Treaties: The symbiotic connection between land and body sovereignty, an exploration into re-presencing Indigenous epistemologies to re-story sovereignty

Abstract

A central claim of this thesis is to illumine the innate connection between land, body, and treaty sovereignty. In this thesis, I will argue that the land and the female body are innately tethered to one another through a reciprocal relationship bound by Anishinaabe epistemologies. A primary purpose of this thesis to demonstrate the interconnectivity between body and the more-than human world which are tethered to treaties and sovereignty. Through this exploration, I offer pathways of possibility to re-presence Anishinaabe epistemologies to re-story the narrative of sovereignty. This thesis will illustrate that epistemic violence has contributed to the exclusion of Anishinaabe knowledge’s which obstructs the relationality between land, body, and treaty sovereignty. Anishinaabe epistemologies can be repositioned to refute settler colonial infringement and reject the states exercise of their borrowed sovereignty which undermines the autonomous nation-to-nation relationship entrenched within treaties between Indigenous Peoples and the Crown within Canada. This research supports the repositioning of Indigenous Peoples and land-based epistemologies to illumine the ways in which Indigenous Peoples can continue to revitalize and reject colonial heteropatriarchy and land usurpation. By grounding my thesis between the relations of the feminine body and the land it refuses the dismissal of nature as a living entity and re-story’s relationality. Rejecting the systemic institutional dispossession of Indigenous epistemologies and sovereignties is essential for Indigenous futurities to reclaim presence and re-story sovereignty.