Thesis Defence: Imaginative Intimacies: An Ethnography of Black and Indigenous Relations and Place-Making on the Prairies

Savannah Kosteniuk, supervised by Dr. Fiona P. McDonald, will defend their thesis titled “Imaginative Intimacies: An Ethnography of Black and Indigenous Relations and Place-Making on the Prairies” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies – Power, Conflict, and Ideas Theme.

An abstract for Savannah Kosteniuk’s thesis is included below.

Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Please email fiona.mcdonald@ubc.ca to receive the Zoom link for this defence.

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Abstract

This thesis considers the relationship between Indigenous and Black communities in my hometown, Regina, located on Treaty Four Territory in Saskatchewan. The nuances of the relationships between Black and Indigenous communities on the Prairies in so-called Canada, in particular potential practices of co-resistance and re-imagining, has received little attention and existing scholarship outside the discipline is often theoretical and abstract. My project asks: What kind of relational intimacies are being created outside of colonially structured relationships between Black and Indigenous communities? What do “good relations” and ethical attachment to place look like in an urban context on Treaty Four Territory? To answer these questions, I focus on: (1) Black and Indigenous conceptions of place, identity, and belonging in Regina; (2) the dynamics of how relations connect to respective and collective struggles for freedom and relationality; and (3) how distinct political traditions, local lands, and histories come to bear on co-resistance and co-imagining. Focusing on two Black and Indigenous-led food-based mutual aid organizations and an Indigenous-led arts-based non-profit, I consider moments of relationality, contextualizing them within a broader socio-historic context. Bringing together Black feminist anthropological theory and praxis, Indigenous feminist theory, anticolonial, and decolonial theory, this ethnography uses traditional ethnographic methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, as well as community-based methodologies to develop a nuanced understanding of good relations.