Lakota experiences of security: self and the social
Date
2016
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The dissertation focuses on the Lakota Sioux and begins with exploring puzzles at the intersections of colonialism, (in)security, and militarization. It focuses how the engagement of traditional cultural practices acts as a means of transforming and navigating the settler colonial social order — for the Lakota, individual transformation is closely related to social transformation. Certain relational Lakota ways of being inform decolonial action and act as an ontological challenges to Descartes-oriented Western philosophical thought. This work represents an exploration of multiple ways the Lakota have come to understand security. Interviews and experiences with Lakota men and women reveal different conceptualizations of security and insecurity, conceptualizations that resist the traditional security framework. The intersection(s) of security, military, and colonialism creates tensions, paradoxes, and ruptures, that, when given attention, can significantly further the study of security. It is within intersecting and overlapping spaces that interesting puzzles emerge. As Indigenous people who have had a long history of military engagement, while still living inside of the US (one of the most, if not the most, militarized state in the world), Lakota experiences and understandings have the potential to greatly enrich the International Relations (IR) study of security. In spite of this, they maintain a distinct sense of self — both culturally and politically. Foregrounding Lakota experiences provides a critical possibility, the opening of space for engagement and transformation of the phenomenal social order, while also providing a path to interrogate Western philosophical thought. ☐ An important aspect to how the Lakota were able to survive was their foundation in traditional ways of life. These traditional ways not only influenced Lakota social arrangement (such as gender roles, guidelines of how to be good relatives, and socially organizing societies or institutions), but they also emphasized the need for spiritual perception that is lacking in much of modern life. These Lakota social, cultural, and spiritual practices provided a foundation that permitted the Lakota to persevere through the most extreme hardships and oppressions. Lakota traditional ways of life allowed the Lakota to make it through genocide, warfare, and violence — all key themes thoroughly examined within the traditional security studies paradigm. As a result, the loss (or potential loss) of traditional ways of life evokes a greater sense of insecurity than physical security threats. The Lakota recognize the importance of traditional practices within their communities and that, through self- and community-affirmative cultural practices, they are engage and transform the phenomenal social order. ☐ This dissertation also offers a remapping (or reorientation) of IR through the engagement of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his work on the science of the subject and phenomenology. Lacan acts as a means of interpreting Lakota experiences and worldviews for an IR audience by putting forward a framework of understanding the dialect relationship between self- and community-affirmative cultural practices and transformation of the colonial social order. Transformation of the social order comes from intervening upon the master signifier of settler colonialism.
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Keywords
Decolonization, Indigenous Peoples, Jacques Lacan, Lakota Sioux, Ontological Security, Settler Colonialism