"Land is Everything": Tracing Relationships with Land through Global Indigenous Literatures

For too long, Indigenous voices and struggles for land have been obscured by mainstream culture, leading to misinformation surrounding Indigenous perspectives. Understanding Indigenous land rights struggles is especially relevant as settler people continue to occupy and claim Indigenous land for resource extraction. As land houses knowledge systems to Indigenous Peoples, colonizers worked to separate Natives from their land to colonize their understandings of the world and prevent them from practicing their traditions. When looking at Indigenous connections to land in diverse Indigenous literatures, it becomes necessary to understand Indigenous relationships with land as a means to solve the climate crisis. To better understand ways land acts as a healer, protector, home, supporter, and more, this project juxtaposes novels from diverse Indigenous contexts: Diane Wilson’s (Mdewakanton) The Seed Keeper, Kiana Davenport’s (Kānaka Maoli) Shark Dialogues, Sia Figiel’s (Samoan) Where We Once Belonged, Richard Wagamese’s (Ojibway) Indian Horse, Rešoketšwe Manenzhe’s Scatterlings, and Mamang Dai’s (Adi) The Black Hill. Mobilizing Chadwick Allen’s theory of the trans-Indigenous and Glen Coulthard’s (Yellowknives Dene) theory of grounded normativity, this project explores ways individuals might better understand the roles and relationships to land in the hopes of finding how that understanding may impact one’s connection to land.<p></p>