Thread by @MaxLiboiron

#Collabrary 85: @JessKolopenuk's "Miskâsowin: Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society." #Collabrary = a project trying to change academic reading relations that tend to be extractive into something more reciprocal, humble, generous & accountable. 1/11 civiclaboratory.nl/2021/01/03/col…

Part of the #Collabrary (collaborative library) project is to post synopses of texts we (@DeondreSmiles & I) read to share out. I'm reading @JessKolopenuk's text for an Indigenous STS book club organized by @sprucehen_, so lots of extra love today. 2/11
mdpi.com/2313-5778/4/1/…

"Miskâsowin: Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society" outlines a Ininiw/Cree theory of science, technology & society. The article has become a hallmark of Indigenous STS (I-STS) that shows how Indigenous theorizing-as-and-relationality is inextricable from academic work. 3/11

Plus, it's one of my favourite texts for writing against pan-Indigeneity. Yes, we have some things in common in broad strokes, but when you come from the stars your theory will necessarily be different than if you have other origins. @JessKolopenuk shows how this is so. 4/11

The piece starts with an overview of the relationship between science, technology and colonialism and a short intro to critical Indigenous theory. Super handy.Then it introduces Indigenous STS as something unique: 5/11

"Indigenous STS asks questions like: how do the logics of nature, exploration & discovery, & the scientific & political technologies that they bring to bear impact bodies, peoples, relationships, relatives, and spaces?" (5) 6/11

"How can we disturb assertions of assumed geopolitical dis/possession to territory and the exceptionalism of academic freedom to reconfigure balanced relationships with each other and with misewa (all that exists)?" (5) 7/11

"Miskâsowin is infinite action. It is in the remembering, the doing, the ongoing movement, not in the endpoint where one connects. [It is not] 'add methodology and stir,' but requires connecting w/ how one’s body is relationally generative w what they know..." (6-7) 8/11

"The purpose of tapwewin (speaking truth) is not to engage in adversarial argumentation per se like much academic critique does (ie speaking truth to power), but to truth-tell: to channel and share the accumulation of knowledge amassed through one’s myriad relations" (8) 9/11

These ideas are in tight relationship with the texts punchline: "Being in relation with the communities that I am a part of makes my theories. I theorize what matters because I am connected through relations that matter to me." (13) 10/11

I highly recommend spending some slow time with this text. It's a showing, not telling, kind of read so these are just teasers and tastes. I look forward to the conversation with @sprucehen_ and the I-STS reading group later today. Maarsii @JessKolopenuk 11/11