Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to address interpretations of Nishinaabeg epistemologies and pedagogies that replicate essentialist modes of storytelling and governance. This paper elaborates on Anishinaabek theories of consent and consent-based governance systems by drawing upon our stories and storytelling practices. Presenting Anishinaabeg storytelling practices as critically reflexive engagements with power, this paper demonstrates the untranslatability of Nishinaabeg methods of governance to colonial contexts of systemic violence. The intention of this work is to reveal how Nishinaabeg relationship governance practices are fundamentally oriented to consent, sustainability, and collective and/or mutual/reciprocal validation.
Highlights
In contemporary settler colonial contexts, consent is understood as a measurable, identifiable, or quantifiable thing, which must be actively regulated against the grain of its own systems of non-consent
-called trickster stories do not exist for the purpose of correcting or accommodating colonial culture
The rigid and prescriptive logics of roles and power within the colonial imaginary do not allow for the existence of infinitely diverse relationship networks, nor do they account for these sustainable imbalances that manifest in various local contexts
Summary
Reactionary responses to rape culture (such as the circulation of standardized definitions of consent) take for granted its naturalness by infantilizing agents of sexual and other kinds of violence. Given the failure of such logics to address violence as a system—or to define violence in terms of non-consent itself—there exists a reactionary conflation between kink and sexual violence. This creates a prescriptively “vanilla” culture—one that normalizes “gentle” or non-aggressive sex, while stigmatizing kink—which disregards consent altogether, as well as the diversity of desires and subjectivities. We rightfully insist that our governance practices are traditionally consent-based and consentoriented, but iterations and interpretations of this must be careful and critical, since traditional teachings cannot be applied in a prescriptive manner, or be repurposed without an account for such a profound change in context
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