This is a special call to submit a chapter for our book collection
We seek chapter proposals on the topic of Indigenous Women’s Research. The book positions our voices as central to engagements with Indigenous community life and to dismantling the research paradigms and practices that have not served us as Indigenous women.
We see questions of “voice” as vital issues of political articulation, creatively and wisely expressed in personal, collective and symbolic terms. We write for and with the Indigenous women we work alongside in the diverse fields we occupy. We believe in making our positions and perspectives – across gender, race, ethnicity, class, cultural, social, religious and relational contexts – more nuanced, accessible and expressive to the wider community of Indigenous women in the Global South. We dream of a defining moment when we can speak about who we are in the world for ourselves and with the Indigenous women around the world who inspire, challenge and move us.
This dream and aspiration – to present our voices for ourselves and with each other – sits at the heart of this proposed book collection on Indigenous women researching and reflecting on our most significant milestones and work to date. We embrace the idea of writing for and with each other as a collective voice contributing to the transformational, gendered and decolonising work urgently necessary at this point in history. In doing so, our focus is to flip the script, to forge new pathways for knowledge production and sharing that centre our voices and amplify our authentic narratives.
The way we can afford to do this meaningfully is to do so together through critical reflection, inclusivity and care.
Our book, titled Rematriation: Indigenous Women on Indigenous Women, provides a pragmatic context for our work to be understood across the spheres of the academy, community and everyday life. We write with community women in mind to engage Indigenous struggles, stories and circumstance. This is a call to ground our work as Indigenous women within the modes of engagement, exploration and agency that matter to us as Indigenous women, to oppose, criticise and challenge dominant notions of who we are, how we work and what we want to achieve.
We are interested in chapter proposals that explore how our research opens up the field for other Indigenous women. How does our work create impacts for and with community women? Why should we care and how do we care?
Our goal is to bring new perspectives to understandings of community work from Indigenous worldviews – whether you are part of community, working at the nexus of the academy, activism and community, working at the coalface of land, water, environmental, educational, values- and rights- based or social justice concerns.
The land is life and law. We see spirit in all things. Indigenous wisdom is grounded in a myriad of complex and reciprocal interactions with community, the land, sea and sky. We have much to learn from each other and much to share.
What forms of Indigenous wisdom inspire us? What new work do we bring to the world? What new or old wisdoms do we wish to enshrine, where and how? What do we stand for and how do we stand with and as Indigenous women? Who are we?
This call invites you to respond to such questions just as much as it is an opportunity to pay homage to our ancestral and matrilineal connections. We aspire to build respect and acknowledgement across our communities, disciplines and fields of research as Indigenous women.
Rematriation means returning to the nurturing principles of Mother Earth, honouring the interconnectedness of all life and restoring balance to ecosystems. It involves the revitalisation of Indigenous knowledge systems, languages, and traditions suppressed by ongoing colonial and neocolonial forces. For us, rematriation is both land back and environmental consciousness. This practice offers ways to think outside the border logic of nation-states and reimagine relationships based on ancestral connections and ecology. We are stewards of the earth driven to oppose dominant paradigms of ownership, exploitation and extraction. Rematriation invites us to resee the land and resources beyond commodity fetishism.
We’d love to hear how you are contributing to the conversation on local, national or global issues and what this means for the communities you write about. The book’s thematic focus “on Indigenous women” in our title is about sharing this knowledge with each other through this collection rather than showing how your research is about Indigenous women. Put simply, the book is for us, by Indigenous women for and with Indigenous women.
As editors of this collection, we will be looking to find links between the different chapters submitted so we each speak to one another through strong, interconnected themes.
Possible themes for chapter proposals:
REMATRIATION: How can rematriation serve as a framework for addressing environmental justice issues affecting Indigenous communities, particularly women? How do Indigenous women navigate the complexities of rematriation in the context of ongoing colonial and neocolonial pressures? What are the strategies and initiatives led by Indigenous women to promote rematriation and decolonization within our communities and beyond? How can rematriation initiatives prioritise the voices and leadership of Indigenous women in decision-making processes regarding land, resources, and governance? What are the potential impacts of rematriation on future generations of Indigenous women and our relationships with the land, culture, and community?
KNOWLEDGE: What is Indigenous knowledge and in what ways is it gendered? How does women’s knowledge shape community life? How does our research include new knowledge about Indigenous women’s realities?
VOICE: In what ways are Indigenous women leading the charge on environmental issues? How are Indigenous women’s voices different, enabled, silenced or actualised? How do Indigenous women’s voices influence local, national or global issues? On what issues are we most or least vocal? How are our voices unique, powerful, underrepresented or misheard?
IDENTITY: How does language, religion, gender, class, place or politics shape our identity? What are the differences between our personal, public, academic, historical or community identities?
RELATIONALITIES: How do we work across differences with men, non-Indigenous women and researchers, across generations and cross-culturally? What is the relationship between us as Indigenous women on a local, national or global or an historical scale? In what ways can we talk about a global Indigenous movement of women?
STORY: How does story ground our experience as women? In what ways do we share similar or different stories of Indigenous women’s experience? What are the most moving, uplifting or comical stories by or about Indigenous women?
COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE: What kind of community research is taking place, for instance on cultural revitalisation, language learning or regeneration or traditional practice, as well as specifically on Indigenous mothers, youth or elders? How is this research innovative, new or transformative?
PLACE-BASED RESEARCH: Where do Indigenous women choose to live and why? Where are the most vulnerable, dangerous, risk-laden or overlooked places? Why does place matter to Indigenous women? How do places shape Indigenous women’s lives, families and/or communities?
KNOWLEDGE HOLDERS: Who are the Indigenous female leaders we want to hold with the highest esteem? How do or have we acknowledge(d) their life experience? How can we learn from their legacy?
DEADLINES:
1 June 2024: Send your 300-word abstract with a brief profile
1 December 2024: Completed chapters due (5000 words)
Trixie Tangit
