Multidimensional kinships : Black and Indigenous environmental thought

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Jessica Suzanne Cory (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Mark Rifkin

Abstract: Multidimensional Kinships examines work by six Black and Indigenous women authors (Sarah Winnemucca, Hannah Crafts, Natasha Trethewey, Linda Hogan, Tiana Clark, and Lehua Taitano), paying particular attention to how the authors theorize interpersonal and environmental relationships. Multidimensional Kinships builds on the foundational understanding that Black and Indigenous kinships have long been a threat to the state and thus targeted for extermination and yet these women continue building kinships with one another and the land despite state interventions and violences. This project redefines the environment as relationship, as demonstrated through the chosen texts. These works’ Indigenous and Black women writers theorize the environment as a kinship formation, that is, a type of relationality encompassing environmental, economic, familial, and spiritual modes of Black and Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Further, these writers establish environmental relationalities by exploring how being in and of a place or separated from it affect family structures, land ownership and tenure, spiritual relationships and many other aspects of Black and Indigenous women’s lives. This project illustrates how Black and Native women’s texts use kinship-building in multidimensional ways, such as (re)mapping space and engaging in actions unseen by the colonial gaze, to work toward goals of Black liberation and Indigenous resurgence.

Additional Information

Publication
Dissertation
Language: English
Date: 2024
Keywords
Environmental studies, Indigenous, Kinship, Multidimensionality, Water
Subjects
Environmental literature $x History and criticism
Black people $x Relations with Indians
Women authors, Black
Indian women authors

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