Indigenous Motherhood in the Academy

I went to 2S Glam at Bill Reid Gallery as one of the last activities of my 2025 summer vacation.

I've never been to a drag event before. It was a lot of fun. It was a family event and the host gave us an orientation of sorts at the beginning. Several of the performers (Jaylene Tyme, Beth, Xana) were contestants in Canada's Drag Race, and the King (Theo Rhetical) was recently featured in a series called Long Live Kings. The music was provided by DJ Osho. Everyone put on a great show and the outfits were stunning. I can't believe I have never been to a drag show before. It's so much fun. 

Related Podcasts 

Today's book is Indigenous Motherhood in the Academy by Robin Zape-Hol-Ah Minthorn, Christine A. Nelson, and Heather J. Shotton. I learned about the book from a University of Washington podcast episode called Indigenous Motherhood in the Academy. While I waited for the book, I listened to another podcast from one of the editors called Indigenizing Higher Education. I thought the Indigenizing Higher Education contained a lot of interesting discussion, including: 

• a project in which Robin Zape-Tah-Hol-Ah Minthorn moved to Arizona, which is an area that she is not Indigenous to. In order to do program planning in her new role, she met with the 19 Indigenous communities in Arizona (either tribal leaders or their delegates) to hear about what their priorities were for post secondary and what they wanted their students to learn. 
• while planning a doctoral program for University of Washington, she met with Muckleshoot 22 times in order to co-develop a program with them, which was eventually co-delivered with the tribal college. 

As an educator, I thrive on concrete examples, and so I appreciated the way that a theoretical concept, Indigenizing Higher Education, was brought to life through concrete examples of structuring programs in such a way that leaders from communities Indigenous to the place where the institution is located have input into what happens in the institution. There are a lot of scholarly debates around "what does acknowledgement of territory mean?" I think that this is an example of how a scholar can walk the talk of acknowledging territory. She also talked in the episode about some of her negative experiences in post-secondary, such as when she had to switch advisors in her doctoral program because her first advisor was not supportive of her vision for her work, and her second advisor was a white man, but he supported her work, and so she was able to pursue what she wanted. I think that these personal stories of navigating difficulties in the academy are important, because current students may be struggling with similar issues, and so it's important for them to know that they are not alone when they are feeling unsupported in pursuing what they want to do, and that if their first supervisor is not supportive, they often do have the option of trying to find someone else who will support their work. In today's academic job market, there is a lot of pressure to only focus on accomplishments. Talking about challenges encountered along the way does not take away from one's  accomplishments. 

I like academic podcasts for a number of reasons. First, post-pandemic I am still reluctant to travel to conferences. I'm not sure whether or not that reluctance will fade over time, but it's where I am at. Right now, I like spending time where I live and with my family, and conferences take away from that time. Air travel is hectic and uncomfortable and bad for the environment. And it's hard to meet my nutritional and physical activity goals while travelling a lot. So, with podcasts, I can experience people talking about their work without travelling. Someone might say "but if you go to a conference you might be able to talk to the presenter." That's true... but I rarely do. Usually I just sort of hang around with people that I know, and I think most people who go to conferences also mostly hang around people that they know, and so theoretically I could go meet the speaker, I rarely do. Maybe when I go to conferences I should be better about networking. Anyhow, I also like podcasts because when I am on the fence about buying a book, I have this free option to get an idea of what the book is like, and then I can make a decision. I also like podcasts because I can listen to them while I am doing chores or commuting. I'm a big fan of academic podcasts and really grateful for scholars who make their ideas broadly accessible to the world for free. 

Introduction 

Anyhow, back to the book. This book came about because Robin had a dream while she was holding her newborn baby (Minthorn, Shotten & Nelson, 2022, p.2). She shared that dream with a friend and another friend, and they made it happen. They describe the nature of the book as such: 

"Through various methods, like storytelling, letter writing, and poetry, the contributors invite you into their lives to understand what the Indigenous motherhood in the academy journey means for different tribes, different communities, and even different generations. As Indigenous mothers, we are not homogenous, but we are connected by our journeys, including finding a spiritual balance and nurturing our children, who have been given to us and who carry our/their ancestors' bloodline and legacy wit them. Our intention with this book is to tell these stories from a complex place where Indigenous mother-scholars are fostering and sustaining mothering/nurturing spaces while simultaneously challenging the colonial structures of the academy. Before diving into the contributors' narratives, we outline our shared (and ever-changing) definition of what we mean by motherhood in the academy." (Minthorn, Shotten & Nelson, 2022, p.3). 

There is a little bit of discussion around rematriation in the introduction (p.5-6) but overall I was surprised that it didn't arise as a bigger theme within the book. The book is about motherhood, but beyond biological motherhood and inclusive of other types of care such as being an aunt. The authors note in the introduction that they wished that they had more gender diversity in the book, and they attributed some of the lack of gender diversity as being reflective of their personal networks as well as due to the ways that gender diverse Indigenous mothers may be systemically excluded from the academy. And so they note that perhaps future books on the same topic will be more gender diverse (p.8). I love it when a movie drops breadcrumbs for the sequel and I look forward to Indigenous Motherhood in the Academy, Vol.2 🌈. I think it is interesting when the authors of a collection note an absence in the collection, and reflect on why the absence exists while also expressing a wish for things to be different. They could have just said nothing, but I think that it was better that they did say something. 

The book contains 24 chapters from a wide range of Indigenous mother-scholars. There are a lot of personal narratives, and the contributors are transparent about challenges they encountered as mother-scholars, the help they received along the way, the complexity of bringing children on to campus, and conflicting cultural expectations around parenting. The authors also model the ways that they honour Indigenous motherhood through their relationships with their mothers, even when those relationships are fraught with complexities caused by colonial trauma. There is a lot of trauma in this book, but it is not presented in a sensationalist, stereotypical, or re-traumatizing way.  I feel like the authors care about their readers, and talk about trauma in a trauma informed way, while also being role models who openly shared how they sought out support through family, community, culture, and therapy in order to pursue their goals in spite of trauma. 

Various Chapters 

There were a wide variety of contributors to this book. One of the most prominent contributors was Shelly Lowe. She was the Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities until recently when you-know-who removed her. In her chapter, she spoke to  the power of reproduction, literally and metaphorically. And she also spoke to the isolation and alienation of working at an Ivy League where there are very few other Indigenous staff. She included specific examples of anti-Indigenous racism that she experienced, but didn't say whether they occurred at Harvard or Yale, both of which being places where she worked. But she also spoke to the ways that her work was meaningful and important to her, and the way that she felt rewarded when students succeeded and let her know that she was part of her success. 

Some of the chapters spoke to the tension between the ideal scholar, or the type of scholar which the institution was structured to reward, versus the Indigneous mother scholar. For example, in the chapter, "My children are my teachers: Lessons learned as a Kanaka Maoli mother-sholar," Nicole Alia Salis Reyes says: 

 "In the professoriate, following from the ideal scholar trope, there seems to be less variation regarding how to be a so-called successful academic. The master narrative suggests that when you are on the job market, you should cast a relatively wide net and accept a position at the most prestigious institution possible. Next, once you are on the job, you should spend minimal time tending to your teaching and service responsibilities and maximum time researching through the use of widely accepted methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Moreover, you should publish completed research primarily in the most well-respected journals with the highest impact factors. Finally, only after you have achieved tenure and gained national and international status as a scholar through following these steps may you begin to devote more time to the research, teaching, and service activities that you might care most about but are least rewarded in the academy. This master narrative upholds the experiences and intentions of white and male faculty as normative." (Salis Reyes, 2022, p.55).

Similarly, in her chapter "The (time) line in the sand," Miranda Belarde-Lewis says: 

"the widely accepted norm to move across the country fof an academic job is what we as academics are "supposed to do" to cross pollinate our ideas and to subject ourselves and our families to the harsh transition of entirely different towns, neighborhoods, schools, friends, cultures of research, and institutional politics." (Belarde-Lewis, 2022, p.92).

I can definitely see how these expectations of the ideal scholar are at odds with things like developing relationships with Indigenous communities, developing deep connection to place, and parenting. As an Indigenous mother-scholar myself (I'm assuming that the term scholar here is inclusive of people who studied, and not just faculty, although I note that the contributors are faculty and/or admin, so maybe I am wrong, maybe scholar only includes people who are scholars by vocation? Thinking aloud her, maybe I should say "as an Indigenous mother who has studied a lot"), I find that there is a pragmatic tension between some key concepts in various Indigenous epistemologies and the ideal scholar. For example, Indigenous epistemologies often put a high value on deep knowledge and engagement with place. Yet, the ideal scholar will not do all of their education in one place. These things are in opposition to each other. And these tensions are larger than any one individual person. 

The contributors do not provide simplistic individual solutions to systemic problems, and I am glad they didn't, because that would have trivialized the scope, scale, and weight of these systemic tensions. However, the contributors do model how they rely on the Indigenous identity as a resource in order to navigate these systemic tensions. For example, in the chapter "Mvskoke eckvlke (Muscogee motherhood) in academic spaces," Dwanna L. McKay says that she was a teen mom, and she describes her own culturally informed understanding of motherhood:

"As part of a matrilineal culture, Muscogee mother were traditionally considered the head of the household and women possessed full rigths to their children and to the lands and houses in each town. Within Muscogee culture, motherhood is not a burden, role, or job but rather a sacred space that grounds and connects the people within a larger culture. Mvskoke Eckvlk (Muscogee motherhood) organizes the lives, ceremonies, and histories of our people, marking where and to whom we belong." (McKay, 2022, p.85). 

She reflects on her choice to spend time working on her PhD instead of spending time with her mother, and then her mother died shortly after she finished. She says, "the cost for my accomplishments, even for the good of my people and family, felt too high then and now." (McKay, 2022, p.88). She then went on to accept a position at an institution where she faced anti-Indigenous comments, including a department head making a comment about how she is from one of the "civilized tribes." (McKay, 2022, p.88). Eventually she left the institution, delaying tenure by two years (McKay, 2022, p.88). These narratives are sometimes difficult to read, and there were several times where I felt sad about the sacrifices one must make in order to gain tenure. I think an unasked question in the book is whether there is a way to restructure the academy and scholarship as a vocation in order to increase support for Indigenous mother-scholars. The book describes tensions, and describes ways that individuals navigate tensions. The book does not prescribe a systemic agenda for change. It promotes concepts, like Indigenization or decolonization. But it does not contain a multitude of specific structural recommendations.

A unique feature of the book is that it has a collective chapter, where women share their stories without sharing their identities. The author is listed as Indigenous Mother-Scholars and the name of the chapter is "Honouring our relations: Collective stories." It contains unnamed anecdotes. For example, one woman recalls how she received a tentative offer for a postdoctoral position. As part of the process, she went to the university to do a presentation, and her presentation included ways which being a mother informed her work. After the presentation, the private investigator hugged her and told her "let's just forget this postdoctoral and let you just focus on your children, who should be most important." (p.132).  Her focus on motherhood led to the offer being revoked. Another mother-scholar says, "I have often thought about what the academy has taken from me, what I have sacrificed to it as my price for admission into this space." (p.129). As an example, she shares that she had a miscarriage in her office and her graduate assistant had to take her to emergency. After having a procedure and while coming out of anesthesia, she asked her doctor if she could still travel to a conference in two days (p.129).

Another unique feature of the book is a chapter written by the editors, which contains both named and unnamed comments from the contributors about the impact of the pandemic on Indigenous mother-scholars. One scholar notes that when she was on campus, she had to do a lot of unpaid labour educating colleagues about Indigenous issues (Minthorn, Nelson & Shotton, 2022, p.188). During the pandemic, she was talking with her therapist about whether or not she should stop the tenure clock, and a motivating factor for not stopping the tenure clock was that once she achieved tenure, she would feel less pressure to do the unpaid labour of educating colleagues about Indigenous issues (Minthorn, Nelson & Shotton, 2022, p.189).

I think the most painful anecdote to read was in the chapter, "A journey of Indigenous motherhood through the love, loss, and the P&T process" by Robin Zape-Tah-Hol-Ah Minthorn. She talked about how she had genetic testing done while she was pregnant, and the testing flagged a potential chromosomal abnormality (Trisonomy 18) while she was midpoint in the tenure and promotion process. In spite of the pregnancy and then the subsequent loss of Emery Rose ten minutes after she was born, Robin kept moving in order to meet the requirements of tenure and promotion (p.153).

The book contains many personal narratives of how being a mother-scholar is shaped by institutions, policies, and various pressures of the roles. However, I found the chapter which was most useful in understanding the lack of support that mothers working in American universities experience was Tria Blu Wakpa's chapter, "A glint of decolonial love: An academic mother's meditation on navigating and leveraging the university." She gives examples from her own experiences. For example, when she was nursing, the lactation room did not have a fridge. So she would have to walk to the lactation room, and then walk to a different area to put the milk in the fridge, and then walk another distance to where she was teaching, and sometimes she had to do this three times a day (p.116). She cites this as an example of how mothers are not supported in the academy and pushed out of the academy. She notes that for both of her births, she started working again a week after giving birth, in part due to the fact that she worried that if she took time off, it might negatively impact tenure and promotion (p.117). She says, "because mothers and other caregivers may have additional familiar responsibilities that can inhibit us from taking on extra work for the university, we may be (mis)perceived as less dedicated to our work than our colleagues" and this pressure is a form of de facto discrimination (p.117). She also notes that if she had stopped the tenure clock, she would have had to wait longer to achieve the merit pay associated with tenure, so even though the option for taking a leave exists, in the U.S. there are financial repercussions to taking maternity leave (p.118). Taking time out for motherhood would have meant lost income opportunities, meanwhile early motherhood is a time of life which comes with significant increased costs such as childcare. 

Transformation 

Overall, I found this book an interesting read. Oftentimes, when we look at successful people, we only see their achievements. I think it was really brave of these authors to share the hurdles they have had to overcome as Indigenous Mother-Scholars. I hope their narratives inspire early career Indigenous Mother-Scholars to say "yes, this is hard, but I can do it." And I hope that the book generates conversations around what institutions can do in order to be more supportive of Indigenous Mother-Scholars. 

Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education: The Transformative Indigenous Praxis Model by Cornel Pewewardy, Anna Lees, and Robin Zape-Tah-Hol-Ah Minthorn

I've been listening to Nicola Campbell's audiobook version of  Spíləx̣m: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence. I read the hard copy as soon as it was released and I thought it was a beautiful book. I particularly loved how it was a celebration of Indigenous place in south-western British Columbia. I thought that she was really brave in sharing personal experiences, some of which were part of the ongoing legacy of colonialism. And I really respected the way that she illustrated how Indigenous identity, language, and culture is a source of strength. It is truly a strengths based approach to intergenerational Indigenous trauma. When I first read the hardcopy of the book, I was at a different place in my life with respect to grief. Between reading the book the first time and the second time, I lost my aunt and uncle who I was very close to. Before I lost them, I understood the idea of death, but I had no understanding of the visceral experience of grief. So when I read the book the first time, I understood the idea of grief, but I had never experienced it in a life-altering way.   This time around, while listenng to the book, I understand the sections on grief differently. I might post more about the book later so I won't say too much here, except I recommend listening to her book. 

I have also been reading this random book on ecology. It falls into the category of "books I picked up because I thought they would be relevant to my dissertation but then I started reading them and realized they were not relevant to my topic so I abandoned them, and am picking them up again now." This one's central thesis is that we as humans are interconnected to the world in a corporeal way (erotic) and if we acknowledge that then we will learn to love the world as part of ourselves, and as a result we will be more motivated to stave off self-destruction through environmental collapse. Refences to Indigenous in the book are in the style of or directly through Hyde... and I find Hyde's approach to Indigenous content somewhat colonial-adventurer... there are weird tensions between some schools of environmental writing/theorizing and Indigenous thought/Indigenous people. That being said, the book is aesthetically well written. If you like John Muir, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and other types of artistic expression of natural science, then you will like this book. There was one weird line which put decolonization under the umbrella of the romantic movement. I do not think that decolonization falls under the umbrella of the romantic movement. The romantics challenge the idea that science and rationalism are the cure to all the problems of the world. Decolonization challenges the idea that imperial forces have the right to dominate Indigenous people (individually and collectively) on their own territories while also extracting value out of said territories in order to enrich the position of the imperial power. These are quite different things. They have some common goals (challenge the status quo, question taken for granted truths about the goals of society and life, asserting the validity of diverse intellectual traditions) so in some ways there is overlap in aspirations and methods, but one does not fall under the umbrella of the other. Anyhow, in spite of this detail, I do think that this is a nice book to read while sitting in the woods. 

The book that I want to talk about in depth today is Unsettling Settler-Colonial Education: The Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model which is edited by Cornel Pewewardy, Anna Lees, and Robin Zabe-Tah-Hol-Ah Minthorn, with a forward by Tiffany S. Lee and afterword by Michael Yellow Bird. I picked this up because it was part of the same series as Native Presence and Sovereignty in College, which I enjoyed. There are quite a few interesting titles in the series. 

Something that I have noticed that Indigenous scholars do well is demystifying the process of creating community in scholarship. For example, in this book, they talk about the process that led to the creation of this theoretical model. One of the authors created the Transformative Indigenous Praxis Model (TIPM) many years ago, and shared it with others in order to further develop it. In 2018 the editors published an article which explained the model. Then, they spent over a decade of workshopping and refining it at various events, in conversation with various colleagues over time. Finally, they asked colleagues who they had been in conversation with to write chapters explaining how they use this model in their program design and pedagogy. In the final chapter, the editors explain that they had a closing event after the authors had submitted their chapters, and then there is a QR code that goes to a closing song. This book is a great example of creating community inside of academia. Also, Ryan Red Corn, from the comedy troop the 1491s, is included in the acknowledgements. 

This social approach to creating the book has resulted in a book which is written by various contributors, but cohesive in its tone and approach. The book models diverse application of the model while staying in the bounds of critical theory, with a particular emphasis on critical consciousness. If one were looking for an example of critical consciousness in education, this could make a nice jigsaw. 

I did look up the 2018 article, The Transformational Indigenous Praxis Model: Stages for Developing Critical Consciousness in Indigenous Education. The introduction to this book is a truncated version of the article, and the vast majority of the contributors cite this article in their chapters. Here is a rough outline of the article:

• Whitestream education hurts Indigenous students 
• TIPM promotes radical consciousness among educators in order to help them transform their practice so that they can better serve Indigenous children 
• Why and how we introduce ourselves, author introductions 
• Walking in one world with multiple lenses 
• Decolonize and indigenize, as per Deloria and Wildcat 
• US sought to destroy Indigenous knowledge and epistemology as part of a larger program to exert power and control over Indigenous lives 
• White teachers need to spend more time in Indigenous communities 
• Introducing concept of settler replacement and settler futurity 
• Multiculturalism: does not address colonialism, does not address structural inequality and derails self-determination, takes add and stir approach to Indigenous knowledge
• Indigenous resistance to colonialism is ongoing 
• Tribal sovereignty includes educational sovereignty 
• Reject ideologies which promote Indigenous inferiority, embrace Indigenous ideologies grounded in decolonization 
• Indigenous consciousness disrupts colonial narratives 
• This critical thinking framework arises from decolonial theory, post colonial theory, tribal critical race theory, and insurgent theory 
•  Decolonization as defined by Linda Tuhiwai Smith 
• Postcolonial, as defined by Marie Battiste 
• Tribal Critical Race Theory as defined by Brayboy 
• Insurgent as defined by Adam Gaudry 
• "tell our tribal stories of who we are on our own terms as cultural beings" 
• educational pedagogy is congruent with worldviews 
• Not just critique colonization, move to strengths based approach 
• White stream rejects Indigenous education in many ways including deficit based approach 
• This model involves critical thinking, as defined by Michal Yellow Bird 
• Divest from colonialism, and insert tribal culture into the curriculum 
• Heal and rebuild Indigenous education, holistic remedy and antinode to colonialism 
• Consciousness to action, personal change first 
• Moving to higher levels of decolonial thought in order to achieve postcolonial future 
• TIPM is not linear, static, absolute - it involves stages 
• Antidotes to resistance - Waziyatawin Angela Wilson and Michael Yellow Bird's critically conscious study groups 
• Antidote to resistance -  publicly center the strength of Indigenous culture and community 

One thing that I stumbled on a lot as a reader was the use of terms like post-colonial and decolonization. I wished that the authors had created their own working definition at the outset of the article (and book) because those words can mean a lot of different things to different people, and as I was reading, I was searching through my own internal database of "different ways that different people use these words" in order to try to locate this scholarship within the larger fields of Indigenous education and Indigenous studies. I wanted to know how the authors themselves defined these words. Perhaps in their TIPM, the definitions themselves being not tied down is part of the approach. Perhaps it is overly linear of me to want these words to be tidy. I think that the model itself could be accessible to a general audience, but I think that the a lot of prior foundational knowledge is required to engage in the theoretical explanation of the model. Perhaps that is why the introduction to the book kept the model, but cut out a lot of the explanation of the theoretical foundations of the model. I actually don't know if I agree with this decision. Perhaps they made this decision because the book is aimed at practitioners, and so they assumed that they should focus on practice/the model. Yet, it seems to me that a book would be the perfect place to expand on the theoretical framework and go deeper into the premises behind the model. If there is a second edition of this book, I would love it if there were more elaboration on the underlying theories.

Anyhow, having discussed the article, let us return to the book. In the introduction, the authors introduce the model. TIMP has four waves/dimensions, which go from one to four. One is a small wave/dimension, four is the biggest wave/dimension. Educators move along the waves/dimensions, from one to four. But there is resistance trying to pull them back to the previous wave/dimension. In one, educators do not yet have critical consciousness but do integrate pieces of multicultural education (Pewewardy, Lees, Minthorn, 2022, p.4). In two, teachers begin to develop critical awareness. In three, teachers move toward social transformation and have deep awareness. They mentor, collaborate, and “begin to imagine a post-colonial future” (Pewewardy, Lees, Minthorn, 2022, p.6). And finally, stage four is the pinnacle. In this stage:

“At the most advanced dimension, educators demonstrate a deep embodiment of critical consciousness and consistently take active efforts in social justice. Educators enact transformational praxis in both theoretical and concrete ways to make change in the educational experiences of Black and Indigenous communities and other Communities of Color. They engage so consistently that Indigenous and decolonizing pedagogies are embedded in their daily work. They transcend the waves at a steady pace, moving through the resistance fluidly with focused time and energy. Educators in the cultural and social justice action dimension find themselves in leadership roles where they mentor others and are recognized as knowledge holders. These educators advance efforts of radical resurgence (Simpson, 2017) within their Tribal Nation communities and across educational settings. They clearly see a postcolonial future, while still working to uncover the path through decolonization. Centering Indigenous knowledges in their teaching, they resist neoliberal and settler-colonial narratives in school policy and curriculum. It can be difficult to remain in this dimension and event the most critically conscious educators may retreat from leadership roles and move between dimensions to find sustainability in the work." (Pewewardy, Lees, Minthorn, 2022, p.7).

The article contains an illustration of the model. It uses a pyramid to illustrate the model, and stage one is at the bottom of the pyramid and stage four is at the top. The article is posted without a paywall here, and the illustration is on page 17. Personally, I found looking at the model was helpful in understanding the model. The introduction to the book does not include the pyramid illustration, but it does include a diagram of the model illustrated as waves, with stage one being small and on the left, and the waves are progressing to the right, and stage four is the largest wave and on the right. Thus, moving through the stages represents forward progression. Below the surface, however, is resistance to Indigenous education, and so moving through the waves requires overcoming resistance on an ongoing basis. 

As antidotes to resistance, the authors recommend critical conscious study groups:

“These spaces allow for mentorship, comradery, and restoration with others who share the same goals and help beginning educators build their awareness around the need for decolonization. Educators cannot sustain aspirations for change alone and must find spaces of interdependence to nurture each others’ efforts across institutional settings in what we name critical conscious study groups. Having like-minded colleagues within and outside of one’s own institution is invaluable to make sense of experiences that are both successful and challenging. Holding regular critical conscious study groups with educators across contexts and with varying levels of experience creates space to foster continued critical thinking toward transformation. Th examples of pathway -making in this text portray work across the TIPM and depict how the work took form in spite of institutional and societal resistance.” (Pewewardy, Lees, Minthorn, 2022, p.7).

The book itself contains seventeen chapters from various contributors who discuss how they integrate the model into their work, or how their work illustrates concepts within the model. There are four thematic sections: birth to grade 12 education, teacher education, higher education, and educational leadership. 

I found the teacher education section interesting. There was some discussion on how the students in teacher education are predominantly white, and so the pedagogy has to adapt to that scenario. There was a really interesting chapter on how a professor had a student in her class who kept wearing a racist mascot hat to class. She talked to him in class and he kept wearing it. Then she talked to him outside of class, and he kept wearing it. And eventually she got administration involved. She offered an educational/restorative path, and he opted not to take it. Her class was a class that was part of the path leading to teacher education, and she had no idea about whether or not he was accepted into the teacher education program. I thought it was interesting from the perspective of Indigenous workers' rights in education. I know a lot of people who experience micro-aggressions and outright racism in the course of their work in education, and it can be a push factor in people leaving education to work in other fields. The chapter's focus was awareness raising, as in, "here is something that I experienced, here is how I tried to handle it, and here is how it impacted me." I think that more discussion needs to happen at the systemic level in terms of "what should we do when situations like this arise?" For example, how should the dean have responded? What support should be offered to the professor? Does the professor have a right to know whether or not this incident impacted the individual's competitiveness as an applicant to the teacher education program? This chapter provided some critical consciousness raising, and then left the task of imagining structural redress to the reader. 

Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies

 I took an introduction to editing course. In part, one of the goals in taking the course was to reduce the frequency in which I send an email and notice the typo after I hit send. And the second goal was to become better at providing feedback when someone hands me something, whether that be a draft article or an email, and asks me "can you take a look at this?"

One of the activities that editors sometimes do is to go through a text and write one summary per paragraph in order to create an outline. In order to extend my learning and develop my skills as a reader, I have been making a habit of doing this. In doing so, I noticed how frequently I as a reader read into what the author is saying, or infer meaning, and how often there is a bit of a gap between what the author explicitly says as opposed to what I take away from the reading. 

So, with that being said, for the introduction of today's book ( Critically sovereign: Indigenous gender, sexuality, and feminist studies edited by Joanne Barker), I am going to specify that my summary (below) of the introduction reflects what I took away from the reading, including my own inferences and elaborations. 

In the introduction, Joanne Barker begins by asserting that misrepresentations/appropriations are not accidental, they are part of a larger mainstream political practice of upholding imperialism and colonialism. She notes that the apologies for misrepresentations/appropriations often fall flat because they don't address this aspect of the issue and also because they just keep happening. These misrepresentations are often gendered. Violence and discrimination based on gender and sexuality is a core element of imperialism and colonialism. Thus, addressing Indigenous gender and Indigenous sexuality is a core element of decolonization. 

She asserts that this book is political, and the chapters in this book address ongoing conversations about Indigenous identity, Indigenous gender, and Indigenous sexuality. 

 She emphasizes that Indigenous studies engages the polity of the Indigenous, which is "the unique governance, territory, and culture of Indigenous peoples in unique and related systems of (non) human relationships and responsibilities to each other." She posits that "Indigenous" is in part defined by political solidarity against US and Canadian imperialism and colonialism. 

She differentiates Indigenous studies from a number of disciplines/areas of study:

• Indigenous studies looks at both Indigenous peoples' rights within the state as well as Indigenous collectives' relation to the state. This added element of relation to the state as Indigenous sovereigns sets it apart from civil rights studies, as civil rights is about one's rights within the state as an individual, as opposed to collective sovereign to sovereign rights. In my words (although, granted, much of this summary is in my own words) - Indigenous studies has an international relations element which is absence in civil rights studies. 
• Similarly, Indigenous studies is separate from minority studies because of the history of Indigenous peoples' relation to the state and conversations around sovereignty and self-determination. 
• Indigenous studies is different than feminism because feminism takes gender and specifically women as the starting point for analysis, while Indigenous studies takes Indigenous polity as the starting point for analysis. There are core fractures between these two approaches. For example, some feminists assert that discrimination against women is universal across time and space, whereas some Indigenous studies folks point out that some communities have a history of cultures which do not oppress women, thus this claim to universal sexism is incorrect and feminism could in fact learn from Indigenous people. Indigenous studies has criticized feminism for colluding with imperialism, colonialism, and racism. 
• Indigenous studies is different from gender and sexuality studies. Gender and sexuality studies emphasizes the social construction of gender, whereas some Indigenous studies projects focus on gender roles and responsibilities and constructions which emphasize binaries (e.g. matriarchy). However, there have also been some Indigenous studies projects which coalesce with gender studies, such as projects which acknowledge and celebrate third genders. 
• Individuals within Indigenous studies have criticized Indigenous studies for its marginalization of gender, sexuality, and feminism. Homophobia with Indigenous conversations has not been properly addressed. And there is a difficult history where individuals who have tried to raise gender, sexuality, and feminism within Indigenous debates have been accused of being anti-Indigenous. 

Aaaaaand feminism and gender studies also disagree with each other (biological sex as fixed and the basis for discrimination, biological sex is a social construction - to assume that sex is fixed is oppression). I found this section really valuable. Sometimes I enter a conversation, and I just know what because of the diversity of perspectives in the conversation, no matter what I say, I am going to say something "wrong." Nonetheless, I engage in the conversation, because dialoguing across difference is important. As a human, I want to connect with others. And I believe that it is important to learn from others, even if I don't agree with everything that they say. And if I don't understand what they are saying, it is even more important to dialogue. Anyhow, this section of the chapter helped me understand those moments where I am talking about something with someone and we are not disagreeing but also somehow not saying the same thing. 

In this introduction, in addition to distinguishing Indigenous studies from other fields of study, she also traces the development of Indigenous studies from 1968 on. She asserts that while Indigenous studies began to establish itself within institutions in 1968, conversations around the intersections of Indigenous identity, gender, and sexuality were taking place prior to 1968, and she seeks to provide an overview of some of the roots of contemporary conversations within Indigenous studies. In this section I got a little bit turned around because she interspersed the introduction of foundational texts with commentary from others regarding the significance of foundational texts. But that's on me because sometimes I am easily overwhelmed when there are a lot of names in a small number of pages. Anyhow, some of the foundational texts that she points to in the area of Indigenous studies, feminism, gender, and sexuality include:

• Life among the Piutes: Their wrongs and claims 
• Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen
• Cogewea, the half blood 
• The Hidden half : studies of Plains Indian women
• A gathering of spirit: A collection of writing and art by North American Indian Women 
• Living the spirit : A gay American Indian anthology
• The sacred hoop: Recovering the feminine in American Indian traditions

While she celebrates these texts, she also cautions that these texts often include an appeal to liberalism because they were a product of their time. When reading these books (and any books for that matter) it’s important to contextualize work and understand “the profound contentions and difficulties Indigenous peoples confront in having to constantly negotiate and contest the social terms and conditions of imperial and colonial imaginaries, policies, and actions.” (P.18)

I think that reading this introduction helped me understand the nuances of various ongoing conversations, and as such, succeeded in its goal of ensuring that I had a foundational framework of knowledge to draw from when reading the subsequent chapters. 

_____________

I read all of the chapters in this book and personally, I thought it was a delightful collection. All of the chapters were helpful in expanding my thinking around Indigenous identity, feminism, gender, and identity. The chapter which I found most interesting was Melissa K. Nelson's chapter "Getting dirty: The eco-eroticisms of women in Indigenous oral literatures." Basically, her inquiry question is "why are Indigenous women in stories always falling in love with non-human animate and non-animate beings?" 

I found the question very intriguing. I grew up with some of these types of stories, and I had always just assumed that the non-humans were shapeshifters, and that these stories took place in a time when everyone shapeshifted. These types of stories are not just limited to traditional oral stories. Nathan Adler's story "Abacus" in the anthology Love after the end: An anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer speculative fiction involves a boy who calls in love with an AI rat. And Aaron Paquette's Lightfinder involves a love story between humans who also shapeshift into foxes. 

Sometimes I forget that this is a culturally situated concept. For example, a few years ago I participated in a canoe event hosted by an organization. The person next to me said that there was a man on the hill. Habitually, I said that it was sasquatch and he was going to grab her and make her his wife. As soon as the words left my mouth, I silently thought "oh my god - you can't say that here." This casual joke, which has been said to me in various contexts and which I have probably said to others, was not appropriate within a professional event hosted by a non-Indigenous organization. In the immediate moment, I just thought "I hope this person is not offended" and she seemed not to be. Later, I reflected on the odd nature of this joke. Not only the interspecies element of it (assuming that you believe that sasquatch is not human), or the spiritual element of it (assuming that you believe that sasquatch is a spiritual entity), but also the compulsory heterosexuality and non-consent within it. When I reflected on the joke, it occurred to me that there were some really dark things below the joke. I wondered whether or not I had some kind of weird internalized misogyny or something. But actually, underneath the joke is a caution. If you are a woman, be careful, for there are dangers out there. Anyhow, that was one moment which reminded me that the interspecies stories are culturally situated. Another moment was when I was at the gym and someone asked me how my day was going. And I told them good, I was just reading a story about a woman who married a bear. And they were visibly shocked and troubled, because they had no cultural context apparently to process even the premise of such a story. I forget sometimes that not everyone grew up with these types of stories. 

Anyhow, I think that the culturally situated nature of this topic means that it doesn't receive very much scholarly attention. So Melissa Nelson's is definitely a novel contribution to scholarship. 

In this chapter, she examines a number of stories which involve Indigenous women falling in love with non-human and sometimes inanimate beings. Here are the stories she discusses:

• Star husband 
• Stick husband 
• Woman who married a beaver 
• Woman who married a bear 
• Birth of Nanaboozho 

Here are some quotes which illustrate her perspective on the value of these types of stories:

• “These stories offer teachings about reciprocity, belonging, communal connections, and kinship bonds. Tragically, these beautiful stories of embodied connection to. Have been demonized and silenced by patriarchal, colonial, and Judeo-Christian ideologies, and these rich eco-erotic experiences have been suppressed and, in many cases, extinguished… I  committed to remembering these stories of relationship and re-awakening and embodying the metaphysics and praxis of Indigenous eco-erotics.” (p.232-233).
•  “I assert that these stories provide critical insights about humans’ eco-erotic relationship with other than human beings and that stories about falling in love with a star or a beaver should be considered signs of intelligence about the ethics involved with maintaining harmonious and resilient kinship relations.” (p.238).
•  “These stories tell us we should care for and love these ‘others’ - whether animal, plant, stone, stick, or star - and do so with a sense of ethics and consent.” (p.251).
• “most likely, sex is a metaphor. Sex is a symbol for intimate, visceral, embodied kinship relations with other species and with natural phenomenon… [it] is an emotional and ethical transaction, and agreement, a treaty of obligations.” (p.252).

The whole time I was reading her chapter, I just kept thinking "this is so interesting." If you are on the fence about reading this book, I would recommend picking it up for this chapter alone. 

One of the commitments that came out of my dissertation was a commitment to learn more about Indigenous gender studies. I think that this book is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to learn more about Indigenous feminism, gender, and sexuality.