Microsoft Word - 32833_Krisha Hernandez_NJ.docx Hernández, Krisha (2019). Co-Creating Indigenous Futurities with/in Academic Worlds. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 5(2), page 1-3. http://www.catalystjournal.org | ISSN: 2380-3312 © Krisha Hernández, 2019 | Licensed to the Catalyst Project under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license Co-Creating Indigenous Futurities with/in Academic Worlds Krisha Hernández University of California, Santa Cruz kjh@ucsc.edu I dream again of Babok the toad, the deliverer of fire to humans and bringer of rain to Earth. Babok, an excellent storyteller, holds my hand and shows me the way to the river and to myself—a reminder of responsibilities and possibilities. The dream ignites a vision: in the place of flowers, where their power far surpasses their beauty, all beings are regarded as having purpose(s)—with bodies and lives worthy of living and thriving to fulfill those purposes. Here, our community acknowledges each other’s roles and accepts our own as meaningful contributions. In this community, one seeks out the Hu’upa (Mesquite) and Cho’i (Palo Verde) trees to ask for guidance because trees have revealed many truths to our Yoemem ancestors from long ago and continue to teach us still. The vision becomes reality, a way of being and moving among worlds where many persons, such as insect beings, plant beings, soil bodies, elder stones, caretaker plants, and water beings, for example, are relegated to “natural resources”—objects of exploitation who are often taken up in servitude or generally mistreated. Doing academic work that listens to and thinks with more-than-human beings as having bodies and lives worthy of living through to their fullest meaning is indeed a challenge in arenas where settler futurities take precedence over all else. Place/land and all beings tied up with them, despite having much to teach, are Critical Perspectives | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience Issue 5 (Vol 2) Krisha Hernández, 2019 2 rarely treated and centered as living beings in academic analysis (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015). In other words, taking up this sort of work has proven to be such a challenge that it is often skipped over by academics, and quite possibly for good reason. Engulfment in worlds largely filled with settler logics creates seemingly insurmountable barriers to those who may otherwise wish to co-create Indigenous futurities with/in academic, and in particular, with Indigenous Land. Scholars who work to co-create bridges that link the gaps between human- centered worlds and the many more-than-humans already living among them/us are of particular guidance to me in the challenge of co-creating Indigenous futurities with/in academic worlds. I am grateful to geographer Sarah Whatmore (2006) for gifting communities in/beyond the academy with “more-than” terminology, where, in English, one is provided with language that shifts landscape as a plane to land—a living actor. I look to Tonawanda Band of Seneca scholar on literature, race, and ethnic theory Mishuana Goeman (2013) when considering the necessary decolonizing work that is to (re)claim, (re)name, and (re)vitalize—where “(re)” creates Indigenous futurities that are simultaneously past and present but made anew. Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate anthropologist Kim TallBear’s (2013, 2014) work illuminates the ways in which worlds and beings are co-constituted in relation with others, where collaborations are sites for new knowledge formations, thus creating space for academe that is more-than research. I often think with the work of Kanaka Maoli political scientist Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua (2016), who reminds one that Indigenous Peoples forge their relationships with place/land and land-bodied beings, and, therefore, researchers are obligated to such land beings far beyond the scope of a research project. Political scientist Audra Mitchell (2018), a settler of Ukrainian, Polish, Scottish, and English ancestry who lives on the Ancestral and Treaty Lands of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas of the New Credit, demonstrates ways in which non-Indigenous scholars might honor the efforts of Indigenous resurgents who seek to repair protocols and relations between particular peoples, plants, animals, and many land and water beings. Drawing on these lineages of thought and scholarship, my work strives to co-create Indigenous futurities with more-than-human beings, an effort that simultaneously envisions Indigenous futurities as it takes up and works against settler colonial modes of being and separation. I find an academic home in the emerging discipline of Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society (I-STS), a community of scholars who contribute to the interplay of emerging worlds, realities becoming. Together, this community honors land-bodied beings seen, unseen, and felt, while co-creating Indigenous futurities through scholarship. Critical Perspectives | Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience Issue 5 (Vol 2) Krisha Hernández, 2019 3 Acknowledgements I thank Dr. Laura Foster for the invitation to contribute to this special section on Plants, Colonialism, and Race. Much of my un/learning and re/learning is attributed to Tongva, Cahuilla, Kanaka Maoli, and Serrano Land and Peoples. I send my heartfelt gratitude to Yoeme language instructors for their ongoing work and guidance. References Goeman, M. (2013). Mark my words: Native women mapping our nations. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, N. (2016). Reproducing the ropes of resistance: Hawaiian studies methodologies. In K. Oliveira & E. K. Wright (Eds.), Kanaka Ōiwi methodologies moolelo and metaphor (pp. 1-29). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i. Mitchell, A. (2018). Revitalizing laws, (re)-making treaties, dismantling violence: Indigenous resurgence against “the sixth mass extinction.” Social & Cultural Geography, 1-16. doi:10.1080/14649365.2018.1528628 TallBear, K. (2013). Native American DNA: Tribal belonging and the false promise of genetic science. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. TallBear, K. (2014). Standing with and speaking as faith: A feminist-indigenous approach to inquiry. Journal of Research Practice, 10(2), N17. Tuck, E., & McKenzie, M. (2015). Place in research: Theory, methodology, and methods. New York, NY: Routledge. Whatmore, S. (2006). Materialist returns: Practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world. Cultural Geographies, 13(4), 600-609. Author Bio Krisha Hernánez Krisha J. Hernández (Yaqui/Xicanx/Bisayan), raised on Tongva/Gabrieleño land near the village of Nacaugna—in so-called Los Angeles, California—is an Indígenx Ph.D. Candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) whose work is relationally grounded through Indigenous Queer Feminist politics. They are a researcher in the Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society (Indigenous STS) international research and teaching hub chaired by Dr. Kim TallBear, and writes with the Creatures Collective.