Glocal Narratives of Resilience

Glocal Narratives of Resilience, Ed. Ana María Fraile Marcos, 2019

This chapter shifts the focus once again. The authors, well-known researchers in the area of resilience among Aboriginal people in Canada and Australia, argue for more attention on how people cope outside the US and UK. They show that Indigenous peoples have their own unique cultures and contexts, and that their historical rootedness can help them cope with the profound disadvantages caused by colonization and the political oppression and bureaucratic control that followed. In this chapter, the authors incorporate material from collaborative work in Cree, Inuit, Mohawk, Mi’kmaq and Métis communities to explore how cultural ideologies, institutions and practices sustain processes associated with resilience.

On Routes and Beginnings: 9th ASYRAS Conference, 2024

In Indian Horse, Saul, a member of the Fish Clan in Northern Ontario, writes the story of his life encouraged by other Fish Clan members at the New Dawn center for alcoholics. The novel, which was a competing title of the 2013 edition of Canada Reads, explores the resurfacing of residential school trauma and memories in manhood. The Night Watchman, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, deals with the struggle of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in 1953 as they fought against House Concurrent Resolution 108, commonly known as Termination Bill. Simultaneously, the storyline enquires into the impact of historical trauma in the reservation and highly resonates with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement. The proposed work will delve into a comparative, transnational analysis of said novels by Richard Wagamese (Wabaseemoong, Ojibwe) and Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain, Ojibwe). I will be examining the role of (counter)storytelling in the moulding of the discourse related to historical and cultural memory of Indigenous peoples in Canada and the USA. The acts of remembering and narrating will be explored as catalyzing powers for resilience and healing against the trauma caused by the colonization of Turtle Island and its aftermath. I will employ a series of scholarly works that will contribute to the intended interpretation of Indian Horse and The Night Watchman. Indigenous survivance (Vizenor, 2008) and resurgence (Simpson, 2011) will be presented in conversation with the concept of psychological and social-ecological resilience (Basseler, 2019; Coleman, 2019; Fraile- Marcos, 2019) to conduct my analysis. I will also draw on memory and identity studies by resorting to the works of Assmann and Shortt (2012), Halbwachs (1992), Howe (2014), and Coulthard (2014), to name a few of the main notable contributions made in these fields.

Hope and Courage in the Climate Crisis, 2021

Decisive, just, emergency speed actions to reduce emissions, draw down CO 2 and strengthen resilience are all essential priorities for sustaining a world in which human beings and all other species continue to thrive and flourish. At the end of the working day, in the stillness of the evening the activists and artists, researchers and writers, entrepreneurs and policy makers leading these actions will also sometimes share the fears and spectres that appear in the quiet darkness of the night. The following chapters therefore explore a range of broader conversations about insights and wisdom from diverse philosophical, theoretical and spiritual traditions which I and others who I know and respect have found helpful in sustaining meaning and purpose in the face of mounting evidence and stories and images of damaged, drowned and burning worlds. My decision to begin this journey with a series of reflections on learning from four Indigenous and First Nations climate change writers whose work I have found particularly insightful is predicated on respectful acknowledgement of the traditional owners and elders of the country on which I have been fortunate to be born. It is also informed by increasingly sharp awareness of my responsibilities as a descendant

Botany, 2021

Revitalizing Indigenous land-based practices are acts of resurgence and resistance. The presence of Indigenous bodies occupying land to nourish and strengthen themselves through ancestral practices is a political act. These cultural systems of knowledge and practice are in opposition to historical and ongoing colonial attempts to dispossess Indigenous Peoples of their connections to land. Indigenous People have undergone changes in diet and land access, including cultivating and harvesting plants for health and wellbeing. Recognizing and understanding the impacts and implications of colonization on land-based knowledge is fundamental in carrying out meaningful work within Indigenous communities in the field of ethnobotany. Much of the literature and media on Indigenous issues continue to uphold trauma narratives. When working with Indigenous communities on projects, it is essential to understand the history, impacts and ongoing struggles related to colonization and genocide in Ameri...

Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 2017

In the face of declining human-ecological systems, as well as intercultural and interspecies trauma, we are currently witnessing a renaissance of activist-orientated environmental education. In Canada, this work is increasingly viewed as part of a broader healing response of “DEEP” reconciliation work between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples, and ultimately humankind and the planet. This article locates these themes of healing human-ecological trauma and Indigenous - non-Indigenous relationships, within the work of the International Resilience Network (IRN)—a community of practice which aims to collectively impact social-ecological resilience, in part through transformative pedagogical practices which simultaneously support Indigenous resurgence and develop epistemological and relational solidarity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples. Through our story of the IRN’s inaugural summit, we share our learnings of such pedagogical practices amidst the tensions and paradoxes...

2021

The implications of storytelling have been underexplored in LIS. Storytelling involves a teller, an audience, and a story that emerges in the dynamic exchange-laughter, gasps, suspenseful silence-so that each storytelling moment creates a unique version of the story. This panel expands pedagogical and theoretical understandings of the value of storytelling as tradition, practice, and means of cultivating resilience. This panel brings together experts in storytelling, resilience, and storytelling as resilience to demonstrate that story and storytelling deserve conceptual prominence in LIS. This panel format will be focused on a question-and-answer response, asking each panelist to introduce their work briefly and then engage the questions including: How has the LIS tradition of storytelling contributed to community resilience? What stories are missing, underrepresented, devalued, suppressed, oppressed, or written out of LIS storytelling? How might LIS education benefit from taking seriously the relationship between teller, audience, and story in both practice and theory? Dr. Nicole Cooke's work on storytelling, from autoethnography to fake news, brings together the urgent necessity of developing greater LIS cultural competence in services to diverse populations with the potential power of storytelling for positive social change. Her research engages the importance of telling untold stories, including those that challenge racism as status quo, and bringing everyday lived experiences of racism to light in order to change LIS professionals and support the resilience of those minoritized by the field. Dr. Cooke also engages storytelling as a tool for understanding information behavior and enacting social justice. Her recent book, Fake News and Alternative Facts: Information Literacy in a Post-Truth Era (ALA Editions. 2018), examines how some stories operate as information threat and suggests paths toward resistance and resilience for information professionals. (Cooke, 2018) Her teaching engages storytelling as pedagogy in teaching cultural competence and, as Augusta Baker Chair, leads an annual community-focused storytelling festival celebrating the legacy of one of Augusta Baker as one of the leading storytellers in the history of LIS.

Wicazo Sa Review, 2009