Spirituality and a Search for Home: The Complexities of Practising Sikhism on Indigenous Land

Abstract

This chapter asks the question: What does it mean to practice spirituality on land and places stolen through colonial dispossession from Indigenous communities? How do immigrant, refugee, and migrant communities decolonize our spiritual communal spaces and build solidarity with Indigenous communities? By exploring the spiritual, communal space of temples, the author engages with the complexity of building and searching for safe places to call home for our spiritual selves, while holding ourselves accountable to the sovereignty and governance of Indigenous communities across Canada. This chapter looks specifically at the Sikh Punjabi community and the historical ways in which this community has inserted their claim to land to create safe havens for the community, while in the process contributing to the ongoing genocide and dispossession of Indigenous communities. The author offers ways of reconciling and re-building actions that support Indigenous sovereignty and radical acts of collaboration and allyship to fight ongoing acts of colonialism.