ABSTRACT
This chapter considers ethnomusicology in relationship with critical Indigenous studies. It emerged from two, interconnected ideas. The first is the concept of radical citational practices, especially as expressed in Sara Ahmed’s work. As Ahmed notes, if we think of knowers and individual articles as bricks, then our citations create our dwellings; that is, they create our bodies of knowledge and spaces we inhabit. The second is an issue raised by Unangax scholar Eve Tuck in a commentary on extractive reading. Tuck addresses her growing disillusionment with the idea that reading the work of Indigenous authors can lead non-Indigenous readers toward meaningful change; for too many, reading Indigenous research becomes another form of extraction. Together, Ahmed and Tuck’s ideas address a need to change our bibliographies and how we read our bibliographies. Drawing on the work of Tanja Dreher and Anshuman A. Mondal, this chapter argues for an ethics of responsiveness as a way to place sustained attention on this intersection. An ethics of responsiveness attends to the responsibility of settler-scholars for redress, while prioritizing responsiveness to (not just inclusion of) Indigenous communities and thinkers. Adopting an ethics of responsiveness fundamentally shifts how we go about studying, performing, and even listening to Indigenous musics, or if we do those things at all. The chapter closes by considering four projects for Indigenous-centered music studies that emerge from the work of critical Indigenous scholars, specifically histories as present and future, relationality and kin, resurgence, and sovereignty and inaccessibility.
