Confluence: Water as an Analytic of Indigenous Feminisms

Abstract

This article intends an orientation of readers to critical Indigenous feminist politics through a theorizing of and engagement with water as an analytic. To do so, it focuses on two solidifications of Indigenous feminist politics in the United States and Canada. The first concerns theory and method: What informs and distinguishes the articulation of a critical Indigenous feminist politics, with/from other feminisms? What difference does water make within that articulation? The second involves the junctures of the Flint water crisis and the #NODAPL action at Standing Rock: How did water bring people together, not just there but around the world? How does the coming together matter? The article presumes that gender is a core, constitutive aspect of Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and solidarity. It argues that water rests with women and women-identified individuals, and their social and cultural responsibilities to, and in, multiple kinds of relationships, which include other-than-human beings and involve other-than-seen realities.