Mapping Geographies of Violence Against Indigenous Peoples & for Self-Determined, Safe Indigenous Futurities

Abstract

This dissertation includes an introductory prologue essay, with six appendices. While the six appendices to this essay join together chronologically to tell a story of my experiences and contributions as a scholar, they also can be woven together in a different way, which reveals three areas of work that come together in their own narrative. This narrative traces my efforts to (1) identify, challenge, and break free from colonial violence in data and cartography (especially in regards to violence against Indigenous women and girls); (2) reclaim, name, and reimagine Indigenous cartographic praxes and why they matter; and (3) reflect on self-determined storytelling through cartography and geography as an Indigenous survivor striving towards a future free from violence for myself and my people. In this sense, broadly, my work has focused on addressing the problem (colonizing spatial practices in response to and responsible for violence against Indigenous people), what can fix it (applying and upholding our rights as Indigenous peoples in mapping our stories and geographies), and offering a solution by experimenting with what self-determined, anticolonial Indigenous geography can look like. All of this was done with the intent of transitioning from anti- to de- colonial work in the future: instead of dismantling, challenging, or disrupting colonial geographies of violence, creating our own self-determined, sovereign geographies of safety and healing.