In trying to think about the phrase "becoming indigenous to place" while also not furthering the ongoing ideological and material processes of indigenous displacement and genocide, the phrase itself seems quite daunting for the prospect of the settler attempting to replace the native. Kimmerer says, "For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children's future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it."(9), which to me seems compatible with the work of Spinoza. Spinoza stands out from the Western tradition by asking the question Judith Butler talked about, "what can a body do?" instead of "what should a body do?" which critically undermines the dominance of mind, rationality, autonomy, law, and other synonyms that seek to separate man from nature and mind from body.
The Spinozist maxim of God or Nature was seen as heretical for placing God as immanent to the world instead of standing outside of it, opposing the transcendence in the manifest goal of Western Modernity, to stand above and outside nature as our dominion, Man being made in His image. The substance of the world is god and is nature; there is no differentiation or hierarchy between the two. The spirit of the world is in us and everything that surrounds us, extending to even nonorganic life, like rocks and wind, which, of course, also have an ecological role and help other forms of life strive and persist in their existence. What is ethical or life-affirming is that which affirms god or nature, and that which persists in both its existence, and in coextension with other lifebeings on every scale of potential community, which seems like it could be helpful at least for helping break some of the spiritual malaise which places man above nature, if not being fully extendable to practices of reciprocity, mutual recognition, and embodied gratitude that require transforming how we view nature.
"Spirituality" seems to have had quite a surge lately, but is often tainted by extremely narcissistic "protect-your-peace" & capitalistic "self-help" mentalities, which fall back on the rational individual dominating over the unhealthy and impure natural world that surrounds them. God or nature seems like a humbling alternative to both, being a direct critical response to the ontological and theological bases for settler colonialism, while also being a vehicle to break from the insideness of human consciousness, which views plants and animals as inert and just up for human use as matter and meat. It seems akin to many of the ideas and practices that Kimmerer has talked about, not to flatten out or homogenize indigenous practices, but to breed commonality and allow ourselves to learn from the world and other cultures without taking from them. Becoming indigenous to a place is not so literal as it is an ongoing process of reconfiguring or undoing one's extractive needs and practices. Spinoza is therefore helpful for breaking from the hegemony of the mind and returning to the divine body of nature, becoming conative to and with it.
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