De-Indianization is a strategy of redefining indigeneity, not abandoning it

Evidence

Marisol de la Cadena suggests that “de-Indianization” – she is talking of Peru but the point can be generalized as “de-indigenization” – is not simply the shedding of indigenous culture and custom in order self-effacingly to integrate or assimilate on the part of the indigenous. It is a selfconscious substitution of reified notions of essentialized culture for more fluid, self-sustaining, mobilizing conceptions and practices of indigeneity, redefining their self-understanding relationally as their circumstances, conditions, and social locations alter. De-Indianization, thus, does not entail rejecting indigeneity; quite the contrary. It means reconceiving Indianness by stripping it of the fixations of racist culture, updating it in relation to its contemporary circumstances and conditions, casting off its imposed restrictions and delimitations. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1215

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the de-Indianization concept used throughout the chapter and Latin American race scholarship.
• QUESTION: How does Goldberg’s own insistence on relationality here sit with his critique of racialized fixity elsewhere in the larger book argument?