Aen Loo Pawatamihk: Inherited and Personal Memories Shared Through Storytelling and Mediated Interactions with More-Than-Human-Beings

• Main Author: Ouellette, Dianne Lynn
• Other Authors: Staseson, Rae, Farrell-Racette, Sherry, Ramsay, Christine, Archibald-Barber, Jesse
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina 2020
• Subjects: Aen; anishina*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10294/9238; https://ourspace.uregina.ca/bitstream/handle/10294/9238/Ouellette_Dianne_MFA_MP_Spring2020.pdf

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Media Production, University of Regina. vi, 67 p. This critical engagement paper represents the fundamental framework conducted for my MFA thesis project, Aen loo Pawatamihk: Inherited and Personal Memories Shared Through Storytelling and Mediated Interactions with More-Than-Human Beings. My project connects storytelling, photography, video, and audio recordings of personal encounters with animals and the land. Autoethnographic research paves a path for reconciliation as I discover my Métis identity. This qualitative research with more-thanhuman interactions is a creative, cultural, social, and ecological narrative analysis, exploring hidden colonial truths of inherited and personal trauma. Representation of mediated interactions demonstrates personal stories and connections with animals and the land, reflecting on colonization. In this paper I am engaging Indigenous epistemology with Anishinaabe kwe scholar Kathleen E. Absolon's research on Indigenous wholistic knowledge and ways of knowing. I include Blackfoot researcher, and Indigenous advocate, Leroy Little Bear's understanding of traditional Indigenous knowledge. I also include Métis scholar Dr. Angela Snowshoe's notion of holistic healing through more-than-human interactions. By embracing Absolon, Little Bear, and Snowshoe's theories, I practice Indigenous methodologies with my autoethnographic research and decolonize through the camera lens as I prove my spiritual connection to animals and the land. The purpose of this project is to bring awareness of my colonized family and our ancestral history in a post-colonial time. In this era of Truth and Reconciliation, I choose to share personal stories, and interactions with animals and the land because I feel this connects me to my ancestors. Also, I choose to convey personal and inherited memory by displaying my relationships with more-than-human beings as ...