Cheyanne Brown Armstrong (née Connell) (they/she) is an indigi-queer scholar and artist, with Indigenous lineage and membership with West Moberly First Nations (Dunne-Za Cree). Currently, they divide their time between their Doctoral program and research in Socio-Cultural and Indigenous Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and creating art.
Cheyanne Brown Armstrong (née Connell) (they/she) is an indigi-queer scholar and artist, with Indigenous lineage and membership with West Moberly First Nations (Dunne-Za Cree). Currently, they divide their time between their Doctoral program and research in Socio-Cultural and Indigenous Anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and creating art.
Dreaming of Dunne-Za (2021-present)
Working closely and collaboratively with my home community of WMFN, this ethnographic research project primarily focuses on the experiences, stories, and archival accounts of Indigenous women with membership in and direct ancestral ties to WMFN. Too often Indigenous women have been written out of historical accounts of Indigenous land, culture, and legacies. My community of WMFN, like many others, has shared this burden of gender erasure, in which women are seldom central to the story being told (see Brody and Ridington). Nearly all literature about our culture and community—the few and rather brief mentions that exist in archival documents and books—are first-authored by men (e.g., Post Journals by men employed by Hudson’s Bay Company and scholars like Hugh Brody and Robin Ridington) or privilege the stories of men (see Brody 1992 and Ridington and Ridington 2012). Focusing on the experiences, stories, and archival accounts of Indigenous women with membership and direct ancestral ties to WMFN, my research offers an opportunity to document, assert and invite vital broader Indigenous representation in scholarship and community, ensuring young women and past and present matriarchs stories and identities are better represented culturally and linguistically in WMFN, Canada, and beyond.
From AIR website: “Our Vision: As a non-hierarchically governed, BIPOC-led research team and registered society, our core vision is to direct far more attention to the rich, countless ways in which Asian-Indigenous relations have shaped (and been shaped by) Turtle Island.
Our Mission: The digital spaces our research team occupies, including the website you are reading this on, cannot be separated from the offline world. All aspects of our operations are grounded on the unceded, traditional, and stolen territories of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) Nations. Core to our overall mission is to continue to fight for the decolonization and restitution of these colonial places, both offline and online.” Click here to learn more about this project.
From the project website: "This project explores the hidden legacies of transnational Indigeneity and Indigenous diplomacy by examining two pivotal trips during which a group of Ainu delegates from Japan and a group of First Nations delegates from British Columbia traveled to China in the mid-1970s. They were impressed with what they saw in terms of education and Indigenous language promotion, and began to envision new kinds of activism in their home countries. Our Indigenous-majority team of Investigators, Collaborators and students will work collectively to carry out four key objectives: 1) engage with scholarship in Transnational Studies to provide alternatives to state-centered accounts, 2) show how Indigenous transnational diplomacy expands Indigenous Studies beyond domestic studies and offer non-oppositional frameworks that expands understanding of Indigenous agency; and 3) contribute to Asian Studies by analyzing transpacific connections, not just comparisons." Click here to learn more about this project.(Artwork by Saki Murotani)
My findings suggested that the Ainu identity-making of those who grew up and live in Japan is primarily shaped by Japanese Ainu experience, whereas for some American-Ainu, their identity-making is largely shaped by North American Indigenous experience. I argued that this in turn made American-Ainu uniquely subject to North American-based experiences and anxieties of culture appropriation, identity gatekeeping, and Indigenous authenticity, and what I call precarious indigeneity. The aim of this project was to expand public and academic narratives of Ainu identity-making that speaks to the diverse realities of learning what it means to be Ainu and Indigenous in present day and as multiethnic and digitally connected individuals and communities. As part of this project, I created a series of illustrations (see below) to demonstrate media representation of Ainu and North American Indigenous peoples, and various findings and ideas in my research.
From this, I suggest the need to recognize and meaningfully engage with urban Indigenous experience and livelihoods as being authentically Indigenous and not of an inherent cultural, traditional, and land deficit. Growing up off-reserve and in densely populated cities, this project was what inspired my thirst for knowledge and passion in interrogating public and academic assumptions, generalizations, and expectations of Indigenous peoples, that are often rooted in colonialism, nation-state governance, and Christianity.