Decolonize Futures Vol.3: Ainu and De/colonization | mai ishihara

In contemporary Japanese society, there is a colonial structure that commodifies and consumes Ainu people and culture within the frameworks of promoting SDGs, diversity, and addressing environmental issues. This consumption extends beyond the market to academic and intellectual discourse. Treating Ainu people as mere academic topics and ideas leads to overlooking the history of racism and poverty resulting from colonialism, and the suffering and deaths of many Ainu people.

Furthermore, when discussing the Ainu people and colonial structures, understanding the reality in binary terms such as insider/outsider, perpetrator/victim, colonizer/colonized can render invisible the voices and existence of those who do not fit into these dichotomies.

In this issue, we interviewed mai ishihara, an anthropologist at the Center for Ainu and Indigenous Studies at Hokkaido University and herself of Ainu descent, on how to resist tokenization/encoding and consumption and think about decolonization regarding the reality that does not fit into the dichotomies.

第三期：阿伊努與去/殖民化

在當代日本社會中，存在著一種殖民結構，將阿伊努人民和文化商品化並消費，這種情況發生在推廣可持續發展目標（SDGs）、多樣性和解決環境問題的框架內。這種消費不僅限於市場，也延伸到學術和知識話語中。將阿伊努人民僅僅視為學術主題和觀念，會忽視由於殖民主義所造成的種族主義和貧困的歷史，以及許多阿伊努人民的痛苦與死亡。

此外，在討論阿伊努人民和殖民結構時，以內部/外部、加害者/受害者、殖民者/被殖民者等二元對立的方式理解現實，可能會使那些不符合這些二元對立的人聲音和存在變得無形。

在本期中，我們訪問了北海道大學阿伊努與原住民研究中心的人類學家 mai ishihara，她本人具有阿伊努血統，討論如何抵抗象徵化/編碼和消費，並思考與不符合二元對立的現實相關的去殖民化問題。

About Decolonize Futures

“Decolonize Futures” is a ZINE project to open up the discussion of the deep history of colonialism and the need of decolonization in Japan and East Asia for the possibilities of plural futures. The project criticizes the historical violence and ongoing colonialism from political, historical, cultural, and activist perspectives to create a discursive space for decolonization in Japan and East Asia.

《去殖民化的未來》是一個小誌出版項目，旨在開啟有關殖民歷史深度與日本及東亞去殖民化需求的討論，以實現多元未來的可能性。該項目從政治、歷史、文化和社會運動的角度批評歷史暴力和持續的殖民現象，創造一個在日本和東亞進行去殖民化的話語空間。