I think I am hardly a mover and shaker politically aside from showing up to town councils a few times a year and doing some union safety and advocacy stuff and occasionally hyping Raven Trust. It’s a weird place to be because with indigenous issues you want to be kind of tasked with something to do or at least have a signoff that what you are doing is helping but if you don’t belong to those groups you really don’t want to recommend any courses of action? I mostly do a lot more LGBTQIA+ related stuff because that is my wheelhouse. A couple buddies of mine are way more personally impactful in their work regarding Indigenous advocacy because they operate inside more exclusive power strucrures. I think I am kind of the layabout.
I think one of the most nerve wracking things on the indigenous front I ever did was run a D&D one shot for the former National Chief of Canada. Like I have done a lot of thinking on the implicit colonialist history of the game and the implicit bias wherein that reinforce that mindset through mechanics… But it’s one thing to know that intellectually and another one entirely to pick through your homebrew materials with a fine tooth comb looking for fault.
I also feel like there is no silly in acedemia. Stories tell us a lot about a culture and picking things apart can tell us a lot about psychology, culture or philosophy. Like RPGs they have mechanics that inform the tale though everyone interprets those mechanics differently and sometimes they aren’t really there to “say” anything. Sometimes there is no moral of the story you’re just being invited to have fun. Like Star Wars I think is one of those. Like the Jedi give the veneer of mysticism but I don’t think their internal logic is meant to be extrapolated out to be the author’s world veiw. I think they are basically just a warrior stoic fantasy… But there are thousands of acedemic papers on Star Wars. Every student who goes through the system is there to demonstrate they can think and dissect thought using the current methodology. It creates a body of convention which then they might use to pointed effect in their own work one day. The process refines and changes the process which in turn alters the process and the cycle goes on. It’s fascinating.
If you are into podcasts I might recommend “Revisionist History” “Invisabilia” “Radiolab” and the like for wonky dives into minutia and seeing stories from interesting angles. On YouTube I recommend the trans philosophy suite of Philosophy Tube, Shanspere, Kat Blaque and Alexander Aliva, the history and lit stuff with Crash Course, Extra History, Kaz Rowe, J Draper… I wish I had more indigenous forward stuff to offer but I tend to get a lot of that through books or personal connections willing to talk shop. The book “The Red Deal” was pretty evocative but also at odds with a lot of the things that we tend to have going on with local efforts. The books deal with efforts to make society at large run less on a western colonialist mindset but through a more combative nature. Like you can lock horns with the government as the book more suggests … Or you can just change the dominant culture at ground level to normalize forms of reconciliation and restorative justice and work inside those systems indiginizing and hybridizing the structures. Like there’s surprisingly little stopping my union department meetings or say public library management from adopting a restorative justice circle model for arbitration. Anyhow I hope that list of things has some fun stuff on it for you!