Mapping Out a Liberatory Praxis of Homeplace and Indigenous Literatures

To map out a pedagogical juncture of bell hooks's feminist theory of homeplace and Indigenous maternal pedagogies, I begin by describing hooks's theory of homeplace as a space of resistance and renewal. I then share an overview of Indigenous experiences of homeplace within the context of the ongoing history of genocide on Turtle Island and persistent colonial violence. This is followed by sharing the “grandmother's place” as an example of community organizing that fosters intellectual spaces of resistance and renewal. I then discuss finding homeplace in Indigenous literatures by sharing a genealogy of Indigenous women's literature for feminist praxis. This extends into a conversation about Indigenous literatures as theorizing tools for engaging social change, and I offer examples of how I engage homeplace as liberatory praxis for teaching Indigenous women's literatures. To bring this work full circle, I offer this Indigenous perspective of homeplace as intentional work toward imagining Indigenous futurities. My commitment to enacting liberatory pedagogical praxis rests in fostering a homeplace in academic settings by extending the lessons gleaned from Indigenous literatures. Indeed, theorizing about and enacting homeplace provides the basis for liberatory practice in the classroom, specifically through critical engagement with Indigenous literatures. This involves bringing hooks's work on homeplace into conversation with Indigenous literatures—specifically those that share and interrogate ideas of home (Campbell Reference Campbell1973/2019; Brant Reference Brant1997; Maracle and Laronde Reference Maracle and Laronde2000)—to highlight Indigenous experiences of homeplace and showcase the ways in which Indigenous women have also created safe spaces for renewal and self-recovery amid racialized, sexualized and gender-based violence.

Aligning with my praxis of Indigenous maternal pedagogies, this article is presented in a style that moves away from traditional academic writing aesthetics (Graveline Reference Graveline1998). Following Indigenous literary aesthetics and Indigenous pedagogical approaches to academic writing (Justice Reference Justice2018) is common within Indigenous women's literatures as we journey and mark our “home” in academia by charting new, albeit familiar, pathways for theorizing violence and oppression. This work, then, follows a tradition of presenting narrative and creative artifacts to imagine change and call for safer “homes” behind closed doors, and within the communities that have become our homes. I thread snapshots describing memories of homeplace throughout this article to give a deeper sense of the sacredness of the homeplace and glimpses into the meaning of home that exists in the hearts of those who long for home, who are removed from home, and who are seeking to reconcile the notion of home. Finally, connecting this work with liberatory pedagogical praxis fosters a site to establish homeplace and empower students to engage in the kind of work that recreates the home and advocates for safer homes, schools, and communities.

Homeplace: A Space of Resistance, Renewal, and Self-recovery

hooks presents a theory of homeplace by drawing on the experiences of Black women within the context of racial oppression and sexist domination. Homeplace is defined as a safe place for renewal and self-recovery, but it is primarily described as a site of resistance:

As hooks expressed, love and respect for self could not be learned in the culture of white supremacy, thus homeplace took place behind closed doors where there was an opportunity for nurturing and a place “where we can heal our wounds and become whole” (277). Indeed, this notion of homeplace has deep historical roots connected to a troubling past of slavery, segregation, and colonial violence.

Thus, homeplace existed as more than a safe place of refuge; homeplace was also about envisioning a future of liberation.

hooks shares her work on homeplace by presenting snapshots of particular moments by looking into the histories that have characterized the construction of a safe gathering space for healing, wellness, love, and nurturing. As an example, hooks recalls the stories told of Black women who nurtured and cared for white families, longing to have energy for their own families. By drawing on some of these stories, hooks reminds us that for some families, the act of creating homeplace became a connection between mother and child to the extent to which mothers were in the home. In some cases, the homeplace connection was only possible in the wee hours of the night when Black women were home for short periods of rest before returning to their roles as homemakers in the homes of white women. It was during these few hours of rest that they could hold their children as they slept. Establishing homeplace was not easy within the context of slavery and the years that followed. It is arguably challenging for many Black families today given the social, political, and economic climates that continue to benefit a society that hooks refers to as a “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks Reference hooks1984, 51).

Within the lens of these historical and contemporary realities, hooks's work takes on deeper meaning as she writes about the longing for the energy to establish homeplace and the efforts involved in reserving, or finding within, that energy to offer their own children:

Historically, the mobilizing and gathering of individuals who resist oppression and domination and call for freedom face ongoing attacks. It was not only strategic, then, but also necessary that homeplace took place behind closed doors and has become threaded into revolutionary mothering practices (Mogadime Reference Mogadime2000; Simpson Reference Simpson, Memee Lavell-Harvard and Lavell2006; Gumbs Reference Gumbs, Gumbs, Martins and Williams2016; Brant Reference Brant, Hallstein, O'Reilly and Giles2019).

To bring hooks's work full circle, it is important to consider ongoing attacks on homeplace since it serves to threaten the status quo. Indeed, many who now call these lands home are beneficiaries of the sexist and racist domination of families and communities displaced by settler colonialism. Thus, as hooks articulated:

As hooks articulated, “domestic space has been a crucial site for organizing, for forming political solidarity” (271). Homeplace is thus more than a physical space but also an intellectual and spiritual site for holistic well-being (Brant Reference Brant2017). As a site for radical mothering, homeplace is also intergenerational (Gumbs Reference Gumbs, Gumbs, Martins and Williams2016). Thus, this work extends Haudenosaunee teachings of looking forward to the next seven generations and creating healthy homes and communities for the coming faces.

An Indigenous Perspective of Homeplace

Indigenous women have also had to create safe spaces of resistance intended to nurture and bring wholeness to their families and communities in response to ongoing genocidal attacks. The Indian Act of Canada, a policy that inspired racial apartheid in South Africa (Talaga Reference Talaga2017), advanced strict policies of assimilation that controlled the everyday lives of Indigenous peoples, and interfered with family and social structures. This involved forced relocation to reserve lands, removal of children who were placed in residential schools and subject to multiple forms of abuse, and ongoing interference through family and children's services. The Indian Act and its associated legislated policies continue to interfere and separate Indigenous families today (Blackstock Reference Blackstock, Kufeldt and McKenzie2003). From health care to education and human services, this act still governs the everyday lives of Indigenous peoples in Canada who are still legally defined as “Indians.” Although recent amendments to the act have addressed sex-based discrimination, the act still exists as a racist piece of legislation and arguably a contemporary form of segregation.

It is important to consider that when children were removed from communities and placed in residential schools, foster care, and detention facilities, opportunities to create physical homeplaces were not always available. Indigenous women had to find other ways of providing sources for renewal and self-recovery. Cultural practices were legally prohibited as a way to control and assimilate, but they were carried in the hearts of mothers and grandmothers and creatively passed on to younger generations for the survival of Indigenous nations. It is important to understand homeplace as an intentional orientation for resisting violence and calling for liberation rather than a physical structure. hooks reminds us that homeplace is a transitional site; I extend this into spiritual and intellectual realms. Attending to the transitional nature of homeplace, cultural traditions were practiced secretly and in some cases out in the bush and on the land. Indigenous women, aunties, and grandmothers held onto traditions such as “coming of age” and “rites of passage” ceremonies despite the harsh colonial realities that continually attacked Indigenous families (Brant Reference Brant2014). Because of the fierce and radical love of Indigenous grandmothers, aunties, and mothers, our traditions have survived years of genocidal and colonial attacks. These women persisted as cultural carriers to ensure that our most sacred traditions could be revived today. This is not a seamless process, but I raise the idea here as an intergenerational survivor of the aforementioned colonial attacks on my Indigenous relations. The continued work toward marking out pathways of resistance and renewal aligns with this vision as a journey toward homeplace.

The silent place where Indigenous maternal traditions were held and nurtured has also served as a site of resistance. The continuity of these traditions demonstrates the deep love the women expressed for future generations. Today many young Indigenous families are unconnected to these traditions; they are trying to mark their own journeys back home. This work also honors these Indigenous women, aunties, and grandmothers who went to great lengths to plant seeds of renewal and make space for remembrance. Indeed, as hooks wrote, “The act of remembrance is a conscious gesture honoring their struggle, their effort to keep something for their own” (hooks Reference hooks and O'Reilly2007, 267).

As Indigenous communities continue to face racialized and sexualized violence, especially at the hands of authorities, resistance fuels solidarity work and mobilizing efforts. Ongoing genocidal attacks have been largely on women—through practices that remove thier right to choose mothering by physically birthing or raising up younger generations of Indigenous peoples. In Canada, we continue to see these attacks, with recent cases of coerced sterilization, birth evacuation, and the troubling practice of birth alerts.Footnote ¹ Indeed, the Indigenous home and family unit is still under attack by genocidal practices. When we consider these attacks on Indigenous women, the meaning of the Cheyenne proverb “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground” becomes strikingly clear (Lavell-Harvard and Corbiere Lavell Reference Lavell-Harvard and Lavell2006). Yet we are still here; our survival is rooted in the creative acts of resistance of Indigenous mothers, aunties, and grandmothers who physically, politically, and spiritually continue to birth the nation. These creative acts of survival and resistance give life to the community (Anderson Reference Anderson and O'Reilly2007) despite forced sterilization, ongoing racism and sexism, and continual interference in the homes and lives of Indigenous families. Thus, Indigenous women enact intellectual and spiritual homeplaces through creative acts of resistance and renewal expressed in our writing. As Beth Brant articulated, “these fruits feed our communities. These flowers give us survival tools” (Brant Reference Brant1994, 9). Indeed, Indigenous women's literature “does become the Good Medicine that is necessary to our continuation into wholeness” (13).

Finding Homeplace at “The Grandmother's Place”

The efforts to find homeplace are ongoing in Indigenous community work and writings. This is evident in the lifelong work of Maria Campbell, author of Halfbreed, a beautifully written and powerful memoir that carries with it the gift of homeplace. Halfbreed was first published in 1973 and is well known as one of the first Indigenous-authored books that inspired an Indigenous literary movement. The connections of Campbell's lifelong work to a spiritual and physical homeplace are eloquently reflected in Halfbreed. Campbell's literary legacy itself offers homeplace for generations of Indigenous folx whose experiences are reflected in the memoir. Campbell has also established a homeplace that community auntie and mentor Kim Anderson describes as “the grandmother's place”; a physical and spiritual gathering place for resistance and renewal (Anderson Reference Anderson and Campbell2019). The intellectual and community work imagined at “the grandmother's place” extend Campbell's legacy: her writing, her role as a muse, a leader, and a community grandmother. Indeed, this work will continue to have reverberating effects on generations to come.

To offer a vivid picture of “the grandmother's place,” I turn to Anderson's words:

In this excerpt from the preface to Campbell's updated edition of Halfbreed, Anderson reflects on “the grandmother's place,” describing it as a place where Maria holds ceremony and prompts a younger generation of Indigenous women to carry on the many responsibilities of Maria's lifelong work into the future. The second edition of Halfbreed comes more than forty-five years after the first. Since then, Maria has touched the lives of many, and her work has indeed had a rippling effect, transferring well-being throughout Indigenous families and communities.

Campbell wrote Halfbreed to share what it's like to be defined as a halfbreed woman in Canada, “the joys and sorrows, the oppressing poverty, the frustrations and the dreams” (Campbell Reference Campbell1973/2019, 2). Maria's story marks the resilience of Indigenous womanhood, of overcoming racism, sexism, and colonial violence, and the power of reconnecting to cultural identity. Powerful lessons associated with the launch of the second edition of Halfbreed expose the sexual violence Campbell experienced at the hands of RCMP officers. This scene was removed from the first edition without Campbell's consent and directly highlights the ongoing issues of complicity and silence around racialized and sexualized violence against Indigenous women at the hands of police (Goodyear Reference Goodyear2018). Moreover, Campbell's lifelong work is rooted in spirit, thus offering a spiritual homeplace in her writing that transcends the physical site of the grandmother's place. Both are sites that offer a gathering space through mind, body, and spirit to resist the racist and sexist domination of Indigenous bodies and to advance healing and wellness as we come to understand how to be active agents of social change and advocate against racialized and sexualized violence and other genocidal attacks on Indigenous families. Like homeplace, “the grandmother's place” advances the kind of community work that characterizes a labor of love that merges into academic spaces (Anderson Reference Anderson2020).

Finding Homeplace within Indigenous Literatures

When I read Maracle's words, I am reminded of two powerful anthologies: A Gathering of Spirit (Brant Reference Brant1988), and Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America (Harjo and Bird Reference Harjo and Bird1998). Indeed, as Brant articulated, “writing done with a community consciousness” (Brant Reference Brant1988, 19) has led to an Indigenous literary movement that extends Indigenous philosophies with contemporary realities to transform feminist theorizing. The idea for A Gathering of Spirit was born in 1982 in the living room of Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich. During a visit to their Massachusetts home, Beth Brant asked the editors of Sinister Wisdom if they had ever considered an anthology dedicated to the writings of Indigenous women. In a similar fashion, the plans for Reinventing the Enemy's Language were solidified by a gathering of women at Lee Maracle's kitchen table in 1993. Harjo and Bird “wished the collection to be as solid as a kitchen table and imagined creating that kind of space within the pages of a book, a place where we could speak across the world intimately to each other” (Harjo and Bird Reference Harjo and Bird1998, 21). The anthology was imagined as a collective voice of Indigenous women. As Harjo and Bird explained: “To understand the direction of a society one must look toward the women who are birthing and intimately raising the next generations. We wanted to see how well we had survived the onslaught of destruction” (21). These anthologies published nearly a decade apart both serve as seminal documents of Indigenous women's writings and share the commonalities and differences among Indigenous nations, their homes, and communities. As Brant articulated:

My own liberatory pedagogical praxis is grounded in Indigenous literary traditions and continues to be informed by the work of those who contributed to the aforementioned anthologies: critical race and critical feminist scholars, particularly those who bring emancipatory literatures into their classrooms (Martin Reference Martin2009; Nixon Reference Nixon2014; Hardwick Reference Hardwick2015; Hanson Reference Hanson2017). As Brant eloquently expressed, these literatures give us survival tools, and in so doing, move us to community organizing and action; thus they are important tools for application in educational settings as well. The following words by Angelique Nixon, who specializes in Caribbean and African diaspora literatures, speaks to the power of literature that can be applied within educational settings to “move” learners to action and inspire empowered participation:

Nixon describes the value of literature as an educational tool that inspires students to think about processes of oppression and the intersections of oppression that are deeply embedded throughout social and political structures. Thus, her application of literature in the classroom promotes critical dialogue that can move students spiritually and invoke transformative emotional learning. Lorde's poetry moved her to find her voice. In the following excerpt she describes a deep connection with Lorde's poem “A Woman Speaks” (in Lorde Reference Lorde1997):

The sentiment evident in this statement resonates with my experience when I first came across the work of the late Patricia Monture-Angus, whose Thunder in My Soul: A Mohawk Woman Speaks was my first taste of Indigenous women's writing (Monture-Angus Reference Monture-Angus1995). Although her book is a collection of her own academic essays, it opened my eyes to the world of Indigenous women's literature where I have in many ways found myself, my intellectual homeplace, and inspiration for my liberatory pedagogical praxis of Indigenous maternal pedagogy. This praxis is further documented in my dissertation, which showcases the reverberating effects of Indigenous literatures on Indigenous students who also found homeplace in Indigenous literatures. Alicia Elliot has also recently expressed this experience of finding herself in the literature in her debut memoir, A Mind Spread out on the Ground, where she shares her experience of reading Simpson's work:

Nixon's and Elliot's words also resonate with those of Sabrina, one of the participants in my doctoral research. Sabrina was in my Indigenous Literatures course where I shared Lee Maracle's I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Feminism and Sociology (Maracle Reference Maracle1996). Sabrina described this as a powerful moment that ignited a flame within her. After connecting with Maracle's work, she immediately purchased her own copy and has expressed a similar experience of finding herself, her voice, and the strength to use her voice in the call for community well-being. Sabrina described this as a starting point that fueled her into community work, advocacy, and activism. Two other participants in my doctoral study, Jess and Sherry, articulated this sentiment of finding their voices. Moreover, their own work toward empowered participation (Yosso Reference Yosso2005) is exemplified in their application of classroom lessons to community organizing and publishing. As published authors in an anthology about racialized and sexualized violence against Indigenous women and girls, their contributions are helping other Indigenous women become empowered participants. Fostering homeplace in academic settings by extending Indigenous literatures as liberatory praxis “ensure[s] the flowering of this growth” (Brant Reference Brant1994, 9). Like Elliot, all three of these women articulated the feeling of finding permission to write their own stories after delving into Indigenous women's writings and used their experiences to foster this growth in other Indigenous women.

Another connection between Indigenous, Caribbean, and African diaspora literatures that is relevant to the act of finding homeplace is that of ancestral or spiritual guidance. For example, Nixon refers to Lorde as an ancestral guide and connects with her writing in a similar way to how I—and many other Indigenous women—have connected to the work of Tekahionwake Emily Pauline Johnson (Johnson Reference Johnson1892; Reference Johnson1997; see also Nixon Reference Nixon2014) and the many others whose writings now fill our bookshelves. As Beth Brant expressed, these writers have become our muses, and we carry their words with us as we engage on our own liberatory paths:

In her own writings, Brant described Pauline Johnson as a “spiritual grandmother” and ancestral guide for Indigenous women writers. Brant explained this further by noting the process of the spirits calling her to write:

This process also helps articulate the responsibilities of honoring the depths of Indigenous literatures. The writing process Brant defined is not a solitary process, rather it is a collective one. Like homeplace, writing, then, becomes a site for fostering community consciousness that is both fed by ancestral memories and spirits to feed new generations through resistance, renewal, and self-recovery (hooks Reference hooks and O'Reilly2007).

I am moved by the connection between the work of scholars who merge Caribbean and African diasporic literature into their feminist praxis in a way similar to how I merge Indigenous women's literature into my feminist praxis. Indeed, these connections mark the meeting spaces of liberatory work and showcase how the spiritual and intellectual elements of homeplace come to fruition to plant seeds of renewal within our homes, gathering spaces, and communities. The defining features of homeplace as “a site of resistance” and a safe space for “renewal and self-recovery” (hooks Reference hooks and O'Reilly2007, 272) live within these literary works that bring life into our spirits and awaken our critical consciousness. Bringing these writings into praxis through a particular pedagogical process (Hanson Reference Hanson2017) is intentionally political; for our daily lives and our spiritual, cultural, and physical existence. As Anh Hua eloquently expressed, writing is thus the intellectual weapon that promotes the possibilities for social change:

This sentiment echoes the work of Indigenous women authors such as Laguna Sioux writer Paula Gunn Allen, who said, “I came to understand that the pen is mightier than the law books, and that the image is where the action is begotten” (Allen Reference Allen, Harjo and Bird1998, 151). This is evident in the work of Brant, Maracle, and Monture-Angus along with the many others who fill my reference list and whose work I feature in this article (Brant Reference Brant1988; Reference Brant1994; Monture-Angus Reference Monture-Angus1995; Maracle Reference Maracle1996; Brant Reference Brant1997). Indigenous literatures are creating new forms of community cultural wealth (Yosso Reference Yosso2005) that resist ongoing genocidal attacks and extend powerful visions of holistic well-being that redefine homeplace on Turtle Island.

Theorizing Tools for Articulating Social Change

Beth Brant's work positions Indigenous women's literature as a place of “self-recovery” where we can imagine together our liberation and transformation (Brant Reference Brant1988; Reference Brant1994; Reference Brant1997). This is evident in her very process of putting together A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by North American Indian Women. Intending to ensure that the voices of Indigenous women who were most silenced would be heard, Brant requested contributions from everywhere she “thought there was a story to tell” (Brant Reference Brant1988, 9). She recruited entries from Indigenous women from all over Turtle Island by sending requests for submissions to Indigenous newspapers, journals, and associations, to prisons across Canada and the United States, to Indigenous women's health organizations, and to the antipsychiatry network. As Brant wrote, the intention of this far-reaching collection was to gather voices from those who could attend to complicated realities of a wide Indigenous readership. For Brant, who described herself as an uneducated, economically poor, feminist lesbian, the act of gathering spirit for the collection was both personal and political, and indeed a labor of love. Because generations of Indigenous homes, families, and kinship relations have been disrupted for generations, a vision of homeplace must include gathering the many and varied voices of Indigenous women. If we are to truly imagine liberation, we must delve into the spaces of those who have been most displaced and center their lived experiences in our work to bring wholeness back to our communities.

Beth Brant's description of Indigenous women's writing as “recovery writing” against repeated attempts of “cultural annihilation” at the hands of the “State” (Brant Reference Brant1994, 18) highlights Indigenous women's literature as a “survival tool” that serves as a weapon against colonial violence. Indigenous women's literature, then, becomes a source of homeplace itself as a powerful source of protection and spiritual medicine against the collective threat of violence. Bringing these stories into the classroom as part of an intentional liberatory praxis offers a theorizing space for articulating change.

By reading the memoirs noted throughout this article as curricular material, students whose family realities are reflected in the stories may find comforting familiarity as they come to terms with their own experiences in relation to others’. As students collectively make sense of their worlds, Indigenous women's literature fosters a pedagogical homeplace as it deepens a critical consciousness for students to understand the root of social inequities and begin to realize that education is a vehicle for social change. A developing critical consciousness involves naming the forces of oppression that have attempted “cultural annihilation” (Brant Reference Brant1994, 18). Janice Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe’s work helps students to name and identify the ideological and colonial forces of systemic racism (Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe [1995] Reference Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe2016), and the memoirs help students connect these systems to the daily lived experiences of social injustices. Tara Yosso expressed how naming these forces can lead to empowered participation:

Enacting homeplace as a liberatory praxis provides a space for students to gather medicines that empower their participation while protecting them from the need to hide their identities. I have established a safe educational homeplace where Indigenous students can follow a path toward community well-being, and non-Indigenous students can also participate by walking along this path of liberation. Homeplace is a space for all learners to express their whole selves and work to advance sociopolitical justice within the communities we call home.

Teaching Indigenous Literatures through the Lens of Homeplace

My own praxis of Indigenous maternal pedagogy fosters a pedagogical homeplace through the use of Indigenous literatures so learners can understand the colonial interferences in generations of Indigenous homes (Brant Reference Brant2017). By centering Indigenous voices through a variety of literatures and making intentional connections with contemporary realities, students are exposed to particular knowledges that will indeed fill the gaps that have arguably been left out of the predominantly colonial education of many students. As Sheila Cote-Meek articulated in Colonized Classrooms: Racism, Trauma and Resistance in Post-Secondary Education, if we “justify silence as a preferred ethical and pedagogical response,” we continue to be complicit in the colonial violence that manifests in classrooms (Cote-Meek Reference Cote-Meek2014, 34). This work then contributes to the scholarship on antiracist and decolonial praxis across education. The historical, sociopolitical, and contemporary contexts of ongoing injustices as they relate to the home and community call attention to the need for homeplace as a safe space within academic settings and communities. Such a safe space is required as classrooms themselves can be violent spaces, and educators must employ particular pedagogical strategies to move students through “difficult knowledge.” This vision of homeplace as liberatory praxis imagines and fosters spaces in classrooms for curriculum and pedagogy to attend to the difficult work our current political moment calls for. I position homeplace as a liberatory praxis that aligns with the work of educational scholars who have theorized about resistance to antiracism education (Schick and St. Denis Reference Schick and Denis2005; Cote-Meek Reference Cote-Meek2014), and offer this as one pedagogical approach to teaching antiracism and social justice (Brant Reference Brant2017).

By working intentionally with Indigenous women's literatures, students learn not only about the disruption and the despair, but also about the collective memories that highlight the beauty and illuminate the spiritual strength of homeplace. The power in these stories in relation to homeplace is in their shared connections that reflect memories of home, longing for home, disruptions of home, and visions for recreating the home. Collectively, bringing the synergies of these works to those of hooks offers an Indigenous theory of homeplace that prompts us to reimagine home and community. Teaching homeplace through Indigenous literature is fitting because the literature itself can become a homeplace, as noted above. Beyond this, approaching the literature through the lens of homeplace presents a safe curricular and mourning space (Tarc Reference Tarc2011) to understand historical and contemporary injustices. For some, this becomes a process of feeling safe within ourselves, and this can involve ceremony or other elements that bring self-renewal into the classroom. Ultimately, teaching Indigenous literatures through a shared vision of homeplace can offer theorizing tools to articulate social change.

In my courses I begin teaching homeplace as a theoretical framework by sharing hooks's work, walking students through Indigenous realities of homeplace, and prompting students to reflect on their own understandings of homeplace. Students are asked to consider external factors that have shaped their experiences of home, and connections are made from the personal to the communal. One of the first books students read is Iskwewak Kah'Ki Yaw Ni Wahkomakanak: Neither Indian Princesses nor Easy Squaws (Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe [1995] Reference Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe2016). This text documents Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe’s research into the stereotypical images of Indigenous women within mainstream literature. Through an analysis of white-Euro-Canadian-Christian-patriarchy institutions, Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe documents how literature, dominant ideologies, and policies have targeted Indigenous women and justified acts of genocide, racism, and sexism. Her work is situated alongside hooks's notion of white capitalist supremacist patriarchy to consider state disruptions of and interference with home. Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe connects her work to the ongoing acts of racism and sexism that have been ignored until very recently when Canada launched the national public inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. This book sets a pedagogical platform to move into memoirs such as Campbell's Halfbreed and Helen Knott's In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience (Campbell Reference Campbell1973/2019; Knott Reference Knott2019). Both memoirs powerfully name the forces of oppression and the cycles of despair as the authors unapologetically speak their truths and invite readers to bear witness to the ongoing racism and sexism in our own backyards.

I then encourage students to consider Indigenous experience of homeplace with attention to these themes: memories of home, longing for home, disruptions of home, and visions for recreating the home. Below, I offer a brief sense of what each of these themes might entail. For a fuller discussion, see Brant Reference Brant2017.

Theorizing Homeplace to Imagine Indigenous Futurities

This article documents homeplace as an essential element of my own liberatory pedagogical praxis that centers Indigenous worldviews, antiracist curricula, and cultural identities to promote agency, activism, and advocacy. Within the teaching and learning context, I extend hooks's work as a lens through which to teach Indigenous literatures and position the classroom as a site of resistance, renewal, and self-recovery within the context of ongoing white supremacy, racism, and colonial and epistemic violence. I offer this article on an Indigenous perspective of homeplace in honor of bell hooks's work, as an expression of solidarity with the many communities facing ongoing injustices, and as a commitment to enacting liberatory praxis that moves students to action. In the current sociopolitical climate, this work is critical in the teacher education courses I teach and offers an ethical space to articulate Black and Indigenous solidarity work that holds our institutions accountable. It is within academia that the tools for societal change can not only be imagined and articulated but actualized through a rippling effect that transcends classroom spaces outward into our social institutions, homes, and communities.

I present Indigenous women's literature as a powerful force that lends protection, perhaps spiritual medicines, against violence as it empowers women to return to their cultural identities. Indigenous women are still here! Our hearts are not on the ground! And our writings continue to plant seeds of rebirth and renewal. In this way, if we are to consider Anderson's work on life stages (Anderson Reference Anderson2011), Indigenous literature itself can be the starting point for a reader's own rite of passage to understanding an Indigenous perspective of homeplace. Thus, these are spaces that nurture Indigenous cultural identities and offer spiritual medicines as weapons against colonial violence (Brant Reference Brant1994; Hua Reference Hua2013). It is no coincidence that two of the authors, Maria Campbell and Morningstar Mercredi, whose memoirs I feature in my Indigenous literature courses were also keynote speakers at the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women's Conference held in Regina, Saskatchewan (Anderson, Kubik, and Hampton Reference Anderson, Kubik and Hampton2008). Indeed, the realities that Indigenous women write about connect Indigenous women across Turtle Island and prompt empowered dialogue that engages women in drawing from and forming renewed relations that bring us to imagine safer homes, families, and communities.

As I wrote in the introduction, homeplace exists beyond the physical structures and geographical spaces we call home and is found within the intellectual and spiritual realms of community activism, emancipatory literature, and liberatory spaces. Indeed, it is a place that exists on land and in territory, but it also exists in our psyches, in our hearts, and in our spirits. Theorizing homeplace to imagine Indigenous futurities, then, extends Indigenous women's literatures as the “fruits [that] feed our communities . . . [and the] flowers [that] give us survival tools” (Brant Reference Brant1994, 9) to imagine, dream, articulate, and create safer homes and communities. To bring this article full circle, I return to the words of Lee Maracle: