Creole Indigeneity

Between Myth and Nation in the Caribbean

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Central & South American, Nonfiction, History, Americas, Caribbean & West Indies
Cover of the book Creole Indigeneity by Shona N. Jackson, University of Minnesota Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Shona N. Jackson ISBN: 9781452934075
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press Publication: October 25, 2012
Imprint: Univ Of Minnesota Press Language: English
Author: Shona N. Jackson
ISBN: 9781452934075
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Publication: October 25, 2012
Imprint: Univ Of Minnesota Press
Language: English

During the colonial period in Guyana, the country’s coastal lands were worked by enslaved Africans and indentured Indians. In Creole Indigeneity, Shona N. Jackson investigates how their descendants, collectively called Creoles, have remade themselves as Guyana’s new natives, displacing indigenous peoples in the Caribbean through an extension of colonial attitudes and policies.

Looking particularly at the nation’s politically fraught decades from the 1950s to the present, Jackson explores aboriginal and Creole identities in Guyanese society. Through government documents, interviews, and political speeches, she reveals how Creoles, though unable to usurp the place of aboriginals as First Peoples in the New World, nonetheless managed to introduce a new, more socially viable definition of belonging, through labor. The very reason for bringing enslaved and indentured workers into Caribbean labor became the organizing principle for Creoles’ new identities.

Creoles linked true belonging, and so political and material right, to having performed modern labor on the land; labor thus became the basis for their subaltern, settler modes of indigeneity—a contradiction for belonging under postcoloniality that Jackson terms “Creole indigeneity.” In doing so, her work establishes a new and productive way of understanding the relationship between national power and identity in colonial, postcolonial, and anticolonial contexts.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

During the colonial period in Guyana, the country’s coastal lands were worked by enslaved Africans and indentured Indians. In Creole Indigeneity, Shona N. Jackson investigates how their descendants, collectively called Creoles, have remade themselves as Guyana’s new natives, displacing indigenous peoples in the Caribbean through an extension of colonial attitudes and policies.

Looking particularly at the nation’s politically fraught decades from the 1950s to the present, Jackson explores aboriginal and Creole identities in Guyanese society. Through government documents, interviews, and political speeches, she reveals how Creoles, though unable to usurp the place of aboriginals as First Peoples in the New World, nonetheless managed to introduce a new, more socially viable definition of belonging, through labor. The very reason for bringing enslaved and indentured workers into Caribbean labor became the organizing principle for Creoles’ new identities.

Creoles linked true belonging, and so political and material right, to having performed modern labor on the land; labor thus became the basis for their subaltern, settler modes of indigeneity—a contradiction for belonging under postcoloniality that Jackson terms “Creole indigeneity.” In doing so, her work establishes a new and productive way of understanding the relationship between national power and identity in colonial, postcolonial, and anticolonial contexts.

More books from University of Minnesota Press

Cover of the book The Divided World by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book The Dionysian Vision of the World by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Celebrity and Power by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Insistence of the Material by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Designing Our Way to a Better World by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Indirect Action by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book When Eagles Fall by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Saint Genet by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book The Thought of Death and the Memory of War by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Blood Sugar by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Compulsory by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Only the Dead by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book From Light to Dark by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Cinema Approaching Reality by Shona N. Jackson
Cover of the book Oil Culture by Shona N. Jackson
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy