Indigenous Studies Research Articles

#indigenousauthor: locating Tenille Campbell’s erotic poetry, photography, and community-based arts beyond social media

ABSTRACT Guided by a desire-centred framework, this article explores how Tenille Campbell (Dene/Métis) uses Instagram as a space for contemporary muiltimedia artistic practice. Her poetry, photography, and other creative endeavours have presented meaningful opportunities for community-building and identity-affirmation as a force specifically for Indigenous resurgence across national, tribal, and geographical lines. The first section begins with a discussion of desire-centred research as it intersects with Indigenous new media studies and decolonial methodologies. Later sections argue that Campbell’s artistic expressions nurture emotional, mental, communal, and spiritual connections to land, thereby growing a virtual landedness—especially in relation to the erotic, which best captures Campbell’s project of community-building and identity-affirmation. Lastly, this article highlights the remediation of Campbell’s poetry into fashionwear, which simultaneously cultivates networks of Indigenous women entrepreneurs. Her poetry, evinced as a co-creative, community-based, multidisciplinary literary arts practice, surpasses its manifestation on social media, and should be understood as a multimodal constellation that has impacts that ripple far beyond digital environments.

Show Me the Bibliography: Indigeneity and the Eighteenth Century

Show Me the Bibliography:Indigeneity and the Eighteenth Century Alice Te Punga Somerville (bio) What is Indigenous about the eighteenth century? What is Indigenous about this special issue? What is the difference between, on the one hand, studies of the eighteenth century that trace European imperial expansion and thus necessarily talk about Indigenous peoples and, on the other, whatever is happening in this collection—or indeed, whatever is happening specifically in these two longer essays by N. S. 'Ilaheva Tua'one and Julia Lum? If the mere presence of Indigenous peoples, knowledges, and worlds as objects of study or as topics of focus or as strands of interest was a satisfactory answer to these questions, it would be entirely plausible to argue that a great deal of existing scholarship about the eighteenth century could have been included in these pages, and that a special issue like this is surely redundant. An alternative answer could be that all of the people who have produced the scholarship are Indigenous—but that's not the case in this volume. Still another could be that the scholarship engages Indigenous language archives, or perhaps is written in Indigenous languages—but those aren't the cases here either. [End Page 255] Perhaps the answer is more about argument and method than about topic—that the scholarship in this special issue seeks to decenter Eurocentrism by centering Indigenous perspectives, although what such grand (and laudable) ambitions look like on the page, and in the review process, quickly becomes subjective and complex. How much less Cook does an essay need before it becomes Indigenous? Does it count if the focus is on how Cook and his peers and their crews engaged with Indigenous peoples, and if it does, how is that actually about Indigeneity and not just about non-Indigenous perspectives? How does one center "perspectives" of Indigenous peoples without resorting to stereotypes or generalization? And, for the purposes of this journal, how might one account for Eurocentrism (decentered or otherwise) or for Indigenous perspectives using the tools—and people—available through current academic conventions for ensuring and assuring rigor? A response I would proffer, which is less of a compromise and more of a stance than it might first appear, is: "all of these things and more." These questions—and my answer—may seem circular, but they sit at the heart of Indigenous literary studies and Indigenous Studies more broadly, and they provoke us to think carefully about the shapes and stakes of our research.1 None of the possible answers suggested in the previous paragraph is enough on its own, but together they weave something tangible. I use the metaphor of weaving here quite deliberately. This lineup of considerations is neither a bullet-point list of things for which keen (or cynical) scholars should aim, nor a tool for evaluating the degree—the quantum—of "Indigeneity" (or "engagement with Indigeneity") in scholarly work. Rather, it is the intersection and interlocking nature—the mutual reciprocity—of these answers that matters. In this issue, and particularly in the pair of longer essays, we find a constellation of researchers, approaches, topics, and archives. Placing pressure on any one essay to critically engage Indigeneity in the eighteenth century in its entirety would miss the point not only of a special issue but also of the broader calls for engagement with the longstanding critical work of Indigenous Studies scholarship. We might look, then, to the broader cloth in which these essays and this issue are woven: to bibliographies which direct us to broader conversations in which the researchers are enmeshed; to the positioning of authors in institutional and Indigenous contexts; to those gorgeous points where individual pieces here speak to each other in ways that stitch together communities, texts, questions, and archives that are usually separated by contemporary disciplinary configurations as well as by empire-based and state-based networks. We can hold this special issue that foregrounds Indigeneity alongside similar volumes in journals that have overlapping interests in the period or topic.2 We can consider the likelihood that each of these pieces will move around so many Indigenous kitchen tables, desks, and social media messaging platforms as Indigenous scholarly...

Little Chahta News Bird: Indigenous Periodicals and the Performance of Nationhood

ABSTRACT: This article explores the Biskinik , a monthly newspaper produced by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and in continuous circulation since 1978. It draws together methodological and theoretical investments from Native American and Indigenous Studies and Performance Studies in order to demonstrate how tribal newspapers such as the Biskinik are active sites of nations performing themselves. They curate actions and enact a story in which the nation is central. Explicating how performance and performativity reveal the ongoing process of Indigenous sovereignty within periodical publication, the article focuses on a 2022 issue of the Biskinik . It argues that the Biskinik should be read as a curation of Choctaw performance and a performance of Choctaw-ness, and as such the newspaper enacts nationhood in a complex and continuous movement of connection.

Phlebosclerosis of Great Saphenous Vein-Series of Cases During Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG)

Phlebosclerosis is defined as the fibrous degeneration of the venous wall, though in history, it has been defined from endophlebitis to hyalinzation of the intima of the venous wall, the actual pathology is obscure. We present a case series of three different cases from three different decades of life, 5th, 6th, 7th respectively with varied co-morbidities, in which we encountered phlebosclerosis, while harvesting GSV for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). To authors’ knowledge, this is the first ever indigenous study on phlebosclerosis of GSV, the study would give an excerpt into the continuum on the natural history of the disease. The literature is reviewed and the case is presented.

Decolonising Canadian water governance: lessons from Indigenous case studies.

Meaningful lessons about decolonising water infrastructure (social, economic and political) can be learned if we scrutinise existing governance principles such as the ones provided by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2021's Principles on Water Governance. Instead of using only Western frameworks to think about policy within Indigenous spheres of water, sanitation and hygiene, the Government of Canada can look to Indigenous ways of knowing to complement their understanding of how to govern areas of water, sanitation and hygiene efficiently. In this paper, the term Indigenous encompasses First Nations, Inuit and Métis populations. This paper is presented as a step out of many towards decolonising water governance in Canada, and is intended to show that it is necessary to make space for other voices in water governance. By highlighting the dangers in the case studies, three lessons are apparent: (1) there needs to be an addition of Indigenous Two-Eyed Seeing in water governance; (2) Canada must strengthen its nation-to-nation praxis with Indigenous communities; and (3) there needs to be a creation of space in water, sanitation and hygiene that fosters Indigenous voices. This is necessary such that there can be equal participation in policy conversations to mitigate existing problems and explore new possibilities.

Ancestral Lands and Genders

The revitalization of Indigenous ways of knowing and being with land is central to addressing the devastating impacts of climate change. This article contributes to growing research in Indigenous Climate Change Studies by focusing on connections between ecology, sexuality, and gender. To track the histories of gendered violence for Two Spirit peoples is to also follow the marked wounds of land dispossession, excavation, and exploitation. Conversely, Two Spirit futures are deeply imbricated in not only surviving but also flourishing among post-apocalyptic conditions. Through socio-linguistic analyses of western animacy hierarchies and a historical analysis of colonial fables which casted the racialized-gendered other as monstrous, this article critiques popularized end-of-the-world discourses on climate change narratives. Alternatively, the article concludes by offering a reading of Indigiqueer speculative science fiction, gleaning methods of not only survival and resistance but also resilience amongst post-apocalyptic conditions. Ultimately, this paper argues that the revitalization of Indigenous genders is in-part linked to the present revitalization and protection of ecological life-worlds, centering Two Spirit knowledge at what settlers may fear to be “the end of the world.”

Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies

Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening is a treatise on how to approach, engage with, and listen to/with Indigenous ways of knowing. One major premise is simple: musical undertakings that involve Indigenous musics and/or musicians have reified and continue to reify colonizing power structures. Nevertheless, what he offers in response is complex and necessarily impartial, since no one answer exists. The decolonizing work remains in the hands (ears?) of scholars, composers, musicians, music critics, and audiences as they grapple with the varying contexts and functions for past and contemporary Indigenous music-making. More generally, such answers could apply to any rethinking of (Indigenous) art and knowledge production. Robinson’s threading of decolonizing approaches together with his analysis of several different musical settings presents a most provocative springboard.Robinson opens with Canadian composer Murray Schafer’s disparaging depiction of Inuit singing. For those fond of Schafer’s compositions and theoretical ponderings (after all, he did peg soundscape in sound studies), he jarringly, yet effectively, rips open assumptions running through past and recent encounters with Indigenous musics and musicians. Some are blatant, as in Schafer’s depiction; others are couched in good intentions, as in more recent performances in the name of Truth and Reconciliation. His introduction also provides his initial explanation of the hungry listening concept, a phrase creatively adopted from Halq’eméylem to convey the exploitive and selective manner in which Western (art) music is heard and created with formal-aesthetic properties at the forefront. Directly after, he enacts critical Indigenous studies use of refusal and writes to an Indigenous-only readership in a short section.The next two chapters further flesh out hungry listening as an orientation and explore writing about music through performative writing. Robinson’s point that Indigenous musics function in different ways than Western art music is nothing new, yet he also teases out the implications of ignoring such functions in terms of Indigenous sovereignty. Further, in tackling hungry listening as something that ideally should be resisted/refused, he begins to propose pathways for practical and structural change. Between them is an “Event Score,” these appearing throughout in brief interludes of poetic writing engaging places, the senses, and materiality.The bulk of his analyses of musical performances come in the next three chapters. Chapter 3 examines performances bringing early music (Western classical) together with Indigenous music and/or Indigenous musicians, albeit in different ways, while chapter 4 takes on the issue of songs collected by early ethnographers stored in museums. Such songs have been used repeatedly by Western art music composers, often encouraged by the ethnographers that collected them, with little to no regard to their Indigenous functions/meanings/contexts. Providing some egregious examples, Robinson also highlights varying approaches from Indigenous activist-artists in reviving and repatriating such songs and asks composers/music critics/listeners to consider their own responsibility when working with or writing about musics stemming from such collections. Directly after is “Event Score for Responsibility,” a playbook for how a composition inspired by Inuit singing might be enacted more critically and collaboratively. Chapter 5 then grippingly recounts Robinson’s spectator reactions to four specific musical performances, enacting his positionality through performative writing. Here he also tackles affect, whether collective affect is even a possibility, and ultimately asserts “fostering empathy” (232) is not enough to direct structural change.Robinson concludes by revisiting inclusionary and exclusionary approaches modeled after Indigenous multimedia artists for listening, creating, and collaborating. He then offers space to two (non-Indigenous) ethnomusicology scholars to ruminate on decolonial thinking and listening before ultimately offering his own conclusions. Hungry Listening, while sometimes difficult to wade through with its many interdisciplinary references and Halq’eméylem phrases, pushes readers—refusing to placate them.

INSUBORDINAÇÕES CRÍTICAS DA INTELECTUALIDADE NEGRA BRASILEIRA: UM OLHAR A PARTIR DA ATUAÇÃO DO NEABI/CPII

ABSTRACT: From a black decolonial perspective (GOMES, 2020), this article aims to discuss the paths taken by the Center for Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Studies of the Colégio Pedro II (NEABI/CPII), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the (re)production of emancipatory and anti-racist practices and knowledge. In methodological terms, the research was structured based on the narratives of four black intellectuals committed to anti-racist education, who actively participated in the creation process of the NEABI/CPII, in 2013, and who had a recognized role in the constitution of practices based on (re)education for ethnic-racial relations and the fight against racism. In summary, we observed that the black intelligentsia underlying the group establishes a position of insubordination in relation to typical coloniality practices in the (re)production of knowledge, with actions that unfold into four dimensions: political-institutional, political-epistemological, political-identity and political-pedagogical. We understand that these dimensions, which are articulated with each other, are crucial for the constitution of educational spaces that are more democratic, racially diverse and politically positioned in the fight against inequalities

Toward a More Complicated South: New Work in Southeastern Indigenous Studies

Toward a More Complicated South: New Work in Southeastern Indigenous Studies

Echocardiographic nomograms and Z-scores for term Indian neonates.

The availability of nomograms is crucial for the correct interpretation of pediatric and neonatal echocardiograms. Echocardiographic Z-score applications/websites use Western nomograms as reference, which may not be an appropriate standard for gauging Indian neonates. Currently available Indian pediatric nomograms either have not included neonates or have not been specifically designed for neonates. This gross underrepresentation of neonates renders available nomograms unreliable for use as standards for comparison. The objective of this study was to collect normative data for the measurement of various cardiac structures using M-Mode and two-dimensional (2D) echo in healthy Indian neonates and to derive Z-scores for each measured parameter. Echocardiograms were performed on healthy term neonates (within first 5 days of life). Birth weight and length were recorded, and body surface area was calculated using Haycock's formula. Twenty M-mode and 2D-echo parameters were measured (including left ventricular dimensions, atrioventricular valves, and semilunar valves' annuli sizes, pulmonary artery and branches, aortic root, and arch). We studied 142 neonates (73 males) with a mean age of 1.83 ± 1.12 days and mean birth weight of 2.89 ± 0.39 Kg. Regression equations with linear, logarithmic, exponential and square root models were tested to select the best model of fit for the relationship between birth weight and each echocardiographic parameter. Scatter plots and nomogram charts with Z-scores were prepared for each echocardiographic parameter. Our study provides nomograms with Z-scores for term Indian neonates weighing between 2 kg and 4 kg at birth, within first 5 days of life, for a set of echocardiographic parameters that are frequently used in clinical practice. This nomogram has poor predictability for babies at extremes of birth weight. There is a need for further indigenous studies to include neonates at extremes of weight, both term, and preterm.

Exploration of Indigenous Tamang Identity and Values in Yambunera

Examining the identity politics of Tamang people – about what and how Tamang identity is made to mean and the effects of their articulation- through literary writing, especially in Yambunera, is the central concern of this research work. As writing is the best way to express real-life experience and the mode of cultural practice, this study examines how Tamang indigenous identity is properly reflected in Yambunera and how particular aspects of Tamang life style and behaviours can be meaningful in searching for their indigenous identity. ‘Yambu’, as a symbol, Tamang people are at the marginal state, always away from Yambu, the centre of politics, power, rights and central culture. They are obliged to accept the position silently or have to speak for their rights and identity. In both conditions, they live with their identity. This identity is the heritage and the storehouse of their understanding and anticipation of system of life. It includes and represents the community attached to their geo-cultural identity. The language Tamang people speak, the profession they adopt from their tradition, the cultural practice they anticipate, and the traditional outfits they wear really parade their real impressions of indigenous identity. This research explicates different modes of indigenous identity of Tamang people reflected in Yambunera on the basis of the theory of Indigenous Studies.

Back to the future: Indigenous relationality, kincentricity and the North American Model of wildlife management

For more than a century, wildlife conservation in the United States has been built on the notion that nonhuman animal populations are resources to be regulated by law and managed efficiently, according to the best available science and in the public trust. This approach, known as the North American Model of Wildlife Management, has come under increasing criticism for excluding diverse viewpoints that have the potential to advance both conservation and environmental justice goals. How might the greater inclusion of Indigenous worldviews and Indigenous Studies concepts, such as radical relationality and kincentricity, improve western wildlife management? In this paper, we review three case studies of tribal wildlife stewardship programs in the land currently known as California—the Maidu Summit Consortium’s beaver restoration project, the Karuk Tribe’s elk management program, and the Yurok Tribe’s condor recovery effort—that illuminate generative connections among ecological restoration, Indigenous cultural practices, community wellbeing, and environmental justice. Radical relationality and kincentricity offer enormous potential for informing stewardship and recovery efforts that produce more just outcomes for both people and wildlife.

Indigenous Peoples and Organization Studies.

This essay encourages scholars of management and organization studies (MOS) to critically reflect on how Indigenous peoples and their knowledges have been, and continue to be, systemically discriminated against. This discrimination is the result of colonization; it has deeply impacted and continues to affect which knowledges and practices are valued and embraced. The impact of colonization is mirrored in MOS via processes and actions within the academic setting and our business schools. The result is the continued marginalization of Indigenous peoples and their knowledges. We propose a shift in how MOS scholars approach research in relation to non-western societies to counter, and hopefully end, these continued practices of discrimination in our business schools. Specifically, we argue that demarginalizing Indigenous research in academia and going beyond 'cosmetic indigenization' in our business schools are new, collaborative ways of rethinking indigeneity and breaking down the current barriers in MOS that reinforce and perpetuate the systemic discrimination against Indigenous peoples, their knowledges and practices.

Histories of the Canoe Journey: Border Studies, Critical Indigenous Studies, and the Decolonization and Unsettling of Coast Salish Territory

ABSTRACT The fields of Border Studies and Critical Indigenous Studies offer much to social scientists seeking to understand the operation of power in the lives of borderlands communities. This article illustrates why critical Indigenous scholarship should be a necessary framework in exploring issues of state and nation-building by examining four possible origin stories for what is now an annual event on the Northwest Coast of North America: The Canoe Journey. I implore border studies scholars to look beyond national boundaries and consider Indigenous epistemologies and historiographies in understanding the impacts that international borders have on shaping how all peoples make meaning of our world. I argue that doing so will allow border studies to contribute toward an analysis of settler colonialism and highlight the role state borders play in upholding it.

Teaching Australian Indigenous Studies: Non-Indigenous academics negotiating structural impediments in a regional context

This paper examines the experiences of two non-Indigenous academics in a regional Australian university who taught/coordinated a first-year course, Introduction to Indigenous Australia (SCS130). Drawing on our own experiences, we explore the implications and contentious nature of non-Indigenous academics teaching Indigenous Studies and align this discussion with structural critique. As non-Indigenous academics, some argue that it is culturally disrespectful and pedagogically problematic for us to deliver this course. We consider that the work of embedding Indigenous perspectives should not be relegated solely the responsibility of Indigenous academics, and that our teaching contributes to reconciliation and begins to fill a significant gap in awareness and understanding among Australian students in higher education. The course SCS130 aims to introduce students to Indigenous perspectives through narratives, film, documentaries, academic and non-academic texts, biography and art. The objective of the course is to engage students with the complexity of colonisation and its ramifications for constructions of individual and national identities. Student survey qualitative data is used to provide an analysis of the course and to illustrate the conflict between our pedagogic practice, student expectations and the structural impediments to our decolonising teaching aims.

Editorial

Editorial

Settled and unsettled listening: café culture, colonialism, and multisensory politics in Tunisian-Andalusī music

ABSTRACT This article examines French colonial and early Tunisian nationalist initiatives concerning public music listening practices in 1930s Protectorate Tunisia. Drawing on historical documents from the colonial archive, period travel logs, and Tunisian authors, I offer a history of café listening in Tunis focused on audition of ma’lūf, Tunisian Arab-Andalusī music. Specifically, I analyse a 1935 government-issued mandate directing café owners across the country to play pre-approved recordings of ma’lūf for their clientele. I consider this mandate alongside a co-occurrent policy of the nascent Rashidiyya organisation that prohibited live performance of ma’lūf in cafés. While these approaches appear contradictory – one encouraging ma’lūf listening and the other discouraging it – I demonstrate that French and elite Tunisian actors in fact sought similar goals: rescuing traditional music from neglect and debasement. I explore the way these policies reflected pre-existing ideological tensions among Tunisians around the respectability of music listening in public – especially with regard to class and gender – and how acts of colonial control sought to ‘settle’ ma’lūf listening, challenging Tunisian ‘sensate sovereignty’ (Robinson [2020]. Hungry Listening, Resonant Theory for Indigenous Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) and shaping emerging politics of multisensory and embodied listening. This account aims to situate ma’lūf listening within its dense sensory, cultural, and historical contexts, taking into account the social-sonic milieu of the café, colonial anxieties around public radio listening, and the use of music broadcasting to combat threats to colonial control. Finally, I identify examples of present-day approaches to ‘unsettling’ Tunisian listening and reclamation of multisensory musical experience from my ethnographic research.

Corto Maltese and the Myriad Narratives of a More-than-Human Ocean: Revisiting Some of UNCLOS’ Ontological Assumptions

Graphic novels have been previously recognized by scholarly research as a valuable conceptual lens for thinking critically about law. Asserting the need for a deeper engagement with the material foundations, ontological beliefs and epistemological grids that lie under the development of international law of the sea, this article delves into the imaginary oceanic universe of Hugo Pratt’s classic graphic novel series, Corto Maltese. In conjunction with the comic series, “law and comics” literature, Indigenous studies, and new materialism thinking, the article examines different ontological values related to the material oceanic universe that are incorporated in the graphic narrative, juxtaposing them with beliefs embedded in the Western legal understanding of the ocean systems. Using the graphic novel series as a methodological device, the article thus seeks to revisit some of the law of the sea’s fundamental assumptions and ground future discussions towards a material turn of international law of the sea, and not least Western philosophy as a whole.

Dr. Chelsea Gabel

Dr. Chelsea Gabel is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Well-being, Community Engagement, and Innovation, Director of the Indigenous Studies program at McMaster University, and former Director of the McMaster Indigenous Research Institute. As an Indigenous scholar, her work integrates community-based participatory and arts-based research methods in studying Indigenous health and well-being. Dr. Gabel’s interests include understanding how digital technology can be used for healing and empowerment of elders and youth. She also examines the pressures facing Arctic communities as they prepare for resource development. Dr. Gabel combines community- and arts-based research methods with academic rigour to create positive social change for Indigenous communities through public policy.

The Legend of Thanadelthur: Elders’ Oral History and Hudson’s Bay Company Journals

This article introduces the legend of Thanadelthur, a Dene woman who had a profound impact on the Dene people in Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba during the eighteenth century fur trade. Thanadelthur was instrumental in the negotiation of a peace treaty between the Dene and Cree, and in helping the Dene to build a trade relationship with the Hudson’s Bay Company. These actions helped to create new economic opportunities for Dene communities and a good life for Thanadelthur’s people. While Thanadelthur’s life is documented in scholarly works and Hudson’s Bay Company journals, those records do not tell the entire story. Thus, this article also recounts oral stories told by Elders and others in order to expand this legend to include the perspective of the Dene. In bringing together the reports from Dene oral historians, scholars, and other authors, this article outlines the remarkable events in Thanadelthur’s life in order to underscore her historical significance to our communities and Canada at large. This article is a chapter in the open textbook Indigenous Self-Determination through Mitho Pimachesowin (Ability to Make a Good Living), developed for the University of Saskatchewan course Indigenous Studies 410/810 and hosted by the Northern Review.Tthainaltth’er t’ą-u Cǫmpani Kǫę ha Dene chu, Ená chu ëƚëhela nį snį, t’a-u dahłëlghël nį-u; Ąƚnëdhi chu Cǫmpani Kǫę honį nįhenįla si diri bëghą honį sį. Dene ëƚëhela tl’ąghë tsádhedh k’ets’įdel nį. Tthainaltth’er Denesuline ha nįdhen-ú, la Dene ha horenįle hël, Dene doreƚti nįthen t’a Dene ts’įnį nį. Tthainaltth’ur bëghą honį ƚą, ëritƚ’is k’e tth’i hëla, ąƚnëdhi behonié tth’i ƚą sį. T’ą-u Tthainaltth’er huya, yanathë honį k’onį ha. Canada k’eyaghë náide si, Tthainaltth’er denegodhë helį kuli horįcha hołts’į nį; Dena ha.