Stories from the Margins

Indigenous Connections to the Land

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Programme (version May 2021)

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About p.2

Conference Schedule p. 3

l(eynote Address p. 6

In Conversation p. 7

Contributors p. 8

Organiser p. 28

About Stories From the Margins: Indigenous Connections to the Land

is an Online Conference held on29-3othjune2021 and is supported by the Department of Humanities, Northumbria University

This conference will explore Indigenous connections to the land through storytelling. The term "Indigenous" encompasses a wide range of peoples, diverse culturally, linguistically and geographically. Originating from the Latin root indigena, which means "sprung from the land", it has been used in international and United Nations contexts to define peoples in relation to their colonisers.

While there are many differences among Indigenous groups, land plays a foundational role in Indigenous belief systems and lifeways:

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Relationships to the land are familial, intimate, intergenerational, spiritual and instructive for Indigenous peoples and it is these relations that Western settler societies sought to destroy as part of their colonial project of territorial conquest and forced assimilation policies. Indigenous peoples from around the world share common problems related to how colonial empires have compromised their rights to traditional lands, territories and natural resources.

This conference will examine how Indigenous stories - told, written, sung or performed - refl,ect Indigenous connections

to the land and how these relations have been affected by the colonial enterprise. "[S}tories are a type of medicine and,

like medicine, can be healing or poisonous depending on the dosage or type", Terry Tayofa (2005), an Indigenous

psychologist from the Warm Springs and Taos Pueblo, explains. In particular, this conference will refl,ect on the

following questions: how does Indigenous storytelling contribute to understanding Indigenous identity and the crucial

role of land in Indigenous ways of life? How can Indigenous storytelling subvert colonial narratives of the land? How can

storytelling contribute to addressing colonial exploitations of the land and its resources? How can storytelling assist

Indigenous peoples in restoring their intimate relations to land and its natural gifts?

The conference is free of charge and will take place between the29th and3oth of June 2021. Registration is available via Eventbrite.

The conference is organised by Dr. Francesca Mussi as part of her Leverhulme ECR Fellowship for the project "Truth-telling/ Story-telling: literary and critical perspectives on Canada's TRC" (2018-2021), with technical assistance from

Adam Curry. The conference is also supported by the Department of Humanities, University of Northumbria.

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Stories From the Margins: Indigenous Connections to the Land

Online Conference supported by the Department of Humanities, University of Northumbria

29-30 June 2021

Session 1 - Tuesday 29th June 14 :00-15 :JO UK time

Welcome address 14:00-14:15 - Francesca Mussi (Northumbria)

I(eynote address - 14 :15-15 :JO

Dr Lill Tave Fredriksen, Associate Professor in Simi literature at UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Title: "Meahcci - the place we live" Chaired by Dr Francesca Mussi (Northumbria)

Session2 - Tuesday29thJune15:50-17:20 UKtime

~--, • H•~l \al~W-~~~~~~, Panel A: Human and More-Than-Human Relations: Indigenous Perspectives

Chiara Tellarini, 'The Dreaming: Stories as intermediaries between people and land in Aboriginal Australia' - University of Bologna

Tikli Loivaranta, 'Customary Lawscapes of Indigenous Community Forests in Central India' - University of Turku

Erika De Vivo, '#Meannu2118 at the Convergence of Fiction and Reality: Art, Performance and Storytelling between Pasts and Futures in a Land of Relations' - University of Torino

Chaired by Prof Claire Sutherland (Northumbria)

. ~ Panel B: Recovering the Past to Recreate Land Relations:

Alice Smith, 'Angusht and Saniba Gorge: The Birthplace of the Ingush and the Nart-Ortskhoi Saga' -

Chechen State Pedagogical University

Franck Miroux, 'Place, displacement, and replacement in Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse' - University of Pau

Dawn Wambold, 'The Landscapes of my Ancestors: Using Archaeology to Tell the Story of Metis Connections to the Landscape' - University of Alberta

Chaired by Dr Francesca Mussi (Northumbria)

th]une17:40-19:10 UKtime

Panel C: Water as a Site of Colonial Resistance

Abbey Ballard, "'ARE THEY GET TING IT?": Texting with Water in Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's This Accident of Being Lost' - University of Worcester

Claire Sutherland, 'Decolonialising through the Sea: Bringing Indigeneity into a National Legacy' -University of Northumbria

Kristin Lucas, 'Elemental Kinship: Water and Stone' - Nipissing University

Chaired by Dr Fra!lcesca Mussi (Northumbria)

Panel D: Exploring Indigenous Connections to the Land through Media

Anthony Adah, 'Ecocritical Approaches to Indigenous Films' - Minnesota State University

Jeff Danison, 'Voicing Indigenous (dis)connection to Canadian land: Identity construction in the

"Stories from the Land" podcast' - York University and Ryerson University (Canada)

Lara El Mekkawi, 'Lands of Solidarity: Understanding Contemporary North American Indigenous and Palestinian Realities' - University of Waterloo

Chaired by Prof Katherine Baxter (Northumbria)

1

Session4 - Wednesday3oth]une14:oo-15:30 UKtime

Panel E: Indigeneity, Ecocriticism and Settler Colonial Exploitation

Fernando Perez Garcia, 'Fiduciary Gridlock in the Last Frontier: An Indigenous Futurist Approach to Land Dispossession and the Colonial Benevolence' - University of Oviedo

Anna Kemball, 'Recoveries in Land and Language: Tara June Winch's The Yield (2019)' - University of

Edinburgh

Haydar Jahr Kohan and Thamir R. S. Az-Zubaidy, 'Representation of Environmentalism: A Postcolonial Ecocritical Study of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart' -Al-Ma'moun University College and Wasit University

Chaired by Dr Joanna Allan (Northumbria)

Panel F: Identity, Land Relations and Indigenous Counternarratives

Daniel] Bowman, 'A Chance to See Indians': john Joseph Mathews' Sundown (1934) and Native Americans

in early automotive culture' - University of Sheffield

Evan Miller, 'Changing Lands: An Exploration of the Relationship Between People and Land in Native American Literature' - Salem State University

Jeffrey Swartwood, 'The Call of the Waves: the Changing Tides of Native American Surfing Narratives' -

Ecole Polytechnique

Chaired by Prof Katherine Baxter (Northumbria)

Panel G: Indigenous Women and the Land

Emma Barnes, 'Aloha 'Aina: Indigenous Women and 'Love of the Land' in Mary J0,wena Pukui's Hawaiian

Mo'olelo' - the University of Salford

Anna Ortiz, 'A Case For Hondurena Liberation in Postcolonial Ecofeminism' - Illinois State University

Chaired by Prof Katy Jenkins (Northumbria)

Session6 - Wednesday3oth]une17:10-18:40 Ul(time

Conversation between Prof David Stirrup (University of l(ent, U.l(.) and Anishinaabe, Metis and settler-Irish artist Elizabeth LaPensee -17:10-18:25

Chaired by Dr Francesca Mussi (Northumbria)

Closing remarks 18:25-18.40 - Francesca Mussi

Sessions - Wednesday3othjune15:50-16:50 UI(time

~ •--=-- - • I l~~

I(eynote Address Lill Tove Fredriksen Lill Tave Fredriksen is from Porsanger, in Northern

Norway. She is Associate Professor of Sami Literature

at UiT the Arctic University of Norway, which is

located in the city of Tromso, in Northern Norway.

She has published widely in the Sami language, and

in Norwegian and English, on coping skills and

traditional knowledge in Sami literature. She also

participates in the public debate concerning Sami

issues. Her latest article is: "The art of hinting and

allusions in Sami literature: A reading of ]ovnna-Ande

Vest's novel trilogy Arbbolaccat" (in AlterNative,

VOL 17, Issue 1, 2021).

Meahcci - the place we live How can we investigate relational connections to the land? How can we do it within relational

contexts from a Sarni perspective? There are multiple ways of thinking about, talking about and

focusing on Indigenous connections to land. In this presentation I will focus on relational contexts

that refer to the interaction between human and the land itself, as a mutual interaction. The word

baiki - place, is an environment that is shared by humans and non-humans. It does also mean the

place where one lives, where your house is. Meahcci, the place that forms part of the title of this

presentation, has many meanings, such as pastureland, open country, waste country and wilderness.

To illustrate the use and connection to meahcci, I will do a short investigation of stories connected to

the use of meahcci, to the ancient Sarni yoik tradition, and introduce a glimpse into Sarni written

literature. Relational contexts must somehow mean that we human beings need to see the land as an

actor, and that we need to act according to the terms of the land. What does this require of us, of our

human interactions? Can arbemahttu, which can be translated as "inherited knowledge based on

trust", teach us how to act and establish a place for thought when new times are coming? The

relational contexts reveal that arbemahttu is vital to the use and understanding of meahcci.

Arbemahttu contains a deep meaning of knowledge transfer between generations. It gives us some

impressions of what arbemahttu means in a contemporary life, and how it can contribute to living

relations also in the future.

David and Elizabeth will have a conversation about her project "Along the River of Spacetime", a virtual reality game

about activating Anishinaabe star knowledge to enhance river ecosystems - please visit: www.spacetimeriver.com/ about.

Contributors

Anthony Adah Ecocritical Approaches to Indigenous Films

This project, "Ecocritical Approaches to Indigenous Films" works from the premise that land should

be sustained not only for memory, history, and the imagined future, but also, in an intersubjective

sense, because it sustains and imagines us as well. Furthermore, there is no doubt that cinema and

its modes of signification form an integral part of the discourse that preserves or impedes the land

ethic. In this regard, indigenous filmmaking has a central role in keeping alive on-going debates on

the land ethic and producing work that at once showcase human creativity and the capacity to

instigate policy in the real world. Cinematic representation of land and environment is one of the

areas where an Indigenous filmmaking differentiates itself from and re-articulates the themes of

their mainstream national cinemas. Although displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands

and inhabited environments have always been framed within the discourse of development

economics, the location of self in-place informs the signifying practices of Indigenous films

irrespective of the formal (narrative and non-narrative) and stylistic choices adopted. As the world

grapples with the realities of environmental crisis and climate change, and the Humanities

increasingly look to eco-criticism for explanatory models, it appears that Indigenous cinemas

provide unique opportunities to re-examine how cinematic representations of the environment

produce different versions of identities and nationhood. This paper, therefore, proceeds with a

central question: why and how do Indigenous films animate a land/ body relationship as site for

articulating, recuperating Indigenous identities while simultaneously contesting the field of their

mainstream national cinemas?

Biography

Anthony Adah is a Professor of Film Studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead, USA. His teaching and research areas are

African cinemas and Indigenous filmmaking in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa/ New Zealand. He has published in PostScript, Film Criticism, Intellectbook's journal of Media and Cultural Politics

and he is currently editing a

volume on the Family in African Film and Media.

Contributors

Thamir R. S. Az-Zubaidy & Haydar Jabr I(oban

Representation of Environmentalism: A Postcolonial Ecocritical Study of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

The narratives of African writers who have experienced living in a colony and being colonized subjects have played a

significant role in shifting the universal perspective towards African literature. This paper focuses on the environmental

tropes in Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart (1958) and explores the realities of colonial exploitations of land and

people. Thus, it examines Achebe's novel in the context of the postcolonial ecocritical premise. The primary interest of

this paper is the representation of interactions between people who may not identify themselves as environmentalists and

their immediate local environments. Achebe's novel portrays Africa before colonization as a society with a strong bond

with land and determined to preserve this sacred affinity against colonial endeavors. As suggested in the novel, land plays

an infl,uential role in indigenous traditional customs and beliefs. Land is thought to be intimate, sacred, spiritual and,

eco-friendly. Accordingly, any unfair conduct toward land is never tolerated. The novel conveys how the settlers' policies

that sought to manipulate indigenous land as part of their colonial project of territorial conquest and forced assimilation

provoke African people against colonization and exploitation of the land. In addition to casting light on indigenous

people's affinity with land, the paper points out the role of storytelling as a technique through which indigenous people

cope with and also undermine colonial narratives of land.

Contributors

Abbey Ballard

'ARE THEY GETTING IT?': Textingwith Water in Leanne Betasamosake Simpson's This Accident of Being Lost

For many material ecocritics water's unique chemical properties and discursive fluidity is a vital source for tracing

human entanglement with the more-than-human world. Not only does water flow through and between the matter

which constitutes our own bodies and that of our ecosystems, but its fluid form 'gathers stories, identities and

memories'b] across cultures. The question is, however, in the technological world we live in would we be more likely

to heed the ecological impacts of our actions if water were to manifest this material agency by sharing hashtags and

liking our tweets?

In her collection This Accident of Being Lost (2017 ), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson asks just that. Rooted within

traditional Nishnaabeg storytellingpractices, Simpson actively resists authoritative Western literary norms through a

fluid, nonlinear narrative off ragmented songs and stories. This resistance bleeds into the stories themselves, and is

manifested within 'Big Water, ' in which the narrator engages in text communication with Chi'Niibish, the

technologically astute spirit of Lake Ontario. Through a critical analysis of Simpson's use of fragmented storytelling

as intervention, this paper will seek to explore whether the often satirically dark results of such storytelling

successfully decolonise and reorient dominant Western narratives of ecological understanding.

The passive responses to water degradation found within Simpson's fictional work offer an eerie reflection of Western

society's response to environmental and social injustice. While it is unlikely that we will find Lake Ontario sharing

our tweets, this critical analysis of Simpson's work will explore the possibility of ecological connection mediated

through technology. By doing so, this paper will seek to question whether social media can allow us to reconnect and

to reconsider our ecological impact on the more-than-human world, or whether it is time for us to look up from our

screens to seek voices of ecological sensitivity.

[1] Cecilia Chen,]anine Macleod, and Astrida Neimanis, 'Introduction', in Thinking with Water, ed. by Cecilia Chen,]anine

Macleod, and Astrida Neimanis (Montreal: McGill-Qy,een's University Press, 2013), pp. 3-22 (p. 5).

Biography

Abbey Ballard began her PhD at the University of Worcester in October 2020, having accepted a

fully-funded research studentship in the Environmental Humanities. Her research examines

environmental justice and the process of decolonisation through activism within academia,

with a particular focus on Indigenous women's writing of North America. Abbey acts as Editorial Assistant for the academic journal Green Letters:

Studies in Ecocriticism, the official journal for ASLE- UKI. She has also recently published her

first co-authored journal article entitled 'Ties that bind: international studies in ecocriticism' within

the October 2020 special issue of Green Letters on international ecocriticism.

Contributors

Emma Barnes

Aloha 'Aina: Indigenous Women and 'Love of the Land' in

Mary I(awena Pukui's Hawaiian Mo'olelo

Throughout colonial history, the feminisation of the Pacific Islands has contributed to Hawai'i being considered as a

location of fantasy and gratification that American tourists can consume and degrade intermittentry. As Huanani-Kily

Trask outlines, in the colonial imagination, 'Hawai'i is a "she", the Western image of the Native "female" in her magical

allure' (1992, p.23). This feminisation of land forms part of the long-standing colonial rhetoric that constructed land

as female in order to consider it conquerable. This paper, however, offers one of the first explorations into native

Hawaiian writer Mary Kawena Pukui's mo'olelo, 'The Pounded Water of Kekela' and 'Woman-of-the-Fire and

Woman-of-the- Water'to examine how Pukui subverts this colonial discourse. Through anarysing how Pukui parallels

the changing land through drought and famine with the aging female body, and the restoration of the land through

powerful female goddesses, this paper demonstrates how Pukui transforms the feminisation of land from a derogative

rhetorical practice, into a form of survivance that foregrounds the strength and resilience of Indigenous women, and

their physical and spiritual connection to the land. In particular, I draw upon the concept of mana wahine that Lilikala

Kame'eleihiwa translates to power of woman, and Brandy Nalani McDougall to 'feminine spiritual power' (2016,

p.27), to foreground the resilience of native Hawaiian women in responding to a changing environment, and to

demonstrate the sacrifices Indigenous women make in their role as cultural bearers. In exploring the relationship

between native Hawaiian women, or wahine 'o iwi, with the land and water, this paper adds to the foundational

scholarship of Kyle Whyte who suggests that '[c]limate change impacts affect Indigenous women more acutery' (2017,

p.156).

Biography

Emma Barnes is a final year AHRC-funded PhD Student at the University of Salford. Emma's research interests include Indigenous Literatures,

Animal Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Eco{eminism. Emma is also a Research Assistant

for an AHRC-funded project 'South African Modernism 1880-2020', and Associate Lecturer

at the University of Salford.

Contributors

Daniel J Bowman

'A Chance to See Indians': John Joseph Mathews' Sundown (1934) and Native Americans in early automotive culture

The discovery of oil on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma in the early 1920s made the Osages the world's richest

community almost overnight given their collective ownership of the land's mineral resources. The booming North

American automobile industry ensured that demand for petroleum remained constant, and many citizens of the Osage

Nation used their newly-acquired wealth as a means to participate in automotive culture, with all of its privileges and

limitations. Up to this point, the (colonial) history of the automobile in the United States had Native Americans

positioned not in the driving seat but in the background, as primitive people who made up part of the scenery. Their

assumed technological ineptitude and deep connection to the land made them natural curiosities, to be observed from

the safety of a motor vehicle. This singular perspective was perpetuated in all manner of automotive literature from the

late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, including the first periodical in the English language dedicated to the

automobile-The Horseless Age.

As well as advocating for the removal of horses from "civilised" society due to their anti-modern associations (a familiar

colonialist solution), The Horseless Age also encouraged nationalistic attachment to the automobile-the new hallmark

of civilisation. This idea was complicated, however, by Native Americans owning and operating cars, a sight which

became all the more conspicuous following the Osage oil boom. One story which addresses these complications is the

novel Sundown (1934) by Osage writer John Joseph Mathews (1894-1979), which, I will argue, narrates the

difficulties inherent in separating the colonial symbolism of the car from its practical usages. Thus Mathews' Osage

characters find themselves in a double-bind as they seek to refute stereotypes of technological primitivism whilst still

ma.intaining and respecting Indigenous connections to the land.

Biography Daniel] Bowman is a PhD Candidate in the

School of English at the University of Sheffield, funded by the White Rose College of Arts & Humanities. After receiving his BA from the

University of Northumbria in 2014, Daniel lived and worked in South Korea before returning to Sheffield in 2017 to complete his MA in English

Literature. His PhD thesis-entitled 'Horsepower: Animals in Automotive Culture,

1895-1935'-examines the impact of the automobile on the lives of animals, both human and nonhuman, in U. S. literature and culture. Daniel is also a member of the Sheffield Animal

Studies Research Centre.

Contributors

Erika De Vivo

# Meannu2118 at the convergence of fiction and reality: art,

performance and storytelling between pasts and futures in a

land of relations. This contribution addresses the relationship between the MarkaSami - a Sami farming community - and the Marka

landscape. The Ma.rka (an inland area on the Norwegian side of Sa.pmi) is a borderland region long regarded as

peripheral and liminal both in Norwegian and in Sami milieus. Nevertheless, the Marka and its specific landscape are

central to the identity of the local Markasami people. The relationships the Markasami have with the Marka are deeply

rooted in Sami non-Christian worldviews and are bestowed with multiple layers of meaning. The exam of

Markomeannu festival (held in Gallogieddi) offers the opportunity to examine the relationships between Markasami

and the Marka as well as the narratives, conceptual bases and cultural significance characterizing Ma.rkomeannu in

relation to Sami indigenous cosmologies and the local landscape. It also enables a reflection upon the relation between

humans and non-humans in the time of climate change. I shall focus on Markomeannu 2018 that, unlike previous

editions, was organized around a festival plot implemented through site-specific art exhibition, scenography,

soundscape, and theatrical performances. The plot merged fiction and reality, setting the festival 100 years in the

future, in a time when the "World is about to collapse in power struggle, nuclear war, colonization and environmental

crises" and only Gallogieddi stands as a landscape of freedom for the indigenous Sami peoples. This concept introduced

festivalgoers to a dystopic scenario denouncing contemporary environmental malpractices while, simultaneously,

reaffirming Markasami connections with their land and with Sapmi and the Sami community as a whole. The festival

itself and its participatory theatrical performances constituted new forms of storytelling that enabled the younger Sami

generations to address issues important to the local and transnational Sami community as well as to society as a whole.

Based on 16-months ethnographic fieldwork and on interviews with Sami cultural activists, this contribution provides a

glimpse into the complex relationship between different local actors (humans, non-humans) and the Marka landscape.

Biography Erika De Vivo is currently a PhD candidate (3rd

year) at Unito Universita degli Studi di Torino.

She had also been a visiting PhD student at

SESAM the Centre for Sami Studies at UiT

Arctic University of Trams@ for 16 months

between summer 2018 and spring 2020. She is

currently concluding her PhD in cultural

anthropology, with a thesis on the origins and

meanings of the Sami festival Markomeannu.

Her research interests include Sami Festivals,

indigenous Sa.mi spirituality, urban Sa.mi

identity, and art as a means for political

expression in colonised contexts, with a focus of

Fennoscandinavia.

Contributors

Jeff Donison

Voicing Indigenous (dis)connection to Canadian land: Identity construction in the "Stories from the Land" podcast

Settler-Canadians have traditionally controlled dominant institutions like media and education that produce national

knowledge grounded in white histories and experiences, negating the traditions and lives of marginalized peoples. For

Indigenous communities especially, their heritage and connection to lands and territories have been omitted from

Canadian mainstream representations. This paper examines if podcasting provides a potentially decolonizing media

space online for Indigenous peoples in Canada to confront the hegemonic constructions of dominant Canadian history

while voicing counternarratives reflecting Indigenous connection to Canadian land and the rituals of colonized

subjects. Particularly focusing on the Indigenous podcast Stories from the Land (Cowboy & Indian, 2014-2018), this

paper utilizes textual analysis on the program's website and episodes to address digital audio storytelling that not only

facilitates community belonging online, but also builds on the oral traditions of Indigenous cultures by allowing these

communities to vocalize their affiliation with Canadian land. Stories from the Land is chosen because of its central

focus on reinforcing Indigenous connection to local territories and because its mandate promotes Indigenous

worldviews in experiential audio formats facilitating marginalized stories. As a form of oral storytelling, this program

illustrates the potential for podcasts to communicate histories, experiences, and traditions of a marginalized group over

space and time through the Internet's digital affordances while still respecting the customs of oral knowledge

dissemination. Discussing interactions with animals and nature, each episode invites a special guest who identifies as an

Indigenous person to share their individual stories of connecting to land in Canada. All episodes amalgamate into a

podcast catalogue revisiting what it means to be Indigenous and how that identity is constructed across the country

through cultural practices respecting traditions rarely discussed in mainstream Canadian media.

Biography

Jeff Danison is a PhD candidate in the Communication and Culture joint program at

York University and Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He holds a MA from the University of Western Ontario in Popular

Music and Culture. His current research focuses on participatory cultures and digital technology,

specifically dealing with race, identity, and representation in Canadian podcasting and the use of sound as a primary epistemological tool

for decolonizing historical narratives.

Contributors

Lara El Mekkawi

Lands of Solidarity: Understanding Contemporary North American Indigenous and Palestinian Realities

On December 6, 2017, US President Donald Trump announced the United States recognition of Jerusalem as the

capital of Israel and ordered plans to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This news came as a blow

to the millions of Palestinians displaced in and out of the country. As an indictment of this decision, acclaimed

musician, Roger Waters recorded "Supremacy" in collaboration with Palestinian band Le Trio Joubran. The lyrics of

the song are from the late Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish's poem, "The 'Red Indian's' Penultimate

Speech to the White Man"(2009). Darwish's poem refl,ects a history of solidarity between Palestinians and

Indigenous communities in North America, formed over similar histories of imperial occupation and land seizure.

Malek Rasamny and Matt Peterson's 2018 documentary, Spaces of Exception, explores the commonalities found

between Indigenous and Palestinian communities in North America and Middle Eastern refugee camps respectively.

The documentary 'attempts to understand the land, it's memories and divisions' (Spaces of Exception 2018). What is

evident in this film is that the land assigned to these communities is still constricted and conditioned by governmental

powers, be they American, Canadian or Israeli. The declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reinforced the 53

year long belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territories, further deterring the right of the Palestinian people to

self-determination.

Building on the theory of inter/ nationalism developed by Steven Salaita and Mike Krebs and Dana Olwan's

comparative study of settler-colonialism, this work aims to analyze the potential, as represented in Spaces of Exception,

for solidarity between Indigenous Nations and Palestinians. In this work, I argue that the documentary's depiction of

daily life in North America/ Turtle Island and Palestine attempt to decolonize these communities and reaffirm the

need for Indigenous and refugee solidarity more than ever in the present moment.

Biography

Lara El Mekkawi is currently a 2nd year PhD

student in English at the University of

Waterloo. Her research interests are in

Cosmopolitanism and Transnational literature;

Lara studies the complicated connotations

behind being a part of the world. Her

dissertation work is specifically on transnational

narratives of familial migration, focusing on

trauma and memory. She is the recipient of the

Provost Doctoral Entrance Award for Women

(2019).

Contributors

Anna I(emball

Recoveries in Land and Language: Tara June Winch's The Yield (2019)

This paper discusses the various types of recovery at work in Tara June Winch's The Yield, winner of the 2020 Miles

Franklin Literary Award. Following August Gondiwindi's return to her home at Massacre Plains, August's recovery

from disordered eating and mental distress is intimately connected to her time on Country and the discovery of a

Wiradjuri dictionary written by her late grandfather. Winch (Wiradjuri) tells the story of 500 acres of Wiradjuri

Country - including the former site of a Christian mission that is to be repossessed by a mining company - through

narrative, fictionalised archival texts, and this embedded Wiradjuri dictionary. Indeed, following the activism and

scholarship of Wiradjuri elder Dr Stan Grant Senior, Winch's deployment of the dictionary form profoundly

advances the relationship between an Indigenous language and Indigenous fiction written in English. By remapping

stories from Country through these alternate discourses and the Wiradjuri language, Winch's strategic textual

practice parallels the efforts of the novel's Gondiwindi family to claim Native title and assert continuous Indigenous

presence on the land.

Aligning my readings with the Social and Emotional Wellbeing framework (SEWB), an emerging Indigenous health

model in Australia (Dudgeon et al 2017), I will approach the representations of recovery in Winch's novel with a

strengths-based focus that emphasises the importance of connections to Country, culture and language. This follows

Winch's own refusal to centre trauma and victimhood when representing Indigenous health. I shall also locate this

novel within a wider critique of settler colonial extractivism that foregrounds Indigenous place-based solidarity and

grounded Indigenous knowledges (Coulthard & Simpson, 2016). This paper will close by considering the wider

relationship between activism, language revitalisation, situated knowledges, and the wellbeing of Indigenous

Australians.

Biography

Anna Kemball is an AHRC-funded PhD candidate in

the School of Literatures, Languages & Cultures at

the University of Edinburgh, having previously

studied at the University of Leeds. Her thesis explores

representations of mental health and wellbeing across

a range of contemporary Indigenous literatures,

bringing Indigenous literary studies and the critical

medical humanities into closer relation. Her work on

Maori representations of schizophrenia is published in

the Journal of New Zealand Literature.

Contributors

Tikli Loivaranta

Customary Lawscapes of Indigenous Community Forests in Central India

This post-humanistic study explores lawscape - the bringing together of multiple forms of law and place - in three

Indigenous (Adivasi) communities in Central India. Although "lawscape" is not an Indigenous term, it serves to convey

the various norms that manifest in spatial practices, as described by the participants to the research. A concept that

recognizes the variety of relations intertwining law and place, may also serve to promote Indigenous rights more widely.

Customary lawscapes depict the communities' relation to land. The customs, norms, and relations within the lawscape

are not only relationships among people with respect to the land, forest, and resources, but among the whole

more- than-human community, including the forest itself, with respect to its constituents. The respondents have strong

emotional associations with the forest as a whole and with its particular beings and places. Protection of the forest is a

key element of the lawscape: the community forest extends as far as the residents are able to actively protect the forest

(against fires and logging). Inside the boundaries of the community forest there are small patches that have their

particular functions and rules.

In the stories told by the interview respondents, deities tell in dreams which places are sacred, and animals and humans

negotiate territories in various ways of encountering. The lawscape emerges through encounters such as these. In the

research, the focus has been on these subtle lawscapes. Furthermore, a process of documenting the content of

customary practices secured by UN conventions such as the convention on biological diversity, is studied. Biocultural

rights is a novel approach that aims to do justice to the local understandings of how to live well in the forest, while

accommodating these local stories to a framework that indicates the ways in which the practice of these customs are

protected by international agreements.

Biography Tikli Loivaranta is a doctoral candidate at the

Department of Geography and Geology, University

of Turku, Finland, where she also received her

Bachelor's and Master's degrees in 2014. Currently

she is researching the understandings of (statutory

and customary) forest rights among indigenous

communities in Central India. Previously she has

studied participation in carbon forestry projects in

Northern India. She is also an activist in The

Siemenpuu Foundation, Emmaus Aurinkotehdas and

The CBD alliance, all of which promote human rights

together with biodiversity conservation.

Contributors

Kristin Lucas

Elemental kinship: water and stone

Indigenous fiction about land and environment dwells at the nexus of ecological and Indigenous fiction about land and environment dwells at the nexus of ecological and postcolonial concerns, and recent short fiction by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Louise Erdrich is no exception. But Simpson's "Big Water" and Erdrich's "The Stone" do something unusual. They represent elements as sentient and responsive, and depict them having vital and constituent roles within relationships-relationships which hold a full spectrum of emotions, from ease and joy to jealousy and anxiety. In short, water and stone are characters. In this paper, I develop a reading of human-element kinship, and argue that the remarkable bonds represented in these stories are central to thinking about land. The conceptual cornerstone of my paper is the work of Daniel Heath justice and Lisa Brooks, who advocate Indigenous literary criticism that is grounded in relationality. For justice, the claims of kinship stand in opposition to western individualization. As such, attending to kinship, which in its most capacious includes not only bonds and obligations to other humans but all creation, is a means to oppose fragmenting colonial priorities. Thinking about kinship-particularly the radical kindship of Erdrich's and Simpson's fiction-foregrounds responsibility, obligation, and care, the shifting networks between humans and the world that existed in the past, continue in the present, and will be there in the future. Recognizing expressions of kinship in Indigenous land-based writing matters precisely because it is those bonds that were targeted for erasure by colonization. Developing awareness of the links among literature, land, and decolonization is important to help to shift conceptions of the environment from objective to relational.

Biography Kristin Lucas is an associate professor of English

Studies at Nipissing University in North Bay, ON,

Canada. She publishes on early modern and

comparative drama, and contemporary short fiction. Her recent work includes "Narrative close reading and

land education: Teaching 'On The Wings of This

Prayer' and Medicine Walk" (written with Gyllian

Phillips), a chapter in Approaches to Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media,

Ed. Catejan Iheka, forthcoming in 2021 (MLA).

Contributors

Evan Miller

Changing Lands: An Exploration of the Relationship Between People and Land in Native American Literature

This paper traces the transformation of the relationship between Native Americans and land in Native American stories and literature, and how the increasingly complex nature of this relationship mirrors the entangling of the many definitions of the word "land. " References to the natural land's beauty and power can be traced back to the creation myths of many Native American tribes; here, the enlivened "land" is exalted, its forces, treated with reverence and respect. In works such as Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Louise Erdrich's Tracks, the tone begins to shift, and while these authors venerate the land, they also condemn the exploitative, capitalist efforts by western forces who seek to destroy the land for profit. As the meanings of "land" - the natural, the owned - begin to intertwine, feelings towards the land become more complicated. In the novel, There There,author Tommy Orange expounds on these feelings, describing the challenges and experiences of the Urban Indian in the present-day Oakland. However, while it is apparent in these stories that the relationship between people and land has changed over time, what is consistent in each is the prominence of the setting - the importance of the land, no matter the meaning. Creation myths provide stories of beginnings, of origins, of how populations and communities come to be, and through their relation, ensconce identity and history into permanence. But the same can be said of stories such as Ceremony, Tracks, and There There, which, in their existence, inlay their subjects - the Native populations being written about - into spatial-temporal settings, creating, like the myths before them, an indelible record of people in place, on land. This paper will offer a closer inspection of There There, and how, in its composition, it has created for this population a

new story - not of creation, but of recreation.

Biography

Evan Miller was born and raised in Massachusetts. He attended Boston College for his undergraduate

studies, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music with a concentration in Ethnomusicology. Currently,

Evan attends Salem State University, where he is pursuing a dual master's degree in Teaching and

English, with a focus on literary studies and a goal of teaching English at the high school level.

Contributors

Franck Miroux

Place, displacement, and replacement in Richard Wagamese's Indian Horse

In the statements they made before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2008-2015), many

survivors insisted on the fact that the greatest trauma left by the experience of residential schools consisted in being

forcibly removed from their families, communities and homelands, and relocated to an alien and often hostile

environment, sometimes hundreds of miles away f ram their native communities.

In Indian Horse, a novel published in 2012 by the Anishinaabe novelist Richard Wagamese, the young hero, Saul

Indian Horse, is estranged from lake Manitou Gameeng - the central place and spiritual home where his tribal

identity stems from. He is subsequently taken to St]erome's Catholic Indian residential school, where the priests and

nuns try to deprive him of his Indianness. After leaving the school, and failing to become a renowned hockey player,

his downfall takes him back to two founding places: the lake, where he is able to reconnect with his people's stories

and history; and what is left of St. ]erome's Indian school, where the repressed memory of his rape by one of the

priests resurfaces.

In this presentation, I will focus on Saul's wanderings, meanderings and alienations in order to show how Wagamese

manages to reassert the value and significance of what the Lakota scholar Vine Deloria Jr. calls "the sacred center",

the place where Indian people are able to relate historical and biographical events within the confines of the land

where their identity resides.

By doing so, I will endeavour to show that Indian Horse is a narrative in which history and geography are

interconnected - a story in which storytelling depends on the teller's ability to restore the severed link between the

land and the self

Biography I work as a teaching fellow at the University of Pau, France, where

I have been teaching translation and North American studies for 14

years. I am currently completing a Ph.D. on Indian residential school

narratives in Canada (University of Toulouse). My most recent

publications include a chapter on the French translation of Tomson

Highway's IGss of the Fur Qy,een (in Hybrid Englishes and the

Challenges of and for Translation: Identity, Mobility and Language

Change, Routledge, 2019), a paper on memory loss and recovery in

Wagamese's Indian Horse (in Actio Nova, Universidad Aut6noma

de Madrid, 2019), a paper on the restoration of traditional knowledge

and ways in aboriginal education in Canada (Annuaire de justice

Transitionnelle 2020, IFJD, 2020), and a chapter on truth and

reconciliation in Indian Horse and IGss of the Fur Qy,een published

in a book I coedited (Les pratiques de verite et de reconciliation dans

les societes emergeant de situations violentes au confl,cituelles, IFJD,

2020).

Contributors

Anna Ortiz

A Case For Hondureiia Liberation in Postcolonial Eco{eminism

Since its founding in 1974, the field of Ecofeminism has seen many shifts, but it nonetheless remains largely created by

and for the First World Western, White Woman. In Women and the Environment of the Global South: Toward a

Postcolonial Ecofeminism, Ecofeminist Neelam]abeen argues for the necessity of adding Postcolonial Theory to this

new wave of Ecofeminism, especially for women in developing countries. She specifies the need to do so, in part,

because "Third world women's need for nature are dependent on material necessity and not one of care or

compassion." Jabeen suggests that this necessary widening of the field can help attest to the realities of postcolonialism

and the experiences of women fighting against both oppression and postcolonial environmental abuses.

In my paper, I argue that the continuance of Postcolonial Ecofeminism as defined by ]abeen is necessary, and I

position this theoretical framework around the women of Honduras as rrry primary example. Women in Honduras

face a double binding form of oppression: the first being that of Postcolonial oppression, and the second being that of

Machismo society. Because of these intertwined forms of oppression, women and their relationships with nature

differ greatly as compared with first-world women (and specifically with respect to nature as source of material

necessity, as Jabeen notes. My focus in this paper is two-fold: I give instances of how women in their mountain

villages have been oppressed, and I discuss the safety issues of Female Environmentalists such as Berta Caceres and

Jeannette Kawas, both of whom were murdered for their activism. I will then establish potential ways to end this

double binding oppression, as well as explore ways in which to keep Female Environmentalists safe, by establishing

their voices and experiences as sacred in the fight for equality. Doing so helps ensure that these women's voices and

legacies remain quiet no longer, for the sake of Honduras and the world at large.

Biography My Name is Anna Ortiz, and I am a first-year Masters Student in the Department of English at Illinois State

University. Before starting rrry Masters, I was a High School English teacher, having taught in Madison, Wisconsin, USA for one year, and in Capan Ruinas, Honduras for three years.

In Capan, I taught Fourth and Fifth Grade English, and High School Social Arts. I am hoping with my Masters degree, I can go back to Central America, and continue

teaching my students more about their own culture, which they usually know nothing about. My academic interests

include Ecofeminism, Postcolonialism, Hondurefia Feminism, Central American Literature, and Indigenous

Studies.

Contributors

Fernando Perez Garcia

Fiduciary Gridlock in the Last Frontier: An Indigenous Futurist Approach to Land Dispossession and the Colonial "Benevolence"

Recent approaches to the growing field of Indigenous futurism maintain that Indigenous Peoples have already survived the colonial cataclysm and are living in a post-Apocalyptic world. Thus, Sci Fi allows for Indigenous authors to make sense of their experience in their own terms, and to question the present status qua and explore prospective futures in an speculative manner. Stemming from a sociology of space approach and the work of Indigenous scholars like Bonita Lawrence and David Coulthard, this presentation will analyse the effects and continuity of Indigenous-Canadian settler state relationship, and politics such as the Indian Act and the dislocation caused by the territorial dispossession and cultural genocide on "reservation" and urban Indigenous Peoples. Celu Amberstone's "Refugees" presents the power dynamic between the descendants of First Nations settlers who had been rescued by an

alien race they called the Benefactors, and have resettled in an alien planet in order to escape from extinction in Earth, and the last group of urban Indigenous Peoples that join them. Confl,icts between land, the Benefactors and the different generations of reservation and urban Indigenous Peoples address the internal multiplicity of Indigenous experience as well as the impact of colonial fiduciary gridlock and cultural genocide, destabilizing simplistic colonial separations of"Selfl Other". "Refugees" explores the problem of land dispossession, the breaking of a cosmology and ways of knowing deeply rooted and interrelated with the territory, and the attempts to mitigate the effects from a

normative structure that maintains the source of oppression. Amberstone allows not only to imagine the existence of Indigenous communities and their relations in a future of ecological collapse, but also to comment on the current situation and the clash of land-based Indigenous epistemologies with capitalist accumulation by dispossession and exploitation in the Canadian context.

Biography Fernando Perez Garcia is a PhD candidate in Gender and

Cultural Diversity, and a research fellow in the research group "Intersections: Contemporary Literatures, Cultures & Theories"

at the University of Oviedo. He has carried out teaching and research stays at Simon Fraser University in Canada and the

University of Kent in the UK He is currently a lecturer in the Department of English, French and German Philology at the

University of Oviedo. His research interests include contemporary Indigenous and Black Canadian literature and its intersections with the sociology of urban space. He is currently

exploring the tensions between transculturality, communitarism, and normative forms of state multiculturalism

through Afrodiasporic an Indigenous speculative fiction.

Contributors

Alice Smith

Angusht and Saniba Gorge: The Birthplace of the Ingush and the Nart-Ortskhoi Saga

Angusht is a little settlement from which the Ingush received their name, but in 1845 the Russian Empire sent Cossacks to settle there, changing the name to Tarskoe Selo. Since then the Ingush only long for the return of their land. In 1944 the Ingush and Chechens were deported to &zakhstan and their land was occupied by Georgians and Ossetians. On their return in 1957, the Georgians returned to Georgia but the Ossetians refused to give up the fruitful land they occupied for thirteen years and after the collapse of the Soviet Union Tarskoe Selo formally became part of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. This land dispute led to a bitter conflict in 1992. Saniba gorge is also presently in North Ossetia and is believed to be the birthplace of the heroes from the Nart Saga, a mythology shared by nearly all the Caucasian nationalities: Kabardinians, Balkars, Adyghes, Ossetians, Chechens and Ingush. The latter two go under the common name of Vainakhs or Nakhs. The Nakh version is also known as the Nart-Ortskhoi Saga. Mythology is the deeply buried subconscious of a nation; therefore, it is debatable whether that subconscious can ever be wiped out by merely changing the names of places. By investigating some fragments related to Angusht and the Saniba gorge we will embark on a journey into the distant past and memory of the Nakh.

Biography

Born in South Africa and graduated from North West University in Potchefstroom in 1992, specialising in English literature. In 2019 acquired a Masters Degree in Russian

Literature at North Ossea State University. Presently, studying for PhD at the Chechen State Pedagogical University in

Grozny. Research topic is the "Studying the Geographical Locaon of the Nart-Ortskhoi and some Ancient Na.rt

Monuments".

Contributors

Claire Sutherland

Decolonialising through the sea: Bringing indigeneity into a national legacy

This paper proposes to complement and extend the conference theme of indigenous connections to the land by

exploring how indigenous narratives can be recentred theoretically and empirically from a seaborne perspective. The

'Mayflower 400: Legend and Legacy' exhibition at the Box in Plymouth, U.K, is an example of the decolonising of

museum exhibits through indigenous co-creation. Specifically, it represents the encounter of the so-called 'Pilgrim

Fathers' and the Wampanoag of present-day Massachusetts, and was created in partnership with the Wampanoag

Advisory Committee. The exhibition also plays host to a contemporary Wampanoag artwork by

Nosapocketl Ramona Peters. The paper will consider the extent to which the exhibition challenges and reframes

dominant narratives of the Mayflower's journey as a foundational myth of U.S. national identity by bringing to the

fore Wampanoag connections to their indigenous land. It will also pay attention to a theoretical reframing of the

Mayflower's journey. Rather than forming a solid foundation to a national narrative, the paper asks whether the

material fluidity and mutability of the sea itself could be used to conceptualise indigenous narratives and their

resistance to all forms of colonial dominance. It will also seek to understand whether the process of exhibition

curation and co-creation is in itself a fruitful means of recentring indigenous stories away from the margins and

(post)colonial dominance. The paper asks what can be learned from this particular experience of international,

cross-continental collaboration in contrast to more frequent examples of an indigenous ethnic minority collaborating

within a national space, thereby contributing both to debates around indigenous museum representations and

theoretical f ramings that go beyond the centre and the margin.

Biography

Claire Sutherland is a professor of politics at Northumbria University. She has a long-standing

interest in nationalism and museum representations of the nation in selected Southeast Asian and European

cases. Claire has published widely on aspects of nationalist ideology and its relationship with

cosmopolitanism, citizenship and migration, among

others. Claire's current interests include theorising beyond the nation through a maritime lens, and

looking at how structural racism and colonial legacies are interconnected with nationalism.

Contributors

Jeffrey Swartwood The Call of the Waves:

the Changing Tides of Native American Surfing Narratives Many indigenous cultures have a strong narrative concerning their relationship with the land in its many forms. In a

coastal context, that relationship extends to the frontier zone between land and sea and this relationship is

particularly charged with imagery relative to both the natural world itself and to the process of invasion or

colonization. In the particular history and subculture of surfing a longstanding linear narrative has been constructed

in which Polynesians -notable Hawaiians - laid the genesis for surfing as an act and culture and then symbolically

passed the torch to a renewed "tribe" of surfers from the mainland who were then largely responsible for its

exportation and development.

The purpose of this communication is to reevaluate this construct in the context of current changes in perception and

adaptation involving Native American individuals and communities and their relationship with the act and culture of

surf riding. Far from a Polynesian exclusive, the act of riding waves in various forms has now been shown to involve a

multitude of coastal peoples in different geographic and cultural spheres. Far f ram merely modifying a historical

perspective, however, indigenous peoples are both appropriating or reappropriating their relationship with the ocean

in ways that challenge the dominant dynamic. These include utilizing an element of the dominant culture (albeit a

subculture and often a subversive one at that) to assert a story of Native American values and relationships with the

environment and challenge the priorities of the colonizer I settler construction. Another interesting aspect of the role

of surfing in contemporary indigenous cultures in North America is the creation of a new form of pan-indigenous

identity that gathers both Polynesianl Pacific Islander and Native American communities within a strong sense of

physical and cultural closeness to the sea.

Biography Raised in California and living in France since 2000, Jeffrey

Swartwood's teaching and research focus on American civilization -specializing in California culture and Southwest border studies. Favoring

an interdisciplinary approach, his work notably examines the complex

social constructs within California culture and their representation in

literature, film, and popular culture. Publications include a revisited

version of his thesis: Contested Territories: Mixed Identity Constructs

and Hybrid Culture in San Diego, California (1770-1920) as well as

numerous articles and chapters addressing identity and cultural

constructs in California and Southwest culture and history.

Recent work has focused on his longstanding passion for surfing and surf

culture: working on the exhibit La def erlante surf at the Musee

d'Aquitaine, organizing an international conference on the subject in

Bordeaux, and working on historical representations of women surfers in

early California.

He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique near

Paris and member of the research group CLIMAS.

Contributors

Chiara Tellarini

The Dreaming: Stories as intermediaries between people and land in Aboriginal Australia

The Dream Time, or Dreaming, refers to the stories that tell about the creation of the world and of all its beings

in the Aboriginal Australian history and mythology. While telling these creation stories, connection with place is

recreated every time and, for this reason, the Dreaming is constantly present, and it does not belong merely to a

mythical period that does not exist anymore. Stanner refers to the Dream Time as something common, but not

universal (Stanner 1979: 114), since in each Aboriginal group these stories cannot be universalized because they

all refer to specific, diverse places: this relates to the fact that even the actions taken towards the land cannot be universalized, since knowledge is related to a particular locality.

These stories signify a balance to be maintained with the land and its elements, and this, holistically, is regarded

as a guarantee of reciprocal social balance. By acting locally, with regard to the elements a person is responsible for, people implicitly act also for the communities

living on the other side of the country (e.g. by taking care of a river's section, people living along that river in other

parts of the country will be affected by those actions). In this, stories signify the telling of this balance and the maintenance of the connection with the land that include

the past and the present, making the future possible for the people, the animals and the natural elements living on

it.

When colonizers came, they imposed their knowledge and their actions on the Aboriginal land, introducing

concepts such as land ownership and private property: all this clashed with Aboriginal peoples' cosmologies, stories

and behaviours, implying critical consequences also on land's and peoples' wellbeing.

Biography

Chiara Tellarini has recently earned her master's degree in

Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bologna, with a

thesis based on medical and environmental anthropology.

Her current research interests include the connections

between culture, health, and environment, especially in

post-colonial realities. Drawing on the experiences of

Aboriginal communities in New South Wales and Victoria

(Australia), her master research focuses on how a forced

changed relationship with land during colonization affected

Aboriginal peoples' wellbeing, and on how this also

contributed to altering the Australian environment.

Chiara has been offered a Ph.D. position at Aalborg

University (campus Copenhagen), where she will start in

August 2021.

Contributors

Dawn Wambold

The Landscapes of my Ancestors: Using Archaeology to Tell the Story of Metis Connections to the

Landscape.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, fur traders and bison hunters known as the Metis moved throughout a

landscape that encompassed much of the space between the Rocky Mountains and the region now known as the Canadian province of Ontario. As a culture Indigenous to the Canadian West, they developed a deep connection to the land as they navigated the relationships between their First Nations and European kin. While some Metis, such as Marie Rose Delorme Smith, wrote down their experiences of this time, many of the stories were passed down through oral traditions. But what happens when the chain of oral storytelling is broken within a family? How can today's Metis maintain their connections to such a vast landscape without the stories of their ancestors? Archaeology is one tool that can be used to reclaim these linkages to the past and the land. In this paper I will discuss how the archaeology of three bison hunting communities can be used to tell the Metis stories connected with the surrounding landscapes.

Biography

Dawn Wambold is a member of the Metis Nation of Alberta and an MA student at the University of Alberta. As a scholar at the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology, she is honoured to be able to tell the stories of her ancestors using archaeology. Her research focus is on the lives of Metis women at bison hunting winter camps. It is her hope that this research will help others know these remarkable women and how they, along with the men in their families, made their homes in the lands now known as Western Canada.