Johanna Lederer

Indigenous struggles have often narrowly been viewed as resistance to colonialism instead of being acknowledged as complex practices of placemaking. I explore Indigenous literary and artistic imaginations as decolonizing and Indigenizing placemaking practices in a Turtle Island context. These narrative and artistic practices include remembering places, remapping and renaming places and creating Indigenous futures in Canadian urban spaces. Referencing theories by Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca), Derek Gregory, and Dylan Robinson (Stó:lō/Skwah), I argue that these placemaking practices assert Indigenous presence and futures in both material and fictional places. While Indigenous futurisms (as theorized by Anishinaabe author and scholar Grace Dillon) expand our understanding of what constitutes storytelling, all of these practices can be understood as storytelling, bringing forward Indigenous narratives and epistemologies. They contest the imaginative geography of Canada being a benevolent multicultural nation-state and its manifestations, e.g. colonial statues, patriotic celebrations, and museums. I will discuss how Indigenous futurisms in e.g. novels, short stories, and comics but also museums thus destabilize Canadian settler colonial claims to diversity and the settler colonial infrastructure. Colonialism is frequently described as a societal structure that cannot be reduced to specific events. I will argue that colonialism and decolonization should be understood through – often mediated – practices, focusing not so much on time, but making place.