Description
The dominant context of US cybersecurity policy remains primarily premised on discourses of nationalism, territoriality, and state sovereignty. By drawing on Indigenous theorizations of cyberspace, where questions of sovereignty and territoriality hold particular resonance specifically related to the ways in which land-based relationships constitute the foundation of Indigenous thought, I explore and complicate the politicized dynamics of this space. By following on Lorenzo Veracini and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower’s provocation that asks, “What happens […] when the space of postcolonial and settler colonial studies is cyberspace?”, I seek to subvert the neat, linear, and often colonial narratives that obfuscate entangled relations of power to further undermine the utopic universalizing narratives of the technologies of cyberspace that dominate policy frameworks and initiatives. I explore the spatial imaginaries of the settler state that intersperse the discourses of cyberspace specifically taking the case of the Navajo Code Talkers as a departure point to examine the multiple overlapping contradictions, elisions, and investments that inform Indigenous ties to cyber landscapes. This case illustrates the instrumental value placed on Indigenous knowledges by the settler state, even as it constructs Indigeneity as dissonant with technological progress. I argue that the exclusion of Indigenous communities from policy considerations on cybersecurity is a continuation of this pattern. Furthermore, by centring Indigenous perspectives and experiences in this paper, I aim to shift the focus from one of exploitation and state mediated oppression to that of Indigenous possibility. By drawing contrasts between state-oriented policies and more relational socio-spatial re-imaginings of cybersecurity frameworks, I highlight the importance of engaging with Indigenous epistemologies in the context of cybersecurity that allow for the anticipation of cyber futures grounded in Indigenous ties to lands and community relations.
