Arts and Social Sciences, Irving K. Barber Faculty of (Okanagan)
Community, Culture and Global Studies, Department of (Okanagan)
DSpace
UBCO
Paul, Hanna M.
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
Indigenous women’s bodies have been the subject of extractive study through western scholarship, yet Métis women’s bodies and knowledge around experiences with Métis moon time (menstruation) has received little to no attention. I approach my Master’s thesis through the weaving of emergent Indigenous feminist theory, decolonial theory and methods, and Métis methodologies. My project focuses upon: (1) the historical legacy of western menstrual teachings and its effect on Indigenous women and youth’s body images; (2) how Métis teachings can create space for knowing, healing, and identity in my community; and (3) how Métis women’s teachings and bodily connection can help reimagine and dream into existence self-image futurisms for Buttertown, Alberta. Current literature only addresses how colonial and patriarchal concepts of menstruation affect Métis women and young girls (Baldy 2017). Beyond the literature, there is no specific research within Métis communities, specifically Buttertown, near Fort Vermilion, Alberta, which stems from internalized patriarchal frameworks and principles that affect the well-being of women and youth during this monthly ceremony. This project begins with my own experience and with the Métis community of Buttertown. I use autoethnography, Métis storying, Métis oral history, Métis historical archives, and most importantly the social practice of visiting (Flaminio et al. 2020; Gaudet 2018). My metaphoric methodology of saskatoon berry picking grounds my research in Buttertown and parallels my Indigenous research approach to the berry picking process. Through this project, I gain new insights into how reconnection and re-emergence of Métis moon time teachings links to healing and Indigenous concepts of well-being (Gaudet & Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Zinga & Styres 2013).
SHARING MÉTIS WOMEN'S STORIES ABOUT MOON TIME AND COLONIAL BODY SHAME THROUGH VISITING AND BERRY PICKING IN BUTTERTOWN, ALBERTA by Hanna M. Paul B.A., University of British Columbia (Okanagan), 2021 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Interdisciplinary Studies—Community Engagement, Social Change, and Equity) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Okanagan) June 2023 © Hanna M. Paul, 2023 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the College of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis/dissertation entitled: Sharing Métis Women’s Stories About Moon Time and Colonial Body Shame Through Visiting and Berry Picking in Buttertown, Alberta submitted by Hanna M. Paul in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts. Examining Committee: Dr. Gabrielle Legault, Community, Culture and Global Studies Co-Supervisor Dr. Fiona P. McDonald, Community, Culture and Global Studies Co-Supervisor Dr. Cindy Gaudet, Native Studies Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Allison Hargreaves, Creative and Critical Studies Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Katrina Plamondon, Health and Social Development, School of Nursing External Examiner iii Abstract Indigenous women’s bodies have been the subject of extractive study through western scholarship, yet Métis women’s bodies and knowledge around experiences with Métis moon time (menstruation) has received little to no attention. I approach my Master’s thesis through the weaving of emergent Indigenous feminist theory, decolonial theory and methods, and Métis methodologies. My project focuses upon: (1) the historical legacy of western menstrual teachings and its effect on Indigenous women and youth’s body images; (2) how Métis teachings can create space for knowing, healing, and identity in my community; and (3) how Métis women’s teachings and bodily connection can help reimagine and dream into existence self-image futurisms for Buttertown, Alberta. Current literature only addresses how colonial and patriarchal concepts of menstruation affect Métis women and young girls (Baldy 2017). Beyond the literature, there is no specific research within Métis communities, specifically Buttertown, near Fort Vermilion, Alberta, which stems from internalized patriarchal frameworks and principles that affect the well-being of women and youth during this monthly ceremony. This project begins with my own experience and with the Métis community of Buttertown. I use autoethnography, Métis storying, Métis oral history, Métis historical archives, and most importantly the social practice of visiting (Flaminio et al. 2020; Gaudet 2018). My metaphoric methodology of saskatoon berry picking grounds my research in Buttertown and parallels my Indigenous research approach to the berry picking process. Through this project, I gain new insights into how reconnection and re-emergence of Métis moon time teachings links to healing and Indigenous concepts of well-being (Gaudet & Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Zinga & Styres 2013). iv Lay Summary For many reasons, engaging with positive body image and self-esteem practices can be difficult for Indigenous Peoples living within colonial bodily concepts. For Indigenous women, layered colonial oppressions interfere with positive self-esteem and self-care. I began this thesis research project to understand moon time and its connection to body image exists in my community through visiting with family through research and moments in-between research work. As a Métis community member and researcher, I am taking on kinship-based research in my Métis homelands. My Métis community is called the North Vermilion Settlement (or Buttertown) near Fort Vermilion, Alberta. I use the Métis method of visiting and a metaphoric saskatoon berry picking methodology to guide this research; the procedure parallels Indigenous research and the berry picking process. This project is meant to thoughtfully produce ways that Métis women and youth can experience and nurture positive self-esteem for themselves and their community of Buttertown through future moon time teachings. v Preface Indigenous Peoples are not a monolith, and neither are Métis people. There are nuanced experiences within the Métis Nation as a whole and within this Métis research community. I can only speak to my experiences as a young Métis woman, my connection to community, and my post-secondary education. I take on the responsibility to do this research in a good way and the gravity of my community and academic responsibility is not lost on me. It guides my work, and it is also called relational accountability.1 The research project questions were initially formulated while reflecting on my lived menstrual experiences founded on western teachings in conjunction with Syilx women’s teachings. I realized there was a different way to understand menstruation and wondered if there were Métis moon time teachings in my Métis community.2 I was prompted by Syilx Elders Chris Marchand and Eric Mitchell to bring this research topic to my Métis homelands. Around this time in the 2018/19 semester, Elder Maureen Ziprick encouraged me to bring my developed post-secondary skills back home; she said that there is a responsibility for Indigenous university students to bring their talents back to their communities and reach back to help other community youth on their paths. Métis community members and family members contributed to this research project in many ways such as participant word of mouth recruitment, visiting outside of research, and giving life to the content of this thesis.3 Although the research community did not ask for this research, there was interest when it was offered and advertised. This research project is not community-based research where communities bring forward research questions, but it is kinship-based and founded on my familial ties. Métis community member participants (later named Berry Pickers see Chapter Two), enriched this project with their words, memories, and sentiments. The research topic shifted alongside kin and participants’ requests to focus on women and youth’s confidence, knowing our bodies, and dreaming up futures; moon time teachings then functioned as a tool to the new focuses. Participants voluntarily signed informed consent forms after we went through each page together ensuring participants knew the details of 1 I learned this concept in Dr. Shawn Wilson’s Indigenous Methodologies course (2022) and in his book, Research is Ceremony (2008). 2 In Chapter One, I share my Métis family names, my Métis community, and positionality in depth. 3 Here I think of Cutcha Risling Baldy’s (2020) words from her research talk, women give life to community beyond biological birth. vi the project and their participation. Participants were given a non-incentive honorarium, a card, and tobacco seeds or dried tobacco. A year prior to conducting research, I grew and cared for tobacco seeds4 until they were big enough to harvest leaves to dry. These were picked to be gifts for Elders and knowledge keepers in my Métis community (before I had specific participants in mind). I grew and tended to six tobacco plants, so a few flowered and went to seed. I gathered the seed pods (which make this wonderful rattling sound when shaken) to gift to all participants for their contributions to the community and to the research project. These second-generation seeds were meant to be literal and symbolic of intergenerational knowledge transmission and intergenerational care in the community. The relational data analysis of fieldnotes and semi-structured interviews and the talking circle transcripts crafted the main themes of this thesis which are discussed in Chapter Two. While the quotes ground this research, not all that I write about will be agreed with amongst my Métis community and the wider Métis Nation; we all have varying opinions and I share more about my positionality in Chapter One. This research project was co-supervised by Dr. Fiona McDonald and Dr. Gabrielle Legault. They both mentored and guided me along the research process to ensure it remained structured and followed Master thesis guidelines. My co-supervisors assisted defining emergent themes upon my arrival back to Kelowna from fieldwork and reconnecting with my community. Further, they helped me find opportunities to push back against conventional thesis writing. Prior to fieldwork, this research project was considered a minimal risk study and approved by the Okanagan Campus Behavioural Research Ethics Board under certificate number: H22-00382. 4 The seeds were provided by the Indigenous Programs and Services as a tobacco growing competition in Spring 2021. vii Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary ................................................................................................................................. iv Preface............................................................................................................................................. v List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ ix A Note on Language and Definitions ............................................................................................. x A Note on Formatting .................................................................................................................. xiii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... xiv Dedication .................................................................................................................................... xvi Chapter One: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Research Questions ............................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Research Commitments in my Métis Community ................................................................ 3 1.3 Positioning My Kinship ........................................................................................................ 8 1.4 Background ......................................................................................................................... 11 1.5 Autoethnography................................................................................................................. 13 1.6 Theoretical Framework ....................................................................................................... 15 1.7 The Flow of Thesis Chapters: Setting the Table with Câpân’s Embroidered Tablecloth .. 17 Chapter Two: Research Design, Visiting, and Saskatoon Berry Methodology ............................ 21 2.1 Research Design.................................................................................................................. 21 2.2 Ethnographic Indigenous Methodology .............................................................................. 22 2.3 Saskatoon Berry Picking Research Methodology............................................................... 23 2.3.1 Finding a Berry Patch // The Level of Local Indigenous Knowledge ............................. 24 2.3.2 Recruitment // Finding Fellow Berry Pickers .................................................................. 24 2.3.3 Traveling to the Berry Patch // Intentions and Rationale of Research ............................. 27 2.3.4 Picking, Processing, and Snacking on the Saskatoons // Gathering the Data .................. 28 2.3.5 Cleaning the Picked Berries // Analyzing Data and Lived Experiences .......................... 29 2.3.6 A Fresh Baked Pie to Share // The Final Thesis .............................................................. 30 2.4 Methods............................................................................................................................... 30 2.4.1 Visiting as Method: Keeoukaywin................................................................................... 31 2.4.2 Praxis................................................................................................................................ 35 2.4.3 Semi-structured Interviews .............................................................................................. 35 2.4.4 Talking Circle .................................................................................................................. 36 2.5 Ethics................................................................................................................................... 38 2.5.1 Pseudonyms and Nicknames............................................................................................ 39 viii 2.6 Sifting Through the Data .................................................................................................... 40 Chapter Three: The Métis Women of Buttertown ........................................................................ 43 3.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................. 43 3.2 Telling Our Story ................................................................................................................ 44 3.2.1 Buttertown........................................................................................................................ 45 3.2.2 Visiting ‘Round Buttertown ............................................................................................. 48 3.3 Our Women ......................................................................................................................... 50 3.3.1 Indigenous Women’s Spiritual Power ............................................................................. 55 Chapter Four: Colonial Mechanisms of Shame and Body Sovereignty ....................................... 58 4.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................. 58 4.2 Métis Women and Trauma Cycles of Shame ..................................................................... 58 4.2.1 Identity Shame: Enforced Colonial Parameters of Being ................................................ 59 4.2.2 Sexuality Shame: Governing and Hyper-Sexualizing Bodies ......................................... 62 4.2.3 Menstrual Shame: Colonial Interruptions of Moon Time Knowledge Transmission...... 65 4.3 We Know and Own Ourselves ............................................................................................ 68 4.3.1 Body Sovereignty and Biopolitics ................................................................................... 70 4.3.2 Biopower of Reproduction and Governing the Family.................................................... 72 4.3.3 Body Sovereignty and Land Sovereignty ........................................................................ 74 Chapter Five: Care, Place-Based Teachings, and Buttertown Futurisms ..................................... 77 5.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................. 77 5.2 Nākatohkātiso: Take Care of Yourself ............................................................................... 78 5.3 Coming Back to Métis Moon Time Teachings for Body Image and Wellbeing ................ 80 5.3.1 Politicking Menstrual Taboos .......................................................................................... 83 5.3.2 Place-Based and Spatial Teachings ................................................................................. 86 5.3.3 Indigenous Women’s Land-Based Teachings ................................................................. 89 5.4 Collectively Dreaming Buttertown Futurisms .................................................................... 92 Chapter 6: Conclusion................................................................................................................... 95 6.1 Research Beginnings ........................................................................................................... 96 6.2 Research Outcomes ............................................................................................................. 97 6.3 Key Take Aways: Coming Back to Câpân’s Embroidered Tablecloth .............................. 99 Appendix 1 .............................................................................................................................. 100 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 102 ix List of Figures Figure 1: “Plan of North Vermilion Settlement”, 1914 Department of the Interior, public domain. Accessed January 24, 2023..………………………………………………………………………5 Figure 2: “North Vermilion Settlement” used with permission from © Google 2023 and Airbus CNES/Airbus Maxar Technologies. Accessed July 10, 2023..……………………………………6 Figure 3: “North Vermilion Road in Buttertown” photograph © Hanna Paul, 2022..……………7 Figure 4: “Câpân’s Kitchen Tablecloth” photograph © Hanna Paul, 2022...……………………19 Figure 5: “Front of Métis Moon Time Postcard” © designed by Hanna Paul, 2022.……………26 Figure 6: “Back of Métis Moon Time Postcard” © designed by Hanna Paul, 2022.……………26 Figure 7: “Câpân’s Kitchen Tablecloth” photograph © Hanna Paul, 2022..…………….………95 x A Note on Language and Definitions Belonging: For me, I was initially concerned about belonging in my community without growing up there. I quickly learned that in my community belonging consists of kinship, familial ties you can name and speak to, practicing community responsibilities, and visiting as often as possible. Body Sovereignty: This refers to authority, agency, control, knowledge, and autonomy in relationship to one’s body. Care: In this project, care means self-care and communal care. Often to care for others one must care for themselves first to ensure they have the energy and groundedness to contribute to community wellbeing (see wellbeing definition). Câpân: Nêhiyaw and Northern Michif for great grandparent or great grandchild because it is genderless and expresses an intergenerational relationship.5 Colonial settlers: In this thesis, colonial settlers refer to European colonial settlers and descendants of the first colonizers. It also is used in reference to the current colonial settler ideologies that structure apparatuses of colonial power (education, judicial, healthcare, welfare, borders, literature, and colonial master narratives of bodies and Indigenous communities). This is further discussed in Vowel’s book.6 Kokum: Nêhiyaw and Northern Michif for grandmother. Métis: In this project, Métis people are a distinct and unique ethno-cultural group of people who have been practicing their culture for hundreds of years. In the north, and many other Métis communities, the Métis practice fiddling, jigging, visiting, sharing, and respecting All Our Relations (human and nonhuman). Métis people are not anyone who are of mixed ancestry. I 5 Âpihtawikosisân Blog. Cree Kinship Terms. Posted October 24, 2011. And the spelling is also from the Northern Michif Phone App created by the Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research. 6 Chelsea Vowel (2016, 15) discusses names for those not Indigenous on Indigenous lands. xi recommend Métis scholar Chelsea Vowel’s (2016) work7 about variations of Métis / Métishood / Métissage definitions and why various definitions exist. Menstruating people: Throughout the thesis, you will notice I use the term menstruating people to reiterate they may not always identify themselves women and not all women menstruate for many reasons. If anyone connects to this research in some way—then this project is for you. Moon Time: The spiritual, cleansing, and cyclical moon ceremony (Gaudet 2018). With the onset of moon time, one is expected to venture in solitude to the moon lodge and practice self-reflection and creativity while resting too (Gaudet 2018; Anderson 2011). Often they are served food at the door of the moon time lodge or sometimes they are fasting depending on the specific family and community practices (Gaudet 2018; Anderson 2011). Indian and Halfbreeds: These two words are used in some literature that positions settler understandings of First Nations and Métis people in the Fort Vermilion area in the 19th and 20th centuries. The word Halfbreed is the colonial perpetuation that Métis people are only defined by their ancestors’ mixed ethnicity and not the years of cultural practice and specific collective lived experiences (traumatic and joyous) that truly define the Métis Nation. Indigenous Peoples: As stated in UNDRIP and Cheslea Vowel’s (2016) work, Indigenous Peoples are First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people in so-called Canada. Globally, Indigenous Peoples are connected to their ancestral and traditional territories since time immemorial and are often targets of colonial violence and apparatuses of power. Métis Nation: I acknowledge that all Métis are connected through kinship, whether it be direct or distant, to the Red River area. There are provincial Métis Nations, (I am a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta) but previous to the Dominion of Canada there would not be borders dividing the Métis Nation nor other Indigenous Peoples whose territories transcend colonial borders. 7 Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel (2016). xii Wellbeing: This term means holistic wellbeing that includes the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing of a person. It goes beyond tangible and visible indicators of health and wellbeing. Wellbeing can be understood on a personal level, familial level, and a community level. People’s wellbeing enables their care for community which contributes to community wellbeing. White Supremacy: The belief that European, especially Anglo-Saxon, cultures are superior to all other cultures based on the unilineal cultural evolution theory that compares all cultures to European parameters of so-called civilization and technological advancements. Rather, all cultures use technology and change over time and can only be understood through that respective culture’s epistemologies (how they know what they know), ontologies (their understanding of their nature of being), and axiology (their culture-specific values). This theory was developed by early anthropologists, but white supremacy is pervasive throughout the world due to colonization and globalization. Woman/women: In this project, women are anyone who identifies as a woman. Women may include people who menstruate, or they may not. For the goal of this research project, it is unproductive to attempt to confine the definition of women and womanhood to western colonial binaries of gender. It would be a disservice to our ancestors who knew and practiced free self-expression and free love. Indigenous concepts of gender, sexual orientation, masculine energies, and feminine energies are far more diverse, spectral, and expansive than colonial borders of gender. Youth: For Métis Nation of Alberta, youth mean anyone between the ages of 14 and 29. From my understanding, youth exist into perceived adulthood because young adults are still learning about themselves and about their cultures. xiii A Note on Formatting Berry Picker (participant) quotes use italicized font and are not confined within quotations marks to push back against colonial narratives and typeface. This decision is inspired by Daliso Mwanza’s (2022) Thesis Preface where he reiterates how he “intentionally used a non-standard font when writing out insights in the words and voices of my collaborators as the history of font and typeface is linked to documents, literature, and policy that have sought to suppress Black people globally” (5). Like Mwanza’s collaborators, Berry Pickers’ voices transcend the conventional and colonial expectations of font usage. xiv Acknowledgements This research is grounded in the Buttertown community, and I acknowledge the Métis community members who breathed this research into existence. The Berry Pickers (participants) generously shared their words and lived realities. Buttertowners have always practiced Métis culture and this project is only a small piece of the many initiatives to ensure cultural access to youth that bolsters identity and self-esteem. I also thank our ancestors who loved hard, fought hard, visited hard, and collectively cared for each other to keep our culture alive. I want to thank my co-supervisors, Dr. McDonald and Dr. Legault, whose expertise in their respective fields have generously guided me through my research and back to myself time and time again. I could not have survived a colonial institution without your rigorous (yet gentle) love and care. To my committee members, Dr. Gaudet and Dr. Hargreaves, thank you for enriching my interdisciplinary research with your respective discipline knowledges and lived experiences. You have enriched my life through your words of wisdom and deep care as well. To my friends and family, you have upheld every ounce of my being throughout this project. Every time I broke (there were plenty of times), you all collectively and lovingly picked up the pieces and grounded me again. This work would not be possible without you all. In fact, I could write the same number of pages as this thesis of all who supported me and my thesis in a plethora of ways. A special thank you to my partner who brought me to the water many times so that my tears could join the Okanagan Lake (anyone notice the water levels risen? jk). Another special thank you to my Kokum, local guide, best friend, and research summer roommate. Know that I cry the tears you could not, and your power invigorates me to be a better person every day. To my many cousins, I am ever grateful to spend time with you and get to know you all. You are the ones doing the good heart work in community day in and day out; your community-led work is equal to and transcends academic work because there is so much power in it regardless of its proximity to academia. We will visit and belly laugh together again soon. I love you all very much. kinanâskomitin. xv Lastly, I am grateful for the financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the University of British Columbia (Okanagan), and the province of British Columbia. xvi Dedication I dedicate this work to the strong, badass women in my family, kinship circles, and communities. Whether you acknowledge your power or not, know that I do and I am inspired and driven by your tenacity every day. And I hope this thesis is a call to action to always come back to yourselves and the ancestral remembrance of women’s spiritual power that anchors whole communities in so many different and vital ways. May you continue to dream up Buttertown futures for the youth and those yet to come. 1 Chapter One: Introduction In so-called Canada, Indigenous women’s bodies have been the subject of study and erasure through western scholarship no matter the discipline (whether it is the humanities or sciences) (Simpson 2014). Erasure and simultaneous extraction of Indigenous Peoples’ knowledges benefit white colonial-settlerism through pirating and subjugating these non-euro western knowledge systems (Battiste and Henderson 2000; Simpson 2014; Foucault 1999). In particular, Métis women’s bodies and experiences of Métis moon time (menstruation) have received little to no attention in more traditional euro western scholarship. I am undertaking an interdisciplinary project that looks critically at mechanisms of body sovereignty through understanding the traditions and ceremonies of Métis moon time in my own Métis community. Conversations with Métis women and scholars’ literature inform the knowledge of Métis moon time. This thesis begins with my experience within my Métis community of the North Vermilion Settlement (locally known as Buttertown) across the Peace River from Fort Vermillion, Alberta, and is a synthesis of an integrated lens I used that combines emergent Indigenous feminist theory and decolonial theory to process and situate the knowledge that has emerged from Métis methods. Formatting conversation as kitchen table talks throughout this thesis is a manifestation of the vital crosshairs of Indigenous feminist theory and decolonial theory; Métis women’s conversations at kitchen tables are just as valid and scholarly as academic conversations and by centering my thesis around this I am practicing decolonial theory while recognizing I cannot completely decolonize my work as it exists and is supported by an inherently colonial institution. Where Métis women’s bodies do not appear in the literature is where this thesis enters to address how colonial and patriarchal perceptions of menstruation affect Métis women and youth (Baldy 2017). In anthropology, only a small body of work has unveiled the social policies and patriarchal ideologies around women’s bodies that enforce western menstrual taboos elaborated on throughout the stories of women in this thesis (Chrisler, Marván, Gorman, and Rossini 2015; Chrisler 2013; Freidenfelds 2009; Martin 2001). Beyond the literature, there is also an opportunity to expand knowledge within Métis communities that transcends internalized patriarchal frameworks and ideologies that affect the wellbeing of women and youth during this monthly ceremony. In Métis communities, the reality of navigating through two worlds and emerging from a colonized nation raises the question of whether certain “traditional” practices 2 and beliefs stem from either internalized colonial patriarchy or are pre-colonial ideologies (Vowel 2016; Pedersen, Malcoe, and Pulkingham 2013; Fiske 1991). Moreover, internalization often stems from cognitive imperialism perpetuated through Indian Residential Schools and other apparatuses of colonial power in the midst of the multiculturalism myth (Battiste 2005). Because of this, menstruation teachings and preparation were rarely available for young Indigenous women (Métis Nation of Alberta 2004; Anderson 2000). Due to this disruption, this thesis aims to center the voices of women, including my own, who have experienced this colonial violence and youth like myself who strive to know the ceremonies that honour our Métis bodies. My thesis centers on Métis women of the North Vermilion Settlement (Buttertown), Alberta and their embodied experiences with moon time (menstruation) and body confidence. Métis women’s lived realities exhibit collective knowledge and care within our community. Métis women are vital in Métis visiting and knowledge transmission (Anderson 2011). This is more than a thesis, however, as it is a space for sharing dreams and stories that strengthen our familial bonds, bodily connection, and ancestral land relationship (Flaminio et al. 2020). These discussions which are woven into each page of the thesis reinvigorate Métis perceptions of kin, bodily sovereignty, and are remembrances of an animate, sovereign land base; the embodied connection to “ensouled landscapes” ground Indigenous storytelling theories and methodologies (Marker 2018, 458). Because of this, my project focuses upon: (1) the historical legacy of western menstrual teachings and its effect on Indigenous women and youth’s body images; (2) how Métis teachings can create space for knowing, healing, and identity in my community and in my kinship-based experience returning to my Métis homelands; and (3) how Métis women’s teachings and bodily connection can help reimagine and dream into existence futurisms for Buttertown, Alberta. 1.1 Research Questions The narrowed research question of my project is: How have colonial ideologies of the menstrual cycle, or moon time, affected Métis youth and women’s body images and their connection journey to moon time in Buttertown, Alberta? I was drawn to answer this question because Métis youth and women in Buttertown are interested in reconnecting to women’s teachings, recognizing their power, and enacting their bodily sovereignty. As Anderson (2011) notes, Métis 3 women’s teachings transcend the boundaries of the domestic sphere while emphasizing how the domestic sphere is paramount in knowledge transmission and visiting. Women’s teachings are road maps for community management and wellbeing (Anderson 2011). This research acknowledges the interconnectivity of Métis being, which includes Métis sovereignty. Subsequent research questions that this thesis also addresses are: (1) how do Métis youth and women connect to Buttertown?; (2) have there been moon time teachings in this community?; and (3) how does body sovereignty connect to moon time and land sovereignty? The central research question and three subsequent questions are the foundational work for dreaming Métis Buttertown futurisms for women and youth in the community (which is discussed in Chapter Five). 1.2 Research Commitments in my Métis Community The community I work with is my Métis community called the North Vermilion Settlement or Buttertown, an unofficial Métis settlement of the Peace River’s north side (see Figure 1, Figure 2, and Figure 3) near Fort Vermilion, Alberta, Canada. The population of Fort Vermilion is 753 and the population of Buttertown, which resides on the north side of the Peace River across from Fort Vermilion, is unknown. These unique lands of the northwest are in what is called Treaty 8 Territory. My relationality, through my father (Métis and status Beaver First Nation) and paternal Kokum (grandmother in Nêhiyaw and Michif), positions me as kin to the land and family members. My family in the north is Métis, Beaver First Nation, and Nêhiyaw. I return to who I am in the next section to situate myself in this work, my community, and every word in the thesis. But first, I wish to set out more context for why I am doing this work and give more insight into how I have come to be a Métis researcher. While this thesis fulfills the goal of bringing together the stories of Métis women in Buttertown, it also responds to eleven of the 95 Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that address health, gender, education, and cultural revitalization (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2012). To ensure my work provides actionable and applied outcomes for Buttertown women and youth, I engage in this written form with archival material and stories—present and absent—that evidence the connection to Métis moon time teachings that have been shared and are present today. New insights are shared in this thesis about how reconnection and re-emergence of Métis moon time teachings are linked to healing, 4 body image, self-esteem, and Indigenous concepts of wellbeing (Baldy 2017; Zinga & Styres 2013; Gaudet & Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). The methodological thread that ties these aspects of the project to answer my research questions is my engagement with Métis storying through visiting (Flaminio, Gaudet, and Dorion 2020; Gaudet 2019), saskatoon berry picking process as a metaphor of my methodology (Chapter Two unpacks this metaphor), and the Nêhiyaw natural laws of wahkootowin (MacDougall 2017). Métis people were introduced to the natural laws of wahkootowin through their Nêhiyaw relatives early on, “[a]s the Métis learned about wahkootowin—all my relations—from their Nêhiyaw maternal lineage, they came to understand that this system did not simply relate to living (or real) family members but included the land, animals, winds, birds, water, rocks, trees, and every other object around them” (MacDougall 2010, 132-133). Furthermore, wahkootowin “was not simply a way to organize people socially in family units it was also part of a religious system that drew the land, creatures, and people together as spiritual relatives with all creation […]” (MacDougall 2010, 132). While the research community did not use this word, the nuances and concepts remain descriptive of the mechanisms of relationality there. Despite colonially created disconnections, there is communal engagement with the nuances of the Michif and Nêhiyaw concept of wahkootowin in Buttertown because these concepts are grounded in kinship. My Indigenous studies and anthropology training in both my undergraduate and graduate journeys have prepared me to use Indigenous autoethnography, Métis storying, Métis oral history, Métis historical archives in the Fort Vermilion Heritage Centre, and most importantly the social practice of visiting (Flaminio, Gaudet, and Dorion 2020; McDonald and Paul 2021). Visiting and my lived experiences as a Métis cisgender woman are the starting point for this research. I approached this research topic through self-inquiry about my menstruation and other gendered experiences that denied me access to moon time teachings. Early on, I began to ponder upon this project because I noticed a connection between my western menstruation teachings around hiding and being ashamed of my menstrual experiences and my self-esteem and body image. I made connections by visiting and discussing this topic with other Indigenous women and family members to understand if there was interest in my research idea within my spheres; my experience was more common than I thought and many women family members who hold normalized negative self-esteem and body image. 5 Figure 1 (above): “Plan of North Vermilion Settlement”, 1914 Department of the Interior, public domain. Accessed January 24, 2023. Via the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/WCW_M000218. 6 Figure 2 (above): “North Vermilion Settlement” used with permission from © Google 2023 and Airbus CNES/ Airbus Maxar Technologies. Accessed July 10, 2023. https://earth.google.com/web/search/The+north+vermilion+settlement/@58.40218134,-116.04020126,253.05398323a,13934.29560004d,35y,-0h,0t,0r/data=CigiJgokCfiGRTNqqjhAEfiGRTNqqjjAGe4PfClKiDDAIXC4FQkGAl_A. 7 Figure 3 (above): “North Vermilion Road in Buttertown” photograph © Hanna Paul, 2022. 8 1.3 Positioning My Kinship I present my research and approach through the kaleidoscope of lived experiences that brought me to this space. Moreover, I wish the reader to know my voice and its lineage filling these pages. Therefore, I situate who I am, where I come from, whom I belong to, which community claims me, and my responsibilities. Introducing myself alongside my family names, parents, and grandparents is a vital Métis protocol that situates me in my web of relations. Taanishii! Hanna Paul dishinikashoon. Mon faamii shinikashoo Paul, Lizotte, Lambert, and LaFleur and Routhier, and Andriuk. Hello! My name is Hanna Paul. My family names are Paul, Lizotte, Lambert, and LaFleur (on my dad’s side) and Routhier and Andriuk (on my mom’s side). I am a beginner learner of Michif, the Métis language, and it is considered a combination of Nêhiyaw and French with various dialects depending on the location of the Métis community. Michif sometimes is also substituted for the word “Métis” because we are our language. I took a Southern Heritage Michif course with my dad over the summer of 2021, and I try to practice often. Joshua Morin taught this course through the Michif Cultural Connections in St. Albert, Alberta. However, I took this course online. I practice whenever I go to the land, the water, and in meetings or classes. My introduction is in Southern Heritage Michif, but according to many family members, my ancestors spoke Nêhiyaw and a combination of Nêhiyaw and what they called “lazy French” during phone calls, which I can only imagine would have been northern Michif, although it was never called that. I was still overjoyed to take this course with my dad. Since then, he has taken a Nehiyawewin course with other family members, and I am so happy to witness his reconnection journey to language in tandem with mine. Family members heard and spoke Nehiyawewin not long ago, but missions, day schools, and residential schools instilled shame and trauma that interrupted language transmission. It is a protocol for me to situate my kinship to provide the context of who I am, to whom I belong, and my community responsibilities. My grandparents on my mom’s side are Peggy (Andriuk) Routhier and Denis Routhier. Veronica Paul and Doug Lambert are my Kokum8 and 8 Grandmother in Nêhiyaw and Northern Michif. 9 late Moshom on my dad’s side. My mom, Jodie Paul, is French and Ukrainian. My dad, Ronnie Paul, is Treaty Beaver First Nation and northern Métis. My Métis community is locally called Buttertown or the North Vermilion Settlement in northern Alberta. It is a beautiful community surrounded by birch and jack pines trees. Buttertown is on the north side of the Peace River, across from Fort Vermilion, Alberta (Ferguson 2008). It has river lots, or rangs (Teillet 2019), that connect the property lines to the river (see Figure 1 and Figure 2). The long and thin properties ensured Métis families lived closely together while accessing the river and the land backing onto the river lots. I needed to witness and partake in visiting house to house. Driving around the backroads with my Kokum felt important because the ancestral presence is strong in Buttertown, although I did not do so by horse and wagon like my Kokum did when she was young. I am honoured to have experienced so many moments of love and joy with my Kokum. I did everything I could to help make her life a little easier (whether it was washing her car, making her food, massages, deep chats about her childhood, always taking out the garbage, or bringing in flats of water) while I lived with her since it is my responsibility as her kin. I was simply lucky to be in her presence and learn so much from her. I spent most of my summer of 2022 in Buttertown, visiting with family I had not met or visited very often. I grew up away from my Métis community in Fort McMurray, Alberta, and I was primarily raised with my mom’s side of the family. I am not sure why we did not spend as much time up north, but I know it was a twelve-hour drive from Fort McMurray, which played a role in the distance and disconnection. I grew up knowing I had my Kokum (grandmother in Nêhiyaw and Northern Michif), and I knew that when my Kokum would sometimes say “âstam ôteh” to me, I needed to go to her. Unfortunately, that was the extent of knowing my language (yet I am grateful that my younger self knew even this), and I knew some of my kin from the north. We did visit for holidays in the north, but not as frequently as I desired. However, I did not quite see how extensive my kinship network was until I recently visited. In the summer of 2022, I returned to the community with many internalized insecurities about belonging. Reflecting on the first iterations of my thesis proposal writing, I could see my caution. Part of my caution stemmed from being white-passing. As Métis scholar and poet Samantha Nock (2023) states in her op-ed in IndigiNews: 10 We cannot continue holding our white fragility at our centre, as a way to scapegoat our role in upholding white supremacy in our communities. Remember, kindness is not always softness. I come from a brown Métis family. I am amongst some of the lightest of my cousins and also one of the first to receive a university degree and experience class mobility. I am proud of the achievements that I fought hard for, but I cannot deny that my skin has given me access to historically-white spaces and opportunities. I acknowledge and understand that my experience in academic settings is a privilege in a hegemonic white supremacist society. Hegemonic means white supremacy is a dominant belief that founds both explicit (seen) and implicit (unseen) practices in Canadian colonial apparatuses of power. White supremacy is the belief that European, especially Anglo-Saxon, cultures are superior to all other cultures on the basis of the unilineal cultural evolution theory that compares all cultures to European parameters of so-called civilization and technological advancements (Erickson and Murphy 2013). Rather, all cultures use technology and change over time and can only be understood through that respective culture’s epistemologies (how they know what they know), ontologies (their understanding of their nature of being), and axiology (their culture specific values) (Erickson and Murphy 2013). This theory was developed by early anthropologists, but white supremacy is pervasive throughout the world due to colonization and globalization (Evans 2000). Being white-passing, I move more freely in a society that considers whiteness as the default and the preferred. I intend to bring the academic skills and mobility I learned back to my community. While I appreciate my cautionary approach upon arriving in Buttertown, it quickly became apparent that kinship ties ground me in my community. I bonded with many cousins over our massive family tree connections, berry picking, and attending youth camps together. I was situated where I needed to be. I was once worried about who would be my local guide, not realizing my Kokum took on many roles, and she was central to my research and reconnection journey. I am ever grateful to my Kokum and our time together over the summer. My belonging to a community is forever grounded in kinship; I worked on fostering my connection and fulfilling my responsibilities as a community member. While I am a citizen of the Métis Nation of Alberta Region Six, it is far more crucial to name my community, know it, and be a responsible relative to my Kokum, parents, sister, cousins, aunties, uncles, and the land as they are to me through our reciprocal relations. 11 1.4 Background To understand women in Buttertown, I need to contextualize its history and the effects of coloniality. Colonial hegemonic ideologies and assimilation policies forced Indigenous communities to conform to western beliefs and the make-believe idea that a ‘civilized’ white way of life in so-called Canada was paramount (Milloy 2017; Wilk, Maltby, and Cooke 2017; Lawrence 2008). Colonization is an ongoing act of multi-faceted violence that upholds colonial-settler occupancy on Indigenous Peoples’ ancestral lands (Barker 2017). Furthermore, the Indian Residential School system was utilized to disconnect Indigenous children from their cultural teachings and sense of identity (Milloy 2017; Wilk, Maltby, and Cooke 2017; Tatz 2005; Rutherdale 2003). These colonial institutions implemented intense psychological, spiritual, emotional, sexual, and physical abuse (Milloy 2017). Therefore, shame, identity issues, and self-hatred were teaching mandates in the Indian Residential Schools (Wilk, Maltby, and Cooke 2017; Milloy 2017). For young Indigenous girls, this also meant being conditioned to believe their bodily functions were shameful (Baldy 2017; Métis Nation of Alberta 2014). Historical and current western rhetoric imply that women’s bodies are unpredictable (Martin 2001); the discourse of women being unpredictable relates to the language of women being ‘hysterical’, ‘sensitive’, and ‘illogical’ (this is connected to Felt Theory in Chapter Three). This message conveys that women lack a relationship to their natural rhythmic cycles and need patriarchal support by way of biomedical guidance to know their bodies (Martin 2001; Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). Furthermore, the colonial-settler medical ideologies of hyper-sanitization negatively affected menstrual perspectives (Freidenfelds 2009). Menstruation narratives, in turn, discussed a naturally dirtying and uncontrollable process used to justify women’s subordination (Baldy 2017; Freidenfelds 2009). This polluting ideology stems from the religious demonization of menstruation. Christian beliefs situate women as polluted beings that contaminate those around them (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Anderson 2000). As Anderson (2000) states, “Judeo-Christian culture saw menstruation not as a manifestation of female power, but as a manifestation of female sin, contamination, and inferiority” (75). Indian Residential Schools and Missions schools Christianised Indigenous children and their self-understanding (Milloy 2017; Métis Nation of Alberta 2014). The conversation about hyper-sanitation relates to the rhetoric of blood quantum and blood purity; Métis people were considered to contaminate white blood and 12 the white colonial settler society (Teillet 2019). Métis women are then doubly contaminated through the colonial-settler polluting concepts of blood purity, white supremacy, and menstruation. Therefore, western medical ideologies around sanitation and hygiene relate to menstruation and identity enculturation of Indigenous generations. Such ideologies differ from Indigenous conceptions of moon time (menstruation), which consider moon time a special and sacred time for women and not dirty or polluting (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). Métis moon time is a ceremonious experience that occurs monthly and is also known as menstruation in the western context, although it comes with the colonial baggage of shame and taboo (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Anderson 2011). Moon time is a ceremony of renewal and release for menstruating folks where Grandmother Moon gifts moon time in Métis stories (Gaudet 2018). Menstruation is often considered taboo due to colonization and the imposed patriarchy. Western paradigms that feed capitalism, colonialism, and the patriarchy negatively contort body images and self-confidence for youth and women (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Chrisler et al. 2015; Chrisler 2013). In this thesis, I come to understand body image as how a person perceives their holistic relationship to their body and sense of self. And scaffolding from this, self-confidence has emerged with the understanding of assurance and empowerment that stems from within. Moon time teachings can potentially aid any lack of self-confidence since they teach that women are inherently powerful, which is evident in their embodied experiences (Baldy 2017; Anderson 2011). Moon time teachings are antithetical to patriarchal beliefs that founded colonialism and perpetuate and normalize gender discrimination (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Anderson 2011). Moon time is about renewing and cleansing all aspects of a person’s wellbeing (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). By wellbeing, I refer throughout the thesis specifically to the holistic inclusion of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional aspects of wellbeing. Holistic wellbeing is distinguishable from western biomedical health discourses that have historically only included physical health (Martin 2001). The worldview encompassing the word “moon time” depicts the interconnection between women and Grandmother Moon (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015); Métis scholar Cindy Gaudet and colonial settler ally scholar Diane Caron-Bourbonnais (2015) share that “as the moon pulls the tides of the oceans, so the moon, according to common belief, is synchronized with women’s menstrual cycles and with the waters in their bodies. Both follow [an approximate] 28-day cycle. Thus, women have a natural ability to relate 13 to the earth’s waters as they do to Mother Earth” (166). Over time, western medical discourses exposed Indigenous youth and women to colonial narratives rooted in a patriarchal logic (Martin 2001), which inevitably influenced their perspectives on the menstrual cycle. Through assimilationist policies across Canada since its inception as a colony, Indigenous youth and women were forced to adopt and internalize demoralizing and alienating beliefs about their bodies (Kelm 1998). Thus, there was extreme disconnection to the holistic and spiritual teachings that Indigenous youth have been privy to had they not been forcibly taken from their communities and support networks (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). Therefore, Indigenous youth experience cultural genocide that includes the implementation of negative perceptions of the menstrual cycle (Baldy 2017). Reconnecting to self, community, and body in my own work is resistance to these apparatuses of colonial power. In the crosshairs of colonialism, capitalism, and the patriarchy lies the fractured perceptions of self for many Indigenous youth and women (Baldy 2017; Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Anderson 2011)—myself included. 1.5 Autoethnography Autoethnography as a research method in this project richly allowed for convergences self-reflexivity and the study of my own culture (Whitinui 2014; Ngunjiri, Herandez, and Chang 2010). It allows researchers to unpack, understand, and explain their own unique lived realities that frame their research where “[v]ulnerability is part of what makes reading autoethnographic works so compelling, as researchers expose their pains, hurt, loss, grief, heartbreaks, and other emotions experienced as they travail through events in their lives” (Ngunjiri, Herandez, and Chang 2010, 8). Faith Wambura Ngunjiri, Kathy-Ann C. Herandez, and Heewon Chang (2010) are immigrant scholars at American academic institutions who traverse through the nuances of autoethnographic methods to discuss their unique experiences that create depth in their research projects. Their article and Māori scholar Paul Whitinui’s (2014) work provides the essential model for how I have taken a thread and woven throughout this thesis to enact how Indigenous autoethnography acknowledges the interconnection between myself and my work. Whitinui understands “[…] [I]ndigenous autoethnography as a culturally distinctive way of coming to know who we are as indigenous peoples within the research agenda” (2014, 461). He unpacks Indigenous autoethnography as a native method of inquiry and specifically focuses on Māori 14 perspectives of self-inquiry to engage in meaningful and culturally focused research (2014, 458). Therefore, utilizing culture, self, identity, and place creates depth to research approaches that question the eurocentric methods of ethnography and autoethnography. Eurocentric ethnography historically sought to remove the researcher from the research topic and participants to create a sense of objectivity. Furthermore, the removal of self is an act of eurocentrism by assuming one ought to ignore the extensive network of lived experiences and connections that inevitably create subjectivity and biases (Battiste and Henderson 2000). Conventional autoethnography works to challenge this while still assuming there is distance between the researcher and the field which is the purpose of journaling about one’s experiences and perspectives in fieldwork (especially “helicopter”9 anthropological fieldwork). Whitinui (2014) draws upon many Indigenous scholars who founded the field of Indigenous methods and methodologies. He draws from Māori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) work, where she states that “engaging in a discussion about research as an indigenous issue has been about finding a “voice,” or a way of finding a “voice,” or a way of voicing concerns, fears, desires, aspirations, needs and questions as they relate to research” (93). Moreover, Whitinui (2014) and Smith (1999) unpack what it means to be an Indigenous researcher and auto-ethnographer. Autoethnography is a crucial part of coming to this project that goes back to a few years before I started graduate studies. I recall a moment that founded my preliminary research curiosities in moon time when I attended the 2017 Syilx Okanagan Salmon Feast hosted by the Okanagan Nation Alliance. I was on my moon time and could not participate in the ceremony, according to my Syilx peers. Syilx protocol states that a woman on her moon time could not partake in the ceremony because they are too powerful during this time; since a menstruating person is already undergoing a moon ceremony while on their moon time, they cannot be in two ceremonies at the same time. This experience was formative for me as a Métis woman on Syilx territory because Syilx moon time teachings began my journey back home to Northern Alberta with moon time questions in hand. Furthermore, moon time teachings speak to the profound understanding of women’s diverse roles in their respective Indigenous societies that inform this research (Kermoal & 9 Helicopter anthropology refers to ethnographic research outside of a researcher’s community and worldviews. The phrase creates the image of an anthropologist helicoptering into a community to extract data and helicopter out without maintaining relationships. 15 Altamirano-Jiménez 2016). Moon time teachings connect to the vital ways Indigenous women maintain and foster their communities’ wellbeing. Furthermore, “[t]hese practices fostered and nourished women’s power and creative energies, wellbeing, health, and a sense of harmonious living in tune with all of creation, blessed by the particular energy and power of the moon” (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015, 166). Therefore, moon time empowers women and does not disadvantage them in experiencing a natural, bodily phenomenon (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). Disconnection from Métis culture and identity through colonial apparatuses of power often resulted in a disconnection from women’s teachings (Barker 2017; Anderson 2011; Anderson 2000). After the Okanagan Salmon Feast and creating a literature review including Métis moon time teachings and practices for this journey, I crafted research questions about how aspects of my Métis family’s disconnection (while acknowledging where connection still exists and all I witnessed in my time in Fort Vermilion) to moon time teachings may have affected their self-esteem and body images given it affected my own. Through these emergent questions, I wondered if youth and women would have different self-perceptions if they had the opportunity to learn this empowering perspective of menstruation. Métis culture recognizes women’s inherent spiritual power; therefore, I demonstrate how moon time teachings function as a mechanism of cultural reconnection and decolonization (Baldy 2017; Anderson 2011; Anderson 2000). Because of this, I need to consider Métis women and youth’s lived experiences and realizations with the extensive theoretical work of Indigenous scholars who broke ground on this trail for this project to exist. 1.6 Theoretical Framework I came to this research as a Métis researcher and Métis community member, which meant I navigated two spheres with equal but differing ethical responsibilities. I was responsible for sharing my autoethnographic reflections and weaving them with community members lived experiences and relevant literature. Gathering stories, like picking saskatoons, required deliberate slowness and concentrated efforts. Storytelling communicates Métis ways of being (Teillet 2019), so I storied the data (Kovach 2021). The stories that compose the data strengthen kinship ties and create moments of remembrance. Gregory Cajete (1995) is a Tewa scholar doing extensive work on Indigenous knowledge within educational institutions. As Cajete explains, “[t]o remember is a way to re-know and re-claim a part of your life” (Cajete 1995, 87). 16 Storytelling is a mechanism of remembering and re-situating ourselves within our kinship networks. In Métis communities, storytelling is a central mechanism of knowledge transmission, resulting in enchanting stories that tie to theoretical musings (Teillet 2019). The intertwined theories woven across the pages that follow are Indigenous feminist theory, decolonial theory, Felt theory (Million 2009), Double-Consciousness theory (Du Bois 1903), Biopolitics theory (Foucault 2008), and Indigenous theories (and practices) of kinship, storytelling, and visiting (Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) 2022; Flaminio, Gaudet, and Dorion 2020; Kovach 2021; Gaudet 2019; TallBear 2014; Anderson 2011; Wilson 2008; MacDougall 2006). There is a genealogy of theories and knowledge that informs and upholds the work within this thesis. Chapter Two expands upon the voices of the project’s stories which are honoured in the spirit of relational accountability (Wilson 2008). Relational accountability in research methods and methodology conveys two principal qualities, “[…] the methodology needs to be based in a community context (the relational) and has to demonstrate respect, reciprocity and responsibility (be accountable as it is put into action)” (Wilson 2008, 99). As a member of the Métis community in Buttertown, Fort Vermillion, Alberta, it is vital for self-reflexivity (as part of Indigenous and decolonial theories) throughout the research and writing process, which I undertook through a considered process of Indigenous autoethnography (Whitinui 2014; Ngunjiri, Herandez, and Chang 2010). Furthermore, situating the researcher and the epistemologies embedded in their work is essential at the start of this thesis (Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) 2022). Specifically, “me-search” is used to locate myself as a researcher and community member since this requires a sort of code-switching10 between my responsibilities in each setting (Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) 2022; Epps 2018). I delve into these complex and differing responsibilities in Section 1.3, Positioning My Kinship. I have a responsibility to help share our community narrative when colonial settlers often told the stories from this region. American colonial settler Mary B. Lawrence (2008) and colonial settler secretary to the Treaty Commission Charles Mair’s (1999) autobiographies from their time in northern Alberta (Fort Vermilion and all of Treaty Eight territory) are examples of the colonial master narrative in this region. These pieces of work reference the Métis in this area, 10 Code switching is a linguistic anthropology term coined by Lucy Shepard Freeland in her book Language of the Sierra Miwok in 1951 and it meant the switching of languages in certain settings. This term is now used to discuss the complexities of changing tone of voice, vernacular, or how one shows up in a particular space given their safety levels in being themselves and what is socially acceptable in that particular space. 17 but primarily men’s stories are shared (Lawrence 2008; Mair 1999). The erasure of Métis women’s stories and bodies disrupts matriarch visibility for Métis youth. However, the work of Dian Million (2009), a Tanana Athabascan scholar who has coined Felt theory as a branch of affect theory, guides me through the mechanics of this work and grounds the lived experiences of Buttertown women. From this, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1903), an African American sociologist whose work on Hegelian theories of consciousness through a Black perspective allows me to situate his ideas of Double Consciousness theory alongside Biopolitics and Biopower theory crafted by French philosopher Michel Foucault (2008). Across all chapters, however, Indigenous theories that have been in practice since time immemorial are woven throughout the thesis. The Indigenous scholars who informed these theories are Anishinaabekwe scholar Kathleen Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) (2022), Métis scholar Anna Corrigal Flaminio, Métis scholar Cindy Gaudet, Métis scholar Leah Dorion, and colonial settler ally scholar Diane Caron-Bourbonnais who engage with and inform Métis theories of visiting, moon time, and women’s wellness (Flaminion et al. 2020; Gaudet 2019). Cree Métis scholar Kim Anderson (2011) speaks to Métis women’s wellbeing and community structures through her research. Opaskwayak Cree11 scholar Shawn Wilson’s Indigenous methods and methodologies work (2008), Nêhiyaw and Saulteaux scholar Margret Kovach methodologies work (2021), and Métis scholar Brenda MacDougall’s (2006) Indigenous kinship work all inform my research approach. 1.7 The Flow of Thesis Chapters: Setting the Table with Câpân’s Embroidered Tablecloth I return to the kitchen table again, as it is the framework of the remainder of this thesis. This hypothetical table must be in the kitchen because this is where funerals, weddings, and visioning for future generations occurs. This table is not mine per se, but it is where stories are shared, theories enacted, and futures imagined. Thanks to many Indigenous scholars, this table has been set for me to do this important work in my community. I draw upon the work of Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) (2022), Gaudet (2019), Kovach (2021), and Wilson (2008) to help set the table of this thesis. Many Indigenous scholars have informed my research project, and the care 11 Cree is the colonial settler word for Nêhiyaw people who have many different communities and dialects. 18 with which knowledge has been co-produced with community members circles the thesis’ kitchen table. Before I travelled north to live with my Kokum, I was FaceTiming her and asked her if she had anything left of her mother’s. Kokum shared that her mother embroidered a kitchen tablecloth and showed me (Figure 4). My initial reaction was naïve because I did not consider how embroidery was essential for my ancestors and relatives. Soon I realized sewing, knitting, embroidery, and beading were crucial to my ancestors’ survival (Farrell-Racette 2022); in the Fort Vermilion historical text called Fort Vermilion People: In Our Vast Trading North 1788-1988, there are many stories of Métis women of the past in Fort Vermilion and how they supported their families through artistry, survival skills, and love (1992). Therefore, I understood the importance of the tablecloth to my Câpân Agatha Lizotte when I got to Kokum’s place and held her mother’s tablecloth in my hands. 19 Figure 4: “Câpân’s Kitchen Tablecloth” photograph © Hanna Paul, 2022, depicting an embroidered tablecloth created by Agatha Paul (nee Lizotte) and Veronica Paul’s (Kokum) hands touching her mother’s work. 20 In this realization, I knew that Agatha’s tablecloth would set the table of this thesis. I want to visit with the readers, and I want this particular tablecloth to hold our teacups while we discuss the women of my family in Buttertown. There is ancestry and feminine love woven into this thesis just like it is woven into our heirloom tablecloth my Câpân embroidered many years ago. I exist because of the complex realities my ancestors lived. It is cyclical, and there is still knowledge transmission through the love of my Kokum despite my lack of knowledge of my Câpân’s stories. I can see the fine work she created, and I recreate this care from each stitched segment of her design in each chapter of this thesis. I dream and hope that one day those yet to come, those whom I will be an ancestor to, will sit at the kitchen table with my family’s embroidered tablecloth uplifting their cups of tea and witnessing their ancestral laughter and feminine love that the threads have always known. It is our birthright to visit in this way, enabling the continuation and longevity of these teachings. To embed Câpân’s work in this thesis, the stem of her embroidery design symbolizes my reconnection journey and autoethnography woven throughout the thesis. The thesis flows through the past, present, and future of Buttertown and Métis women’s stories and experiences connected to moon time and body image. Chapter Two situates the research design, methodology, methods, instruments (semi-structured interviews and talking circle), ethics, and relational data analysis. The third chapter brings us to Buttertown to better understand how Métis women have always been the heart of our communities. In this chapter, I discuss the themes of place, kinship, intergenerational trauma, and teachings. The fourth chapter centers on Métis women and youth’s body confidence and body sovereignty in the present through the coded themes of body, shame, and place. Then in Chapter Five, I discuss Buttertown Métis futurisms, and the focus turns toward those coming generations connected to Buttertown through the coded themes of care, body, and future. I invite you, the reader, to pull up a chair at the table. 21 Chapter Two: Research Design, Visiting, and Saskatoon Berry Methodology 2.1 Research Design My Câpân’s tablecloth has large, captivating leaves; just as these leaves soak in the energy from Grandfather Sun and draw in nutrition from Mother Earth, this chapter functions as the first flower to invigorate this research project with meaning and metaphor. I initially crafted my research design in the graduate advanced qualitative course one of my co-supervisors led. While this preliminary work was helpful, the research design ebbed and flowed with community members’ and Berry Pickers’ sentiments like visiting which is not scripted yet purposeful. Initially, my research design and questions focused primarily on moon time and its existence for Métis community members in Buttertown. This focus shifted into becoming a mechanism to enhance youth and women’s body image and self-esteem. Furthermore, reflecting on Buttertown’s past also became fundamental for the progress of my research. Thus, the visiting sessions between and within the research instruments changed my design to reflect community members’ needs and observations, which I discuss in the visiting method section. My methodology metaphor reflects the research design and approach; the metaphor of saskatoon berry picking combines my lived experiences while conducting research and kinship bonding in Buttertown. While I set out to take on more of an autoethnographic approach for this research project to encompass the spirit of self-reflexivity and self-inquiry (which is vital for Indigenous research), it was only once I was with my Indigenous community that kin-based research needed the space for a multimodal technique due to the rigour of building and fostering relations. Moreover, time is at the heart of Indigenous research reality; however, the amount of time needed transcends what academia currently permits for Master of Arts thesis projects without paying more tuition. I am grateful to Indigenous scholars before me, such as Jeannette Armstrong (2019; 2012), Maria Campbell (2019), Lee Maracle (1996), Margo Tamez (2010), Kathleen E. Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) (2022), Margret Kovach (2021), Brenda MacDougall (2017; 2010; 2006), Shawn Wilson (2008), Cindy Gaudet (2019), Kim Anderson (2011), Anna Flaminio, Cindy Gaudet, and Leah Dorion (2020) and many other scholars who advocated for combining Indigenous autoethnographic methods and undertaking an Indigenous methodological approach which I discuss in the following section. This project intersects 22 Indigenous autoethnography, ethnography, and Métis methods for knowledge production and qualitative data gathering (otherwise known as berry gathering which is explained in section 2.3). Autoethnography allowed me to deeply unpack and explore the nuances of my experience of reconnecting with my community. I weave together the autoethnographic moments, existing literature, and Berry Pickers’ words into this thesis to honour the cyclical nature of conversation at the thesis kitchen table which is another Métis women’s methodology. 2.2 Ethnographic Indigenous Methodology I began this research project carefully considering the methodology and dual responsibilities of returning to my Métis community and conducting Indigenous research in the community. I came to the project with newfound skills I developed through graduate courses in the first academic year of my master’s degree. In these courses, Shawn Wilson (2008) and Margret Kovach (2020) guided my research approach through their intensive work around Indigenous methodologies and methods. Specifically, Wilson (2008) and Kovach (2021) brought Indigenous research ethics and morals to my attention which differ from the ethics board standards (discussed in section 2.5). This teaching includes Indigenous research preparation and preparation of self for research. In the same way that one must prepare for a ceremony, one must prepare for research through self-inquiry (Wilson 2008; Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) 2022). Wilson (2008) explains that research preparation is essential for conducting good heart-based research. Before leaving the Okanagan for northern Alberta, I spent time among the wild roses and saskatoon berries in Kelowna to remind myself of the parallels between the unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan people that is my current home and my homelands in Northern Alberta. There is similar flora and fauna north of the fiftieth parallel where the Kelowna waterways and the swamps within the northern boreal forest interconnect in ways I did not anticipate. I also prepared by growing the tobacco I gifted to Elders and community members for sharing their time and experiences in the research project. A year before going into fieldwork, I grew tobacco from the tiny seeds into foot-tall mature plants; I dried the leaves and kept the second-generation seeds for community members. I found the seeds unique because they are encapsulated in the flowers’ hardened wombs, making them sound like tiny tobacco rattles when shaken. The experience of growing tobacco taught me how the strength of the womb-like seed pods protects the next generations. 23 Preparing myself for Indigenous research and coming back to the community began in these moments and my coursework prior to fieldwork. Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) (2022), Kovach (2021) and Wilson (2008) both discuss how preparing self for the ceremony of research is vital. Preparation of self centers self-reflexivity; I keep a moon journal that I began in the months prior to fieldwork at the recommendation of Shawn Wilson, my professor for the Indigenous Methodologies graduate course I took in January 2022. In the journal, I reflected on my hopes and worries about my research and the patterns I noticed within myself and the moon’s cycles. Anishinaabekwe scholar Kathleen Absolon’s (Minogiizhigokwe) (2022) work helps me ground myself in the familial and academic knowledge I gathered over the years to utilize towards my research project and journey back to my Métis homelands. As Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) (2022) shares, “Indigenous research is often guided by the knowledge found within” (3); I continued looking into myself, journaling, and reflecting on how my emotions flowed with the phases of the moon and how this formed my approach to my research in summer 2022. Absolon (2022) also uses a metaphor to position self-inquiry and knowing through flower petals. The metaphoric practice creates tangible and accessible approaches to me-search and re-search (Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) 2022). 2.3 Saskatoon Berry Picking Research Methodology In spring 2021, a late frost killed the saskatoon berry buds in Fort Vermilion, and there were few harvestable berries. In contrast, the summer of my research provided an immense amount of large, juicy berries that hung from the straining branches like grapes. Visiting with my aunties and my Kokum often consisted of picking buckets of berries together (a good day for me was filling one ice cream bucket, my aunties, on the other hand, could pick two full pails with ease). Since the gift of berries coincided with my fieldwork summer, I wanted to incorporate berry picking as my methodology. I only realized the extent of my berry visiting in Buttertown upon visiting Shawn Wilson in the Fall of 2022. I mentioned how the berry picking belonged in my research project, but I was unsure how—he suggested it could be my methodology metaphor. Metaphor can be utilized to define and describe Indigenous research for community accessibility to research (Wilson 2008) and questioning academic colonial parameters of formality in research jargon (Windchief 2018). 24 2.3.1 Finding a Berry Patch // The Level of Local Indigenous Knowledge In the first step of my metaphorical methodology, a researcher’s degree in local Indigenous knowledge reflects berry patch location knowledge. Berry picking requires place-based knowledge to find a perfect berry picking spot. Often, this knowledge is familial and stays within a family knowledge circle. If someone is seeking a bucket full of berries, they need to know a spot, or they need to know a local guide who trusts them with this information. In many Indigenous communities, expecting knowledge of a family’s berry patch location is disrespectful without acknowledging your relations, responsibilities, and reciprocity. There are numerous circulated jokes and memes that express this protocol. The berry-based etiquette is well known within many Indigenous communities (Wilson 2008) and I discuss it, my intentions, and research rationale thoroughly in the following subsections. It is consequential to respect Indigenous knowledge protocols and acknowledge research intentions. Since I never lived in Buttertown, I do not hold the local Indigenous knowledge that others do. I did not know good berry patch locations. I needed a local guide to help me reconnect with the land and family members and find potential Berry Pickers. That guide was my Kokum. I have many kinship ties to this land, and it was perfect living with my Kokum for the summer and throughout my research fieldwork. She grew up in Buttertown and Fort Vermilion (just across the Peace River), and most folks connected to this community know her. She filled many vital roles in my research and my reconnection journey. Although I did not grow up here, I looked over my family tree that extends five generations back; this work helped begin conversations around familial connections with family members. My Kokum allowed me to get to know my aunties better and spend time with them. While I came to the community with limited place-based Indigenous knowledge, I prepared in a good way and got to know my community better through family relations. Thus, my family shared berry patch locations with me by establishing and fostering kin relationships first. Kokum guided me to family berry patches; the liminal phase of walking to the berry patch but not being there yet was the moment to consider the rationale and beneficiaries of the research thoughtfully. 2.3.2 Recruitment // Finding Fellow Berry Pickers Before diving into the intentions of berry picking, I need to know who will pick berries with me. It is not best to pick berries alone since many bears are also looking for berries in the summer, 25 and there is strength and safety in numbers. While up north, family members who brought us out to fill pails or cardboard boxes berry picked with me. I bonded with family members while visiting with them and my Kokum; therefore, my Kokum guided me to fellow Berry Pickers (which is how I refer to research participants moving forward). In this aspect of my metaphor, these Berry Pickers were potential storytellers sharing knowledge and visiting spaces. Recruitment is paralleled by those who wanted to pick berries with me—or gather data with me in semi-structured interviews or the talking circle. Visiting with my local guide, my Kokum, is the primary mechanism of Berry Picker (participant) recruitment. Visiting is an Indigenous method I discuss more thoroughly in the next section, but it is critical to acknowledge its relevance in recruiting Berry Pickers. Through visiting, I talked about my research and how it brought me back to visit family and live with my Kokum. Family members recommended community members they knew who were passionate about Indigenous women’s wellbeing. I decided not to exclude Métis who did not currently live in Buttertown and include Métis women connected to Buttertown for the interviews and talking circle. I did not publicly advertise for berry pickers or Berry Pickers; I created postcards with information about myself and my research (See Figure 5 and Figure 6). I crafted a post to publish on the private Facebook Group “Paul Family History Book,” which, when I started my project, included 494 people (See Figure 6). This Facebook Group exhibits our massive family tree and does not encompass our relations’ vast extent. Our family roots in Buttertown are deep, which is why many community members in the Fort Vermilion area are also family. To put this into perspective, Fort Vermilion’s population is 753 people as of 2021. Although not all Facebook group members live in Fort Vermilion or Buttertown, they are all family. In my time up north, I have noticed Facebook is the central virtual meeting point where many kin share recipes, family photos, sometimes knowledge, and squabbles too. I received little interest from the Facebook group post, but it created visibility of my project intentions. Visiting was the primary way to recruit family to participate in the semi-structured interviews and talking circle. I hoped three Elders or knowledge keepers and two Métis youth would participate in this project. Instead, I contacted potential Berry Pickers and one Métis Elder which four community members agreed from who I reached out to. Of course, not everyone made it to the berry patch (the research instruments of interviews and the talking circle) because of prior commitments and typical life happenings. All Berry Pickers I recruited were kin because most folks who live in 26 Buttertown and Fort Vermilion are family. Kin’s participation fits well because one usually picks berries with their family since berry patch knowledge circulates within family knowledge. Now that I have found berry pickers to gather berries and data together, we must make our way to the berry patch. Figure 5 (above): “Front of Métis Moon Time Postcard” © designed by Hanna Paul, 2022. Figure 6 (above): “Back of Métis Moon Time Postcard” © designed by Hanna Paul, 2022. 27 2.3.3 Traveling to the Berry Patch // Intentions and Rationale of Research Now that I have my local guide, visited, found berry picking companions, and gathered the tools we needed to go berry picking, I can begin walking to the berry patch with my family. While travelling there, we think about why we want to pick berries and who will be gifted these berries. I walk on an ancestral Buttertown trail with my Kokum, dad, aunties, and cousins. I think about the Buttertown women before us and their strength. Then I think about our youth and women who deserve to hear their stories and share their own as future ancestors. I intend to pick these berries with other berry pickers (Berry Pickers) for the Métis women and youth in the community and future generations. Kinship bases my axiology and self-reflexivity as an Indigenous researcher; I do not hold objective distance from the research nor the Berry Pickers because many community members are family. Through this acknowledgment, I understand I have various responsibilities to the research, community, Berry Pickers, and myself. The rationale for this research drew on Métis women and youth’s body confidence and moon time teachings because I noticed the low self-esteem of women and youth in my community, and in myself; in my family, many Métis women do not feel confident in their power and feel disconnected from moon time teachings. I saw a potential connection that I wanted to research further for the women and youth in our community. My cousin-auntie expressed that we need to tell our stories from our perspective instead of the colonial-settler master narrative; I intend to create a body of literature composed of the stories of women connected to Buttertown to assist with the visibility of our women and their strength to break the shame-cycle and self-hatred born out of colonization and the patriarchy. The thoughtful movement to the berry patch equates to my rationale and intentions for the research. Metaphorically, I intend to bake and share a saskatoon berry pie with kin as a research outcome. In other words, I hope this thesis informs future funding opportunities, programs, and a road map for Métis women and youth connected to Buttertown. I return to the possible community applied outcomes of my research in chapter five and six of this thesis. I came to this research and my community to learn more about Métis moon time teachings. I imagined that moon time would function as a prompt for more profound insights into who our Métis women are, how we enact body sovereignty, and our hopes for future generations. With these berries, we shall bake a pie and enjoy the fruits of our labour together. 28 2.3.4 Picking, Processing, and Snacking on the Saskatoons // Gathering the Data In this metaphor, berries are akin to data. The word data comes with the colonial baggage of supposed objectivity and hierarchy for me (Wilson 2008, 101; Battiste and Henderson 2000). The living data from this project is primarily composed of stories; stories are data with a soul, as psychology researcher Brené Brown has shared (Nadar 2014). Furthermore, data are living stories and their longevity relies on generational knowledge transmission (Episkenew 2009). When using the term living data, I acknowledge that the data is in constant relationship with those who share and receive it. Therefore, as a metaphor, sentient berries convey the data’s liveliness. With an ice cream pail strapped around my waist with a belt, I pick berries alongside fellow berry pickers (Berry Pickers). Standing with community and kin reproduces an age-old methodology of knowledge transmission and mobilization (TallBear 2014, 5). Since the saskatoon berries represent living data, “picking” represents gathering data through semi-structured interviews and the talking circle. It is crucial to pick berries gently and with relationality in mind. You do not want to squish the berries, and you do not want to destroy data by handling it without care. Care-centric approaches to berry and data gathering are fundamental to this project. While out on the land, I thought about the relationships I was upholding through this practice; I ensured I was taking care of fellow berry pickers (Berry Pickers) through honorarium for their participation in the research project. Therefore, gifts are essential for visiting and berry picking with community members. Also, I need to think about the other beings which survive from the saskatoon berries’ nutrients. I am perpetually in relationship with all beings (including those who are not conventionally considered sentient) and must deeply consider my responsibilities to the interconnected cosmic web of existence; being accountable to All my Relations meant ensuring mindful picking practices (MacDougall 2006). Relational accountability means acknowledging and fulfilling responsibilities to your relations; in this project, I am accountable to the community members’ and research Berry Pickers’ voices (Kovach 2021; Wilson 2008). I must handle these voices with the same care I handled the saskatoon berries while in my homelands. Picking and processing berries meant making sense and meaning in coming back home through Indigenous autoethnography. Autoethnography embodies the vine that connects all the data findings keeping them grounded in the land. I need to situate myself in the research because 29 there is no objectivity, and this project is intensely personal; situating myself means doing self-discovery alongside conventional research practices to enrich the process and the outcomes (Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) 2022). Coming back home strengthened my kinship ties and understanding of our collective narratives. Buttertown land is fertile because it holds our ancestors and their stories; I am deeply interconnected to this project through perpetually rooting my journey home and kinship into the thesis (Wilson 2008). While some experiences appear in the subsequent findings, others do not because they belong savoured in the moment. Furthermore, a handful of berries or so ended up in my mouth instead of my pail for this reason. Through snacking, I enjoyed being present in the moment and savoured the sweet bursts of flavour. The berry snacking represents the pauses in research where I relished family time, reconnecting, and the times when I existed on the land and witnessed the life around me. Just as these berries did not make it into my pail, these vital pauses are not present in my analyzed data. The buckets of berries look inviting, but they must be filtered through before they are ready to be boiled and baked into a pie. 2.3.5 Cleaning the Picked Berries // Analyzing Data and Lived Experiences After a day of berry picking, it is time to sit in the lawn chairs and sift through the berries, weary of spiders and worms lurking in the cardboard boxes piled high with saskatoons. Visiting and storytelling manifest in the moments of cleaning berries. I ensured I listened with my heart, and some stories stayed between myself, my Kokum, and my aunties. The cleaning and organizing process is incredibly time consuming and repetitive. It requires many hours of cleaning off twigs, spiders, inhabited berries, and worms. There are strategies to clean the berries efficiently. Kokum likes to pick through the berries and then soak them. Others preferred to soak the berries and pick off debris simultaneously. There are numerous approaches to cleaning berries and analyzing data. Analyzing transcripts meant going back and reliving the transcript conversations over many cups of Red Rose tea. I approached the analysis with an open mind. I saw the data alter the trajectory of this research project from the primary focus on moon time to Métis women’s power in the past, present, and directing the future. I went through each interview and talking circle transcripts to colour-code the relevant quotes and organize them into themes (which section 2.6 further discusses). Organizing patterns in the data to create a story proved to be as time consuming as picking through and cleaning pails 30 of berries. Data analysis required constant reflexivity to ensure I was upholding community members’ sentiments (Kovach 2021). Keeping kin and Berry Pickers’ voices within context was crucial to ensure the credibility and integrity of the living data (Wilson 2008). There was already meaning embedded in the stories shared; however, I must create shared and collective meaning through relational analysis to translate the stories’ inherent value to the academic institution (Kovach 2021). I finished cleaning berries beside kin and categorizing data with my academic kin to create critical findings from the relational data analysis. The themes stemming from this work have been boiling in a pot of sugar and water while I write my thesis. Soon it will all come together in the crust and be baked to produce the finished pie thesis. 2.3.6 A Fresh Baked Pie to Share // The Final Thesis At this point, I would like to set my Kokum’s kitchen table with my Câpân’s embroidered tablecloth and welcome folks in to sit and drink tea. Through each chapter at the kitchen table, sorting these berries has led to each key finding, and we will (hopefully) enjoy the saskatoon berry pie that was baking for several months while being held by the land and kinship ties. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labour with my family and community and this pie with some ice cream (read the thesis with ice cream). 2.4 Methods The initial methods I utilized in my research courses included interviews and a community conversation. However, the language I used in my thesis proposal is a remnant of colonial training and did not reflect Métis methods. Therefore, the interviews became fluid and adaptable semi-structured conversations at the kitchen table. Community conversations turned into talking circles to embody the spirit of togetherness and building conversations together. This shift embodied the reflexivity required in my research to ensure a Métis context that honoured me as a Métis scholar. With Indigenous research and methods, unpacking the colonial language and research parameters is imperative to reflect on how Indigenous research is required to mould into colonial structures instead of the reverse (Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) 2022, 298). Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe) (2022, 297) calls these the “Mind/Knowledge” considerations, which center on decolonization approaches. I also altered the thesis proposal language from “collecting” data from the field site to gathering qualitative data from archival materials, semi-structured 31 interviews, and a talking circle (community conversation method at the heart of Indigenous community-engaged research). While I waited for responses from community members to see if there was interest in berry picking (formerly known as the recruitment phase), I visited the Fort Vermilion archives at the Fort Vermilion Heritage Centre. This archival work helped situate the historical documentation and photographs of my community and the women in my family. Western narratives have often dominated archives, creating meaning for those portrayed in the archives (Anderson 2011). I recognized this in the Heritage Centre because the Fort Vermilion historical books and memoires were all white narratives depicting Métis and First Nations’ lives. Regardless, the utilization of these narratives exhibits how colonization has re-imagined the past through the erasure of Métis women’s voices in the archives and Indigenous research (Anderson 2011). As Anderson (2011, 6) states, part of the process of “digging up medicines” is looking into past research of Métis communities (whether Indigenous Peoples did it or not) to find relevant information about Métis women from historical documentation. Anderson (2011) offers an Indigenous perspective on archives that sifts through the colonial narratives to find pieces of our ancestors’ lives. Looking back in time and bringing forward pictures of late family members sparked stories shared during visits on the ancestral lands of Buttertown. I hold deep gratitude for sitting with my family and community members. 2.4.1 Visiting as Method: Keeoukaywin I have imagined this thesis’s textual form as an extension of visiting. Visiting with you, the reader, Métis community members, and many scholars around the thesis kitchen table. The visiting facet of this project is a vital form of Métis knowledge transmission (Flaminio, Gaudet, and Dorion 2020). Although visiting centers various story subject matter, it is essential to acknowledge that sacred knowledge and familial knowledge is passed on through visiting and that it must remain protected as outlined in the principles of OCAP® and through Métis community members’ guidance (OCAP® | FNIGC n.d; Battiste and Henderson 2000). As a community member, I am committed to protecting any shared knowledge that stayed within the interviews or talking circle at the request of Berry Pickers; therefore, those protected aspects do not appear in this thesis. 32 I utilized the Metis method of visiting, or keeoukaywin, during fieldwork and fostering my reconnection journey back to my community (Gaudet 2019). Reconnection here means knowing and understanding my kinship ties to the community and nurturing my relationships with family members and the land in Buttertown through visiting. Visiting, from a theoretical standpoint, values togetherness and sharing space. Colonial concepts of academic rigour excluded visiting, but as Gaudet explains, “there is nothing lazy about visiting work” (2019, 48). Visiting as a theoretical approach is grounded in the understanding that “…every living thing is then a keeper of wahkohotowin. For all these reasons, keeoukaywin holds great promise as it inspires to bring all the pieces back together and lead us back to what is right; it is a relational obligation, a spiritual responsibility” (Gaudet 2019, 48). Relational data analysis recognizes patterns within the shared stories; I acknowledge that data analysis removes words from their contexts and spaces, but the technique allows for succinct, clear findings (Kovach 2021). Through relational data analysis of semi-structured interviews, I captured core findings around kinship, place-based teachings, disconnection, and moon time as a mechanism for the confidence building of youth and future generations. The focused themes of the project organized these findings. The Métis method and way of life, the “Visiting Way” or keeoukaywin, is integral in my research because it embodies the natural laws of wahkotowin (or wahkootowin) and storytelling to transmit those laws and stories to coming generations (Gaudet 2019, 47; MacDougall 2006, 432). Visiting is emerging in Indigenous scholarship and taking up much-deserved space in academic spheres; I read a lot about visiting but experiencing it in my community brought the practice to life. Returning to my community and sitting with my aunties at the kitchen table transcended time; I could feel the ancestral power in the voices of the women I surrounded myself with this summer. I witnessed keeoukaywin occur at these kitchen tables. We held space together for stories, recipes, and teasing. This place is where my research thrives. Being together and sharing space to visit was an unparalleled method of remembrance, storytelling, knowledge production and transmission (Gaudet 2019). Although it is challenging to try and fit visiting into either method or methodology, visiting transcends the colonial and academic binary of method versus methodology and instead it embodies both through Métis epistemology. Visiting is not easily defined because it is not meant to be through colonial academic jargon—which is why it is not typically considered a rigorous method or methodology in western academic standards without thorough explanation of 33 why it belongs in academic spaces. Therefore, my thesis encompasses both through visiting as a method by practice and methodology through its principles while acknowledging its purposes and spirit surpass academic jargon. Visiting is guided by established principles of relational accountability—being good to one another is what I witnessed being with kin (Wilson 2008). Therefore, the keeoukaywin practice is grounded in wahkotowin12 (Gaudet 2019) kinship. Moreover, I felt these Métis practices were constantly pulling me in. However, the inherent colonial concepts that ground post-secondary research pulled me out. I wanted to move slowly through this research and spend time visiting and reflecting. The colonial and capitalistic timelines of a master’s degree (which includes paying more tuition without added funding) did not allow this desired slow, deliberate, and community care-centric approach. Cindy Gaudet (2019) explained this well in her experience with her research: As a Métis woman from Saskatchewan living in Ottawa, with maternal ancestral roots in Red River, I felt distant from home, and from the Omushkego people’s worldview of living and being well. Distant, because I had not yet visited. Distant, because I was not grounded in my own family stories and his-tory. In other words, I needed to do the hard work—to slow down, take time, make the effort, knock on the door, sit down, listen, share, go to the land, meditate, empty myself, and be present, as my research on land-based wellness had taught me. My methodology lacked theoretical footing, and I struggled with what made the visiting way distinctive enough to stand on its own as a living practice anchored in theory (48). I felt this conflict and had to slow down and catch up wherever possible. There needed to be more time, and there may never be enough time when visiting and reconnecting with my community. In my community, Keeoukaywin was not explicitly said to be a methodology, but it was witnessed and experienced during this research project. I was privileged to practice the “Visiting Way methodology” in the unplanned daily routine where visiting lives in my community (Gaudet 2019, 47). Visiting was the primary process of finding lived experiences and asking women if they were interested in participating in the research. While visiting around the kitchen table with a relative in Buttertown and his partner, I learned about a music and art youth camp retreat. It was paramount for me to prepare before going to youth camps. I wanted to ensure I was open to 12 This means kinship or all my relations in Nêhiyaw and extends beyond conventional nuclear family and human relations. 34 learning experiences about myself, my family, our community, and the land. In this space, I heard stories about my Kokum, aunts and uncles, my dad, and my great-grandparents that I had never heard. I became acquainted and bonded with more cousins, finding the lineage path that weaves our two existences together. During this retreat, I witnessed my family’s musical talents and how this musical trait has continued through many generations. Before living closer to my northern Métis homelands, I did my homework and knew the web of my relations through our family tree. It helped me to navigate and relate to family members I had yet to meet. Métis visiting is central to this research because it embodies relationality and joint knowledge production. Visiting values togetherness and sharing space from a theoretical standpoint. Métis Visiting and story work outlined by Anderson (2011) centres the importance of the process of this kind of community-engaged research instead of the outcomes. It is about relationships and honouring the Berry Pickers’ multiple truths. This practice and process is a method that embodies the methodological approach of reciprocity. Indigenous methodologies, specifically Métis methodologies, call for relationship-building approaches to research. An example of the Métis method of visiting is kitchen parties; these gatherings often entail a multi-generational group sitting at a kitchen table with tea. Although visiting and holding space together purposefully could occur around a fire, while harvesting medicinal plants, or anywhere stories could be exchanged. Each generation has a specific role in this method/ gathering/ knowledge transmission space (Anderson 2011). I am drawing here to how Maria Campbell, an honourable Métis Elder from Nukeewin (colonially known as Park Valley, Saskatchewan), explains in the forward of Anderson’s book that visiting is the practice of holding space together and transmitting knowledge through bonding. This multi-layered knowledge exchange can take on the form of either ahtyokaywina, the sacred stories, or as tahp acimowina, the family histories (Anderson 2011, foreword). The visiting environment and the Berry Pickers’ upbringing determine the shared stories (Anderson 2011, 24-27). An Elder or knowledge keeper only share what a listener is ready to hear (Anderson 2011, 25). However, teachings in stories shared during visiting are cyclical and may arise when needed (Anderson 2011, 22-23). Relationships and “thinking mutually” are vital for Métis visiting, which must be centred in my research methodologies to honour this knowledge transmission process (Anderson 2011, 23). “Thinking mutually” exists between the storyteller and the listener (Anderson 2011, 23). The position of the listener and teller affect shared stories, and both parties carry responsibilities for the knowledge. 35 Therefore, it is essential for time to be determined by the flow of visiting and not research timelines. The time-sensitive expectations are where colonial ethnographic and Métis methods do not align. As Gaudet (2019) suggests in a past-tense context, but one that is true today in my community, Métis gathering and visiting “[…] was part of the everyday expression of Métis spirituality; it was a way of being and relating to one another that was not restrictive, that was unscripted and yet responsive to the environment and to the needs of the present moment” (52). The focus is on the created relationships and the research process, not the study results (Supernant 2022, Collaborative and Experimental Ethnography Lab Public Anthropology Speaker Series). 2.4.2 Praxis The multi-pronged approach includes a Métis community engagement and an Indigenous feminist framework. An Indigenous feminist framework is an academic term where the essence of the term has been known and practised for millennia by many Indigenous communities; it describes the inherent spiritual power Indigenous women hold, which emerged to call out and combat the colonial patriarchy (McKay 2019). Although, Métis methodologies innately employ a community-engaged and Indigenous feminist structure. Community centrality, egalitarianism, and matriarchal social systems have been foundational in Métis methodologies, including visiting. Indigenous methodologies transcend and encompass a multitude of academic methodologies and expectations. For example, embedded within the practice of visiting is a positionality statement. It is crucial to situate and position yourself within your family names and community ties since you represent these extensions of your being. This Métis practice relates to Gaudet’s (2018) suggestion that “[w]ith every visit home, I research and reflect on stories of where my relations came from, how and where they lived, to whom I belong, and what compels me to pursue a methodology that fosters living and being well in our homes and communities” (51). 2.4.3 Semi-structured Interviews I conducted four semi-structured interviews (n=4), which embody the crosshairs of anthropological interviews and Métis visiting practices. However, I had to meet different women 36 from the community across the summer of 2022 as life happens, and some people had to cancel for various reasons. I needed the flexibility to roll with these changes throughout the research because many situations led to rescheduling and re-evaluating. It was essential to nurture and honour the relationships I built throughout the saskatoon berry picking process with community and family members. I always complied with the formality of academic research ethics and asked for informed and ongoing consent in person. We read the informed consent pages together in real-time, ensuring everything was understood and agreed upon before beginning the interviews. Before each session, we reviewed the consent form document to ensure the utmost transparency and clarity before recording and to remind Berry Pickers that they are free to step away from the research project at any time. After the informed consent was signed, I asked a set of questions that were appropriate for the hour-long timeline. Some questions were answered in the flow of conversation or became irrelevant to the interview. It was interesting balancing the open-ended questions I prepared months in advance and asking follow-up questions from the natural flow of our conversations around moon time, personal experiences, cultural connections, and hopes for the future of our community. I ensured every person received their honorarium and gifted tobacco or tobacco seeds from the plants I grew from seeds for over a year for this project. I told everyone who shared time with me that I hoped these seeds would yield plants that would also produce seeds and that one day, they would be passed on to kin—generations of seeds for generations of Métis Buttertowners. 2.4.4 Talking Circle The talking circle was a place of collaborative visioning for Buttertown futurisms. I conducted one talking circle (n=1) that included all the Berry Pickers from the interviews and any others who wished to join in honouring the inclusive nature of my project. These questions and topics functioned as prompts, so the conversational flow was not interrupted to honour Métis visiting practices. Not everyone from the interviews could attend the talking circle, so four people, including me, were in attendance. I also opened, guided, and closed the talking circle as best as possible; I ensured everyone was fed the bannock I made and the jam my Kokum and I made with the saskatoon berries we picked over the summer. There were also refreshments and a variety of teas. Once everyone was well-fed, we smudged, and I gave an opening prayer that welcomed everyone to the session. An Elder from Beaver First Nation, my father’s community, 37 was asked to open and close the circle, as she had done many times before. However, she and her daughter cancelled minutes before the talking circle began due to a family emergency. These protocols highlight the significance of collaborative care, adaptability, and flexibility in Métis research. After we began, we had a fruitful discussion over the library conference table turned kitchen table with our presence. We discussed our personal lived realities, collective experiences, and dreams for the future of Buttertown and our youth. In both the interviews and talking circles, it was disruptive to bring conversations back to the prompts because I felt it was inappropriate to control the conversation for my own needs instead of letting it flow where Berry Pickers needed it to go; Kovach (2021) speaks to the fluid yet rigorous interview approach to allow space for Berry Picker agency within Indigenous research that contradicts the conventional anthropological structure and style of interviewing Berry Pickers. My anthropological training throughout my undergraduate and graduate academic experiences sometimes created internal conflict because of the discipline’s history with Indigenous communities (OCAP® | FNIGC n.d; Métis Centre National Aboriginal Health Organization 2020). The Principles of Métis Research guiding this research are reciprocal relationships, respect, safe and inclusive environments, recognizing diversity, centering relevant research outcomes, and utilizing Métis context (Métis Centre National Aboriginal Health Organization 2020). However, I unlearned and found crosshairs between anthropological and Indigenous research approaches (Simpson 2014). As Mohawk scholar Audra Simpson states, anthropology was the primary discipline that discussed and determined Indigeneity to scholarly audiences (2014, 95); anthropology became “the voice of the colonized” (Simpson 2014, 95). Therefore, I found solace in deviating from my interview and talking circle scripts and questions if that is where the conversation flowed. Without strictly following the prompts, community members could express what was on their hearts and what they hoped for our community. After our talking circle, all Berry Pickers were gifted honorarium and dried tobacco, or tobacco seeds I grew for over a year before harvesting and drying for this research project. Any questions and comments after the scheduled interview or talking circle were taken seriously and answered accordingly. In the spirit of relational accountability, I stay in contact with Berry Pickers because our relationship does not end after research (Wilson 2008) because they are kin, and it challenges western research practices. We are family, kin, and bonded over this project experience. We visited, shared tea, and held space for each other as Métis women to imagine and dream forth a future for Buttertown youth. 38 2.5 Ethics There are differences between academic and Indigenous ethics; it is vital to discern litigation-based and Indigenous ethical standards. There are minimal ethical concerns for my research project, and I am certified under the TCPS2 Core training. Conducting ethical research through the Behavioural Research Ethics Board (BREB) guidelines is necessary but does not always include Indigenous ethical values. However, I approached my community and family cautiously and with an open heart. The Indigenous ethics I learned in academia taught me to first listen to stories and guidance (Wilson 2008). After all, storytelling is a form of lesson-giving that does not necessarily result in direct conclusions or answers (Wilson 2008, 17); there is an agency in how the listener receives lessons. Regarding academic liability concerns, the most significant risk for working with Elders during the pandemic is their safety and wellbeing. I ended up working with one Elder and three other Métis women connected to Buttertown (some were within the parameters of Métis youth according to the Métis Nation of Alberta, which includes people under the age of thirty). Furthermore, Elder’s travel ability was a concern when I created my research proposal (Gaudet 2019). Given this risk, I travelled to Elders to ensure their time and mobility were respected for interviews and visiting family outside my research fieldwork. I drove my Kokum most of the summer, and she greatly appreciated the stress relief; so, I can understand that travel for Elders can be stressful. Discussing moon time and experiences of moon time did make some people somewhat uncomfortable due to menstrual stigma and taboo (I come back to this in Chapter Four). Although, it did not squander the conversations and only added depth of understanding for the colonial apparatuses of power that created and fostered menstrual stigmatization. Another litigation-based risk centred on the close-knit community and family relations. Everyone in Fort Vermilion and Buttertown knows each other because of the small population. I am related to many people who live in Buttertown and Fort Vermilion, especially those who have lived in Fort Vermilion their entire lives. Relationality created a complex dynamic because this served as an asset to relational and kin-based research while being burdensome to colonial-centric academic research. Therefore, anonymization was the best solution to comply with ethics regulations, minimize risk to Berry Pickers’ identities, and practice kinship care. Of course, this was impossible in the talking circle that invited all semi-structured interview Berry Pickers. Thus, the consent forms for the talking circle asked Berry Pickers to keep the discussions in the 39 talking circle session and Berry Picker identities to themselves. Situated in this familial dynamic is my comfortability in bringing this research to my Buttertown family without partnering with the Métis Local branch of the Métis Nation of Alberta. I consulted the Métis Nation of Alberta Region Six President to inquire about best practices on providing honoraria to Elders and knowledge keepers and discussing the need for this research topic in my Métis community. I sought permission through BREB to ensure this UBC-affiliated research is within its ethical parameters. Otherwise, I remained reflexive and flexible with community Berry Pickers’ needs and visions for this research. Furthermore, the next ethical consideration is the potential resurfaced intergenerational trauma and emotions which coincide with colonial menstruation teachings. I am aware of the intergenerational trauma for Indigenous communities existing in a colonial nation-state. I ensured proper support systems during the semi-structured interviews and in the talking circle. The interviews included the space to step away at any time, tea or water, and lists of local support and mental health resources embedded in Berry Pickers’ consent forms. I transcribed all recordings to create verbatim transcripts. These data files are securely stored on an encrypted computer file, external hard drive, and in the secure online Canadian database OneDrive. Stored data is in Canada on the UBC secure servers and secure digital files that are encrypted and locked on external hard drives. There are comprehensive nomenclatures that will properly organize the data files and ReadMe files that will explain and outline the content and format of the files and folders. Research data management is an extension of the genealogy of care that extends before and beyond the fieldwork of my research project. Although this project requires no sensitive personal information, confidentiality ensures that no personal information will be released. All study results and non-personal research data will be available to Berry Pickers during and after the study. All Berry Pickers will be contacted and consulted before potential use in another study. The Métis community of Fort Vermilion will receive the finished thesis through the UBC theses and dissertation database called cIRcle. 2.5.1 Pseudonyms and Nicknames The names of the community members who took on Berry Picker roles in this project are kept private for confidentiality. I can appreciate that their knowledge could be associated with their identities; however, our community is small. So, identifiable lived experiences and stories will 40 not be shared in this thesis to protect their identities. In place of their names, I am using pseudonyms describing characteristics I noticed in my time up north. Their pseudonyms are Miyôw, Kîhkimiwêw, Miyo-tôtam, and Kakâyawohtêw, which I describe below. These are Nehiyaw names instead of Northern Michif names (although there are likely overlaps) because most community members who visited with me shared that Cree was spoken in their households at a young age or in their grandparents’ homes. It was not Michif, or at least it was not named Michif. I picked these names for their respective Berry Picker because it lovingly describes them and highlights their collaborative care for the community and one another. One Berry Picker plays an instrument well and so she is named “she/he is good at something/performs perfectly” (www.itwewina.altlab.app/word/miyôw/). The second person is named Kîhkimiwêw which means “she/he gives them a good talking to” (www.itwewina.altlab.app/search?q=kîhkimiwêw) because she is known for standing her ground and being candid in her teachings. Another Berry Picker often takes care of her parents and participates in Métis mutual aid practices, so she is named Miyo-tôtam which means “she/he does kind deeds” (www.itwewina.altlab.app/word/miyo-tôtam/). The next person used to walk a lot and made us all belly laugh in the talking circle with their humour about walking now, or not walking, her name is Kakâyawohtêw which means she/her is a good walker” (www.twewina.altlab.app/word/kakâyawohtêw/). I want to acknowledge here that naming ceremonies are extremely important, and I would never try to conflate these pseudonyms. In the spirit of keeping this thesis as a love letter to my community, these are little acts of love to the Berry Pickers to engage with names that hold history. Translating these names will also never fully grasp the depth of what they truly mean. Even I, a non-Cree speaker, cannot fully comprehend these phrases. 2.6 Sifting Through the Data Between the semi-structured interviews (n=4) and the talking circle (n=1), I transcribed audio recordings and reviewed them multiple times. Repeating the audio aloud in the privacy of my room while transcribing helped me re-embody and re-enact the interview. This process was grounding and acted as a moment of remembrance that I am a part of the research and deeply engrained within the design, process, data, and writing, which all follow my reconnection journey. Through re-visiting each transcript, I manually coded each one twice to better 41 understand the project’s emergent vital themes. I utilized relational data analysis to interpret the data from conversations over the research period. Western data analysis methods often feel extractive and reductive because stories are data with a soul, and western data analysis asks us to take out segments of the story (Kovach 2021; Nadar 2014). However, it is helpful in formatting and presenting straightforward findings from the research process. The key themes that emerged are place (ancestral land connection); kinship (family histories, matriarchs, and unspoken teachings); body (bodily connection, self-confidence, and moon time lived realities); pain (menstrual and trauma-based pain); care (self, family, and community, care as trauma response); and Métis futurisms. My co-supervisors and I crafted a mind map on a whiteboard to formulate the interconnections between each emergent theme. The relationships between the themes began the outline of my thesis. The following three chapters synthesize the stories from this living data through rigorous yet nourishing kitchen table-based discussions. The stories gathered through visiting are one of the few moments where Métis women connected to Buttertown can have their stories documented. This opportunity is necessary because even in the few instances where northern Métis experiences were historically written in literature (usually from a white perspective), only men’s experiences were shared (Lawrence 2008; Mair 1999). Métis women are central to the wellbeing of our community (Anderson 2011). Despite being the changemakers in the community, women often do not make time to love themselves based on their powerful existence and inherent community value due to patriarchal systems (bell hooks 2000). This dynamic is partially because it creates an opportunity in empowering teachings given to youth, especially in colonial settings, such as western educational institutions. I initially sought potential moon time teachings in Buttertown but quickly realized moon time would only function as an apparatus of women’s power and not be the central piece to the whole story. In the next chapter, we move to the next flower on the tablecloth, where I centre Buttertown women’s past and present and how we dream for future youth initiatives. As Hupa Scholar Cutcha Baldy (2020), eloquently says, “when I think about women as life givers, I don’t just think about the women that birthed you. I think about all the other women that are in your life that are giving you life every chance they get…I don’t think we’re powerful because we give birth. I think we’re powerful, and we give birth, and we give life” (8:08-8:45). The ways our 42 women bring life to the community includes but transcends birth; our women breathe life into each other and the future (Baldy 2020). 43 Chapter Three: The Métis Women of Buttertown 3.1 Overview This chapter situates the community of Buttertown, and the Métis women as intrinsically connected and grounded in ancestral belonging and teachings. The vine along the tablecloth that runs through this discussion to create the second floral bloom of this chapter is the way Métis women dynamically maneuver through ever-changing (yet consistent) colonization to ensure Métis futurism. This chapter first discusses Buttertown and its beginnings for Métis people; it focuses on the past and situating our Métis ancestors to thoughtfully analyze the connections between the past, present, and future. Dian Million’s (2009) work on Felt Theory guides this chapter’s theoretical approach through Indigenous women who embody this theory by navigating compounded and layered oppressions. As Million (2009) writes: They were at the heart of the struggle. Native women’s personal narrative explored the racialized, gendered, and sexual nature of their colonization. In doing so, they transformed the debilitating force of an old social control, shame, into a social change agent in their generation. I explore here their sixth sense about the moral affective heart of capitalism and colonialism as an analysis. A felt analysis is one that creates a context for a more complex “telling” […] By connecting to the early work of Maria Campbell, Lee Maracle, Ruby Slipperjack, and others, I suggest ways that Indigenous women participated in creating new language for communities to address the real multilayered facets of their histories and concerns by insisting on the inclusion of our lived experience, rich with emotional knowledges, of what pain and grief and hope meant or mean now in our pasts and futures. It is also to underline again the importance of felt experiences as community knowledges that interactively inform our positions as Native scholars, particularly as Native women scholars (54). For this project, a felt analysis unpacks the triangulation of multi-layered, ongoing coloniality. Felt Theory distinguishes the embodied feeling of historical and present contexts of colonial oppression. Million (2009) argues that Indigenous women reframed and renamed how we perceive colonized experiences and histories through their heart-based approach. This approach is often demonized, cast aside, and “segregated as a ‘feminine’ experience, as problematic, or at worst as not knowledge at all” in white, patriarchal academia (Million 2009, 54). Felt scholarship starkly contrasts the patriarchal, western positivistic, and “objective” self-fulfilling colonial narrative (Million 2009, 54). This chapter discusses our need to draw upon our Métis women’s stories while digging up medicine from embodied memories (Anderson 2011) 44 and the diaries of colonial settlers’ anecdotes depicting our Métis ancestors in the Fort Vermilion area. The chapter concludes by situating our women and their teachings. It is clear that we come from a community of place-based knowledge, and our women are central to the continued transmission of ancestral knowledge to future generations (Anderson 2011). 3.2 Telling Our Story Before beginning the discussion about the key findings from this research project, it is essential to convey an image of where I situate myself in this discussion. This crucial step functions to create the image of visiting; visiting is rigorous knowledge transmission and production (Gaudet 2019). It starts with me sitting at my Kokum’s round kitchen table. Etched into the dark wood are the layered recollections of all who visited Kokum. Maybe you can smell tea steeping and the bannock baking while you trace the raised threads of my Câpân’s embroidered tablecloth. It is essential to position the sensory richness of this moment to evoke the soothing embodied experience of knowledge transmission and mobilization that often occurs at kitchen tables. In the Fort Vermilion Heritage Centre, the only museum in the hamlet, my community’s experiences are only available through colonial-settlers’ autobiographies, experiences, and narratives of Fort Vermilion people during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Women like Mary B. Lawrence, an American settler, lived in Fort Vermilion for nine years and befriended many Indigenous community members (Lawrence 2008). However, sentiments of white supremacy are entrenched in her writing. Another colonial-settler biographical voice from the Fort Vermilion Heritage Centre is Charles Mair (1999). Mair was an immigration official, journalist, and nationalist for the Canadian Government and documented his observations of the Treaty Eight signing and Métis Scrip Commission (1999). Mair was anti-Red River Resistance and hated the Métis people which he expressed through his journalism. The Métis returned this hatred back to him; while in the Red River, he was horse-whipped and publicly humiliated by Red River Métis Annie Ballentyne for his published story calling down Métis women (Teillet 2019, 168). The published colonial-settler narratives of my ancestors and community neglect to include the cultural nuances; for example, Lawrence (2008) often mentions how young Métis women wanted to learn the ways of the white woman, without acknowledging the weaponization of shame that led Métis women to ask about white societal standards for women. Unfortunately, these texts (from settlers who looked down upon Indigenous Peoples) continue to be more 45 available than the words of those women in my community. The voices at our kitchen tables do not receive the same visibility across time as white narratives do in the archive and in public spaces like museums and schools. The importance of these words became manifest alongside this project when I received a call to action from a cousin-auntie who vocalized the need for our voices to share our stories of Buttertown during a Métis youth camp in Buttertown. The youth needed to hear our words and stories. And in Métis community, when a cousin-auntie, a woman who is technically a cousin but fulfills auntie roles such as guidance and support for youth, tells you to do something, you listen.13 Because of this, and through youth culture camps, I met many cousins and cousin-aunties who taught me more about Buttertown and our familial connections through teachings, music, and dance. The pieces of history missed in the colonial-settler biographies are the spaces where our kin gathered, strengthen their ties, and shared place-based knowledge of Buttertown. And I am honouring these stories by telling them in this thesis and contextualize them within Felt Theory. I now move to this next section and invite Million (2009), Gaudet (2019), Anderson (2011; 2000), Lawrence (2008), Mair (1999), Teillet (2019), MacDougall (2006) and the Fort Vermilion District Bicentennial Association (1992) to the thesis’ kitchen table with Métis collaborators to share their perspectives on Buttertown, visiting, and identity. 3.2.1 Buttertown Miyo-tôtam: […] the music, the connection to the land, and all the stuff we still do and the gardening and like, making our own food, and. And, like that to me is in our family. While Buttertown Métis certainly practice Métis culture, they also have unique experiences since our ancestors inhabited this northern and rural area since the late 18th century. This conversation with Miyo-tôtam centers on the distinctness of northern Métis culture in Buttertown. The Buttertown Métis are musical folk, hardworking, self-sustaining in many ways, and come from people who value community, which continually emerges within this thesis. As far as I know from the stories shared while visiting in the summer of 2022, my Métis ancestors have been in the Buttertown area since 1788, which is why many Métis Berry Pickers expressed ancestral 13 In some communities, Aunties are considered “little mothers” because they are akin to secondary mothers (Harris and White 2018). 46 connectedness to the land during interviews and the talking circle. Jean Baptiste LaFleur created Fort Vermilion on the north side of the Peace River, which later became the North Vermilion Settlement (Buttertown) (Fort Vermilion District Bicentennial Association 1992). The North Vermilion Settlement is known as Buttertown because of the butter made by cattle farmers on the north side of the Peace River from Fort Vermilion (Fort Vermilion People: In Our Vast Trading North 1788-1988 1992). This place became a trading-post settlement because of the North West Company and my ancestors who settled the land. This land is situated in Treaty Eight Territory and ancestrally belongs to Beaver First Nation, Tallcree First Nation, and Dene Tha’ before Métis people came to this region as employees of North West Company (Fort Vermilion District Bicentennial Association 1992). Treaty Eight was signed June 21, 1899 (Mair 1999), and this was over a hundred years after the Métis people canoed down the Peace River into the region. During this time, they had a role in interpreting for Treaty signing and participating in the Scrip Commission (Fort Vermilion District Bicentennial Association 1992; Mair 1999). When talking about the past, Miyo-tôtam shares that Grandpa Paul, uh, he was French, pure French, but he also spoke fluent Cree and fluent French and English. Like he was… but he worked a lot with the Indigenous people. Being multilingual enhanced fur traders’ abilities to create connections between nations (Teillet 2019). Many Métis folks previously spoke multiple languages to aid them in kinship and trading relations (Fort Vermilion District Bicentennial Association 1992). Communal reciprocity is vital for the Métis community in Buttertown. I witnessed this in the moments between my research and the value of communal wellbeing that has existed for a long time. While living with my Kokum, I often asked her impromptu questions, and she often answered with a story. She always shares in her stories how it was hard work to stay afloat back in the day, but it was simpler because community and family had your back. They would rely on one another when one was unwell and needed support. Nourishing those who are hurting helps the community in its entirety. An example of community support is in Mary B. Lawrence’s memoir (2008), found in the archive. In this story, her family experienced a housefire during the Christmas season when it was fifty degrees Celsius below freezing in Fort Vermilion. The loss of the Lawrence family’s material wealth allowed them to experience collaborative care from the local Indigenous community. Mary B. Lawrence (2008) said, “[t]hese Indians [sic] and halfbreeds [sic] were the only ones to help much in our crisis” (2008, 166) and “they simply hauled [dry logs] from the 47 bush and dove-tailed them in with the bark still on, rough and shaggy” (2008, 166). The Buttertown Métis and First Nations quickly worked together and made a dove-tailed log cabin to house the colonial-settler Lawrence family despite their differences in generational wealth. Métis community care continues to be in practice between family members, but it is something my Kokum tells me she misses from when she was younger; you were never alone because family and community members always had your back. Kinship currency is more imperative than material wealth, allowing emotional community healing and leading a good life. Relationships with the more-than-human kin also ensure the community’s wellbeing; the Buttertown community continues to have strong ties to one another and with the land. Throughout interviews and conversations, many community members expressed connectedness and adoration towards their ancestral Buttertown. Miyo-totâm shares that her […] roots are very strong and deep here in this area. Miyo-totâm lived away from the north for some time and noted that she felt most at home in Buttertown and could not bear to be away from her home any longer. In our conversations, we agreed that the energy of this place draws people back to Buttertown. Another Berry Picker, Miyôw, shared that [i]t’s like the meeting place, the gathering place. We always come back [chuckles]. Gathering strengthens interfamilial bonds and ensures communal wellbeing. Métis families have been visiting and gathering since the beginning of the Métis Nation; even property lines were crafted to keep Métis families close together (Teillet 2019). Métis river lots, or rangs, are elongated properties on th1e river and back onto common lands (Teillet 2019). Although, the most crucial aspect of the long and thin river lots is the interfamilial closeness they allow (Teillet 2019). Buttertown, like some other Métis settlements, has river lots lining the north side of the Peace River across from Fort Vermilion. Long river lots allowed families to live nearby, creating reliable ties through visiting and gathering practices. For many generations, these spaces along rivers are where my Métis family names have been interconnected through marriage and living closely around Buttertown to fortify the familial bonds and collective care within the community (MacDougall 2006; MacDougall, St-Onge, and Podruchny 2012). Part of this collaborative care is visiting. Communal care is manifest through ensuring the support of community and family members when they need it most (MacDougall 2006). Métis visiting is about intentionally being together and sharing stories, food, recipes, and holding space in a good way (Gaudet 2019). Often in the moments between research tasks, I found myself visiting with my Elders, cousins, uncles, and 48 aunties on the land or around the kitchen table. During these moments, I heard about the old timer’s visits, including food, music, and jigging. Buttertown Métis culture is a matrix of love, nourishment, and care for our family, community, and the land. Miyo-totâm shared that, […] whatever I learned about the way we live and the way we uh, garden and, and the way we look after families, and, and our music, and we care about each other, and we have big old family gatherings and um, I think that’s part of reconnecting again. And yeah, I feel extremely close to my cousins just as though they were my own like siblings, and, and that’s like something I look forward to all the time, and I never and, that that just keeps me going kind of thing, not only my family but my extended family. I noticed that many close family members are not always immediate family or even first cousins; this is a teaching I also received in a Michif course taught by Joshua Morin (2021). The teaching is that family is family and there is no hierarchy of relationality that distinguishes first, second, and third cousins/grandparents/great-grandparents (Joshua Morin, April 21, 2021). You simply are kin. Therefore, family gathers, community cares, and our culture helps Buttertown Métis stay interconnected to all kin and connected to place. 3.2.2 Visiting ‘Round Buttertown Kakâyawohtêw: We usually had, fiddling and uh, jigging and stuff. Yeah. Oh yeah, they used to go to Buttertown and they would…everyone got to gather together and they would bring out the guitars and their fiddles and they would play and people would just dance. Kakâyawohtêw reminisces here on the gatherings around Buttertown and remembers how, back in their youth, they rode wagons from river lot to river lot, house to house, visiting with their relatives. Particularly, Kakâyawohtêw shares that every single Sunday we would go make rounds in Buttertown. Métis culture flourished in the moments between colonial-settler religions and white society expectations. Despite the continuation of colonization and pressures of conformity, Buttertowners always enact their birthright to visit. Kakâyawohtêw explains that “everybody would go and show up at somebody’s place and somebody would be cooking […].” There was always good food to share with the company, even when the company showed up unannounced. Unexpected guests are welcome to show up and visit with relatives without invitation; visiting is a part of daily routines and needs no announcement. Visiting and gathering together is resistance 49 to colonial-settlerism that continues in Buttertown although less frequently due to floods and fires in the area; this issue reflects the interconnectedness of land and enacting sovereignty through gathering. Through Million’s (2009) lens of Felt Theory, the emotional articulations of intergenerational pain and joy was dismissed as illogical, void of objective fact, and primarily feminine emotions which are used to contrast a supposed objective truth; evidently, felt history holds just as much (if not more) validity as documented history (Million 2009). Since felt history is embodied (Million 2009), one can picture these Buttertown stories of togetherness in their minds, such as huddling together in the back of a horse wagon where the wheels tread within the weathered indents of the Buttertown bush trails as they visited house to house, river lot to river lot. The effect of storytelling theatrics during visiting is how these stories are remembered and reproduced (Teillet 2019). Felt histories enable thorough storytelling and embodied remembrance, resistance, and sovereignty in Buttertown. Métis women’s teachings have been passed down through generations of Métis people, and visiting has long been a way of knowledge transmission (Gaudet 2019; Anderson 2011). Visiting allows family, friends, and community members to stay in touch, build relationships, and share knowledge. Women’s teachings provide more than information about women’s needs, and these teachings come through while visiting and often act as road maps for community management and wellbeing (Anderson 2011). Recognizing there are underlying and layered teachings within one story or one visiting session is vital in preparing for visiting. Visiting requires listening and servitude first and foremost. By servitude, I mean serving Elders and visitors through this visiting protocol which allows for indirect and spatial teachings. There are plenty of undisclosed protocols, such as attentive listening or bringing and receiving gifts. Another nuanced protocol is hosting through offering tea, snacks, and stories, although hosts “were guided by their intuition, sense of responsibility, love, and values” (Gaudet 2019, 55). Visiting is a form of respect to the host, which reflects Gaudet’s (2019) research with a Cree knowledge keeper from Moose Factory; he recalls how “[…] sharing emotions, knowledge, ideas, and food from the land” is imperative for visiting reciprocity (Gaudet 2019, 50). This gesture and the value of reciprocity come in many forms. While the host may provide a meal, the visitors often bring gifts such as tobacco or food (Gaudet 2019). Enacting relational responsibilities while visiting shows respect for a host’s jurisdiction and honours them while 50 they care for you in their home. This exchange of goods and knowledge creates space for teachings. Being within proximity to folks visiting creates environments of spatial teachings. Kîhkimiwêw notes that […] just through osmosis you’re learning stuff, even if it’s not directed at you. The conversations may never, very often be directed at me, unless they ask me to do something or tell me to do something. In this discussion with Kîhkimiwêw, she shares how she grew up around Elders and listened to them visit in Cree—sometimes until the early morning hours. However, witnessing their conversations brought in many teachings for her. Kîhkimiwêw never had direct moon time teachings, but she listened to her cousins’ conversations around moon time and how they dealt with their flow. More importantly, how she was treated during her menstruation taught her the significance of moon time. While on her moon, unspoken respect directed toward her acted as teachings. Spatiality and respectfully being within earshot of visiting are vital to learning from others’ conversations. Visiting is an essential process of Métis culture and is an object of care for Métis women to share their knowledge and wisdom with younger generations. Visiting helps foster relationships, strengthen ties within the Métis community, and ensure that traditional stories are passed down through generations (Gaudet 2019). 3.3 Our Women Miyo-tôtam: Yeah. Any of my family, um, on my mom and, both my mom's side and my dad side, I've always watched the women be very strong. Um, bullheaded and stubborn just as much as you know the man, kind of thing. So yeah, I, for me, I have a lot of female role models […]. In this conversation about Buttertown women, Miyo-tôtam shares how the matriarchs in her family were incredibly strong and exuded power akin to men’s power. Miyo-tôtam says I’ve watched my, my, all the women in my life and like […] we’re strong and uh and they don’t, like, take shit […] And I know cultures, I mean I know that cultures are still, um, the women are subservient. But I know that, for a fact, that we’re not, we’re not like that [laughter]. While colonial-settler cultures brought subjugation for women in this community, many Métis women upheld their power. Another Métis Buttertowner, Miyôw, shared, [y]eah. I feel like it is definitely the women in my family that, um, well the only women that I’m close to they’re all really strong and stern. I don’t really know or have any men in my life that are, hold that like that same, um, 51 like personality trait that they do. In this instance, Miyôw’s perspective on Métis women in their life is synergistic to how Kîhkimiwêw explained how effective her grandmother was in asserting herself, [w]e would just know, it wouldn’t even have to be said, just the way she looked at us. Many Buttertown women are intuitive, influential leaders shaped by matriarch ancestors because they carry their strength with them. Looking back into the historical communities, Métis women are the hearts of our nations (Anderson 2011, 101). Métis women’s jurisdiction included the home, and hosting was often within their roles; however, it is vital to reiterate the difference between jurisdiction and confinement to domestic spheres in the community. Métis women are respected and hold power through their jurisdictions; therefore, visiting is a gendered experience (Gaudet 2019). Visiting is also essential for Métis women to share their knowledge and wisdom with younger generations (Anderson 2011). Deep attentiveness allows for those layered teachings and meanings to come through. Indigenous feminism was practiced daily through the immense respect towards Métis women. Historically, they were the ones who managed communities and households; however, this is not patronizing work. Given their power, women’s work was considered valuable for the community’s wellbeing (Anderson 2011; 2000). This is sometimes still the case, although the colonial patriarchy disrupted this inherent value (Anderson 2000). Women were the primary authority in the home, and they controlled food preparation, preservation, and distribution (Gaudet 2018, 54). In our conversations, Miyôw took a pause and shared their realization that [i]n reality this house would not be a home without me, just kidding [laughter]. She may have been joking, but she is correct; the home is her jurisdiction, where she enacts her familial care and maintains the teachings through practice. Métis women also track familial lineages and are teachers and storytellers (Anderson 2011). For example, I go to my Kokum to brush up on my Métis familial lineage knowledge because she often knows best. She also taught me many lessons and told many stories during my fieldwork in northern Alberta. Buttertown Métis women exhibit many talents and share many teachings. Moreover, they are humble in their knowledge. When they share stories, they are musical, kind, and powerful. During an interview, Miyôw said about her grandmother, Yeah, yeah, she was pretty musical too, the Lizotte side of the family is like honestly super musical. Despite Métis women’s ancestors’ hardships of colonization, residential schools, and the abuse 52 of a capitalist and patriarchal world, they created space for their wellbeing, spatial teachings, and the things they enjoyed, like music. One ancestor, in particular, was loved dearly, and her nickname was Iskwîsis, which means little girl or girl in Cree according to Miyo-tôtam. Miyo-tôtam shared that she was […] very, very close to her. Yeah. And my dad was super close to her like, she was, she was so loving to my dad and, and to all of us. And we all lived there, like, all lived in the same yard with her, so wherever she went we went type thing. We took her to church and yeah. She was amazing. Amazing, I wish everybody could’ve known her […] She played the piano and the harmonica, and she just, she just did all kinds of crafts. Yeah, she was just like, in a way, raised twelve children and had triplets, like before my dad, right, there were three girls that were born. The stories of Iskwîsis were also shared by Kakâyawohtêw, who remembers going to visit Iskwîsis and recalled, […] Once I remember. I don’t know how often we went there. But I remember her coming out with her candy [laughter]. The tender emotions evoked when remembering Métis ancestors who carefully shaped Buttertown women’s spirits with heart-based wisdom demonstrates the ancestral love we carry in our personal walks. This woman also exhibited how Indigenous women, Métis women, taught their settler husbands how to survive by living sustainably and with care on this land. Furthermore, Miyo-tôtam shared that [u]m, like my grandmother and my mother taught me how to knit and sew […] and garden and, so that to me is my Métis culture […]. Métis women foster mutual love between themselves and the land by practicing and carrying on their culture to their children and grandchildren. The extent of their expertise is why they hold such powerful positions in Métis communities. Miyôw learned many invaluable lessons and gained connection through visiting her grandmother, […] my grandma is the one that basically brought me around to Buttertown, that’s the connection I have to there […]. Miyôw also said, [f]or her, like, she’s taught me how to be a gatherer. That’s something that she’s passed down to me. The Métis women before us walked on these Buttertown backroads that we do, and their love for the land, crafting, and communal care reverberate through our existence. We are never alone or untethered to our kinship networks that transcend the present time because “[i]n our bodies, we carry the blood of our ancestors and the seeds of the future generations. We are the living conduit to all life […]. We are strengthened by who we come from and inspired by those who will follow” (Mitchell 2018, 11). The felt history of women’s ancestral power manifests through visiting and 53 family history storytelling (Million 2009); when women’s relatives shared their personal (both traumatic and joyous) stories, the weight of emotions already felt transcended boundaries of time and existed again in those moments. In the talking circle, I felt the intergenerational power the Berry Pickers were gifted from the powerful women in their lives. However, the life Indigenous women provide for their community is not always biological; women give life to one another through their love, which is the basis of womanhood and a community’s strength. Holding space for visiting is taken very seriously in the matriarchs’ homes; much preparation was done before visitors arrived to ensure a good and safe space for visiting (Gaudet 2019). Although, stories and women’s teachings were shared beyond the house as well. As Métis Elder Maria Campbell outlines in Anderson’s (2011) work: Some [women’s] stories were told while we worked, cutting up meat and packing jars for canning or while smoking and drying fish. Some were told on the way to the berry patch [...] So for my nohkoms, perhaps the power that was left for them was the stories they knew and the storytelling they did. In addition to the acimowina...my Cheechum also told the ahtyokaywina, which were told only in the winter beginning with the first snowfall and ending in the spring when the frogs started to sing. Ahtyokaywina told how we came to be here as well as taught us taboos and laws of our people (xvii). Elder Maria Campbell shares that women’s stories emerged through family or personal stories, acimowina, and sacred stories, ahtyokaywina, that followed seasonal timelines (Anderson 2011, xvii). She articulates specific stories in daily tasks or formal storytelling settings; the space and time determine when different stories need to be told. There were many places and forms of storytelling that Métis women were responsible for sharing, like acimowina (personal or family stories) and ahtyokaywina (ancestral stories). In Buttertown, shared acimowina storytelling about relatives’ experiences on the land occured while on the land. Whether it was walking to the berry patch, berry picking, cleaning the berries outside, or sitting around a fire, emergent stories filled the space and time exactly how they were meant to. Therefore, knowledge is produced, mobilized, and transmitted through storytelling. Indigenous ways of visiting and knowledge transmission were dismantled by colonial forces to eradicate Indigenous Peoples and their embodied knowledge (Anderson et al. 2018). Nevertheless, it did not work. As Gaudet (2019) explains, “the long-lasting disruption of keeoukaywin due to colonial policies, oppressive legislation, historical inaccuracies, medical and religious institutions, land displacement, shifting economies, and racism (Anderson, Campbell, 54 and Belcourt 2018)” (55) has left many Métis people disconnected to themselves and their culture. The lived realities from ongoing colonial oppression are the weaponization of time as stagnant. Furthermore, “[t]his ethical contestation resonated within Native communities, informing them emotionally and physically, discursively, and politically; where “what” happened and its emotional resonance cannot now be cloistered within a past that stays neatly segregated from the present” (Million 2009, 71). Master narratives often leave out Métis women’s felt histories, but through sharing these histories, we honour our collective truths (Million 2009). In Buttertown, there was poverty amongst Métis families; as Miyo-tôtam recalls, […] my mom was, like she was pretty great I thought. That I remember, I mean considering the way that she was raised, you know she was raised they were raised in extreme poverty and uh you know had nothing. Like they were raised in the Bush, and they eat rabbits, yeah like my mom grew up very, very poor and you know. Métis women ensured they cared for their families as best as possible in the face of colonial settler-enforced poverty. Miyo-tôtam’s parents were subject to governmental control of their farming property and livestock. In the face of the apparatuses of colonial-patriarchal power and “[despite] the layers and generations of aggression, visiting as a way of knowing, doing, and being has endured” (Gaudet 2019, 55). Despite the constant and pervasive colonial intrusion on Métis families, their women resisted through their love and care. Visiting has been a form of resistance, resilience, and reconnection in the past, and it continues to embody knowledge transmission into the future. Indigenous women continue to be a vital part of grassroots movements, rights defences, and reclaiming identity and culture in so-called Canada (Green 2017). Many Métis women are creating these changes within community through Indigenous organizations, educational institutions, and in their own healing journeys. While in many contemporary Indigenous governing structures it is primarily men who are in leadership positions, women are primarily the leaders of grass roots projects like friendship centres and cultural camps; Statistics Canada's Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics (2021) found that “[c]lose to one in five chiefs in First Nations communities is a woman” and: [i]n 2019, 19% of chiefs in First Nations were women. By comparison, according to the 2016 Census of Population, women represented 50% of First Nations people living on reserve in Canada. The numbers presented in the table also show that the proportion of women as chiefs has generally increased over time. In 1992, 12% of chiefs in First Nations communities were women. While the proportion had increased to 20% by 2008, it declined 55 slightly over the following several years and has remained relatively stable for more than a decade. As seen in this statistic, the colonial patriarchal control of Indigenous governing bodies altered matriarchies that centred women’s vital and diverse roles in the community, which have recently been recovering (Anderson 2000). Buttertown women’s power exudes through shared teachings, and they often lead change in their community. Furthermore, for this reason, as Miyo-tôtam states, I mean, a lot of it was because they’re not, um, like women weren’t um… But they, that there weren’t, they weren’t put on a pedestal like they should be. Although Métis women have always been vital to their families and communities, they are not consistently recognized for their work within a western patriarchal society or internally within themselves due to internalized patriarchal beliefs; the colonial patriarchy disrupted Métis women’s jurisdictions and power within the community and themselves. In my experience in the north, it was rare to hear Métis women in my family talk about themselves in a positive light. Moon time teachings demonstrate women’s power, and this could be a mechanism to discuss how Métis women connected to Buttertown understand the inherent spiritual power they hold. 3.3.1 Indigenous Women’s Spiritual Power Through the Indigenous student resources at the UBCO campus, I came to understand why women are such powerful beings. During a smudging circle with UBCO’s Elders-in-residence, Syilx Elders Chris Marchand and Eric Mitchell, Elder Eric shared that women are inherently spiritual, and men must work twice as hard to get to women’s level of spirituality (Mitchell 2019). These teachings, in conjunction with the stories of past Buttertown women, I recognize the power of Indigenous women and all women too. However, women in my life often call themselves down due to internalized patriarchal rhetoric; in community, calling down means putting bad energy around a spoken topic by verbally insulting someone. However, thousands of matriarchs stand behind them, ready to support them; this concept is what Sheri Mitchell (2018) shares in a poem by Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, “[s]uddenly, all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands” (11). Despite feelings of worthlessness stemming from colonial self-criticism, Métis women connected to Buttertown embody their ancestors’ power; as Million (2009) explains, history encompasses coloniality and intergenerational love and power. Mitchell expresses how we emerge from a 56 “lineage of love” (2018, 11), which grounds people in themselves to move confidently through their lives. Indigenous women are never alone because they carry the love of those before them, especially the matriarchs. As discussed with Berry Pickers, Buttertown Métis women and youth deserve to hear women’s teachings for the opportunity they pose in reconnecting them with healthy self-esteem and body image. There needs to be more matriarch visibility and more chances for women’s teachings for Buttertown youth. While travelling back south from my Kokum’s home, I reflected on matriarch visibility and how this shows up in my northern family. I pondered the coloniality of self-hatred and low self-esteem that perpetuates the felt history of shame. Serendipitously, I was listening to the Matriarchs episode from Auntie Up! Podcast series by Kim Wheeler and Rosanna Deerchild (Deerchild and Wheeler 2022). Kim Wheeler is Anishinaabe and Mohawk and Rosanna Deerchild is Cree. This episode creates many connections between Indigenous women’s roles and what I witnessed visiting and conducting research in my community; Métis Buttertown women and youth are actively working to foster their connections to Métis teachings and women’s teachings in the face of colonial apparatuses of power. The episode focuses on “[o]ur teachings, worldviews, and values are all connected, just as we are to one another—All Our Relations. Colonial rule did all it could to silence women’s voices, to sever there are connections and break the circle. Nahanni Fontaine, organizer of the Matriarch Summit and Andrea Menard, founder of Matriarchs in Training are working hard to strengthen the circle again” (Deerchild and Wheeler 2022). Fontaine is Ojibway from the Sagkeeng Anishinaabe First Nation and Menard is Métis from St. Laurent. Fontaine shares her turbulent lived experiences that shifted through an Elder’s teachings: I met an Elder, who changed the trajectory of my life. And she was the first person in my life that said like ‘Nahanni, don't you realize how sacred you are as an Indigenous woman? Like don’t you realize the ancestry that you come from?’ No, nobody had ever told me that in fact. But that teaching changed the trajectory of my life and that’s, for, for me, where I feel like we're all at right now, Reclaiming that ancestry, reclaiming that spirit, under, you know, however we want to understand and feel matriarchy. So that's kind of what it is for me (Deerchild and Wheeler 2022, 9:10-9:51m). Fontaine speaks to the colonially induced self-hatred and the women’s teachings that can pull us back from the brink. Indigenous women are powerful and sacred, and Fontaine’s teaching is something I hope that all the Indigenous women in my family and community come to realize, too. I want every family member who is a woman to look in the mirror and tell themselves they 57 are sacred as they stand, and I want everyone else who is connected to our women to take the time to let them know they are sacred in their entirety. They embody the strength of all the women that came before them. Our transcending interconnections with present and passed family are witnessed through the way we talk, how we conduct ourselves, in our embodiment, in our music, in our jigging, and our community care. In reclaiming my ancestry and returning home through my research and ceremonies, my spirit felt at peace and invigorated all at once. Living with the matriarch in my family, my Kokum, and visiting with other matriarchs reminded me that the mobilizers and changemakers in my family are primarily women. It may be difficult for women in my family to see their power, but my family has so much feminine power. Many women have been subject to all imaginable sorts of abuses, yet many broke cycles in the ways they could. To continue the work of breaking cycles and resisting the colonial rhetoric of our bodies, we must decolonize how we see ourselves, our bodies, and our bodily functions such as moon time; “Therefore, most powerful things that we can do to end oppression, in all forms, are to free our minds and reclaim our autonomy. Then we can begin taking the steps that are required to rebalance ourselves and to rebalance our lives with the rest of creation” (Mitchell 2018, 131). Moreover, reclaiming bodily agency through decolonizing self-perceptions creates space for re-imagining self-esteem and body image in a positive light. Decolonizing one’s mind is difficult while colonial systems of power continue to function and benefit from colonized minds. In the next chapter, I move on to discuss some of these continued colonial abuses through Foucault’s (2008; 2007; 2003; 1990) theory of biopower and biopolitics to better understand Métis women’s body sovereignty and colonial rhetoric of moon time. 58 Chapter Four: Colonial Mechanisms of Shame and Body Sovereignty 4.1 Overview Now that the thesis’ kitchen table is grounded in Buttertown history and women’s knowledge, this chapter is the third bloom on Câpân’s tablecloth that turns to focus more clearly on Buttertown women’s teachings, the role of colonial shame, the knowing and owning of ourselves as Métis women, and wishing to learn more about ourselves through moon time teachings. In the past hundred years, Métis women of Buttertown knew how to take care of themselves and their communities because women were upheld as the backbone of the community (Anderson 2011). Care that is kinship-based and coordinated is at the root of our survival and well-being. The colonial violence continuum disrupts body sovereignty practices through biopolitics. In this chapter, I bring French philosopher Michel Foucault’s theories on biopolitics into conversation with Berry Pickers’ words to situate cycles of shame and biopower to control Indigenous women’s bodies and sense of self (Foucault 2008; 2003; 1990); I recognize that Foucault has had a large place at the academic table, and I work to actively de-center him; therefore, he is not sitting at the table but standing outside offering his theoretical paradigms which I utilize to name the colonial mechanisms of power Indigenous women experience. This discussion foregrounds how remnants of women’s teachings are being recalled and revitalized in Buttertown despite generations of aggressive colonial erasure efforts. This chapter demonstrates how many Indigenous women have taken on the healing work to reconnect their bodies and those of Indigenous youth to the teachings. This chapter sets the scene for how the following chapter addresses Métis futurisms based on women’s knowledge of the land and our collective dreams for Buttertown’s future (see Chapter 5). 4.2 Métis Women and Trauma Cycles of Shame Miyo-tôtam: Oh definitely. And I mean and, most certainly we've had to fight to get this way [meaning grounded and confident]. Like at my age now, you know, I'm much more confident. And I feel like I can say what I wanna say and and it's okay to feel the way I feel. But not at twenty-one, right? 59 Miyo-tôtam reflects on the changes in her self-confidence over time and the generational changes she witnessed. The semi-structured interviews, or visits, shared the theme of longing for bodily and spiritual connection and understanding. Some Berry Pickers shared that their confidence grew with age. Others grew up confident because of their consistent cultural connection throughout their life. Although, one of the key emergent themes in the relational data analysis was pain. The collective experience of shame was the glaring manifestation of pain between all semi-structured interviews and the talking circle. In this context, shame is defined and understood as feelings of unworthiness and wrongdoing despite shame stemming from an unchanging identity; identity shame in terms of coloniality and white supremacy emerges as the naturalization of identity inadequacy. These conversations around shame emerge from those directly affected by colonial “[i]deologies [which] dictate social and cultural norms that control human identity and relationships” (Gaudet and Martin/Wapistan 2017, 97). Patriarchal, colonial-settler ideologies and menstrual taboos instill shame and attempt to erase Indigenous women’s collective knowledges and lived experiences (Baldy 2017). To expand the number of guests visiting the table, I invite Cree Métis scholar Shalene Jobin (2016), and African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois (1903), colonial settler American scholar Mona Lena Krook (2020), colonial-settler American scholar Emily Martin (2001), United Kingdom scholars Andrew Shail and Gillian Howie (2005), John S. Milloy (2017), Métis scholar Jean Teillet (2019), Métis Nation of Alberta’s report (2004), and Hupa scholar Cutcha Rising Baldy (2017) to the kitchen table with Berry Pickers to discuss identity, sexuality, and menstrual shame. Also joining later are Siem Smun’eem Indigenous Child Well-being Research Network researcher Sandrina de Finney (2017) and colonial settler American Mary B. Lawrence (2008). 4.2.1 Identity Shame: Enforced Colonial Parameters of Being Identity shame is feelings of insecurity and stigmatization within one or more intersectional identities. In the conversation around identity shame, Kîhkimiwêw says I wouldn’t know, I didn’t grow up being ashamed. Through her distance from identity shame growing up, Kîhkimiwêw shares her groundedness in her culture and holistically knowing herself. The Berry Pickers’ experiences are emblematic of colonial white supremacy ideologies instigating identity-based shame. Colonial apparatuses of power negate the likelihood of Indigenous women’s positive 60 self-perception. The Métis community in Buttertown often experienced racism, and the community members who had the opportunity to pass as white received advice to do so for their safety. As Miyo-tôtam shares: Tell this person to, you know, stay away from me, you know? I don't want to do this or whatever. But or, just to stand up for yourself when you feel that, like, like I said we had lots of, um, racism and when you see racism, or you feel racism to stand up to it. But we just couldn't. Like, our parents would literally say just pretend it's not happening, we don't like, you're going to get all, you'd be better off if we just kind of pretend like we're, this is who we are but don't tell anybody if, if they don't know we’re Indian, don't remind them, don't tell them […]. As Miyo-tôtam shares, complicity and white-passing were encouraged as a survival tactic to avoid racism—past and present. Leaving pieces of identity behind for the comfort of colonial settlers and racists creates a sense of fragmentation of the self for Indigenous People. Of course, being able to pass as white is a privilege some people experience. Nock (2023) thoughtfully describes colourism in Métis communities as “[…] the way in which we hold prejudice against our own kin who have darker skin tones. It is important to note that colourism is a tool of white supremacy and is intrinsically intertwined with anti-Blackness”. Therefore, passing as white makes someone invisible to white supremacist systems which are founded on anti-Blackness.14 However, Miyo-tôtam’s childhood fragmentation of self within public settings fits the description of what W.E.B Du Bois calls “double consciousness” (Jobin 2016, 40). Double consciousness is the bifurcated self-perception created by systemic racism and violence (Jobin 2016, 41). Double consciousness explains how marginalized people seek true self-consciousness (untouched by colonial parameters of being). However, a white viewpoint is forced instead due to colonial institutions embedded in white supremacy. Du Bois’ (1903) expansion of the Hegelian perspective of consciousness focuses on Black folks in the United States during the Jim Crow era (Jobin 2016, 40). Jobin (2016) utilizes Du Bois’ work through an Indigenous lens to analyze double consciousness within the Indian Residential School system. Jobin (2016) investigates “how the passing down of Indigenous women’s knowledge through stories is an act of resistance to double consciousness. Residential schools aimed to produce subjects who had internalized the goals of colonial institutions—people who saw themselves through the eyes of 14 Anti-blackness is the white supremacist concept that centers whiteness and marginalizes Blackness in conjunction with the multi-layered systemic and physical violence towards Black people. An example of anti-Blackness is white supremacy encouraging and praising proximity to whiteness through language or skin colour while demonizing proximity to Blackness. 61 the colonizer, seeking recognition and therefore mimicking non-Indigenous ways of being” (40). Internalization is a crucial mechanism of shame that creates distance from cultural teachings. Jobin brings in her grandmother’s stories to demonstrate how “…women resisted the imposition of this double consciousness by passing on Indigenous women’s knowledge, central in which are the relationships of women to the land broadly conceived--including relationships to the air, water, earth, and other nonhuman beings” (40). Experiencing colonization creates complex and layered realities and oppressions for Indigenous women. Indigenous women experience “double consciousness” twofold. First, through their identity as an Indigenous person (Jobin 2016, 42-43), and second, being a self-identified woman is an aspect of double consciousness. In part, there was a promise of better status for Indigenous Peoples in assimilating to the white body politic. However, this pursuit did not change systems of oppression and apparatuses of power (Foucault 2007). There is a false sense of individual agency to align with colonial-settler parameters of supposed civilization (Foucault 2007, 48). This self-governing and self-surveillance that is foundational to the existence of governments—and specifically the Canadian government—is meant to persuade people to want to belong to the state. Essentially, the government fosters complicity through the population’s indifference. In the crosshairs of Foucault’s (2004) discussion of false individual agency and Jobin’s (2016) expansion of Du Bois’ (1903) theory of “double consciousness” lies the promise of social acceptance. White supremacy and coloniality expect Indigenous women to assimilate into the body politic by internalizing colonial shame. Internalization and compliance within marginalized communities are ideal for the nation-state’s occupation and expansionism (Foucault 2007). In other words, striving for white standards in so-called Canada supposedly promised acceptance yet yielded only pity and contempt. American settler Mary B. Lawrence’s interactions with young Métis women, who often sought out her womanly guidance into white society, exemplify double consciousness in Fort Vermilion during the late-nineteenth century (Lawrence 2008). She often discussed “halfbreeds” and “Indians” as inferior community members who could only attempt to reach for standards of so-called civilization but never fulfill them (Lawrence 2008) (despite the fact they offered such generosity as seen in Chapter 2 when they experienced a fire in their home). Métis women in the North historically had to choose between either bush life or “Indian living,” or “white living” (Lawrence 2008, 106). Lawrence (2008, 156) told these women they should adopt white society but only marry their kind. In the 62 next section, I discuss the state and impeding white standards invoking sexuality shame altering the way Métis women and their communities engaged—colonial-settler measurements of existence forced a never-ending pursuit of colonial societal acceptance that was never attainable. Seeking validation in attaining colonial standards of being is in part a result of low self-esteem (created by colonial-settler systems of oppression). As Kîhkimiwêw states, [a]nd it’s so sad, they are strong and beautiful […] the potential is there. And you just, you can't give it to them. They just have to want it and just that underserving self-perception. We conversed about how many young women in community seek reassurance from others because of low sense of self-worth and trust. Conditions that lower Métis women’s self-esteem reside within colonial structures such as western education systems. However, they also permeate into Indigenous homes and are mobilized through lateral violence. Kîhkimiwêw suggested that gender-based shame infiltrates young minds and continues to be reiterated even within community on all levels from education to sport to local government. In Kîhkimiwêw’s upbringing, respect for women was evident from a young age; she expressed, how dare your brother speak to you that way. Like that’s a sin, like a sin. Cause in my family, that’s not how you treat the girls. For Kîhkimiwêw, it was challenging to witness family and community members become victims of colonial shame that did not belong in our communities. Further, the multi-layered trauma and violence continuum fundamentally affects how Indigenous women see themselves through double consciousness. Kakâyawohtêw shares, No, I don’t have no self-esteem [chuckle]… I think it has lots to do with, um, um what happened […] you know, with all that hurt and all that… you lose that, you lose your self-esteem you lose… you don’t feel good about yourself. The hurt, violence, and intergenerational trauma that Métis women experience directly affect body image and confidence. The violence continuum is “[…] a spectrum of violent acts that not only shade into each another but also inform and reinforce one another” (Krook 2020, 119). Therefore, the violence continuum works in tandem with double consciousness to instil identity shame that bled into sexuality shame and menstrual shame for Métis women and youth. 4.2.2 Sexuality Shame: Governing and Hyper-Sexualizing Bodies Ingraining gendered sexuality shame is a manifestation of the colonial violence continuum. Colonial violence in this realm is not always physical and exerts itself through colonized 63 people’s self-perception. Indigenous Peoples are under constant attack through the colonial violence continuum that is covert and overt. Although, the lived realities are overt regardless of how they appear to beneficiaries of a colonial-settler state. Settler colonial western understandings of self that are reinforced through health and educational institutions founded on white supremacy replaced powerful diverse Indigenous epistemologies and structures. Rigid colonial concepts of gender and sexuality notably reinforce this continuum aspect. These colonial ideologies are grounded in western positivism, which means they bolster and reproduce apparatuses of colonial power (Battiste and Henderson 2000). Patriarchal heteronormativity has colonially been enforced through a pervasive focus on peoples’ sex lives while upholding sexuality secrecy (Foucault 1990, 47). Moreover, governing Indigenous women’s bodies means controlling the gender discourse through patriarchal heteronormativity. As de Finney (2017) discusses, many Indigenous communities never have had strict gender or sexuality binaries; there was more fluidity in self-expression. However, there were specific responsibilities to one’s respective community and all relations that would coincide with identity but never govern identity (de Finney 2017). Reiterating the notion of freedom of expression, Kîhkimiwêw explained that […] there was a lot of free love, there was a lot of consensual love. Cause our culture would have been…I can sleep with whoever I want, I don’t have to be married to them, and it’s okay. I’m not ashamed of that, right? But then you have these views that come with really hard damaging responses when you did that. Like basically disciplining you for something that you were allowed to do before. In this conversation, Kîhkimiwêw and I discussed the harmful religious impositions onto Métis women; prior to colonial relationship ideations, early Métis people practiced polygamy and marriages between European fur traders and Indigenous women (a la façon du pays) to create strong trading relations (Teillet 2019) from what I know at this time. Polygamy may not have been the case for Buttertown Métis, but it demonstrates the cultural differences, relationship structural changes over time, and colonial mechanisms of shame within relationships. While there was once “free love”, incoming white settlers and colonial shame altered how Métis women saw themselves; Métis women experienced “double consciousness” within colonial constructs of gender and sexuality (Jobin 2016; Du Bois 1903). In Mary B. Lawrence’s Northern reflections, she recalls telling young Métis women that having multiple men were ungodly and that those sorts of women did not deserve respect (2008, 157-8). Therefore, shame was a mechanism to 64 demean and control women of the community, which allowed for more colonial settler expansionism and capitalization of the region. Despite colonial pervasiveness and obsessive control over women’s sexuality, Indigenous women are historically and presently hyper-sexualized in colonial-settler states (de Finney 2017). Kîhkimiwêw says, [i]t happened to married women…it happened to grandmas, it happened to everyone, if you weren’t fighting off the priest in Grouard you were fighting off the men off the boats. Who never have any intention over being with you, staying with you, or caring about you. Indigenous women have been subject to sexual abuse since the invasion of the colonial patriarchy (de Finney 2017). The extreme dehumanization of Indigenous women and youth is a part of this violence continuum. Regarding the church’s disregard for Indigenous children’s lives, Kîhkimiwêw shared the church’s sentiment, Just go get her from the residential school. Which one do you want? [is something residential school administration would say to abusers looking for child victims] … Grouard, Joussard they were allowed to give them away, if they had their period and they were twelve or thirteen, and these old men would just come and get ’em. In this conversation, Kîhkimiwêw and I discussed the hypocrisies within church teachings. The religious doctrine (here be it the catholic, Christian, Lutheran, and even Anglican) would preach sexual ‘purity’; however, in many church-run residential schools, there was horrific church-sanctioned sexual abuse against children (Milloy 2017). Often, these crimes had no consequences, and abusers only went to another residential school (Milloy 2017; Wilk et al. 2017). The abuses were encouraged and implied in the colonial assimilation policies and ideologies. Colonial bodily narratives of objectification also imply women’s restricted value. Furthermore, menstruation was only considered a sign of sexual maturity rather than a powerful time for peace and reflection are violent attacks on Indigenous youth and women’s wellbeing. In some residential schools, Indigenous girls’ menstruation cycles were tracked in fear of pregnancy of the violated residential school children (Badly 2018). These insidious assaults and imposed colonial beliefs interrupted incredibly vital transmissions of moon time teachings. 65 4.2.3 Menstrual Shame: Colonial Interruptions of Moon Time Knowledge Transmission Miyôw: Um, well, I didn’t like, have those teachings when I was younger, so I don’t have a certain, […] a strong connection or a certain type of way towards moon time. Um, yeah like I didn’t have the teachings growing up which sucks, I wish I did [laughter]. No strong connection. In this instance, Miyôw expresses the lack of moon time teachings that yielded feelings of disconnectedness from her moon time and therefore her body. Many Berry Pickers wished they had learned more about moon time during the critical time of being welcomed into the women’s circle. A young person’s first moon time is a celebratory moment for a young person with many stories and teachings (Anderson 2011). Unfortunately, imposed colonial concepts of menstruation forcefully disrupted moon time teachings by displacing Indigenous youth from their communities and teachings through shame and other colonial apparatuses of power such as western education and the Indian Residential Schools (Baldy 2017). The western education system also reiterates colonial biomedical menstruation teachings, void of spirituality and empowerment (Baldy 2017). To understand how nuanced community taboo ideologies affect Indigenous women through colonization, it is necessary first to distinguish the western ideologies of the menstrual cycle and women that are imposed onto Indigenous women. To do this, I invite scholars to the kitchen table who have delved into the past to investigate colonial perceptions of the body, menstruation, and the interruptions it created for Indigenous women. Before the western, modern developments of science and medicine, deep secrecy was associated with menstruation that excluded even science-based perceptions of menstruation (Freidenfelds 2009, 38). Of course, we can trace the damning views of women and their menses back to ancient Greece (Shail and Howie 2005). This colonial-settler approach shifted from a heavily tabooed monthly cycle into a highly medicalized view of the body (Freidenfelds 2009; Martin 2001). As American anthropologist Emily Martin (2001) describes this as the emergence of the body as a machine; the colonial narratives about women and their bodies connect with the concept of the body as a machine. This ideology foregrounded the idea that women needed their bodies controlled by patriarchal expertise. Moreover, women and their bodies were distinguished as separate entities (Martin 2001); their bodies were something that happened to women without their power and agency. This 66 perceived separation from self and the body naturally made it easier for the male-dominated medical system to control those bodies (Martin 2001). In the same way, machines and bodies need to be maintained; however, this maintenance is the basis of the body’s mechanics and neglects the holistic workings and interconnections of the being (Martin 2001). In addition, body and mind are separated due to this belief (Martin 2001); the existing interconnectedness was reduced to two separate entities meant to be naturally intertwined. Colonization forced Indigenous children to assimilate into western beliefs and the hegemonic ideology of the ‘civilized’ ways of life. The Indian Residential School system disconnected Indigenous children from their cultural teachings, community, and sense of identity; One of the few things that were taught in the Indian Residential Schools was self-hatred (Milloy 2017; Wilk et al. 2017; Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015). These colonial institutions practised extreme psychological abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and spiritual abuse (Milloy 2017; Wilk et al. 2017). Menstruation teachings at the Indian Residential Schools across Canada embedded spiritual abuse; moreover, the Indian Residential School policy was” ‘[t]o kill the Indian’ in the child, the Department and churches aimed at severing the artery of culture that ran between Aboriginal generations” (Milloy 2017, 42) and this included disrupting spiritual moon time teachings. Furthermore, Milloy states that “[i]t took on a sharp and traumatic reality in the life of each child who was separated from parents and community and isolated in a threatening world hostile to identity, traditional ritual, and language” (2017, 42). For young Indigenous girls, this also meant being conditioned to believe their bodily functions were shameful and being separated from moon time teachings (Baldy 2017; Métis Nation of Alberta 2004). To address this history, the Métis Nation of Alberta (2004) published a book outlining Métis people’s lived experiences in the Indian Residential School system and Day Schools. Some survivors shared their stories anonymously and did not share the specific school they attended for personal reasons. When reading these narratives in my Kokum’s home, I randomly flipped to three stories about Métis women recounting their first menstruation in the residential schools. Finding these stories was serendipitous because I realized the connection between self-hatred teachings and damaging menstruation teachings in the Indian Residential School system. These first-time menstrual experiences, which were meant to be celebrated, were met with humiliation, corporal punishment, and violence in these colonial institutions (Métis Nation of 67 Alberta 2004). Magee Shaw recollects her experience beginning her moon time/ menstruation at the St. Bernard Indian Residential School: Sister Clara, was a very mean nun, she was very mean. when I became a young girl, I think I was 12 or 13, I started menstruating. I went up to her, all the girls were sitting in silence in the big room and I was crying and I told her something was wrong. She pulled my hair and said ‘has the brothers been bothering you, have you been fooling around with the brothers?’ I didn’t know what she was talking about and I’m crying and she got the scissors and just chopped all one side of my hair off in front of all the kids (7-9). The horrific treatment of young Indigenous girls during a transition into womanhood enforced patriarchal, colonial-gendered hierarchies. In this effort, shame was used as a mechanism to instill harmful understandings of self and menstruation at a young age. Some of my family members who have now passed on attended the St. Bernard Indian Residential School, which made it even more difficult to imagine their experiences in a notoriously abusive assimilation school. They may have survived the duration of their enrolment, but they did not survive the deep-rooted trauma they carried. Intergenerational trauma radiates from their lived experiences that were not discussed. Often, Métis children were the most attending students in northern Alberta due to supposed neglect cases; in some cases, Métis children were a third of the enrolled population (Chartrand, Logan, and Daniels 2006, 121). The high Métis enrolment caused a unique issue for the school administration. The priests were concerned the schools were turning into orphanages and Métis (or sometimes called white/non-native in the documentation) enrolment did not increase the school’s government funding like Indigenous status children (Chartrand et al. 2006). Furthermore, Métis students experienced multi-layered trauma; They were legally ambiguous to the state and church-run schools and experienced multi-layered traumas during their attendance. An anonymous survivor who attended a residential school for six years stated that: One thing I remember, it was summer and I was bleeding like I was dying, bleeding to death. I went to one of the nuns and I says, ‘I’m dying, I’m bleeding to death.’ she hit me so hard, she knocked me out. When I came to, she threw a rag at me and she explained what was wrong with me, menstruation […] (38). Indigenous women in residential schools often went through intense violent experiences when they received their first moon time—an experience that is supposed to be incredibly sacred (Gaudet & Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). The taught shame and taboos are grounded in the western understanding that women are merely controlled by their bodies (Chrisler 2013; Martin 2001). 68 Furthermore, western colonizers also practised hyper-sanitization and considered menstruation a dirty process (Freidenfelds 2009; Baldy 2017). Anthropologists have widely used menstruation to convince academia and the body politic that women’s inferiority is natural and proven through universal menstrual taboos (Baldy 2018). Through these colonial discourses and institutions, “[t]eachings embedded in stories of creation, designed to reflect wisdom about women’s power, became absent from day-to-day life” (Gaudet 2015, 167); through colonial assimilation policies and apparatuses of power, Indigenous women were deprived of their inherent women’s teachings that would have been foundational to how they grounded themselves and how others treated them. Participants understood the need to return to teachings for current and future generations of Métis women and youth. As Kîhkimiwêw states, [w]hich is a lot of, where, residential schools I think did the damage there because there’s these things we feel, and we know in our heart it feels right to do…but we don’t know why. Residential schools functioned to distort our understandings of identity, sexuality, and shame—but there is still a deep need and desire to reconnect. Kîhkimiwêw witnessed the trauma caused by assimilation policies and the heart-based attraction to return to our teachings and know ourselves within our cultural frameworks. Despite the shame-based trauma cycles that Métis women of Buttertown experience, there is kinship-based theory and practices that bring women back to themselves steeped in ancestral knowledge. 4.3 We Know and Own Ourselves Miyôw: Yeah, cause then you like, you can feel what’s happening and everything… and then when you feel what’s happening, you know how to deal with it and um, yeah [laughter]. In this conversation with Miyôw, we discussed how Métis women have an inherent right to access bodily teachings that inform self-care and community care. We both wished to have had more women’s teachings about knowing what we need and not wholly relying on third-party information about women’s bodily functions. Miyôw stated the need for […] classes or like somebody actually telling you, like the spiritual teachings about it. Hearing spiritual teachings about our bodies and moon time would have instilled a sense of power and bodily sovereignty. We discussed how our ancestors certainly knew their bodies, were in relationship to themselves and knew how to appropriately heal themselves with what was provided by the land. 69 Otipemisiwak is another name for the Métis people meaning “the ones who own themselves” or those who are the “bosses of themselves” (MNA Nation Constitution Commission 2022) which is discussed in section 4.3.3. Knowing our bodily functions and honoring our bodies ceremonies (Belcourt and Kappo 2023) is a part of owning ourselves and body sovereignty as Otipemisiwak women. Reconnecting and revisiting women’s teachings is akin to reclaiming body sovereignty and challenging the colonial systems that deny Indigenous women their bodily rights (Baldy 2017). Body sovereignty is the right of all individuals to have holistic access, autonomy, and control over their bodies (de Finney 2017). In this context, holistic access, autonomy, and control mean knowing self, owning self, and having appropriate access to culturally informed healing practices; this includes the right to decide about one’s body, including medical decisions, sexual health decisions, and spiritual beliefs. As Métis Elder Maria Campbell shares, “your body knows how to conduct ceremony” (Belcourt and Kapp 2023); women’s bodies go through ceremony whether we are aware or not. However, it is vital to know and honour these embodied ceremonies to better know ourselves past, present, and future. To make educated decisions about wellbeing, access to western and Métis methods of healing must be readily available. In the moments between conducting research, community members described the mistrust in western healthcare institutions due to adverse lived experiences and a lack of holistic approaches. One Berry Picker, Miyôw, provided the example of birth control distribution by a nurse in their predominately Indigenous high school. In our conversation, I reflected on my high school experience, where my school’s population was almost all white students, and there was no access to birth control. These two experiences provoked the question of whether young Indigenous women’s bodies are being hyper-regulated through western education systems. Indigenous women in Canada have been historically denied their rights to their bodies, devastatingly impacting their lives, health, and wellbeing. The principal authors I engage with are Anishinaabe scholar Jennifer Leason (2021), Cree Métis scholar Kim Anderson, Métis Scholar and Elder Maria Campbell, Métis Scholar and artist Christi Belcourt, and the Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group (2018), French Scholar Michel Foucault (1990; 2003; 2007), Italian scholar Giorgrio Agamben (1998), Kanienkehaka scholar and activist Beverley Jacobs (2018), and Anishinaabe scholar Maya Ode’amik Chacaby (2018). The Indigenous authors in this conversation illuminate what Foucault has missed in his analysis of biopower. Firstly, the construct of race in the sexuality discourse is an opportunity missed by Foucault according to 70 Stoler (1995). Next, I discuss colonialism, sexuality, and Indigenous women using these lenses to mitigate the gaps in Foucault’s work. 4.3.1 Body Sovereignty and Biopolitics Body sovereignty and colonial biopolitics are intrinsically tied; thus, I utilize Foucault’s theories (1990) to name the colonial mechanisms of power which function to disrupt Indigenous women’s body sovereignty. Through Foucault’s lectures, he defines biopower as the control of state subjects’ bodies through “[…] the ancient right to take life or let live [which was] replaced by a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death” to a person, their identity, or a marginalized group (1990, 138). Indigenous women in so-called Canada have been and continue to be under genocidal attack through colonization, manifested explicitly or implicitly (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Buller, Audette, Eydfson, and Robinson 2019). The government consistently oppresses Indigenous women because that is how the state reproduces itself by validating its colonial occupation of stolen lands (Foucault 1990). Canada’s colonial-settler agenda tirelessly controls the discourse surrounding Indigenous women and their bodies, controls their disenfranchisement, and allows death through societal neglect (Foucault 1990). The oppression practised by this nation is not a singular exercise of power. Instead, it is a careful system constructed to produce a quiet war designed to go unnoticed by the hegemonic population (Foucault 2003, 15). Presently, Indigenous, and non-Indigenous scholars research, document, and report on genocide (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls et al. 2019). Foucault’s (1990; 2003; 2007) elaborate discussions around sexuality, biopower, biopolitics, and surveillance have been discussed fervently in the academic landscape. Many anthropologists unpacked colonial biopower despite Foucault’s lack of colonial-specific discourse (Stoler 1995). There is less conversation about biopolitics and Indigenous women in Canada. Specifically, there is a scarcity of dialogue regarding Indigenous women’s bodies and the biopower enacted upon them by the nation-state. Despite these gaps, Foucault’s concepts hold value in this section. For example, Anishinaabe scholar Jennifer Leason (2021) discusses legislated sterilization and eugenics in Alberta and British Columbia until the 1970s, an essential aspect of biopower. However, there are much more recent incidents of institutional sterilization of Indigenous women all across so-called Canada (Clarke 2021). As Miyôw shared, population management tactics, such as birth 71 control distribution in high schools for young Indigenous women, are still utilized. While Foucault (1990; 2003; 2007) remains useful, there is a lack of kinship concepts that transcend human-centric relationships. This is an understanding that is the foundation of many Indigenous communities. I acknowledge that Indigenous nations and communities are not homogenous; instead, numerous distinct Indigenous nations have specific languages and cultures. Although, a pattern of animacy of all beings (human and nonhuman) is shared amongst many Indigenous cultures (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016). Animacy here means the existence of spirit and, therefore, the liveliness of interconnected beings, including those not conventionally thought to be living like rocks, wind, and water. Foucault’s discussion around subjugated knowledges remains relevant for oppressed teachings grounded in animacy and Métis women’s teachings (2003, 7). The western positivistic discourse around knowledge is weaponized, including deciding which knowledge systems are reproduced and readily available (Battiste and Henderson 2000). Often wherever colonialism invaded, Indigenous knowledge has been repressed. Indigenous knowledge systems are only recently emerging in the mainstream due to western scientific methods of validation catching up with various Indigenous knowledges and the work of Indigenous community members and scholars promoting Indigenous knowledge value through law and declarations like UNDRIP (UN General Assembly 2007). As Foucault (2003, 11) argues, these bodies of knowledge have returned but are also affected by co-opting by their oppressors. Women’s teachings embed body sovereignty teachings; therefore, these subjugated knowledges have been re-emerging and kept intact by women in the community. Being within proximity to kin during their conversations is a mechanism of intergenerational knowledge transmission (Gaudet 2019; MacDougall 2010). Learning continued simply by being present and mindful. As Kîhkimiwêw states [s]o, there’s no questions, because you heard them talk about everything. Biopower tactics to repress Indigenous subjugated knowledges were not successful. Because of their inherent power, the state targeted Indigenous women through colonial biopolitics of life and death. Enacting Indigenous women’s body sovereignty is especially imperative because it involves the reclamation of women’s teachings, community roles, and community wellbeing. 72 4.3.2 Biopower of Reproduction and Governing the Family Canada’s colonial occupation is founded on governing familial structures within marginalized communities, using shame as self-surveillance, and subjugating Indigenous knowledge systems. Canada is built upon the continuous oppression of Indigenous Peoples who innately invalidate this occupancy through their unceded sovereignty (Chacaby 2018; Mitchell 2018; Green 2017; Vowel 2016; TallBear 2014). However, Foucault does not focus on how white supremacist sentiments uphold colonial nations (Stoler 1995); this is just one of many critiques of Foucault from an Indigenous perspective. White supremacist values are the foundation of the Canadian government’s ability to control its population. Without the various functioning levels that white supremacy exists upon, the state could not control Indigenous women’s bodies for the nation’s stability (Foucault 1990). Therefore, the discourse around Indigenous women is colonially tailored to create the rationale behind their need to control Indigenous women’s bodies, children, families, and communities. Nation-states implemented eugenics to control the population and ensure that only desirable bodies existed within their jurisdiction (Kelm 1998; Foucault 1990). In this context, “desirable” refers to white, able-bodied, heteronormative, docile bodies that help validate colonial occupation. In other words, the state seeks ethnic cleansing to create a population that fulfills its interests as a capitalistic colonial state. Leason (2021) discusses how Indigenous women’s forced and coerced sterilizations function as ethnic and disability cleansing. Indian hospitals were built to segregate Indigenous Peoples but also hide the inhumane acts they were committing from the body politic. Leason (2021) states: Research demonstrates that '74% of all Aboriginals presented to the Board were eventually sterilized (compared to 60% of all patients presented).' In her book, An Act of Genocide, Stote documents 580 sterilizations across Canada in Indian Hospitals between 1970 and 1975. Between 1966 and 1976, it is estimated that more than 1200 sterilizations (approximately 1150 Indigenous women, and 50 remaining men or of undocumented sex) were sterilized. From 1966 to 1976, more than 70 sterilizations were also performed on women in Nunavut (525). In Leason’s (2021) research, there is clear evidence to stop Indigenous Peoples from reproducing and transmitting their cultures and ways of life. Leason (2021) explains that despite removing the eugenic policy from the legislation in Alberta and British Columbia in the nineteen-seventies, it is a practice that continues today. Multiple reports from Indigenous women indicate that they were not fully informed or, in some cases, were given ultimatums (Leason 2021); they would 73 either choose to be sterilized or have their children taken away. Further, “[i]n October 2017, a proposed class-action lawsuit was filed in Saskatchewan from more than 100 women across Canada who reported they were forced to be or were coercively sterilized, thus demonstrating the lived experiences of Indigenous women” (Leason 2021). Through a Foucauldian view (1990, 33), this is a state’s explicit intention to dictate sexuality and reproduction through their multiplicity of powers that rely on their apparatuses of knowledge production. Regarding governmental interest in reproduction, “between state and the individual, sex became an issue, and a public issue no less; a whole web of discourses, special knowledges, analyses, and injunctions settled upon it” (Foucault 1990, 26). Therefore, the Canadian government continues to commit genocide against Indigenous women through their attempts to regulate their reproduction. In the process, the government absolves itself from these crimes by dictating colonial legislation and allowing medical institutions to make reproductive decisions for Indigenous women. Foucault (1990) discusses how the state seeks to govern both the public spheres of life as well as the private. However, this kind of surveillance has always existed for Indigenous communities and mothers (Milloy 2006). Milloy argues that any supposed minor misstep of Indigenous parents could lead to family decisions being made by the state on behalf of the Indigenous family (Milloy 2006). Further, the forced admission into Indian Residential Schools was often based upon state-perceived familial neglect of children that then shifted into the child foster care system that exists today (Milloy 2006). The state and its supporting apparatuses of knowledge, such as the medical field and social services, bolster state control of reproductive rights (Foucault 1990). This includes but is not limited to whether Indigenous women can have children, how many, and the apprehension of children (Leason 2021). Additionally, the paternalizing of the family functions to instil European values. Foucault (1990) would agree that the state is incredibly interested in the occurrences within the home—but even more so for marginalized people whose existence threatens the stability of the state. The Canadian government governs the family and the familial structure to ensure it is patriarchal (Foucault 2007). Indigenous women are emphatic entities in family systems and are the heads of the family for specific Indigenous communities. Matriarchs would make decisions on behalf of the clan, house, or nation. Their roles were and are often tied to relationships to the land (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016). Given that the federal government is keenly interested 74 in the land for occupation and resource extraction, Indigenous women threaten these national interests. 4.3.3 Body Sovereignty and Land Sovereignty Indigenous women’s body sovereignty is inherently woven into land sovereignty and self-determination (de Finney 2017). Many significant scholarly conversations surround Métis nationhood and sovereignty (Adese and Andersen 2021; Andersen 2014; Vowel 2016; Teillet 2019). It is difficult to delineate a single definition for the Métis or Michif people (Vowel 2016); however, one of the names Métis people go by is Otipemisiwak which means “the ones who own themselves” or those who are the “bosses of themselves” (MNA Nation Constitution Commission 2022). Cree kin gave this name to the Métis when they observed (and some who participated in) the 1885 North West Resistance, the buffalo hunts, and fur trading to acknowledged Métis nationality (MNA Nation Constitution Commission 2022; Teillet 2019). Owning ourselves refers to national sovereignty but extends to bodily sovereignty as well; decolonizing how we understand ourselves strengthens land and national sovereignty. A significant facet of owning ourselves includes bodily autonomy and collective agency. Deep connections exist between land (and national) sovereignty and the conversation around body sovereignty. Our birthright is to know and own ourselves in local Métis cultural contexts. Canada has laboured to sever Indigenous women’s knowledge, activism, and connection to the land but has ultimately failed. Indigenous women historically and presently hold influential positions in their respective communities. They are often described as their nation’s backbone and beating heart (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016). Women’s connection to the land is grounded in feminine power; language such as “Mother Earth” speaks to the connection between femininity and the land (Mitchell 2019). This inherent power and their vital roles threaten the Canadian colonial state and everything they hold onto to justify their colonial occupation. Thus, Indigenous women are considered internal enemies of the state (Foucault 2003). Foucault (2003) argues that the modern state has more concern with their local populations than other countries for security purposes. Thus, the most pressing threat to the state is its subjects who do not serve the nation (Foucault 2007). Although, Foucault (2003) could have gone into more depth about how marginalized communities are a primary threat because their existence threatens the status quo and the white supremacist foundations. Again, he was concerned about how the state 75 enforces its biopower and less about the “why” (Foucault 2003); so-called Canada demonstrates hatred for Indigenous women because they work to protect the land and water at the cost of the nation’s capitalistic model. Indigenous women have been at the forefront of land and water protection for millennia. Many women are regarded as the water carriers of their respective Indigenous nations (Leason 2021). This understanding is grounded in their innate capacity to give life; it is essential to note that giving life transcends birthing—it constitutes breathing life into community and kinship networks (Baldy 2020). Baldy says, “I think about all the other women that are in your life that are giving you life every chance they get” (2020, 8:09-8:20m). Syilx Elder Eric Mitchell (2019) shared with me that Indigenous women are the most powerful entities in this universe because of their ability to bear life and because the second most consequential phenomenon is moon time or menstruation (Mitchell 2019). Women are often reminded every month of these kinds of power through the experience of their moon time. Women have a special place on Mother Earth because of their diverse roles in communities (Leason 2021). Specifically, “we have a responsibility to protect, educate, support, and empower the next generation of women and girls” (Leason 2021, 526). Indigenous women's embodied power threatens colonial settlers and their interests; thus, they continue to be targeted through acts of genocide (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls et al. 2019). Moreover, the capitalistic need for land and statehood purposefully created conditions that target Indigenous women through displacement, colonial shame, state neglect, biopower of reproduction, and the allowance to death. These interruptions of women’s teachings disregarded body sovereignty, forcing colonial access to land and devaluing land sovereignty. Indigenous women in so-called Canada continue to experience violence and colonial disruptions of their respective women’s teachings. State-sanctioned violence through biopower and shame is cyclical and reproduced through the state's existence (Foucault 1990). Foucault (1990) provides ample description of the general structures of genocide without naming them genocide or racism, which is problematic (Stoler 1995). Genocide against Indigenous women has been implemented through policy and normalizations for population management and defence against internal enemies (Foucault 1990, 138). Despite being targeted as internal enemies to the state and its existence, Indigenous Peoples in northern Alberta continue to share and crave women’s teachings through unassuming mechanisms. As Kîhkimiwêw shared, [y]ou know 76 there’s a lot of those unspoken things that occur. Like, just like not to step over a man or, or whatever when you’re on your time or you know. Kîhkimiwêw saw the shame others endured but could not relate; growing up connected to Cree epistemologies allowed her a resistant perspective from colonial taboo teachings. Indigenous women fight against colonial encroachment (of the land and mind), protect their communities, and aid in cultural knowledge transmission to solidify a future for those yet to come. Jobin explained, “[t]he destruction of Indigenous knowledge and identity has been a fundamental objective of colonial policies in Canada. Significantly, Indigenous women have resisted the Canadian state’s colonial objectives, holding on to their Indigenous teachings and seeing the importance of passing this knowledge onto future generations” (2016, 39). Most community members did not have direct moon time teachings; they primarily learned about their bodies through mishaps, traumas, western education, and unspoken teachings at home. Implicit teachings, whether Métis culture or not, emerged through these experiences and did not create a deficit. However, there was unanimous agreeance that our Métis youth and future generations need access to moon time and other women’s teachings. These place-based teachings ground body confidence and self-esteem in ancestral Buttertown. Re-knowing and re-owning ourselves as Métis women is an act of decolonization. Through body sovereignty and moon time teachings, Métis youth and women can attune themselves to their self-esteem (de Finney 2017; McHugh, Coppola, and Sabiston 2014). In the following chapter, I discuss how community care and self-care can help embed moon time teachings to improve self-esteem, body image, and wellbeing for individuals and for community. These efforts mobilize intergenerational transmission of moon time teachings into the future. Moon time teachings can function to imagine and dream into existence Buttertown futurisms for women, youth, and future generations. 77 Chapter Five: Care, Place-Based Teachings, and Buttertown Futurisms 5.1 Overview Through the past chapters’ each bloom has brightened this kitchen table with women’s stories but the table is not without the stains of the recurrent topics are colonialism, the cyclical nature of intergenerational shame through biopower, and body sovereignty in the Métis community of Buttertown. Despite these cycles of shame, many Buttertown women have taken on the healing work to reconnect themselves and Indigenous youth to the teachings they deserve. This chapter is the fourth bloom on Câpân’s tablecloth that discusses how we can begin caring for ourselves, each other, and the community. Through conducting this research, I recognize that youth need to see our women and matriarchs embodying and teaching self-love and confidence so one day, they can continue communal healing. As the beating hearts of our nation, women in our communities deserve peace and moments to themselves (Anderson 2011; Anderson 2000). As discussed in Chapter Four, we can imagine mechanisms of knowing and owning ourselves stemming from moon time teachings imbued with body confidence. Many of these teachings are often place-based and spatially oriented (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016); during my fieldwork, I noticed how sharing space within community is vital to witness specific knowledge transmission. For example, land-based teachings require being out on the land amongst human and nonhuman kin (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016; MacDougall 2006). I bring in Indigenous land-based theories and teachings because they are partially grounded Métis women’s knowledge contributes to Indigenous schools of thought (Kermoal and Altamirano-Jiménez 2016). We will move on to Métis futurisms based on Métis women’s teachings, Indigenous land-based knowledge, and collective dreams for Buttertown’s future. This chapter, grounded in Câpân’s tablecloth, is critical to ensure the set thesis’ kitchen table can uphold the savoury fruits of our labour (saskatoon berry picking and Indigenous research)—a freshly baked saskatoon berry pie created by all community members, Métis scholars, theorists, and myself in the next and concluding chapter. 78 5.2 Nākatohkātiso: Take Care of Yourself Kakâyawohtêw: I know that when you take care of yourself first, you're, you are able to take care of others, that's my feeling about, but I never seem to do it and I think it's time I did that for myself. Kakâyawohtêw explains a foundational piece of how each person is deeply connected to collective wellbeing through their wellness. To care for oneself is to care for the community in Buttertown. Our responsibility to self exhibits our inherent interwovenness with and beyond the community. Directing energies towards self-care, self-reflexivity, and one’s community are acts of care-centric decolonization (Mitchell 2018, 206). To discuss these topics, Hupa scholar Cutcha Risling Baldy (2020; 2018; 2017), Cree Métis scholar Kim Anderson (2016; 2011), Black activist, poet, and writer Tricia Hersey (2022), Métis scholars Anna Flaminio, Cindy Gaudet, and Leah Dorion (2020) are the scholars welcomed around the kitchen table for this section. Their expertise pertains to the theory of Indigenous women’s recognition of dynamic identity, self-care, and its connection to self-esteem. Self-care and collaborative care are intrinsically tied to a sense of self-esteem (Baldy 2020); in Cutcha Risling Baldy’s Bioneers’ panel discussion, titled Honouring Women: Reclaiming Coming of Age Ceremony, she explains the interconnection between young women’s self-esteem and how their community honours them during their first moon time ceremony, or flower dance in her Hupa community (2020). The flower dance is meant for Hupa girls who go through their first moon time; it is an event where the community comes together and celebrates the transitional stage of the first moon time (Baldy 2018; 2017). It is a time of celebration and not taboo shame. The flower dance and other moon time ceremonies are meant to teach young girls how to care for themselves and for their community (Baldy 2020; Anderson 2011). Taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally can have a powerful impact on our overall self-esteem and self-worth. The previous chapter investigates how Indigenous women experience weaponized shame to enforce colonial heteropatriarchal societal standards (Baldy 2018; Millon 2009). Caring for bodies and minds combats internalized colonially driven shame (Hersey 2022). As discussed in the talking circle, women tend to take care of themselves last, which can result in burnout. All Berry Pickers responded that they wished to take better care 79 of themselves and create time to connect with themselves reflectively. Miyo-tôtam shared …I think I have to connect more to myself and remember that I’m not to be so hard on myself. Taking time for self-reflection, relaxation, and re-grounding allows for self-connection, which is embedded within Métis moon time practices (Anderson 2011; Gaudet 2018). Métis culture values reciprocity and community cohesion; therefore, it is vital to make time to recharge and reground ourselves. At the beginning of this section, Kakâyawohtêw expresses that it is important to connect with oneself to contribute to family and community responsibilities. Restoring our energy deposits through rest and reflection is an act of sovereignty (Hersey 2022; Mitchell 2018). Relying on and contributing to community allows for a personal energy buffer that protects against energy exploitation for colonial capitalism and redirects our energies and efforts into our community (Hersey 2022; Mitchell 2018, 207). Relationality and self-care exist in the quiet moments of boredom, as Kîhkimiwêw states [y]eah. But boredom is seen as a negative thing. Boredom can be an insightful time too. Kakâyawohtêw shares this sentiment and says [b]ecause I spend a lot of time by myself. And, um, it kind of helps too um just to concentrate on healing yourself. Berry Pickers feel the innate need to be with self intentionally to improve their self-esteem. For example, Miyo-tôtam shared that I just wanna feel good about myself and feel healthy and make good choices. That’s my health so. And I just look forward to the fall walks and yeah that. And getting healthier and looking after myself […]. Intentionally coming back to ourselves exhibits strength and groundedness. Berry Pickers also recognize how they lead by example for youth in their community. Métis youth need to witness acts of self-love and self-care to continue to model it for the next generations. Métis youth have an essential role to play in the preservation and continuation of their culture. Strong self-esteem and identity are essential for Métis youth to stay connected to their cultural epistemologies and communities (Anderson 2011). Through the development of self-esteem practices and self-care, Métis youth will be able to continue the tradition of teaching the next generation the core values that are so important to the Métis people. With a strong self-esteem and identity, Métis youth can confidently pass on their culture and values to the next generation, ensuring that Métis culture lives on for generations to come (Anderson 2011). Moon time teachings serve as a mechanism to help instill body confidence in Métis youth, like the essence of the rites of passage (or coming-of-age ceremonies) through the Hoopa Valley flower dance (Baldy 2018); Baldy states that “[c]ontinuing research shows that Native American 80 cultural practices and community support are positive indicators that address issues of self-esteem, poverty, school performance and resilient adaptation in adverse situations” (2018, 144). Métis moon time is a spiritual practice followed by Métis women, reminding them of their inherent power and strength (Gaudet 2018). Moon time reflective practices remind Métis women to slow down and take the time to practice self-care by listening to their body, tending to their spirit, and honouring their inner wisdom (Gaudet & Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). During Métis moon time, women are encouraged to participate in rituals honouring their connection to nature and the spirit world, such as smudging, artwork and praying (Gaudet & Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Anderson 2011). They are also encouraged to set meaningful intentions for the month ahead, reflecting on their goals and dreams (Gaudet & Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). Métis moon time is an integral part of Métis identity and empowers Métis women through self-care and reflecting on their connection to the spirit world and Mother Earth (Gaudet & Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). We can find insight and balance in the moments of silence, self-care, and intentional reflection during moon time teachings and practices. Therefore, Métis women and youth require space to incorporate time for self and wellbeing. 5.3 Coming Back to Métis Moon Time Teachings for Body Image and Wellbeing Miyôw: Okay. It’s also like a hugely, like a confidence thing too. Like people think that they’re not good enough I noticed. Don’t even know like the first step to take and they’re just so scared to do it. Yeah. Could use some more uplifting in the community. In the talking circle conversation, Miyôw discusses the confidence issues that create barriers for many community members from pursuing their dreams. In my experience as a young woman, there was certainly early shame and low self-esteem that began around puberty. I began puberty early, so I navigated these confusing and shameful feelings at a very young age. Naturally, the colonial menstrual discourse negatively changed my self-perception and body image and normalized it because I noticed it was a common experience amongst my peers. Then through literature, I learned that pubescent shame was a common experience in Baldy’s (2020; 2018; 2017) work. As Cutcha Risling Baldy said at the Bioneers’ panel discussion, “at puberty, a young woman self-esteem plummets, and this is across the board for anybody, but a boy remains the same or increases” (2020, 11:04-11:10m). A shift occurs during young girls’ puberty; they 81 learn that there is supposedly something wrong with them instead of learning about their importance in the community and their kinship networks. In this section, I invite Gaudet (2018; 2019), Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais (2015), Zinga and Styres (2013), Anderson (2000), McHugh et al. (2014), Kress (2014), and Baldy (2020; 2018; 2017) to the kitchen table conversation. Confidence is intrinsically tied to identity and access to cultural teachings through these scholars' work and the Berry Pickers’ words. Buttertown women spoke of moments of faltering confidence that might have been different given the opportunity to learn moon time teachings. Gaudet (2018) created a book about a young girl learning about moon time from her grandmother and her auntie. In moon time Prayer, Gaudet (2018) discusses what moon time is, and she states that: In Indigenous culture, the moon is known as Grandmother Moon and is connected to women's sacredness, as well as to the roles and responsibilities that come with being a woman. The moon is the weaver of the tides and the leader of the waters of the earth. Grandmother Moon also governs the waters inside women. One of these watery experiences is known as moon time, or the menstrual cycle. Grandmother Moon governs all life cycles from birth to death through her powerful magnetic pull. Her work is to weave magic into the heart of all of earth's creations. Once every twenty-eight days, the fullness of the grandmother moon illuminates the night sky (1). Grandmother Moon cyclically visits menstruating people and fosters the innate connection Métis people have to their more-than-human kin. Grandmother Moon gifted moon time to women so they may cleanse themselves through blood flow (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). Through moon time teachings, Métis women connect to their power and create space for rest during their moon time, like the moon time lodge (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). A moon time lodge was not for seclusion due to taboo but for deep self-reflection, rest, and creative space (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015; Anderson 2011). Accompanying self-reflection, and the ceremony within, is body confidence. Colonial settler scholars Tara-Leigh F. McHugh, Angela M. Coppola, and Catherine M. Sabiston (2014) describe the importance of body image, especially among Indigenous youth and women. Therefore, the conceptualizations of identity pride deeply relate to overall wellbeing and are affected by multifaceted Indigenous health issues (McHugh et al. 2014). Thus, research on Métis experiences of the colonization of their body image is vital in unpacking the health issues that affect Métis communities daily. The researchers use qualitative participatory methods to understand better the experiences of Indigenous women and young girls in Canada and find their 82 five aspects of body pride relevant to their research in urban Alberta; through interviews with eight Indigenous young women, the researchers named acceptance, identity, cultural connection, health, and native pride as the five aspects (McHugh et al. 2014, 319). Body image and self-esteem are imperative for grounding Indigenous youth in their identity, and the reverse is also true. This project reflects the need for more conversations around body pride, identity, and cultural pride. By connecting this project’s findings to my research, moon time teachings can be a mechanism for basing future conversations on positive self-esteem, self-expression, and Métis identity for youth and future generations. Establishing self-esteem and identity through moon time teachings begins with acknowledging feminine power (Anderson 2000). Anderson (2000) interviewed 40 Indigenous women and their experiences with colonial legacies in Canada to examine Indigenous women’s inherent power. She discusses the deep knowledge of women’s roles and powers in Indigenous societies that colonization has thrown into imbalance. Anderson notes that violence and poverty are the most prevalent issues for Indigenous women in Canada (2000). Indigenous resistance often stems from Indigenous women’s power and their vital roles in their respective communities (Anderson 2000). They have found resistance within the strong family and community relations by reclaiming their power and significance as Indigenous women. Indigenous women’s identity recovery is the basis of their resistance to assimilation; they reclaim the knowledge of what their ancestors know them to be. Anderson (2000) identifies the colonial oppressions that Indigenous women face and how this has become detrimental to self-esteem. She explores ways Indigenous women can resist heteropatriarchal colonialism, reclaim their traditions, construct new realities based on identity, and act on that identity to better their communities. Moon time teachings remind Métis youth and women of their kinship to the land, their communities, and themselves in my personal experience and this was reflected in the interviews and talking circle conversation. Through the work of Kress (2014), we can see the intimate relationship between women’s teachings, the land, and ecological knowledge. When we return to our moon time teachings, we declare our kinship to the land, Mother Earth, and Grandmother Moon. Moon time teachings transmit through visiting (Gaudet 2019; Gaudet and Caron-Borbonnais 2015). Visiting is another way the communal kinship was kept strong through Métis women’s teachings. Responsibilities are a core aspect of kinship; Zinga and Styres (2013) explain the vitality of interconnected responsibilities inherent in diverse Indigenous worldviews. 83 The authors consulted an Elder who shared her teachings from other Kiowa Elders about Grandmother Moon and the associated responsibilities attached to that relationship. They state that Grandmother Moon provides vital teachings to people and reminds them of their connection to the land. Matriarchies play a vital role in many Indigenous Nations; thus, Grandmother Moon also provides teachings specifically for women and their role in community (Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais 2015). Moreover, Gaudet and Caron-Bourbonnais (2015) articulate the connection between the critical teachings of Grandmother Moon and intergenerational knowledge transmission. Moon time had been gifted to all women by Grandmother Moon, and this could be holistically integrated into more educational spaces. Reconnection fosters Indigenous Peoples’ healing and wellbeing (Anderson 2000; Baldy 2018). Métis women and youth, including myself, reconnect to their self-confidence by asserting kinship with identity, community, and the land in the face of constant colonial oppression. 5.3.1 Politicking Menstrual Taboos White colonial-settlers’ devaluation and subordination of Indigenous women serve colonial-settler state goals for expansionism and corporate imperialism (Baldy 2018). In this kitchen table conversation about the politics of menstrual taboos, I invite Berry Pickers’ words and Baldy (2018; 2017), Million (2014), Lawrence (2008) and Anderson (2016; 2011). Moon time and menstrual practices became violently politicized partially through colonial interpretation in academia by white scholars (Baldy 2018). Moon time and other women’s teachings shape community structures and wellbeing by teaching Indigenous women their political power and responsibilities in community (Anderson 2011). Anderson shares, “[h]istorian Laura Peers has argued that historians and ethnographers have emphasized large game hunting within Aboriginal cultures at the expense of ignoring women’s contributions to community survival” (2011, 104). Anderson (2011) speaks to Indigenous women’s political and economic influence in their communities and the colonial erasure of Indigenous women’s communal prominence. Through academic disciplines, the colonial weaponization of menstrual practices allowed for narrative control of many Indigenous cultures (Baldy 2018). Baldy explains that “the use of taboo in discussions of Indigenous cultures and societies remains deeply ingrained in scholarship and theories of anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Anthropology undeniably served as a 84 preeminent source of information about menstruation in various cultures, histories, and our modern conceptions of [I]ndigenous menstrual taboos” (2018, 102). Baldy (2018) explains that the anthropological lens often deliberately misconstrued Indigenous women’s menstrual practices to advance and protect colonial heteropatriarchal ideologies. The discipline of anthropology historically used unilineal cultural evolutionary theories to bolster white supremacy; the unilineal cultural evolution theory was developed by anthropologists E.B. Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan in 1879, and they categorized “primitive” cultures using Eurocentric parameters (Erickson and Murphy 2013). Contemporary anthropologists and Indigenous scholars like Baldy (2018) are reckoning and calling out these realities of the discipline’s harmful and violent origin. These theories were convenient for colonialism and the spread of Christianity and capitalism. Further, ethnographic studies exploited Indigenous menstrual practices to highlight universal and justified feminine subordination (Baldy 2018). Employing the term “feminine” instead of “female” is meant to reiterate that roles, performativity, and all embodiments within the womanhood vicinity are undesirable and subjugated (Baldy 2018); Baldy discusses Audra Simpson’s work about the academic gendered and racialized views that parallel “[...] a savage/civilized binary” (2018, 103). By theorizing Indigenous menstrual practices as acts of Morgan’s savagery or primitiveness, anthropologists created a narrative of Indigenous feminism’s undesirability (Baldy 2018). Specifically, Baldy (2018) discusses Margaret Mead’s work in Samoan culture and how her colonial perceptions constituted Polynesian womanhood as perilous in general and worsened by menstruation. The renowned and founding anthropology scholars still embodied colonial settler narratives, which functioned to justify and solidify colonialism. Given that Indigenous women and their teachings are integral to community cohesion and stability (Anderson 2011), they were historically targeted through the violence continuum and academic colonialism. In this context, I consider academia as an apparatus of colonialism that founds western positivism within the colonial agenda. Baldy states that “[a]nthropological accounts of Native women, their roles in Native cultures, and their specialized rituals of menstruation were influenced by a Western colonial-settler desire to devalue the roles of Native women, elevate the status of heterosexualized males, and silence the Native feminisms that sustained many Native nations” (2018, 103). Therefore, anthropology and ethnographic 85 approaches historically stripped Indigenous women’s self-narratives around their menstrual practices. Academia and colonial settler society dominated menstrual discourse, centering on Eurocentric perspectives. In my archival research in Buttertown, I observed that a part of the role of pioneer white women in the North was to utilize shame to spread patriarchal rhetoric and structures in Mary B. Lawrence’s (2008) pioneer memoir; she briefly discusses the menstrual practices of Indigenous women in the Fort Vermilion area. Lawrence (2008) heard of isolation practices where a menstruating woman must leave her camp immediately. Lawrence notes that “the reason for the Indian [sic] woman’s strict seclusion at such times is in the superstition that her blood can harm the camp and ‘make bad medicine’ upon all the trapping and hunting. Guns will not shoot straight and traps will go empty; the camp will starve” (2008, 160). The imposing colonial master narratives and depictions of Indigenous women’s menstrual practices marginalized the deeper meaning of self-reflection during menstrual isolation practices (Baldy 2018); menstruating people held great power during their moon time, and they needed quiet spaces to channel their powerful energies in a good way (Anderson 2011). Experiencing moon time is engaging in a moon ceremony, and protocol often requires seclusion for self-reflection and groundedness (Anderson 2011). Therefore, moon time teachings are tethered to women’s spirituality and wellbeing which are inherently a threat to colonial expansionism. Berry Pickers Miyôw, Kakâyawohtêw, and Miyo-totâm acknowledge the colonial taboos they remember from their own puberty experiences and how spiritual teachings of moon time were not available to them when they needed them most. Acknowledging the combination of identity and menstrual shame enforced in the margins of western education systems, the Métis Berry Pickers wished for more information about their powerful cycles to harness this energy and change Métis youth’s self-perception at a younger age. Older Berry Pickers noted that they thought they were dying when they first got their period, which was frightening. One community member, Kakâyawohtêw, shared that, [w]e never had nothing like that, we didn’t even know about getting a period [laughs]…Got em one day and “what’s this?” [laughter]. I didn’t know what was happening, I thought I was dying. For Kakâyawohtêw, bleeding can be a jarring and traumatizing experience if there is no context; as Elders Maria Campbell and Sturgeon Lake Cree Elder Margaret Kappo share in the webinar series called “nôtokwêw pônkiyokêwin: Indigenous 86 Centred Menopause,” knowing our bodies and understanding cultural concepts provides grounding depth and meaning to these embodied experiences (Belcourt and Kappo 2023). Furthermore, Miyo-totâm knew about menstruation, but their cousins’ menstrual experiences and teasing functioned as educational moments in place of direct moon time teachings. As I moved through my research, I quickly recognized that moon time teachings do not need to be direct or textual. Instead, they are spatial and circumstantial meaning the space and time determines the teachings shared including moon time teachings which are not confined to structured forms of western teachings. The last chapter discusses the underlying themes of moon time which still existed despite colonial oppression (see Chapter Four). Miyôw explains that moon time is vital, because like they [women] hold in their emotions and everything and they’re always like you said like they’re more spiritually nurturing than men, like naturally. So, like, they need a time to release that […] And I’ve heard like it's a sacred time, I don't know, like I haven't known really too much as, as to why. Despite the lack of spiritual affiliation with Miyôw’s teachings, she understands it is a sacred time for women. This recollection serves as a reminder that teachings are cyclical, build upon each other and that understandings grow with time. Only when the right time arises are teachings shared (Anderson 2011). Therefore, being in my community in a good way is paramount to learning and passing on moon time teachings. Another Berry Picker’s lived reality exhibited place-based teachings; Kîhkimiwêw spent plenty of time near Cree and Métis Elders growing up and learned about moon time through spatial teachings. Intentionally being in space with community and family members creates places where spatial teachings can be shared. 5.3.2 Place-Based and Spatial Teachings Kîhkimiwêw: […] but I didn't quite understand like really what it meant and yeah no, in our family it's not treated negatively not even by the males. If anything they're pretty much maybe told, I don't know how they just knew not to bother me, not to make me cry, not to make me run, wrestle, whatever, ya know what I mean? In this interview, Kîhkimiwêw shares that she never knew the direct definition of moon time, but she certainly felt it. In this instance, she explains how people around her acted in minding her cycle and knew proper protocols without naming the protocols. What was significant for 87 Kîhkimiwêw was that there was no need for direct verbal instructions or documents she needed to study to understand the gravity of experiencing moon time. She shares that they were quiet and they just kind of left me alone and it was like an unspoken respect. Kîhkimiwêw’s experiences exhibit the power behind unspoken teachings. The importance of moon time was shared with her, where family members embody and share menstrual teachings within familial spaces. Connecting to women's teachings through spatial orientation is a vital mechanism of caring for self and community. In this kitchen table talk, I invite Métis scholars Leah Dorion (2010), Brenda MacDougall (2017), Kim Anderson (2011), and Anna Flaminio, Cindy Gaudet, and Leah Dorion (2020) to accompany Berry Pickers, who share lived experiences around spatial teachings. Métis women’s spatial teachings are powerful intergenerational traditions, and they continue to adapt through the constant pressures of colonial oppression. For example, some teachings may not be explicitly named “Métis,” but community members remember certain unnamed Métis teachings or protocols that are just part of daily life. Like Kîhkimiwêw, Miyôw shared the few teachings she received when it was appropriate to hear them; she says I’ve heard not to go into the wild, um, I think we’ve talked about this before. Somebody told me that if you go outside in the winter you’ll die, I have no idea…Yeah, she said that. But the other one I heard was that bears can prey on you ‘cause they can smell your blood, like miles away… Yeah. Um, what else did I hear…um, an Elder once told me uh, that it's not okay for like a male to walk over your legs... If you’re like, sitting down or whatever. Probably cause like that’s where all your negative energy is being released or flowing. Explicit moon time teachings exist around Buttertown but are not common. Although, teachings are not always labeled this way and are shared in passing like with Kîhkimiwêw and Miyôw’s experiences. Sometimes teachings are provided without reasoning because the listener is not yet ready to hear them. However, teachings are cyclical and resurface when the timing is right. The timing during storytelling and teachings is imperative and depends on the storyteller and the listener (Anderson 2011); furthermore, Anderson (2011) speaks to the knowledge transfer and nuances inherent in storytelling work. Visiting and storytelling are about relationships with those participating and the shared space they hold together (Gaudet 2018; Anderson 2011). Storytelling is also about the kinship between the storyteller and the listener; storytellers only tell stories meant to be shared at 88 that moment and stories the listener is ready to hear (Anderson 2011). Therefore, these circumstantial teachings were gifted to Miyôw in the perfect crosshairs of time and space. The atmosphere of significant places for teachings relies on those present. Elders, aunties, uncles, or knowledge keepers often foster knowledge transmission to younger generations (Anderson 2011). Grandmothers are especially vital for women’s teachings and mapping familial lineages (Dorion 2010). For example, Miyôw states, I remember like my grandma, showed me how to like physically wrap, like tampons or whatever [laughter]. Although no spirituality is embedded in tampon lessons, Miyôw’s experience exhibits how grandmothers are on the frontline of moon time teachings and intergenerational care. Being close to knowledge keepers in the community is essential in understanding and appreciating these teachings. This is why I am so grateful to return to my Métis community, guided by my Kokum, which grounded my sense of self and self-esteem. In my experience, I noticed youth often crave a sense of belonging, and returning to these spaces with family is grounding which includes myself. Through spatial teachings, there is clarity about how Métis women build meaningful relationships with the land and kinship network. By understanding the stories and teachings of Métis women, Métis youth can better situate themselves in the world and how they can use their knowledge and gifts to create harmonious relationships with others and the environment. Being within proximity to knowledge keepers in the community helps us learn about the spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical aspects of our lives and gain a greater appreciation of the richness that Métis women’s teachings bring to our lives. Métis women’s knowledge of the land has always existed (Kermoal 2016). I witnessed the knowledge of Buttertown in the moments between research and visiting; Métis women in my family shared stories in the berry patches and about the cranberries under the jackpines. During the talking circle, Berry Pickers expressed that the best place to share moon time teachings and other women’s teachings is in Buttertown. In this space, land-based knowledge grows from the roots of Métis women’s teachings founded in Buttertown; moon time teachings based in a place of significance for the Buttertown community enhance the teachings. Many Métis community members noticed a deep pull from Buttertown, making it a gathering place for all. Women’s spiritual teachings are be grounded in ancestral Buttertown soil for future generations. 89 5.3.3 Indigenous Women’s Land-Based Teachings In this kitchen table conversation, I invite white colonial settler scholars Fritjof Capra and Pierre Luigi Luisi (2014), Joyce A. Green (2017), and Kim Anderson (2011; 2000). They help me situate my research with Indigenous feminism and what that means. Indigenous feminist frames are the leading framework of my research project. I first did the work within and unlearned colonial narratives while replacing them with Indigenous feminist frames (Kovach 2021); however, I will never be void of pervasive colonial influences living in the colonial country of so-called Canada. Researching moon time through my understanding and the Métis methodology of Visiting makes this an indigenizing project where I must situate myself in relationship with the project. In the introduction, I grounded myself in this work by introducing myself through my kinship ties, background, approach to research, and my self-reflexivity. It is essential to acknowledge that feminism originated through a colonial lens, and white women achieved milestones at the expense of marginalized women (Green 2017; Moreton-Robinson 2000). Therefore, there is a clear distinction between ‘feminism’ and ‘Indigenous feminism’ (Green 2017). Also, the fight for equality among genders is a foreign concept for many Indigenous Peoples because they center egalitarian, matriarchal cultures, and consider women to be the hearts and backbones of a nation (Anderson 2011; Green 2017). Indigenous women’s prevalence and value in communities manifests differently for every Indigenous community and it is not homogenous. Thus, the reason for feminism to exist in a colonial-settler state did not exist within Indigenous ways of being because it did not fit those epistemologies and ontologies (Green 2017). Many Indigenous scholars and Indigenous women claim that by identifying with the mainstream feminist movement, they inevitably accept a subordinate status to hegemonic men (Green 2017). However, it is also argued that this must not create a divide within the community, and there is merit in the overlapping narratives of Indigenous feminism and mainstream feminism (Green 2017). In the work of Kim Anderson (2000), she expresses the vitality and significance of revitalizing and reigniting Indigenous women within the traditional understandings of womanhood. There was, and still is, a deep value of women’s power in many Indigenous societies (Green 2017; Anderson 2000). Due to colonization, this understanding has been skewed and replaced by patriarchal frameworks (Baldy 2017). Furthermore, violence and poverty are among the most prevalent and ongoing issues that target Indigenous women in Canada (Pedersen 90 et al. 2013; Fiske 1991; Anderson et al. 2018). Therefore, violence and internalization are consequences of the forced assimilation and implementation of patriarchal values and frameworks (Pedersen et al. 2013; Fiske 1991). Through reclaiming their power and significance as Indigenous women, they have found resistance within strong families, revitalization, decolonization, and community relations (Anderson 2000). Indigenous women’s identity recovery is the basis of their resistance to assimilation; they reclaim what their ancestors already knew (and know) them to be (Anderson 2000; Baldy 2017). Anderson (2000) explores and defines how Indigenous women can reclaim their identity, which relates to one of the research questions. I utilize the work of Capra and Luisi (2014) to parallel the significance of networks and patterns of relationships in ecology and the bodily function of menstruation. Western science is inherently patriarchal and reductionist (Battiste and Henderson 2000). Thus, it can become limiting and alienating when discussing the body as a separate entity from the mind (Martin 2001; Capra & Luisi 2014). Capra and Luisi (2014) insist on acknowledging deep connections throughout ecology. I understand that reductionism and compartmentalization have been expressed in western studies and discourses of menstruation (Martin 2001). Thus, I believe this can be understood in the context of the body as well since many women have body confidence issues due to reductionist views and the colonial discourse about bodies (Baldy 2020; Chrisler et al. 2015; Martin 2001). Moreover, this oppression is two-fold for Indigenous women due to the intersectionality of racialization and colonial-driven sexism (Martin 2001; McHugh et al. 2014). This has contributed to the feelings of disconnection between self and one’s body—naturally, this western science discourse instigates the severe imbalance that is the implication of patriarchal ideologies (Martin 2001). Moon time is a term used when it references the holistic worldview of self with the body, reflecting a worldview that inherently values women (Baldy 2017). Furthermore, the moon time concept and experience acknowledge the relationship-based understanding of why this bodily process occurs. It is not simply the body's functioning when an egg is not fertilized; moon time is a gift and a monthly reckoning with the extraordinary power women experience within (Martin 2001; Baldy 2017). Baldy states that: Native feminisms need to critically engage how patriarchy has been inscribed into Indigenous cultural practices. Native people must be diligent in their revitalization efforts and understand that the heteropatriarchy is not traditional. Part of that can be achieved 91 through the re-writing, re-righting, and re-riteing of Indigenous menstrual practices. The revitalization of women's coming-of-age ceremonies disrupts this menstrual discourse of western culture and society by celebrating menstruation in a very public and supportive way. (2018, 122) Therefore, Indigenous feminisms have a role in identifying where heteropatriarchy and heteropaternalism still lurk within menstrual and women’s teachings today. Part of this work is the reclamation, resurgence, and recognition of land-based knowledge embedded in moon time teachings and women’s teachings. Kress (2014) discusses the connection between land, community, and Indigenous women explaining that Kanawayhitowin15 is a responsibility that the Iskwêwak16 in the text hold close to their hearts as women. They sustainably and holistically harvest and know medicinal plants, therefore knowing the land as an extension of self (Kress 2014). Before people’s wellbeing and health were institutionalized primarily by men, the work was run by women (Kress 2014; Martin 2001). Indigenous women are at the forefront of land-based knowledge through ancestral practice and principles guided by moon time and other women’s teachings (Gaard 2015; Anderson 2011). Although colonization separated many Métis women from their women’s teachings, many noticed the inherent tie between Mother Earth and women. As Kakâyawohtêw shared during our talking circle, [d]o you ever notice that there’s, the weather has everything to do with our moods. Our emotions and wellbeing are interconnected to our respective territories and the lands we live on; when we notice and care for ourselves and the land in a good way, we practice our power. Our kinship networks connect us to all our human and nonhuman relations. Therefore, caring for oneself redistributes collective energy enabling a capacity to care for others in community. Body sovereignty intrinsically connects to land and Métis national sovereignty. As stated in the previous section, wholistically caring for oneself is caring for the community, kin, land, and nation. 15 This word means taking care of each other’s spirit as outlined in the OFIFC website: https://ofifc.org/training-learning/kanawayhitowin/. 16 This word means Nêhiyaw (Cree) women in Nehiyawewin (the Cree language). 92 5.4 Collectively Dreaming Buttertown Futurisms Miyo-tôtam: But if we don’t do something and make something…and like, like dream up something like this then there, what are we left with?. Miyôw: A ghost Buttertown. Miyo-tôtam: There’s nothing. The short dialogue between Miyo-tôtam and Miyôw in the talking circle of the project frames the significance of futuristic conversations. The talking circle was a collaborative space to laugh, visit, reminisce, and plan for Buttertown’s future. As Miyo-tôtam and Miyôw discuss in the talking circle, we must dream something up; otherwise, nobody will. Nothing can be crafted without visioning a plan that centers our Métis women, youth, and future generations. Collectively holding space to dream of Buttertown and moon time futurisms for body confidence is essential for the fruition of our dreams. Those in the talking circle are future ancestors responsible for critically reflecting on the needs and wellbeing of those yet to come. Therefore, centring body confidence and self-esteem is imperative to encourage the continuation of women’s teachings and other Métis cultural teachings in Buttertown. Indigenous futurism is a genre typically crafted by various art disciplines and spotlights Indigenous perspectives, hopes, projects, and dreams that exhibit a diverse range of approaches. As Métis scholar Samantha Matters explains, “[i]t creates room for Indigenous cultures to reclaim their place in the future. Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon (2016), one of the most prominent scholars in the field, explains that Indigenous futurism uses the imagery and themes of science fiction to imagine a future from an Indigenous perspective” (2019, 7). Indigenous futurisms challenge western depictions of the future while acknowledging the past colonial futurisms that built our current reality, drowning in the many manifestations of imbalance. Indigenous futurism follows the trailblazed path from Afrofuturism, which “explores the Black experience through art, music, philosophy, technoculture and science fiction across the African diaspora (Strong and Chaplain, 2019). Defined as a mechanism for understanding contemporary systems of oppression in relation to the past, Afrofuturism explores future situations through the arts (Hamilton, 2017)” (Matters 2019, 7). Indigenous futurisms are often welcomed in environmental spheres due to the capitalistic, colonially created climate change crisis (Matters 2019). 93 In the context of this thesis, body confidence, self-esteem, and women’s teachings are the subject of dreaming up futurities for Buttertown’s current and future Métis women and youth. Through reflection on our past and present, Buttertowners construct potential futurities that reconnect youth and women to teachings grounded in spirituality and communal cohesion. During the semi-structured interviews and talking circle, many Berry Pickers expressed a need for the availability of spiritual teachings associated with moon time; there was agreeance that these teachings would provide a source of confidence and a sense of identity for Buttertown women and youth. Moon time teachings shifted from the focal point in this research to a mechanism to inspire body confidence and community cohesion through reemergent moon time teachings in Buttertown. Furthermore, Berry Pickers brought together a plethora of concepts around Buttertown Métishood and womanhood that could spark the gravitational pull back to Buttertown and further emergent research topics. Therefore, many of the Berry Pickers’ ideas focused on a Buttertown community center/camp vision that is on Buttertown land; Miyo-tôtam expressed that [m]aybe we could have a centre somewhere, somewhere out of the flood zone. A good piece of land and make that into, it could be a youth centre, it could be just a Métis museum, interpretive centre, or something like that. And then you could have camps around that. Buttertown needs a flood-safe space to share jigging, fiddling, bannock-making, knitting, hunting skills, stories, history, and moon time teachings for Buttertown Métis youth and other Indigenous communities in the region. This community center was envisioned to have a moon time lodge, a garden, a jigging barn, a fire pit, and a hide scraping and tanning area. As Miyôw put it […] [t]hose would be good life skills to know though [laughter]. Even in our small talking circle, we noted our diverse skills that could be shared in this potential interactive community center. For example, someone could teach their gardening skills, another could share their horse skills, and I could help facilitate moon time teachings. This interactive community center, camp, and museum are vital because Buttertown stories and history have been dominated by colonial settler institutions rather than Buttertowners themselves. The recognition of western dominated narratives initiated a call to action from my auntie-cousins, who recommended we tell our own stories. The idea was community connection through the collaborative sharing of individuals’ unique gifts with each other. 94 Moreover, individual gifted contributions in Buttertown create the mosaic of community wellbeing; collectively working towards a healthy community is done with the future generations in mind. White colonial settler scholar Roman Krznaric (2020) is a philosopher who critically investigates “how to be a good Ancestor” through long-term thinking. Long-term thinking is moving away from fragmenting time into days, weeks, and months and moving towards framing time into decades, centuries, and millennia; the point of this “radical shift” is to understand and consider the “consequences of our actions beyond our own lifetimes” (Krznaric 2020, 1). However, his theories parallel Indigenous theories practiced since time immemorial (Justice 2019). Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Justice (2019) shares “[a]s Brandt’s words remind us, continuity across generations is how the People survive as the People: continuity of stories, language, relations, ceremonies, and of course the very lives of the people themselves” (115). The capitalistic free market economic system that currently grips the entire globe gains from the current short-term thinking (Krznaric 2020; Justice 2019). Convenience takes precedence over the wellbeing of our kinship networks that extend beyond human connections. Furthermore, long-term thinking allows space to critically discuss the survivance and the ability to thrive for those yet to come. Indigenous women continuously reshape the mechanisms of resistance with tenacity and veracity; in fact, “Indigenous women participated in creating new language for communities to address the real multilayered facets of their histories and concerns by insisting on the inclusion of our lived experience, rich with emotional knowledges, of what pain and grief and hope meant or mean now in our pasts and futures” (Millon 2009, 54). In moving on to the conclusion and being one chapter closer to finishing the saskatoon berry pie (thesis in its entirety), I urge remembrance for our ancestors and their dreams that constructed our reality and the power as future ancestors to continue the cycle of collectively dreaming futurisms into existence. Calling for the resurgence of moon time teachings and other women’s teachings to Buttertown will re-ground the wellbeing of our community. As we move on to the final bloom on Câpân’s tablecloth and the final chapter of this thesis, the discussion focuses on nourishing ourselves with love, confidence, and teachings as we move closer to savouring the saskatoon berry pie. 95 Chapter 6: Conclusion The thesis kitchen table talk is closing; so, I call upon visitors of this thesis to come back to the whole of Câpân’s embroidered kitchen tablecloth after going through each blossom and chapter through the guidance of the embroidered green stem (See Figure 7). I do not have much to connect to my Câpân, but holding and feeling the texture of her embroidered work allowed me to understand the time-transcending intergenerational love and care. Figure 7: “Câpân’s Kitchen Tablecloth” photograph © Hanna Paul, 2022, depicting Agatha (nee Lizotte) Paul’s embroidered tablecloth. 96 6.1 Research Beginnings At the beginning of my research project, I focused on the historical and contemporary moon time teachings and embodied knowledge in the Buttertown Métis community. Although this did not remain the primary focus of the research, through conversations within semi-structured interviews, talking circles, and the moments in between, I reflexively shifted the focus to knowing ourselves and our bodies for our wellbeing and how shame has created disruptions in teachings that instill body confidence and self-esteem. It was when Miyo-tôtam explained how youth and women’s cultural camps are essential that I experienced the value of such gatherings beyond the kitchen table as a space where young women and youth value their Métis bodies. There can never be too many cultural camps for youth and future generations; however, moon time is not the central aspect of future youth camps.17 She says, [m]hm, and that could be a small, that might be a little, the moon time thing might, it doesn’t have to be a whole centre of it but it could be a little piece of it […] Yeah, there’s not, there’s not, I don’t think there could be too much of it [youth and women’s camps]. But it, just, just to have those things um, yeah that would be, yeah that would be epic [laughter] you know I wish that I would have had something like that growing up […]. Through listening to Miyo-tôtam’s perspective, I came to value that my research outcomes do not need to center moon time teachings. Instead, the focus ought to be enhancing the confidence of youth in our community. Therefore, the research design shifted over time with the suggestions of community members like Miyo-tôtam. The research design and methodological framework of saskatoon berry picking of my research journey here created space to explore Indigenous autoethnography and kinship-based research specific to my Métis community. Fostering the relations between my thesis, writing, analysis, and my community requires delicate balance; using Indigenous autoethnography, I outline my subjectivities, biases, and relationships that define me and how I have changed throughout my research. My lived experiences and self-reflexivity allowed me to build a strong relationship with my research. My methodological framework then captures aspects of community care I witnessed and participated in. In the early days of my time in Buttertown, I picked plentiful saskatoon berries with my family. Since this was a staple task and the berries were huge and flavourful, saskatoon berry picking defined my Indigenous methodology through metaphor. While sharing my northern 17 Youth camps are an important part of reconnecting young people to their cultures in the north and where I connected with kin and Métis culture myself. 97 experiences of visiting and reconnecting with Shawn Wilson, he helped me find the parallels between the berry picking process and my Indigenous research approach. Indigenous methodological metaphor creates a practical and relatable literacy that expands beyond conventional academic audiences; saskatoon berry picking discourse is more relevant for my community than academic jargon. Naming my research approach and values paved the way for the mechanics of my methodology—my research methods. The utilized methods included visiting for kinship fostering (in the semi-structured interviews and talking circle). The method of visiting transcends the conventional (or colonial) perception of passive visiting. This research project considers visiting an active, intergenerational learning environment and kinship nurturing space. While the visiting within the interviews and talking circle was invaluable, visiting moments outside the research scope are the most enriching because they did not abide by research questions or prompts. The natural flow of conversational visiting allows the subject matter to go where the visitors need it to in that space and time. In the talking circle, there was more visiting with the Berry Pickers than the semi-structured interviews because it included three community members, and the Berry Pickers scaffolded and built dialogue together. In this dialogue, we collectively considered Buttertown futurisms and potential research outcomes. Moon time education beyond women’s circles is essential. The conversations in the interviews and talking circle also called for men’s moon time education. Together, we imagined how these empowering teachings might combat lateral violence. Additionally, self-care can help us to better cope with stress and difficult emotions in a healthy way, rather than turning to negative coping mechanisms. Self-care is an important part of taking care of ourselves and essential for good self-esteem. However, western concepts of self-care are typically utilized to encourage people to continue to contribute to the capitalistic workforce and not for their wholistic wellbeing (Hersey 2022). As discussed in the talking circle, self-care encompasses fostering relations to the land and community. 6.2 Research Outcomes This thesis is the stories of Métis women, me included, that provide new insights into the interconnections between place, kinship, care, and women’s teachings, such as moon time, for future generations’ positive body image and wellbeing. Guided by the research questions, these new insights are outlined through Chapters Three, Four, and Five. Throughout this thesis, I 98 questioned how colonial ideologies of the menstrual cycle, or moon time affected Métis youth and women’s body images and their connection journey to moon time in Buttertown. In Chapter Three, the first bloom on Câpân’s tablecloth, I unpacked how Métis youth and women connect to Buttertown. This chapter sets the tone for the thesis because it situates Buttertown and provides context as to why place became a coded theme for the data analysis. The past Métis women of Buttertown left a strong legacy that allows present Métis youth and women to connect to Buttertown through the land and visiting. In Buttertown, there are few moon time teachings, but there are nuances within the everyday practices that are the teachings lingering, resurging and, waiting to be brought into circulation again. Moon time is part of broader women’s teachings that Buttertown women hope to learn and share to improve self-esteem and body image for our women, youth, and generations to come, according to transcript data analysis from the research instruments. Knowing ourselves, our identities, and our bodies is essential for self-esteem and body image. There are parallels in knowing Métis women’s teachings and asserting land sovereignty in Buttertown. In Chapter Four, I discuss how shame and colonialism create strategic knowledge gaps in women’s teachings because body sovereignty connects to land sovereignty through Foucault’s (2008; 2007; 2003; 1990) theoretical frameworks. Therefore, returning to moon time teachings and other women’s teachings enacts Indigenous women’s body sovereignty and decolonizes how we perceive our bodies. To own ourselves as Métis people includes owning and knowing our bodies. In turn, we practice land sovereignty in our homelands. This is important because the homelands are where we dream up the future of Buttertown and those yet to come. In Chapter Five, we collectively visioned and dreamed futurisms for Buttertown and future generations. The Métis women of the past, our ancestors, dreamt for the betterment of our lives, and as future ancestors, we do the same for those yet to come. In the talking circle, Métis women community members came together to think up ways we can bring youth back to Buttertown and tell our own stories without colonial narratives taking up undue space within our homelands. Through these visions and dreams, I hope this thesis provides tangible co-created outcomes for the Métis community of Buttertown through program creation, as a resource for grant writing, and to help continue the conversations around moon time teachings, women’s teachings, gathering shareable stories, and supporting women and youth’s body images. 99 6.3 Key Take Aways: Coming Back to Câpân’s Embroidered Tablecloth My master’s research called me back home to the north in Buttertown, but I wished to stay longer because of the big auntie laughs and togetherness that made me feel at home. I am at peace when out on the land with my kin, knowing that my ancestors knew and loved this same land since time immemorial and since some paddled down the Peace River. Returning to my ancestral Métis homelands is the most grounding experience I have ever had the privilege of knowing and feeling. Picking wild mint at a sacred summer camp with aunties surrounded by cattails and sandhill pipers is something I never knew I needed so deeply. I never knew picking saskatoons with my cousins in the bush could be regenerative. Even though I did not spend much time on this land growing up, she remembered me and showed me unconditional love. I am eternally grateful for the love I received from the land and my family. Returning to my Métis homelands created a memorable summer bonding with the Métis women around Buttertown. While this project came to fruition through academic realms, I realized I wanted it to be a love letter to my community and the women who shared their lived experiences and insights. Our women have always been powerful beings, and women’s teachings instill body confidence and self-esteem in youth. While there are many trauma stories shared, there are just as many love-based and humorous stories as well. All Berry Pickers noted their experiences with the menstrual taboo that stemmed from colonial ideologies and institutions. Those who grew up closely connected to their culture generously shared their different menstruation experiences grounded in respect. Through shame and menstrual taboos, Buttertown women and youth experienced a disruption to moon time teachings; however, community members are interested to learn more for future generations. Berry Pickers are dreaming up the future, which reflects how women are bringing us back together and grounding us in our home territories. Métis women’s teachings and perspectives about the body and spiritual self must continue—youth and forthcoming generations depend on future ancestors’ work. Thank you, maarsii,18 for sitting at the table for this visit across my Câpân’s tablecloth with my fellow Berry Pickers and invaluable Indigenous scholars. 18 Thank you in Southern Heritage Michif. 100 Appendix 1 101 102 Bibliography Absolon (Minogiizhigokwe), Kathleen E. 2022. Kaandossiwin How We Come to Know: Indigenous Re-Search Methodologies. Second. Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing. Adese, Jennifer, and Chris Andersen. 2021. A People and a Nation: New Directions in Contemporary Métis Studies. Vancouver: UBC Press. http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2751679&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Agamben, Giorgrio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Standford, CA: Stanford University Press. Anderson, Kim. 2000. A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Women’s Issues Publishing Program. Toronto: Second Story Press. ———. 2011. Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings, and Story Medicine. Winnipeg, Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press. Anderson, Kim, Maria Campbell, Christi Belcourt, and Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group. 2018. Keetsahnak: Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters. First. Book, Whole. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: The University of Alberta Press. Armstrong, Jeannette. 2019. "My Reflection of that Time." BC Studies (200): 19-301. ———. 2012. “Constructing Indigeneity: Syilx Okanagan Oraliture and Tmixwcentrism.” Dissertation, Greifswald, Germany: University of Greifswald. Auger, Monique D. 2021. “Understanding Our Past, Reclaiming Our Culture: Métis Resiliency and Connection to Land in the Face of Colonialism.” Journal of Indigenous Social Development 10 (1): 1–28. Baldy, Cutcha Risling. 2017. “Mini-k’iwh’e:N (For That Purpose-I Consider Things): (Re)Writing and (Re)Righting Indigenous Menstrual Practices to Intervene on Contemporary Menstrual Discourse and the Politics of Taboo.” CULTURAL STUDIES-CRITICAL METHODOLOGIES 17 (1): 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708616638695. ———. 2018. We Are Dancing for You: Native Feminisms and the Revitalization of Women’s Coming-of-Age Ceremonies. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295743448/we-are-dancing-for-you. 103 ———. 2020. “Honoring Women: Reclaiming Coming of Age Ceremony.” Presented at the Indigenous Forum 2019, March 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo0jgFCsHNE&list=PLoIAsoaRe01SSIRmsApvetYOSu1yaoVLl&index=16. Barker, Joanne, ed. 2017. Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Battiste, Marie Ann, and James Youngblood Henderson. 2000. Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge. Purich’s Aboriginal Issues Series. Saskatoon: Purich Publishing. http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=608814&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Battiste, Marie. 2005. “Indigenous Knowledge: Foundations for First Nations”. WINHEC: International Journal of Indigenous Education Scholarship 1 (2005): 1-17. https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/winhec/article/view/19251. Belcourt, Christi, and Tanya Kappo, dirs. 2023. “Nôtokwêw Pônkiyokêwin: Indigenous Centred Menopause.” YouTube: YouTube. bell hooks. 2000. All about Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow. Cajete, Gregory. 1995. Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishing. Capra, Fritjof, and Pierre Luigi Luisi. 2014. Capra, Fritjof and P. L. Luisi. The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chacaby, Maya Ode’amik. 2018. “(The Missing Chapter) On Being Missing.” In Keetsahnak: Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters, 125–43. Edmonton, Alberta: The University of Alberta Press. Chartrand, Larry N., Tricia E. Logan, and Judy D. Daniels. 2006. Métis History and Experience and Residential Schools in Canada. Ottawa, Ontario: Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Chrisler, Joan C. 2013. “Teaching Taboo Topics: Menstruation, Menopause, and the Psychology of Women.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 31 (1): 128–32. Chrisler, Joan C., Maria Luisa Marván, Jennifer A. Gorman, and Meghan Rossini. 2015. “Body Appreciation and Attitudes toward Menstruation.” Body Image 12 (January): 78–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2014.10.003. 104 Clarke, Erin. 2021. “Indigenous Women and the Risk of Reproductive Healthcare: Forced Sterilization, Genocide, and Contemporary Population Control.” Journal of Human Rights and Social Work 6 (1): 144–47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41134-020-00139-9. Deerchild, Rosanna, and Kim Wheeler. n.d. “Matriarchs.” Auntie Up! Accessed September 18, 2022. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3lPDbXKErQtDtz4MwlJeIc?si=V3e4RNolTM-gdnaedsX56A. Dorion, Leah. 2010. “Opikinawasowin: The Life Long Process of Growing Cree and Metis Children.” Athabasca, Alberta: University of Athabasca. https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/13768.Dorion_traditional_child_rearing_2010_GDI.pdf. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: McClurg. Episkenew, Jo-Ann. 2009. Taking Back our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Epps, Patience. 2018. “Contrasting Linguistic Ecologies: Indigenous and Colonially Mediated Language Contact in Northwest Amazonia.” Language & Communication 62. Erickson, Paul A., and Liam D. Murphy. 2013. Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Evans, Peter. 2000. “Fighting Marginalization with Transnational Networks: Counter-Hegemonic Globalization” Contemporary Sociology 29 (1): 230-241. Farrell Racette, Sherry. 2022. “Kitchen Table and Beads: Space and Gesture in Contemplative and Creative Research.” In The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada, edited by Heather Igloliorte and Carla Taunton, 7. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003014256. Ferguson, Theresa A. 2008. “The Lizottes of Fort Vermilion and the Pre-1900 Evolution of a Metis Community. - Free Online Library.” 2008. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Lizottes+of+Fort+Vermilion+and+the+pre-1900+evolution+of+a+Metis...-a0233502915. Finney, Sandrina de. 2017. “Indigenous Girls’ Resilience in Settler States: Honouring Body and Land Sovereignty.” Agenda 31 (2): 21. Fiske, Jo-Anne. 1991. “Colonization and the Decline of Women’s Status: The Tsimshian Case.” Feminist Studies 17 (3): 509–35. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178288. 105 Flaminio, Anna Corrigal, Janice Cindy Gaudet, and Leah Marie Dorion. 2020. “Métis Women Gathering: Visiting Together and Voicing Wellness for Ourselves.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 16 (1): 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180120903499. Fort Vermilion People: In Our Vast Trading North 1788-1988. 1992. Fort Vermilion: Fort Vermilion District Bicentennial Association. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History Of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol. 1. New York, New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ———. 2003. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976. Vol. 5. 13 vols. New York: Picador. ———. 2007. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977--1978. Vol. 6. New York: Picador. ———. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics, Lectures at the College de France, 1978-89. Translated by Graham Burchell. Palgrave Macmillan. Freidenfelds, Lara. 2009. The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. https://muse-jhu-edu.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/book/3444. Gaard, Greta. 2015. “Indigenous Women, Feminism, and the Environmental Humanities.” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 1 (3): 86-99. https://doi.org/10.5250/resilience.1.3.007. Galtung, Johan. 1969. “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research 6 (3): 167–91. Gaudet, Janice, Leah Dorion, and Anna Corrigal Flaminio. 2020. “Exploring the Effectiveness of Métis Women’s Research Methodology and Methods: Promising Wellness Research Practices.” First Peoples Child & Family Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Honouring the Voices, Perspectives, and Knowledges of First Peoples 15 (1): 12–26. https://doi.org/10.7202/1068360ar. Gaudet, Janice Cindy. 2019. “Keeoukaywin: The Visiting Way - Fostering an Indigenous Research Methodology.” Aboriginal Policy Studies 7 (2). https://doi.org/10.5663/aps.v7i2.29336. ———. 2018. Moon Time Prayer. MotherButterfly Books. 106 Gaudet, Janice Cindy, and Lawrence Martin/Wapistan. 2017. “Learning Through Conversation: An Inquiry into Shame.” In Power through Testimony: Reframing Residential Schools in the Age of Reconciliation, edited by Brieg Capitaine and Karine Vanthuyne, 252. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Gaudet, Janice Cindy, and Diane Caron-Bourbonnais. 2015. “It’s in Our Blood: Indigenous Women’s Knowledge as a Critical Path to Women’s Well-Being.” AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 11 (2): 164–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/117718011501100206. Green, Joyce A., ed. 2017. Making Space for Indigenous Feminism. Second edition. Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing. Hamilton, Elizabeth C. (2017). Afrofuturism and the Technologies of Survival. African Arts, 50(4), 18–23. https://doi.org/10.1162/ AFAR_a_00371. Harris, John, and Vicky White. 2018. A Dictionary of Social Work and Social Care. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Hersey, Tricia. 2022. Rest Is Resistance. 1st ed. Boston, Massachusetts: Little Brown Spark. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/tricia-hersey/rest-is-resistance/9780316365536/. “Itwêwina: The Online Cree Dictionary.” 2019. Itwêwina: The Online Cree Dictionary. 2019. https://itwewina.altlab.app/. Jacobs, Beverly. 2018. “Honouring Women.” In Keetsahnak: Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters, 17–34. Edmonton, Alberta: The University of Alberta Press. Jobin, Shalene. 2016. “Double Consciousness and Nehiyawak (Cree) Perspectives: Reclaiming Indigenous Women’s Knowledge.” In Living on the Land: Indigenous Women’s Understanding of Place, edited by Nathalie Kermoal and Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez. Edmonton, Alberta: Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771990417.01. Justice, Daniel Heath. 2018. Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Kelm, Mary-Ellen. 1998. Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in British Columbia 1900-1950. Vancouver, CA: UBC Press. 107 Kermoal, Nathalie, and Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez, eds. 2016. Living on the Land: Indigenous Women’s Understanding of Place. Edmonton, Alberta: Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771990417.01. Kovach, Margaret. 2021. Indigenous Methodologies : Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts. Second. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division. http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=682652&site=ehost-live&scope=site. Kress, Margaret. 2014. “Sasipihkeyihtamowin: Niso Nehiyaw Iskwewak.(Ecofeminism and Indigenous Women).” Canadian Woman Studies 31 (1): 52-63. Krook, Mona Lena. 2020. “Continuum of Violence.” In Violence against Women in Politics, edited by Mona Lena Krook, 115–24. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190088460.003.0011. Krznaric, Roman. 2020. The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking. New York, NY: The Experiment. Lawrence, Mary B. 2008. “Wilderness Outpost: The Fort Vermilion Memoir of Mary B. Lawrence, 1898-1907.” Edited by Marilee Cranna Toews. Alberta History 56 (3): 26. Leason, Jennifer. 2021. “Forced and Coerced Sterilization of Indigenous Women.” Official Publication of the College of Family Physicians of Canada 67 (7): 525–27. https://doi.org/10.46747/cfp.6707525. MacDougall, Brenda. 2006. “Wahkootowin : Family and Cultural Identity in Northwestern Saskatchewan Metis.” The Canadian Historical Review 87 (3): 431–462. https://doi.org/10.1353/CAN.2006.0082. ———. 2010. One of the Family: Metis Culture in the Nineteeth-Century Northwestern Saskatchewan. Vancouver, British Columbia: UBC Press. ———. 2017. “Land, Family and Identity: Contextualizing Metis Health and Well-Being,” 32. MacDougall, Brenda, Nichole St-Onge, and Carolyn Podruchny. 2012. Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility, and History. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. Mair, Charles. 1999. Through the Mackenzie Basin: An Account of the Signing of Treaty No. 8 and the Scrip Commission, 1899. Edited by David W. Leonard and Brian Calliou. 108 Manuel, Arthur, Naomi Klein, and Grand Chief Ronald M. Derrickson. 2015. Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call. Toronto, Ontario: Between the Lines. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ubc/detail.action?docID=4789771. Maracle, Lee. 1996. I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism. 2nd ed. Vancouver, BC: Press Gang Publishers. Marker, Michael. 2018. “There Is No Place of Nature; There Is Only the Nature of Place: Animate Landscapes as Methodology for Inquiry in the Coast Salish Territory.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 31 (6): 453-464. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2018.1430391. Martin, Emily. 2001. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. 2nd ed. Boston: Beacon Press. Matters, Samantha. 2019. “Strategic Foresight in Métis Communities: Lessons from Indigenous Futurism.” MRP, Toronto, Ontario: OCAD University. https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/2804/. McDonald, Fiona P., and Hanna M. Paul. 2021. “Collaboration in Virtual Environments: Honouring the Métis Method of Visiting.” Anthropologica 63 (1): 1-16. https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica6312021351. McHugh, Tara-Leigh F., Angela M. Coppola, and Catherine M. Sabiston. 2014. “‘I’m Thankful for Being Native and My Body Is Part of That’: The Body Pride Experiences of Young Aboriginal Women in Canada.” Body Image 11 (3): 318–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2014.05.004. McKay, Marlene. 2019. Forbidden Fruit: Engaging an Indigenous Feminist Lens as an Nehinaw Iskwew. Book, Whole. Vernon, British Columbia: J. Charlton Publishing Ltd. Métis Centre National Aboriginal Health Organization. 2020. “Principles of Ethical Métis Research.” National Aboriginal Health Organization. Métis Nation of Alberta. 2004. “Métis Memories of Residential Schools: A Testament to the Strength of the Métis.” Edmonton: Métis Nation of Alberta. Million, Dian. 2009. “Felt Theory: An Indigenous Feminist Approach to Affect and History.” Wicazo Sa Review 24 (2): 53–76. Milloy, John S. 2017. A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System. Vol. 11. Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press. 109 Mitchell, Elder Eric. 2019. Elders Smudge Circle. Indigenous Programs and Services. Kelowna, British Columbia. Mitchell, Sherri L. 2018. Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books. MNA Nation Constitution Commission. 2022. “Otimpemisiwak Métis Government Constitution.” Mwanza, Daliso William Chikwenya. 2022. “Black Prairie Leisure: An Ethnography on Rest and Leisure Freedom in Alberta, Canada.” Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), University of British Columbia. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0418429. Nadar, Sarojini. 2014. “Lessons from Black 2 Feminist Epistemology.” In The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Feminism. Routledge. National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Canada), Marion Buller, Michèle Audette, Brian Eyolfson, and Qajaq Robinson. 2019. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/. Ngunjiri, Faith Wambura, Kathy-Ann C. Hernandez, and Heewon Chang. 2010. “Living Autoethnography: Connecting Life and Research.” Journal of Research Practice 6 (1): 1-17. http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/241/186. Pedersen, Jeannette Somlak, Lorraine Halinka Malcoe, and Jane Pulkingham. 2013. “Explaining Aboriginal/Non-Aboriginal Inequalities in Postseparation Violence Against Canadian Women: Application of a Structural Violence Approach.” SAGE Journals, Violence Against Women, 19 (8): 1034–1058. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801213499245. Rutherdale, Myra. 2003. Women and the White Man’s God: Gender and Race in the Canadian Mission Field. Vancouver: UBC Press. Shail, Andrew, and Gillian Howie, eds. 2005. Menstruation: A Cultural History. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Simpson, Audra. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376781. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 1999. “On Tricky Ground.” The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research 3: 85–107. 110 Statistics Canada’s Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics. 2021. “Gender Results Framework: Data Table on the Representation of Men and Women in First Nations Band Councils and Chiefs in First Nations Communities in Canada, 2019.” Canada: Government of Canada. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/210413/dq210413f-eng.htm. Stoler, Laura Ann. 1995. “Placing Race in the History of Sexuality.” In Race and the Education of Desire, 19–54. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Strong, Myron T., and Chaplin, Kenneth S. 2019. “Afrofuturism and Black Panther.” Contexts, 18(2), 58–59. Supernant, Kisha. 2022. “The Truth Before Reconciliation: The Role of Archeology in Restorative Justice in Canada.” Presented at the Collaborative + Experimental Ethnography Lab Public Anthropology Speaker Series, Kelowna, BC. https://www.ce2lab.org/experimentsevents#/public-anthropology-speaker-series/. TallBear, Kim. 2014. “Standing With and Speaking as Faith: A Feminist-Indigenous Approach to Inquiry.” Journal of Research Practice 10 (2): 1-7. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2230947090/abstract/2E57E16B7B4329PQ/1. Tamez, Margo. 2010. “Restoring Lipan Apache Women’s Laws, Lands, and Strength in El Calaboz Ranchería at the Texas‐Mexico Border.” Signs 35 (3): 558–69. https://doi.org/10.1086/649053. Tatz, Colin Martin. 2005. Aboriginal Suicide Is Different: A Portrait of Life and Self-Destruction. 2nd ed. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Report Series. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. Teillet, Jean. 2019. The North-West Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel’s People, the Métis Nation. Toronto, ON: Patrick Crean Editions. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action.” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. http://trc.ca/assets/pdf/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf. UN General Assembly, ed. 2007. “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Resolution / Adopted by the General Assembly.” UN General Assemby. https://www.refworld.org/docid/471355a82.html. 111 Vowel, Chelsea. 2016. Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada. Winnipeg: Portage & Main Press. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ubc/detail.action?docID=4832580. Whitinui, Paul. 2014. “Indigenous Autoethnography: Exploring, Engaging, and Experiencing ‘Self’ as a Native Method of Inquiry.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 43 (4): 456–87. Wilk, Poitr, Alana Maltby, and Martin Cooke. 2017. “Residential Schools and the Effects on Indigenous Health and Well-Being in Canada—a Scoping Review.” BioMed Central, Public Health Reviews, 38 (1): 1–23. Wilson, Shawn. 2008. Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Halifax: Fernwood Pub. Windchief, Sweeney. 2018. “Chapter 6. Stealing Horses: Indigenous Student Metaphors for Success in Graduate Education.” In Reclaiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education, edited by Robin Starr Minthorn and Heather J. Shotton, 76–87. Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813588728-008. Zinga, Dawn, and Sandra Styres. 2013. “Coming Full Circle: Looking to Grandmother Moon.” Canadian Journal of Education / Revue Canadienne de l’éducation 36 (2): 313–17.
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Interdisciplinary Studies
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Legault, Gabrielle Monique
McDonald, Fiona P., 1980-
Sharing Métis women’s stories about moon time and colonial body shame through visiting and berry picking in Buttertown, Alberta
Text