APA Member Interview, Claire Becerra

"Claire Becerra is a Ph.D student in philosophy at Northwestern University, with interests in the philosophy of language, social epistemology, and the philosophy of education, all of which are informed by her indigeneity. She is a member of the Tohono O'odham Nation, and currently splits time between Chicago, New York City, and Arizona. What are you working on right now? These days, I'm spending most of my time developing my dissertation, which applies a philosophical lens to indigenous land acknowledgments."

"For example, a plausible criticism is that these statements are shallow and merely pro forma: they are often practiced by large institutions only to virtue-signal, without a genuine attempt to maintain reparative relationships to indigenous communities that such a weighty commitment requires. In order to give teeth to such a criticism, my first chapter starts by introducing the idea that the force of land acknowledgments depends on their speaker. While indigenous land protocols can be used by indigenous speakers (among other things) as protest speech, institutional statements should be understood as responses to such protest speech."

The dissertation applies a philosophical lens to indigenous land acknowledgments and investigates what is being performed when such statements are made and whether those performances are beneficial. A core criticism is that institutional acknowledgments can be shallow, pro forma, and used to virtue-signal without sustaining reparative relationships to indigenous communities. One chapter argues that the force of land acknowledgments depends on the speaker, with indigenous land protocols functioning as protest speech while institutional statements often function as responses and can misfire when treated as initiating protest speech. Such misfiring generates various forms of discursive injustice. Another chapter develops a conversational account emphasizing historical chains of exchange between indigenous groups and institutions.

Read at Apaonline