From Relationality to Resilience in Contemporary Dakota and Ojibwe Environmental Justice Literature

• Main Author: Cavanaugh, Alexander
• Other Authors: Brown, Kirby
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Oregon 2021
• Subjects: Anishinaabe; Dakota; Environmental Justice; Indigenous literature; Ojibwe; anishina*
• Online Access: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/handle/1794/26649

Indigenous literatures offer strong vantage points to address environmental injustice, climate change, and exploitation of marginalized populations in experiential terms. This dissertation approaches Indigenous environmental justice through a trans/national, tribally specific framework, examining contemporary Dakota and Ojibwe texts and offering an intervention into ecocriticism, which often falls short in its engagements with Indigenous literatures. The first chapter explores a genealogy of relationality in Dakota and Ojibwe literary theory and examines the role of nationhood in Indigenous literary studies. The second chapter examines Elizabeth Cook-Lynn’s Aurelia trilogy through a framework of social vulnerability and historical trauma. The third chapter studies Waubgeshig Rice’s speculative novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, further exploring social vulnerability and resilience through the genres of apocalyptic literature and Indigenous futurisms. The third chapter approaches Winona LaDuke’s Last Standing Woman and Vine Deloria Jr.’s God is Red through a discussion of spiritual revitalization, repatriation of Indigenous remains, and resurgence. The conclusion examines the NoDAPL movement via John Trudell’s poem “Crazy Horse,” connecting these threads of relationality, vulnerability, resistance, and resurgence in the context of a recent environmental justice movement. The coda looks outward to the ongoing public lands discussion, considering how centering Indigenous relations to land can contribute to that conversation.