Sovereign Histories, Gathering Bones, Embodying Land: Visiting with Contributors

Abstract

Sovereign Histories, Gathering Bones, Embodying LandVisiting with Contributors Michelle Coupal, Aubrey Jean Hanson, and Sarah Henzi Visiting as a mode of reading is an antidote to the all-too-common practice of extractive criticism. —Warren Cariou taanishi, kwey kwey, welcome, bienvenue We trust these words find you well. Before settling in to the all-too-common practice of editorial introductions, we would like to invite you to make a cup of tea, to settle in, and to flip to the end and take a look at the contributors' bios. To imagine that we are going to visit, as friends and relations, and are about to embark in a spirited discussion, as is so often the case during our gatherings, of which there were few—if not none—this year. The three of us would like to welcome you to visit with the words that follow, in the hopes that they may serve as an intellectual, stimulating, restorative, temporary antidote to the uncertainties that we must all contend with. This special issue of Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL) was inspired by the fourth annual gathering of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA), entitled "Sovereign Histories, Gathering Bones, Embodying Land," which was held at First Nations University of Canada, oskana kâ-asastêki, Treaty 4 Territory, in May 2018. Responding to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's notion of "placing bodies back on the land," we invited contributors to consider her contention that "resurgence happens within Indigenous bodies and through the connections we make to each other and our land" ("Interview" n.p.). One [End Page vii] of the founding principles of ILSA is to find ways to not only mentor, and care for, our intellectual communities, but also to foster the healthy and well-rounded lives of our members and others, while recognizing that various forms of balance are integral to strong scholarly and creative work. For indeed, the topics that frame this special issue are more than academic subjects, and engaging with Indigenous literary studies is more than academic work: we are carrying forward Indigenous lifeways and community principles. We are grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems and must be ready to enact Indigenous pedagogies and practices in relation to stories. And that is exactly what the core invitation in "Sovereign Histories, Gathering Bones, Embodying Land" sought to foreground: that stories are inseparable from the sovereignties, bodies, and traditional territories from which they arise. Further connected to this notion, we drew upon Eric Gansworth's idea of "sovereign bones": "Even as flesh fails, we understand that the parts of us we leave behind are the support structures. Those elements of our beings, stolen for so many generations, like voices, ideas, cosmologies, come back to us—those sovereign bones" (Gansworth 5). As with many special issue ventures, after we had left oskana kâ-asastêki, the place where the bones are gathered, to return to our lives elsewhere, we wanted to catalyze and continue the conversations that had developed throughout the gathering—a gathering that occurred in a place that is meaningful to the region's heritage as rich buffalo hunting grounds for a multitude of Plains cultures, but also the clearing of the Plains in the colonization of the land and peoples. Inevitably, we carried home, in our hearts and minds, the resonances of those voices and sovereign bones, as they were embodied in the stories and opening and closing prayers to the event. And we were left wondering—a wonder that extends to the different essays in this collection—how might such sovereignties be remembered, embodied, gathered, and revitalized through Indigenous literary writings, readings, and practices? With this history in mind, we asked our contributors to think about how the connections between land, sovereignty, gathering, and embodiment in Indigenous literatures (and other artistic practices) might function as carriers of memory and knowledge. We asked for academic papers, as well as creative critical pieces in alternative formats, and we found ourselves rewarded with a very rich and diverse selection of articles. Imagining literary creativity expansively, the contributions [End Page viii] in this issue thus engage with different forms of narrative expression, including residential school literature, testimony, storytelling, children's literature, speculative...