Arts and Humanities Commons^™

November 2023 News, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

This month we offer the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, first published on our blog page on November 2, 2017.

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address is an ancient message of peace and appreciation of Mother Earth and her inhabitants. The children learn that, according to Native American tradition, people everywhere are embraced as family. Our diversity, like all wonders of Nature, is truly a gift for which we are thankful.

When one recites the Thanksgiving Address the Natural World is thanked, and in thanking each life-sustaining force, one becomes spiritually tied to each of the forces of the Natural and Spiritual World. …

October 2023 News, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

This month we offer the essay "Human Resources to Growth and Support: A new take on Annual Performance Reviews (Vol. 2)," by Andrea Francis. "On our continued journey towards a more values-aligned Human Resources department, Wabanaki REACH is exploring new ways to take on traditional HR practices and disentangle them from the idea that humans need to be constantly productive.

See also: How REACH does HR (Vol. 1), by Andrea Francis

September 2023 News, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

Truth, Healing, and Change in Wabanaki Territory, Resources for Learning and Teaching about Land Acknowledgments, dozens of essays in our Voices of Decolonization blog posts, a Literary Resource List, and so much more. We hope you will check them out at Educational Resources (wabanakireach.org).

Justice, Pandemics, And Museums In Cyberspace: Archaeology Museums’ Decolonization Projects During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Samuel Besse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores three Archeology Museums (Historic St. Mary’s City, James Madison’s Montpelier, and the American Museum of Natural History), their attempts at addressing the colonial narratives that museums are built on, and how the Covid-19 pandemic and protests over George Floyd’s death affected these projects. I place a special effort on the online presence of these museums, as this is the main way visitors interacted with the museums during the pandemic. After discussing the origins of museum’s decolonization efforts and their efforts to make an online presence, I talk about the Covid-19 pandemic and the events around George Floyd’s …

August 2023 News, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

This month we offer you the essay where the river widens by Beyond the Claims project coordinator, Kate Russell.

Wabanaki REACH has partnered with Threadbare Theatre Workshop to craft an original, community-devised play together– where the river widens– to be performed along the Penobscot River in September. This collaboration with the Wabanaki community is part of Wabanaki REACH's truth-telling initiative, Beyond the Claims– Stories from the Land & the Heart; an oral history project illuminating the Maine Indian land claims.

Limited Series-Human Resources to Growth and Support: How REACH does HR (Vol. 1), by Andrea Francis.

July News, 2023, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

Voices of Decolonization blog: "Decolonizing Human Resource Policies for Nonprofits," by Andrea Francis.

June News, 2023, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

Voices of Decolonization blog: "On the Anniversary of the Maine Wabanaki State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission," by Andrea Francis.

“My Dead Seeing Eye”: Fantasy, Franchise, And The Image Of The Voyeur In Wilson Harris’S Palace Of The Peacock, Delmar Reffett Jr

Critical Humanities

Wilson Harris’s 1960 novel Palace of the Peacock, the first in his Guyana Quartet that center on the history and society of Harris’s, presents a surreal and disorienting account of a doomed voyage up an unnamed jungle river, which culminates in a mystical, visionary experience of the palace of the title, seemingly a metaphysical space beyond death. Understanding the novel’s bizarre qualities requires grasping the way they relate to the development of the motif of voyeurism central to the novel. Specifically, they can be seen as frequently tied to the novel’s use of the image of the voyeur, the …

Amending Amendments: Digital Colonialism, Bill C-11, And Assessing The Call For Improvement, Kayla Victoria Destiny Clarke

Major Papers

Media scholars Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias (2019) define digital colonialism as the “term for the extension of a global process of extraction that started under colonialism and continues through industrial capitalism, culminating in today's new form: instead of natural resources in labor, what is now being appropriated is human life through its conversion into data” (p. 22). This research will critically analyze the Canadian government’s ill-received Bill C-11: the Amended Consumer Privacy Protection Act by using digital colonialism as a conceptual framework to reveal the Bill’s essential limitations. It will consist of two sections: 1) an in-depth exploration of …

Happy Birthday Reach! Thank You Denise!, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

Voices of Decolonization blog: "Happy Birthday REACH! Thank you Denise [Altvater]!" The "Honoring Denise" video can be viewed on our YouTube (00:02:20).

May News, 2023, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

Interacting with Wabanaki-Maine History: Participate in this interactive experience in which we engage in a story of particular events in the history of 400 years of colonization of Wabanaki people by Europeans in this territory now called the state of Maine. Voices of Decolonization blog: "Native Children Are at the Heart of ICWA," by Erika Bjorum. (Indian Child Welfare Act).

Becoming The Imperfect Friend: Sḵwx̱Wú7mesh And Contemplative Pathways To Healing And Reconciliation In Higher Education, Denise Marie Findlay

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

Throughout this reflective essay I explore Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Indigenous philosophy and contemplative education as ethical pathways to healing and reconciliation in higher education. I put forth the idea of becoming the imperfect friend in a world ethos of death by a thousand cuts as a response to the violence of colonialism perpetuated in academia. I reflect on the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh values of eslhélha7kwhiws and stélmexw as contemplative dispositions that lend themselves to the process of becoming the imperfect friend. I conclude by describing a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh -led program hosted by Simon Fraser University (SFU) in 2022-2023, named Moving Together In The Ways …

S8e7: How Can Indigenous And Western Knowledge Help Preserve The Planet?, Ron Lisnet, Darren Ranco

The Maine Question

Darren Ranco has spent his life determining how to help Indigenous and non-Indigenous people protect the land they inhabit.

Through his work as an anthropologist and chair of Native American Programs at the University of Maine, Ranco has studied tribal sovereignty, cultural resource protection, environmental justice and ways Native American communities can resist environmental destruction. As a member of the Penobscot Nation, he also is passionate about improving research relationships between universities and indigenous communities, as well as training the next generation of Indigenous scientists.

In this episode of “The Maine Question,” Ranco discusses his many research projects and how …

April News, 2023, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

Voices of Decolonization blog: "ICWA Under Attack: Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument for Haaland v. Brackeen," by Ryan Lolar, Indigenous Peoples Unit (IPU) Staff Attorney and Alida Pitcher-Murray, IPU Intern.

March News, 2023, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

Voices of Decolonization blog, "My life today as a Person in recovery, I stand Proud," by Melody Paul, a poem about living in recovery.

From Extractivism To Adjacency. A Research Manifesto, Margarita Palacios, Anette Baldauf

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This essay concerns with the ways in which extractivism continues to be reproduced in academic frameworks despite innumerous initiatives of decolonization. Engaging with artistic research and embracing a materialist approach that emphasizes embeddedness and embodiment, as well as acknowledging the affective-aesthetic flows that accompany research, the authors locate the heart of the problem at the disjuncture between critical epistemology and research practices. This disavowed space of knowledge production, they argue, is where the logics of extractivism and its racialized epistemic dualism are reproduced. The authors put forward the notion of adjacency, as in their view, dwelling on the power of …

January News, 2023, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

Forgiveness is a core cultural value of the Wabanaki and a message of forgiveness is traditionally shared at the start of the New Year. Voices of Decolonization blog, "Wabanaki Prayer," by Brian Altvater, Sr.

Wabanaki Reach Newsletter, Winter 2023, Wabanaki Reach

Wabanaki REACH Newsletters

The Winter 2023 cover story reflects on the year 2022. Headlines in this issue include:

• Nulasuweltom ~ I am grateful
• Beyond the Claims Update by Kate Russell, Beyond the Claims Project Coordinator
• Educational Programs Update by Heather Augustine, Community Education Development Coordinator
• Wabanaki Wellbeing Program Update by Brian Altvater, Wabanaki Wellness Coordinator
• Website Communications by Heather Newton Brown, Wabanaki REACH Volunteer

Destruction And Resiliency: Decolonizing Settler Knowledge In Native American Literature Through The Peoplehood Matrix, Renissa R. Gannie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the complex dynamics of settler colonialism and the construction of peoplehood within the Laguna Pueblo, Lakota, Jemez Pueblo, Anishinaabe, and Blackfeet culture through a comparative analysis of literary works focusing on Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Frances Washburn’ Elsie’s Business, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, Gerald Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus, and Stephen Graham Jones’s Ledfeather; these authors employ narrative strategies to depict the destructive impacts of settler colonialism on indigenous identities and communities. Drawing upon postcolonial and indigenous literary theories, this research uses a comparative framework to analyze the diverse …