leanne betasamosake simpson as we have always done

Colonial unknowing establishes what can count as evidence, proof, or possibility-aiming to secure the terms of reason and reasonableness-as much as it works to dissociate and ignore. In this essay, the issue co-editors theorize colonial unknowing as a practice that endeavors to render unintelligible the entanglements of racialization and colonization, and as a means of occluding the mutable historicity of colonial structures and attributing finality to conquest and dispossession. This is the introductory essay to the 'On Colonial Unknowing' special issue of Theory & Event. Keywords: Anishinaabe, leadership, zagaswediwin, resurgence, governance, anthrozoology, Indigenous Diplomacy, ogimaawiwin, doodemag, clan system. Lastly, I contextualize these practices within the embedded practices of a migratory kinship diplomacy.

I relate Anishinaabeg stories to Anishinaabeg scholar’s engagement with ethnohistorical literature on the clan system and the Midewiwin to situate the practice of council within the multipolar nature of the Anishinaabeg social formation.

Within this analysis I foreground the role of the council form as the venue for interspecies communication and collaboration in both Anishinaabeg stories and the historical record. From the perspective of my survey of the Anishinaabeg resurgence literature I conclude that these sources point towards Anishinaabeg leaders renewing their engagement with animal nations as a potential route for re-establishing an Anishinaabeg-led grounded normativity across Anishinaabewaki. In this thesis I argue that engagement with animal nations to remake the world is an embedded practice of Anishinaabeg stories.

Leanne betasamosake simpson as we have always done