As the devastating effects of capitalist-driven climate crisis grow,
Indigenous-led pipeline struggles, landback campaigns, movements against
militarism and policing, and the fight to end the patriarchal, colonial
violence against Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people have
become more urgent than ever. In Notes on Becoming a Comrade, Jaskiran
Dhillon explores ways to practice politicized allyship and the necessity
for non-Indigenous comrades to stand in direct support of Indigenous
people--from Turtle Island to Palestine. But what does it actually mean
to be a comrade and what challenges must we overcome to become one?
Approaching these questions through an Indigenous feminist framework,
this autoethnographic study charts Dhillon's own political trajectory as
an anticolonial organizer and researcher. In humble, generous, lithe
prose she brings her experiences to life--foregrounding relationality,
trust, humility, critical self-reflexivity, and learning as the
cornerstones of being a good comrade in struggle. From the politics of
writing and research to the paralysis of guilt to the complexity of
history and identity, Notes on Becoming a Comrade demands we
understand and accept the responsibility we all have to fight against
colonialism and global capitalism--in all its forms. Learning from the
leadership of Indigenous women, Dhillon explicates how gender violence
and Indigenous sovereignty; revolutionary environmentalism; and
abolition all converge in a global, active, and growing anticolonial and
anticapitalist movement that relies on the existence of comrades
standing shoulder-to-shoulder in all corners of the world.
Notes on Becoming a Comrade is a powerful call-to-action that
uncompromisingly demands us to question what risks we must take and what
solidarity we must practice for all of us to truly be free.
