Contact without Conquest The moment of difference is reimagined here to highlight the potentiality of every new interaction between previously unrecognized or mutually unknown beings. Contact-without-conquest challenges ideas of hierarchies and hierarchies of ideas. It suggests that the so-called colonial encounter or moment of colonial contact was not inevitably one of gratuitous violence, dispossession, genocide and unilateral oppression. There are indeed modes of coming together and coming into proximity that are prefaces for symbiosis, cooperation, and also, importantly, indifference. Contact-without-conquest is not contact without conflict. This is part of a political philosophy that conceives of decolonization as in part a fundamental reorganization of bodies and matter.
Enterprising Indigeneity
By Joël Laforest
"The Kahnawake have used the available resources to create conditions that work for them. What is distinctive about their approach, however, is the collective enterprise of their nation: rather than being subjected to market forces and the state on an atomized individual level, their political and organizational capacity allows them to advocate for a general interest."
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Exit, Moon
By Maya Indira Ganesh
"Some people had the option of leaving. Those people who don’t have to take care of anyone else, or anything else. Who feel like they can sever their connections and move on to the next thing. Some times this is survival. Some times it is escape, it is exit."
Visiting the Canadian Malartic Goldmine
By June Pham
"The difference between my 2, 3 hour-visit and life of those people who are constantly exposed to the mine’s activities, needless to say, is incomparable. Apparently, there are a number of measures implemented to reduce noise as well as dust generated from the mine’ daily operations. Still, I cannot help but questioning the extent to which the company is committed not only to the environment but also to the local community."
