Work as Metaphor, Labour as Metonymy

Focusing on representation, this chapter analyzes the reproduction or doubling of indigeneity and Indigenous labour, or understandings of that labour not in its immediate context, but in terms of its extraction and re-presentation in other symbolic fields that constrain Indigenous sovereignty. This is the logical outcome of the labour-work divide within which Indigenous labour was only visible when it was represented in terms that could be understood in early Atlantic economies. Analyzing how global conservation efforts treat Indigenous sovereign labour, the chapter draws on psychoanalytic theory to explore the ongoing global effects of conquistadorial desire. It underscores the labour-work dialectic as a relation of incorporation based on metaphor and metonymy, explaining how the conquistadorial habit or desire for the human forces us to repeat and reinstitute the dialectic as a structure of anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity in the service of Creole Independence as a form of freedom against Indigenous Sovereignty.