Urbs Concrescence: nehiyaw Dreams on a Convoluted City

• Author / Creator

  Ground, Mackenzie

• This thesis examines narratives associated with the city and Indigenous people, knowledge, and culture and it then imagines the creative possibilities of new ways of being in the city. This thesis conceptualizes the beginnings of a culturally grounded Indigenous identity that flourishes in the city. I critique narratives that associate Indigenous identity as deficient and inauthentic in the city and the colonial narrative that imposes a binary of civil and the uncivil and that denies Indigenous people a sense of belonging in the city.From my research, I argue that there are Indigenous-led ways to conceptualize the city by seeing the city as animate and from the cosmological view point inherent in Indigenous spiritual practices. My primary argument on the city’s animacy centres on rocks, a living and animate being from a nehiyaw understanding, and to see these rocks as teachers to guide our relationships between other each other: human and the non-human or the more-than-human. I look at nehiyaw laws and what I understand as an ethically grounded Indigenous citizenry. I do this not to impose a spiritual viewpoint, but to see the city from an Indigenous-centred way of being in the world. In particular, I look to the round dance as a means of connecting different voices and views of the world that is also celebratory and a mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually grounding practice of moving through the world.This thesis is an experimental creative research study. There are poets who already critique the city as a space that excludes Indigenous people, but there is limited current research on the city and Indigeneity that coexists and flourishes in the city. I use my own poetry and stories to work alongside poets who struggle with urban space, support Indigenous presence in the city, and advance Indigenous resurgence; and I also use my academic research skills to explore the work of canonical urban theorists. I bridge poetry and academic writing together to create a form wherein both writing practices can be in conversation.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Walter Benjamin
  • otenaw
  • Urban Indigenous
  • Ceremony
  • Urbs Concrescence
  • Urban Space
  • Convoluted City
  • rocks
  • Concrete
  • Round Dance
  • Stones
  • pehonan
  • Indigenous Literatures
  • Citizenry
  • nehiyaw
  • fort itude
  • nehiyaw Dreams
  • civility
  • Creative Thesis
  • Poetry

• Graduation date

  Fall 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3CJ8825F

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.