. The point Daniel D was making is that worlds end. It is inevitable. And you don’t know what’s coming next, if you’re going to be on top of things or if the giants will or if, to return to Daniel HJ, it really is a raccoon’s world and we just live in it. So our job is to be ready. To save the things worth saving so that when it all burns down, and I think this current world is going to end in fire one way or another, we will have the things we need to rebuild.
So that gives me joy. And weirdly enough the the Fall of Rome podcast gave me joy in this vein because if Rome fell then anything is possible. I remember listening to it and consciously thinking that. Rome fell. We’ll be ok.
Look right now and you will see We're only here by the skin of our teeth as it is So take heart and take care of your link with life and
Oh carry it on