This special issue sets out to build upon the various expressions, theorizations and practices of sovereignty that have become fundamental to the field of Indigenous studies—a broad umbrella that we will refer to as Indigenous sovereignties or sometimes Indigenous sovereignty, which we believe is implicitly plural by definition. The focus of the special issue is on creativity and Indigenous sovereignty. There are three main contributions from this introduction: (1) it introduces a three-part framework of creativity that characterizes a majority of the analyses and enactments of Indigenous sovereignty, (2) it situates Indigenous sovereignty as always occupying a space between
To foreground this special issue, we also want to provide some coverage of how Indigenous sovereignties are engaged within academic literature. The main thread we want to run throughout this exploration is that to properly research Indigenous sovereignties, one has to be comfortable with existing in the space between what is and what is possible, or what we refer to as the
Our understanding of creativity provides a platform in which we understand the multitude of physical, intellectual, and spiritual Indigenous engagements with sovereignty, while also situating itself in the in-between space. This is followed by a short overview of how we upheld relational practices in crafting this special issue and, finally, by a brief introduction to the articles, notes from the field, and creative pieces featured in this issue.
Our conceptualization of the in-between space of Indigenous sovereignties emerged from two separate angles that initially did not seem connected. The bulk of the literature on Indigenous sovereignty is not easily classified as normative or empirical analysis. We will detail shortly how the literature balances doing both simultaneously. With the help of a productive workshopping of this introduction at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame we also came to realize how creativity very much characterizes this difficult in-between space in which we find Indigenous sovereignties situated. Thank you to the Peace Research Education Seminar at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame for workshopping this introduction and to Lisa McLean, a Visiting Research Fellow, who pushed us to think deeper about these connections. Also many thanks to Avery Letendre, Emily Proskiw and Will Kujala for their research assistance in putting together this piece.
In exploring sovereignty and creativity, we often arrived at discussions dealing with spiritual expressions of Indigenous sovereignty. Wildcat brought up teachings provided by Elmer Rattlesnake in a video released by the Maskwacîs Education Schools Commission, where he states:
This powwow belongs to the creator, you gotta remember, all these ceremonies that we have, they are from the creator. As individuals, as families when we want to do something, we ask the creator to borrow this lodge, it could be a round dance, powwow, Sundance. All these ceremonies they don’t belong to us, they belong to the creator.
If we take this seriously, we should consider the ways spiritual expressions treat Indigenous sovereignty as a gift from the creator, one that requires a constant bringing our sovereignties into being, in the present and future.
When thinking about creativity as creation, we take inspiration from Marisa E. Duarte’s (2017, p. 27) work
I had stumbled across a book by Mexican American philosopher Manuel de Landa in which he describes institutions as crystallizations of human ways of communicating with one another and within dynamic, ever-changing environments. I most appreciated this idea for how it echoed Native concepts of creation, in which all forms that come into existence are understood as outcomes of cosmic dynamic, of which humans are a very small part. To create is to bring into being. Philosopher Rollo May (1975, p. 39) also points to this in
De Leon drew from the ways some Lakota speak about the significance of braiding hair into three strands and it’s coming together as representing unity and oneness, with each strand representing various aspects of human experience—mind, body, and spirit—that we also use as shorthand for our three part framework of creativity. The Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) describes the significance of braids as a reciprocal give and take, the weaving together of seemingly discrete elements into a unified whole. Braiding represents well-being and balance, the ‘bringing [of] intellectual learning together with embodied practices (hands-on physical learning) and with emotional and spiritual understanding’ (Atalay, 2019, p. 82). Our braided understanding of creativity points to an underlying unity and inseparability, a coherence that characterizes the Indigenous engagements of sovereignty we highlight below. The importance of a holistic Indigenous education has been noted elsewhere, particularly in Jo-ann Archibald’s (2008)
If the issue’s focus on creativity allowed for a deeper exploration of the in-between space of Indigenous sovereignty, it was the undeniable phenomenon within studies of Indigenous sovereignty to attach various terms, extensions, and qualifiers that led us to focus on this tension between what is and what is possible. We identify 15 books with academic presses in the last 15 years that attach additional descriptions to the concept of sovereignty (Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Ford, 2010; Coulthard, 2010; Rifkin 2017; Cattelino, 2008; Bruyneel, 2007; Kauanui, 2018; Nadasdy, 2017; Simpson, 2014; Deer, 2015; Rifkin, 2012; Raheja, 2010; Carlson, 2016; Duarte, 2017; Nichols 2020). Additional descriptors include visual sovereignties (Raheja, 2010), temporal sovereignties (Rifkin, 2017), and nested sovereignty (Simpson, 2014), to name a few. This practice stretches back to at least Robert Warrior’s (1994) articulation of Intellectual sovereignty within the analytic school of Indigenous literary nationalism, itself a formidable site of Indigenous sovereignty. As Daniel Heath Justice (2014, p. 1) describes ‘American Indian literary nationalism works more explicitly to produce literary criticism that supports the intellectual and political sovereignty of Indigenous communities and tribal nations’.
While sovereignty is a core concept in the field of Indigenous studies, it is equally central to the fields of law, political science, philosophy, history, and sociology, as well as gaining increased traction in fields like cultural anthropology (Kauanui, 2017). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, in no other fields has a practice of attaching descriptors to sovereignty been as widespread as in Indigenous studies. A second observation is that most treatments of Indigenous sovereignty move fluidly (for the reader at least) between empirical documentation and normative commitments. This makes the distinction between normative and empirical research insufficient when examining Indigenous sovereignties and opens new possibilities of analysis for all disciplines concerned with sovereignty. Calling into question this distinction or asserting that both can be accomplished at the same time, is not new. For instance, Charles Mills (1997, pp. 10-11), in his touchstone work, describes the need for both:
The
This relationship of descriptive and normative is also captured in Audra Simpson’s concept of ‘nested sovereignty’, found within her 2014 book
Although Indigenous sovereignties constrain settler sovereignties, Simpson (2014, p. 12) is clear that the establishment of settler sovereignties adversely impacts Indigenous sovereignties, suggesting, ‘Where sovereignties are nested and embedded, one proliferates at the other’s expense; the United States and Canada can only come into political being because of Indigenous dispossession’. Simpson (2014, p. 12) concludes by asserting, ‘Under conditions of settler colonialism multiple sovereignties cannot proliferate robustly or equally’. By showing these constraints, Simpson then walks us through not only the injustices that have been perpetuated against the Mohawks of Kahnawake, but the sense of injustice that persists in the people of Kahnawake—a sense of injustice that Indigenous peoples act upon every day in North America.
It is the phenomenon of attaching qualifications to sovereignty and the ability of a whole generation of scholars to move fluidity between empirical and normative analysis that allows these studies of sovereignty to imagine new forms and configurations, Indigenous configurations. From this view, it is clear that the breadth of writings on Indigenous sovereignties can teach us a great deal about how societies challenge, shift, and undermine a Westphalian conceptualization of sovereignty and, by extension, teach us about the dynamics of political power and authority in human societies. Moreover, the study of Indigenous sovereignties also implicitly motions to how settler states are able to draw upon, maintain, and enforce sovereignty as the exclusive and supreme authority over a bounded territory. Foregrounding Indigenous sovereignties as a productive analytical and political space requires understanding the qualified nature of sovereignty, the fluidity of research that toggles between normative and empirical, and its situated location between what is and what is possible.
The purpose of reviewing Indigenous sovereignties here is not to give an expansive account of either the vast literature exploring the concept or its manifestations in communities and on the ground. Such a task would involve significant time with various communities to capture an appreciation of how Indigenous people articulate and practice sovereignty (a useful effort, no doubt, but a project for another time). We also ask for forgiveness in bracketing stories and lived experience and focus our attention, rather, on recent literature. Despite these limitations, we find significance in covering multiple contemporary iterations of how Indigenous sovereignty has been expressed, imagined, as well as how it challenges settler sovereignties.
Sovereignty is defined in a conventional sense as the exclusive and supreme authority within a defined territory (Jackson, 2007), also referred to as Westphalian sovereignty in reference to a series of 1648 treaties signed in the northwestern German region of Westphalia. Further, scholars of International Relations and law suggest the current global order is structured upon an anarchical system of sovereign states that are independent and equal. In response, others have argued that sovereignty is in decline or damaged, as evident by multi-state configurations like the European Union and the rise of globalization which has seen significant power move to multi-national corporations (Robinson, 2004). Sheryl Lightfoot (2016) has argued the global Indigenous rights movement is subtly changing global politics by articulating a definition of self-determination by peoples that does not necessarily manifest in the creation of a territorially defined, independent state.
We identify Robert Warrior (1994) through his work on intellectual sovereignty, as beginning the tradition of using a descriptor to articulate the distinctiveness of Indigenous sovereignty. While Vine Deloria (1969) used terms like tribal sovereignty, we see the creative work of scholars within the tradition of Indigenous literary Nationalism as cementing this practice. For Warrior (1994, p. 1), ‘The process of sovereignty provides a way of envisioning the intellectual work we [Indigenous peoples] do’. Instead of academic debates focused on ‘identity’ and ‘authenticity’, debates that work to constrain and limit Native thought, Warrior (1994, p. xix) suggests that practice of intellectual sovereignty should encourage engagement of the ‘myriad [of] critical issues critical to an Indian future’. Similarly, Scott Lyons (2010, pp. 449-450) puts forward the concept of rhetorical sovereignty, or the ‘inherent right and ability of
The past twenty years we have witnessed a rising and sustained production of literature that investigates Indigenous sovereignties. Paradoxically, the increasing attention on sovereignty begins with Taiaiake Alfred’s widely circulated call for Indigenous peoples to discard the concept altogether. The original critique by Alfred (1999) occurs in For a historiography of Indigenous sovereignties, Alfred’s chapter “Sovereignty” (2002, 2005) contains a useful literature review of research on Indigenous sovereignties to that point and time.
Though this critique of sovereignty provides an important diagnostic, interestingly enough, it has been met with two decades of substantial intellectual production on Indigenous sovereignty. This is despite the central place Alfred’s critique occupies within the literature (Barker, 2005). The rise of scholarship on Indigenous sovereignty might appear as an indication that Alfred’s critique was rejected, especially given how Alfred has recently been scrutinized for how he, as described in his own words, ‘embodied toxic masculinity and how I did wrong and harmed people’ (Creszenci, 2019). However, Indigenous scholarship on sovereignty is not an embrace of the concept but represents creative attempts to modify, shift and speak back to conventional understandings of sovereignty.
We focus on 15 single author books in the last 15 years that conceptually expand our understanding of Indigenous peoples and sovereignty in significant ways (Bruyneel, 2007; Cattelino, 2008; Ford, 2010; Raheja, 2010; Rifkin, 2012; Coulthard, 2014; Simpson, 2014; Deer, 2015; Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Carlson, 2016; Duarte, 2017; Rifkin, 2017; Nadasdy, 2017; Kauanui, 2018; Nichols, 2020). This does not include important edited volumes such as Joanne Barker’s (2017)
We focus on these manuscripts, as opposed to edited volumes and articles, because they each put forward a distinct treatment of the concept of sovereignty. These books lean heavily toward empirical studies that demonstrate the qualified nature of settler sovereignty and its corollary, how settler sovereignty circumscribes Indigenous sovereignty. Each work has a unique investigation or conceptualization of sovereignty, including (to name a few more) third space of sovereignty, white patriarchal sovereignty, and sovereignty of the soul (Bruyneel, 2007; Moreton-Robinson, 2015; Deer, 2015).
Though these works avoid discrete categorization, it is worth pointing out some broad themes, of which we identify three groupings. The first group we identify explores how settler sovereignty exercises coercive control over Indigenous life, or what might simply be described as: sovereignty
The second set of studies focus on how these two sovereignties constrain each other, albeit in dramatically different ways. In particular, settler sovereignty is unable to live up to ideal forms of exclusive supreme jurisdiction over a defined territory (in spite of being some of the more ‘powerful’ nation-states in the global system). Even if settler sovereignty is qualified, it continues to constrain Indigenous sovereignty in a host of ways. A paradigmatic example here is Kevin Bruyneel’s (2007) exploration of competing sovereignties of Indigenous peoples and the U.S. state. For Bruyneel, Indigenous peoples exist in a third space of sovereignty that resides neither wholly inside nor wholly outside the U.S. political system. Instead, Indigenous peoples exist on its boundaries, exposing both the practices and limitations of American colonial rule. This colonial navigation compels ‘indigenous political actors [to] work across American spatial and temporal boundaries’ (Bruyneel, 2007, p. xvii). In sum, these works deal with, in the formulation of Audra Simpson (2014), the enormous tension produced by unending discord between settler and Indigenous sovereignties.
Finally, we present a third group of works that focus on Indigenous configurations of sovereignties, acting as an invitation for new envisioned futures. These studies focus on Indigenous peoples’ ongoing practices and ways of imagining a different future. For example, Mark Rifkin (2012) suggests that focusing on Indigenous erotics provides a space to develop alternative visions of sovereignty and peoplehood. Popular representations of Indigenous erotics create a productive space in which to ‘challenge the obviousness of models and mappings inherited from and imposed by the United States’ (Rifkin, 2012, p. 4). While there is a sizable group of books on Indigenous configurations of sovereignty, academia in many ways may be hard pressed in keeping up with the various expressions of Indigenous sovereignty that are regularly invoked today. For instance, in the period of preparing this introduction, we saw declarations and events around representational, plant, structuring and knowledge sovereignty, as well as the creation of a television show (
Starting with the first two groupings—those that point to the coercive and constraining nature of settler sovereignty—what’s important in these works is how they painstakingly demonstrate settler states’ inability to exercise their full sovereignty (in the conventional sense of supreme indivisible authority) as a result of constraints put forward by Indigenous sovereignty. These are not primarily normative studies, or what sovereignty
Five books hash out the controlling and coercive nature of settler sovereignty. Starting with a defining work, Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s (2015, p. xi)
Lisa Ford, in her 2010 work
Glen Coulthard (2014) describes the process of settler colonization arriving in Denendeh (NWT) in his book
The book
Finally, looking at the productive nature of settler sovereignties on Indigenous sovereignties, Rifkin (2017), in his work
Five works illustrate how Indigenous and settler sovereignties are locked in a perpetual tension where they both constrain and produce the other. Related to this is the aforementioned work by Audra Simpson (2014) on ‘nested sovereignty’. Jessica R. Cattelino’s (2008)
Cattelino looks at Florida Seminole gaming and how tribal ownership and operation of casinos provide economic resources necessary to exercise sovereignty. However, once economic power is exercised, the legitimacy of that sovereignty is brought into question. Cattelino (2008, p. 100) states, ‘American Indians enjoy political autonomy under conditions of economic dependency, but indigenous economic power undermines their political status’. Cattelino (2010, p. 8) puts forward the term ‘double bind of sovereignty’ to convey these tensions arising from Indigenous economic success, suggesting a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario—when Indigenous political sovereignty compels participation in modernity, it often results in ‘accusations that they are not culturally “different enough”’. Simply, even when Indigenous peoples gain economic and political power, settler states and societies impose an assumption that Indigenous sovereignty is only legitimate if Indigenous nations are impoverished and pre-modern.
The double-bind of sovereignty parallels Patrick Wolfe’s (1999) work on repressive authenticity. Here, Indigenous distinctiveness both buttresses Indigenous claims to sovereignty but is also used by settler society to undermine those same claims. The standards of cultural authenticity that settlers impose on Indigenous peoples to gain legitimacy are so stringent that Indigenous cultural difference traps Indigenous nations in a straitjacket. The works of Paige Raibmon (2005),
J. Kehaulani Kauanui’s (2018a) book
Moving to a northern context, Paul Nadasdy’s (2017) work
The third grouping of works that draw upon Indigenous insights and lived experience emphasize Indigenous configurations and focus on the contents of Indigenous sovereignty. Each, in their own way, envisions new futures for Indigenous peoples. Duarte’s (2017, p. 37) work on Network sovereignty, discussed earlier, examines how Indigenous peoples engage with information and communication technologies in ways that are subject to colonization but also create forms of Indigenous sovereignty. To do so, Duarte must skillfully uphold and critique tribal sovereignty—the particular form of sovereignty held by tribal governments. Against a backdrop of tribal sovereignty and the wider efforts of Indigenous peoples to maintain relationships, Duarte shows how Indigenous control over communication infrastructure intertwines with Indigenous philosophies of communication and understandings in ways that helps to maintain the strength and resilience of Indigenous peoples.
Jessica Deer (2015), in her book on sexual violence against Indigenous women, theorizes a ‘sovereignty of the soul’. Deer outlines how sexual violence is so deeply embedded in the colonization of Indigenous peoples that work aimed at achieving sovereignty must include a strong response to rape and the self-determination of survivors of gender-based violence. ‘Self-determination for individual survivors and self-determination for tribal nations are closely connected’, asserts Deer (2015, p. xvi), continuing, ‘It is impossible to have a truly self-determining nation when its members have been denied self-determination over their own bodies’. Thus, sovereignty of the soul is a call to pay attention to the traumatic impacts violence has on individuals and calls on Indigenous nations to both prevent and heal trauma. Sovereignty of the soul is an invocation that the collective sovereignty of Indigenous nations is dependent on the bodily sovereignty of Indigenous peoples.
Turning to creative expressions, Michelle Raheja (2010, p. 194) explores the notion of visual sovereignty as a way to open space for video, film, and new media as a ‘creative act of self-representation that has the potential to both undermine stereotypes of Indigenous peoples’. Artists, through the distinctly unique medium of new media technologies, are able to capture individual and community articulations of self-representation and sovereignty and present them back to communities in ways not possible through conventional political channels. Also see related text on creative theater performances of sovereignty by Julie Burelle (2018) entitled
In
These three groupings—sovereignty as colonial, settler and Indigenous sovereignties constrain each other, and an emphasis on Indigenous configurations (see Figure 1)—point to how we broadly characterize the proliferation of engagements with sovereignty since Alfred’s 1999 call for Indigenous peoples to avoid the concept of sovereignty altogether. As we see, these 15 texts point to how Indigenous sovereignties occupy the in-between space of what is and what is possible.
Graphic we created in our writing process trying to map the literature.
These introductory remarks offer three conceptualizations of creativity: (1) as a means, (2) conceptually, and (3) as a bringing something into being. This framing allows for a creative understanding of sovereignty that moves beyond a conventional understanding of Westphalian sovereignty towards new envisioned futures. Creativity as a means points to the way we express our lived-experience in the world. This form of creativity engages the body, as well as other material modes of expression. Secondly, conceptual creativity requires the involvement of the intellect and imagination to recast social structures and their possibilities. ‘Imagination enables people to rise above their own circumstances’, explains Linda T. Smith (2012, p. 263), ‘To dream new visions and to hold on to old ones’. It allows you to think outside the box, to analyze bodily, material realities and think about differing arrangements. As Lyons (2000, p. 449) asserts, ‘The pursuit of sovereignty is an attempt to revive not our past, but our possibilities’. Conceptual creativity requires finding solutions to old problems, to analyze and transform systems that bind and constrict.
Finally, thinking about the spiritual components to creativity requires looking at the root word We try to avoid essentializing or romanticizing Indigenous spirituality, avoiding limitations of secular conventions common within academic threads. We move into this tension because we know Indigenous lived-experiences of sovereignty are more than just political or material.
These three conceptualizations of creativity are not mutually exclusive but, rather, they are dependent and embedded within each other. It is precisely when they are paired, combined, and woven together as one, when the full potentiality of the concept comes to fruition. Taking care not to overextend the braid analogy, we also offer that the above mapping of three types of Indigenous engagements of sovereignty lays nicely onto our understanding of creativity. Each grouping involves some aspect of bodily engagements (whether coercive or constraining), the requiring of problem-solving and thinking outside-of-the-box and are also working to bring new forms into being. They engage the body, the mind, and the spirit.
You may ask why we have paired creativity with sovereignty? We feel it brings something new into the conversation by allowing room for the multitude of ways Indigenous peoples critique, experience, and enact sovereignty. Creativity, as we see it, provides a scaffolding or housing in which to comprehend Indigenous engagements with sovereignty, to explore the in-between space, and to think against and beyond settler sovereignty. We also see it as a simple roadmap for our own thinking about ways our research encounters settler sovereignty—to describe how it operates to control, to reconfigure or constrain each other, or to offer new envisioned futures of sovereignty. Though we sketch three distinct groupings of creativity and sovereignty, all of these treatments supplement and rely upon each other, weaving together a complex understanding of how various experiences and understandings of Indigenous sovereignties occupy the space in-between.
This special issue explores various dimensions of Indigenous sovereignty through a multitude of approaches, drawing upon scholars and artists throughout North America. We hope that the following four articles, five including this introduction, two notes from the field, and two creative pieces provide a glimpse of various ways to envision creative sovereignty in practice.
Blaire Topash-Caldwell in her article ‘Sovereign Futures in Neshnabé Speculative Fiction’ explores how Indigenous science fiction is not just a leisurely activity, but rather a creative approach to sovereignty. Topash-Caldwell explores the Neshnabé oral tradition character of Weetigo and how it can be seen as a metaphor to describe the settler colonial state. Weetigo, a cannibal creature, consumes (much like the settler state) Indigenous bodies, knowledges, resources, and spirits.
Sierra Edd, in ‘Radical Traversals’, explores Indigenous sound artists and complicates notions of time and space. Engaging music and sound studies, as well as Indigenous studies, Edd puts forward a method of close listening that homes in on the notion of traveling indigeneity and unsettles colonial logic through sonic expressions.
In ‘Creative Sovereignties and Fiscal Relations: How “A New Fiscal Relationship” Between Canada and First Nations Might Take Treaty 6 Seriously’, Javed L. Sommers explores what fiscal arrangements between Indigenous nations and Canada might look like if Treaty Six were to be taken seriously. Sommers works from the premise that the signing of Treaty Six between Indigenous peoples and the British Crown is what gives Canada legitimacy to lawfully exist as a state in central Alberta and Saskatchewan, but this agreement does not substantially shape fiscal agreements between Indigenous Nations and Canadian governments today. Sommers makes six suggestions for how treaty six could be implemented today. Three straightforward and three that would require significant divergence from existing practices.
Justin de Leon in ‘Preserving Values: Militarization and Powwows’, ethnographically explores the presence of militarization in Lakota powwows, suggesting that these markers associated with warriorhood are less about traditional explanations of military service and more about savvy navigations of suppressive colonial oppression. De Leon suggests that the transferring and adapting of traditional practices of bravery and warriorhood into practices deemed ‘colonially-approved’, represents a creative approach to maintaining cultural practices and sovereignty.
This special issue contains two notes from the field and two creative pieces. Kelsey Wrightson explores her experience as a white Settler of lived expressions of sovereignty in her field note ‘Generative Refusal: Creative Practice and Relational Indigenous Sovereignty’. Drawing upon experiences as the Director of Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning in Yellowknife, Canada, Wrightson shows how an innocuous gift of bear hide mitts led her to explore lived expressions of sovereignty and cultural learning. Wrightson puts together a powerful piece that speaks to other forms of sovereignty, as well as the importance of critical reflexivity (and refusability). Matthew Wildcat puts forward a summary of his dissertation ‘Replacing Exclusive Sovereignty with a Relational Sovereignty’. These notes are the opening remarks to his defense. Here, Wildcat argues that one of the primary effects of settler colonization on Indigenous political orders has been the rise of an exclusive sovereignty, where First Nations imagine their authority as discreet and bounded. Wildcat explains how the work of the Maskwacis Education was able to replace practices of exclusive sovereignty with a relational sovereignty where four Nations created a shared jurisdiction to create a Cree education system.
In ‘Extraction: Seeking Ways to Survive’, Tanaya Winder shares and reflects upon her poem
In ‘The Deer with 3: Expressing Indigeneity Through Experimental Hip Hop’, musician Talon Ducheneaux shares thoughts about a recent song
We suggest a relational approach is at the core of Indigenous knowledge creation, touched upon by almost all of the works outlined throughout this introduction. Knowledge and learning does not take place in a vacuum, rather, it comes from our relationships with our communities, family, friends, as well as other scholars and pieces of literature. It comes from our lived-experiences and interactions with the natural world. This recognition is at the center of how we view epistemology and motivated us to be intentional about our relational approach to crafting this special issue.
We fashioned our editing and writing processes to not only create an environment productive of meaningful scholarship, but also to put forward an academic production model that we want to be a part of. This includes more common practices, such as soliciting potential articles from scholars with whom we already have had meaningful interactions and friendships (as opposed to public calls for articles), integrating poetry and notes from the field with our peer-reviewed articles, offering the blind reviewers who were more junior in their academic careers official letters acknowledging their reviewing contributions for use in their promotion files, to more complex efforts such as carrying out a round of open community peer review, as well as the carrying out of a university symposium for the contributors to further develop their research and to build relationships with all the contributors in this issue. The symposium entitled ‘Creative Represencing Native American Symposium’ was sponsored and hosted by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame (Feb. 6, 2020), the event included a ‘methods and muffins’ program focused on Native and graduate students wanting to engage in decolonizing research.
Additional efforts were made individually to make this introductory piece accessible and useful. Nearing its final draft, de Leon used this introductory article as a reading for their class on Indigenous and Native American approaches to social justice. One particularly astute senior pointed out that even the conventional double-blind peer review process, central to most academic journals, acts as a technology for breaking the relational model—contributors are kept from knowing reviewers, many of whom pour hours of labor into bettering another scholar’s work. One Native student asked, if settler societies can always change the rules, ‘What is sovereignty?’ Their feeling of dejection, however, was quickly followed by them describing how sovereignty of the soul deeply resonated. This is to point to how Indigenous experiences of sovereignty are both frustrating and hopeful, all while taking place within a system whose aim is to break relationships. Also nearing its final draft, Wildcat worked with a filmmaker with whom he had previously collaborated in his community work with Maskwacis Education Schools Commission. Their goal was to make a teaching- and community-friendly short video as a way to be able to make our work useful and accessible through multiple mediums. Additional efforts related to this issue include the creation of a Creative Sovereignty Lab community apprentice program for the Canadian feature film
Another defining feature of our editing process is how we carried out peer review. Along with one standard double-blind review, each article also had an open review that enabled a broader and more communal review. In the open review, we created a space where authors were not only challenged to make their writing and analysis sharper, but to also prioritize relationships with community members and other academics working on similar themes. We received feedback from open reviewers about their excitement about the process and their belief that these approaches make academic spaces more humane and uplifting. These reviewers, similar to the double-blind reviewers, made significant investments in each of the author’s works and we are all grateful to Dallas Hunt, Kyle Wilmott, Maria Sonevytsky and Dana Dupris for their generous and productive comments. Though the approach to crafting this special issue may not be entirely unique, we thought it beneficial for readers to be aware of our intention—the creation of spaces for relationships, mentorship, community-involvement, creativity, and for full engagement. We believe the knowledge generated through this issue is dependent on these many levels of relationships.