Decolonize, Ecologize, Indigenize, Joyify
There are several permutations of the acronym DEIJ. Some people like JEDI, while others might leave out the J, and add an A for access, leading to IDEA. Others might use JEDAI and others throw in a B for Belonging, adding to the permutations. In the past, I often used JEID both for its resonance with “jade” and as an orientation that with “equity and inclusion” at the center, we can have “justice” and “diversity” as outcomes.
Regardless, the common words are “diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice” (while again noting how others can include additional elements).
I have taken those oft-used terms and made a bit of a switch as a way to put into practice ideas and concepts that are inclusive of while also being expansive on, the DEIJ of “diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice.”
That shift is to a “DEIJ” of verbs: “Decolonize, Ecologize, Indigenize, and Joyify.”
Here are some starting points on how I have thought about them.
Decolonize
Decolonize is an invitation to identify, interrogate, reflect on, and act on a process that weaves in what we have inherited as systemic and structural elements that designed our current world through a logic, intention, and design of colonization.
There is a whole body of work exploring what that means, but here I want to focus on two orientations that are helpful to work in “DEI” and conservation.
The first one is a recognition of the popular article “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012).
A key argument of the article is that “Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to ‘decolonize our schools,’ or use ‘decolonizing methods,’ or, ‘decolonize student thinking’, turns decolonization into a metaphor.”
This is oriented on the call for “LandBack” and to resist a trendy practice of “decolonizing” anything you can slap the label on (e.g. decolonize your diet, decolonize your syllabus, etc.) This is not because that is not important or necessary, or that there aren’t ways to approach it, but because it can become easy to lose sight of the big picture on what the call for Land Back asks.
Thus in that context, to “Decolonize” is to return stolen land and stolen sovereignty.
At the same time, in calls to “decolonize” beyond what is a simple matter of honoring Land Back, there might be an interrogation of the logic that drives it, and thus the more appropriate term may be “decoloniality”.
For decoloniality, one helpful text is “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality” by Nelson Maldonado-Torres.
He notes:
“The reason is that colonialism and decolonization are for the most part taken as ontic concepts that specifically refer to specific empirical episodes of socio-historical and geopolitical conditions that we refer to as colonization and decolonization. When approached in this way, colonialism and decolonization are usually depicted as past realities or historical episodes that have been superseded by other kinds of socio-political and economical regimes.”
“In contrast, coloniality and decoloniality refer to the logic, metaphysics, ontology, and matrix of power created by the massive processes of colonization and decolonization. Because of the long-time and profound investment of what is usually referred to as Europe or Western civilization in processes of conquest and colonialism, this logic, metaphysics, ontology, and matrix of power is intrinsically tied to what is called ‘Western civilization’ and ‘Western modernity.’ In fact, the modern West, its hegemonic discourses, and its hegemonic institutions are themselves a product, just like the colonies, of coloniality. If coloniality refers to a logic, metaphysics, ontology, and a matrix of power that can continue existing after formal independence and desegregation, decoloniality refers to efforts at rehumanizing the world, to breaking hierarchies of difference that dehumanize subjects and communities and that destroy nature, and to the production of counter-discourses, counter-knowledges, counter-creative acts, and counter-practices that seek to dismantle coloniality and to open up multiple other forms of being in the world.”
What I find exciting and intriguing is the call to “rehumanize” the world and disrupt and redesign what we have inherited that dehumanizes people and destroys nature. This aligns with the simple yet powerful terms of “Othering and Belonging” and is anchored on noticing where reductive mechanistic logic drives actions and design, compared to a life-honoring logic. For example, “your team is functioning like a well-oiled machine” rather than “your team is functioning like a well-nurtured meadow.”
In the framing and practice of decoloniality, it can be inclusive of LandBack decolonization, while also oriented in a way that heals severed connections in relationships between people to people and people to land.
As Dr. Rupa Mayra notes:
“To me, to be colonized means to be disconnected and disintegrated — from our ancestry, from the earth, from our indigeneity, our earth-connected selves. We all come from earth-connected people, people who once lived in deep connection to the rhythms of nature. I believe it is not a coincidence that the colonization of this land happened at the same time that Europeans were burning hundreds of thousands of witches, those women who carried the traditional Indigenous knowledge of the tribes of Europe.”
So to “Decolonize” is an exploration and set of actions that can include “Land Back” while also interrogating the driving logic of colonization and redesigning differently from that. “Nature” is a good guide for that, which leads us into the next section.
Ecologize
Ecologizing anchors on assessing how the language of ecology and mentorship from the land can help orient toward more life-logic practices. It is an invitation to how nature can provide reminders, orientations, and questions about how we design our human systems in relation or contrast to ecological ones- while still challenging us in how we see ourselves as a part of nature rather than apart from nature.
For example, as mentioned before, take the contrast between “your team is functioning like a well-oiled machine” and “your team is functioning like a well-nurtured meadow.”
But we’ve had other reminders as well. For example, we value biodiversity in the ecological landscape but then struggle to transfer that to a social one. How often do conservationists say “That’s a beautiful monoculture of a forest” and value its homogeneity?
When we also anchor operating logics on a life-honoring worldview, we can see how many of those thematic elements are ones where we use in nature-based work, as Michelle Holiday illustrates below.
To be clear, this is not to romanticize or be simplistic about comparisons with nature. But if we find comfort and comparison in how a work team functions like a machine, why not like a meadow? What does that allow us to face in terms of how we are productive? How we value leadership? How we pace ourselves?
A meadow after all is highly productive.
I brought up a similar example years ago with an urban greening organization working on tree plantings. I asked them if after planting a young tree they return every week with ideas and comments to the tree like “ok, I need you to grow by no less than 5 inches by next week because I need to put that in the report.” We know the tree requires supportive conditions, but you can’t have prescriptive demands and expectations like that. Yet how often do we have that for our community partners? It does not mean you can’t support and measure progress, but it can be helpful to unpack what our starting mental models are. Sometimes that can be hard and we end up with more questions than answers. But I have found that it can be an exciting place to see what more is possible and can be a fun investigation.
Another example: I shared with a foundation that we often like reports to be “fruit and bloom.” We want to see the pretty outcomes, the flowers and fruits borne from the work. But how are we willing to fund the seeding and rooting that requires it? It can be figuratively dirty work that requires patience as the seed finds itself in the dark.
And when we do receive fruit, we like the clarity of quantitive outcomes, like how many seeds are in the fruit. But what about how many fruit are in the seeds? That is there too, and although it may not be as simple to measure it is of high value and impact. Imagine how we are funding leadership in that way.
Those are just some examples and of course, you are likely to think of more. Even when I have received feedback like “the other day we got stuck in a project meeting and someone said ‘what if we meadowed for a bit and see what comes up?’” — it’s a sign to me that we can intuitively lean into these invitations even as we may face elements of a calcified culture we did not question before.
The good news is that even as we are redesigning for the future and working with models that may be new to some of us, we still can have guidance from ancestral knowledge and Other Ways of Knowing and Being. This connects to the next section.
Indigenize
Indigenizing is both self-explanatory while of course stating and examining our presumptions. As we move from an axiology and epistemology (what we value and how we derive knowledge from it) that’s reductively human-object and cognitive(“I am the human, that is the tree and here is how we count and measure it”), that movement can be to one that is not just more inclusive of but also expansive in its relational definitions of kin. And if all of that is new to our mental models, then it is helpful to unpack it.
I think Plains Miwok researcher Don Hankins sums it up well in the following, with both its simplicity and power to complement the “way we do science”:
“One way is to embrace traditional Indigenous law, which is rooted in nature and holds individuals accountable for their actions in a reciprocal relationship with the environment. Realigning existing policies and management could work to create more resilient systems.”
Here is where I think people often put “Western Science” and “Indigenous Science” in direct opposition. While there can certainly be elements to that, they can both complement each other in ways that are healing for people and the land. For example, the work behind the Cosmic Serpent notes:
“Cosmic Serpent set out to explore commonalities between Western and Native science, taking into account that Native cultures have, over millennia, developed ways of knowing that are highly adapted, interconnected, and enduring. Each knowledge system informs the practice of science and its role in society in a fundamental way, and the commonalities can provide a framework for developing mutually inclusive learning experiences in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).”
I think that what is key is to not only default to one way of “doing science” that purely relies on a dominant frame that “otherizes” how we relate with each other and the land. While a tree can certainly have utility for its wood, it is not only that. It is part of a community. It can be non-human kin to some. We are in a relationship through breadth with the tree. These conservation relationSHIFTS can be helpful in better understanding the role and value of Other Ways of Knowing and Being; to at least be open to a multiverse way of relating that is not purely cognitive.
Joyify
“Neglecting your joy will lead to burnout” — Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Joyify may seem a bit of an odd-duck and clever way to complete the acronym. Yet, I would argue that joy is a powerful element in anti-oppression work, and the call for “liberated joy” is a focused challenge.
Part of that is that we do not always have the models for joy that is not oppressive or harmful. Or the cultural cues do not support it unless it’s in service of structural privilege or a dominant narrative. For example, I often list the statement “Support Black Joy.” I tell people that it is not because we should not support everyone’s joy, we totally should. The naming specifically of Black Joy is because that is what is too commonly targeted by oppressive dominant norms. The dominant narrative loves Black trauma, Black brokenness, and a host of other strands that feed into the idea that “Black and Brown is broke and broken.” You can see this in movies for example, of what news stories will highlight. If Black Joy is noted, it is an outlier, an exception, or sometimes to view with some suspicion. It needs to be viewed more as part of the norm.
That is just one example aligned to a social identity. In the larger frame, I think joy offers spaces of belonging and inclusion to contrast harmful othering. If something like genocide is an extreme example of othering, to view the “other” in such devalued and reductive ways, what can it mean to be connected with others in a space of play where everyone is invited and engaged as they exist, to belong?
Lastly, joy and its associated vectors (play, humor, etc) can direct us and our action into more hopeful visions of the work and can support healing-oriented practices. Because the work is hard, it takes from us, it extracts. It’s needed but it can burn us out. We need the rest and restoration. And I would argue joy is a part of that.
Closing Words
This is meant as a starting frame, or as I often say “invitations, orientations, provocations, aspirations…”
They are seeds that can be nurtured into more, requiring work. Still, I have found these thoughts to be helpful in how the anti-oppression work of the present and the future can be guided and inspired by ancestral knowledge and mentorship from the land. And, as reminded by the work of Supporting Effective Environments, that as people we can design and support environments that bring out the best in people. Because we’re certainly good at designing what brings out the worst. We have the capacity for both and I’m called to do what I can to do the former.
For as the future definitely outlines spaces of “Doom and Gloom” I would like to be aligned to “Do and Bloom” in our relational ecosystem of community and action. Onward.
