Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will analyze how Diné farmers' identities are complex, and that loving "your" territory doesn't make you an ecological activist. The food sovereignty movement on the Navajo Nation propose what can be analyzed as an ecosocialist project with roots in Diné precolonial values.

Paper long abstract:

The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted in 2007 doesn't propose a definition of what "Indigenous" means. It leaves that decision to Indigenous nations and individuals, with the complexity of what "Diné" or "Inuit" or "Guarani", to name only a few, are.

Since 2016, I’ve been working with Diné farmers from the Navajo Nation, who are also environmental activists. In this talk, I will present the case of two Diné farmers who, after having spent their adult life outside of the reservation, came back and decided to be farmers, eventually becoming educators and food activists. One is a queer, self-described "old Diné hippie"; the other is from Black and Diné descent, father of six children, from a heterosexual monogamous relationship. Both are politicized but not from any political party, both "hating politics and politicians".

In this paper, I will highlight the complexity of the links between Diné identities and their delimited territory, Diné Bikeyah, family ties, and ecological behaviors. Indeed, loving "your" land and "your" territory doesn't make you ecologically responsible. Ecofascism has proven to us that they are two different things. How and what then, makes Diné food sovereignty an ecosocialist project ? Why are those two concepts necessary to explain food sovereignty on the Navajo Nation? Even more, how do they show us that Diné identities are complex and always adapting ? These are the questions I want to explore, questioning blood quantum as the only legal way to prove one's Diné identity.