Critical Indigenous Fish Philosophy

This March I was very thrilled to give a public lecture at the Daniels School of Architecture at the University of Toronto. The talk was part of the Master of Visual Studies Proseminar Series organized generously by Charles Stankievech.

Abstract (from the Youtube video): “”Fish pluralities, refraction and decolonization in amiskwaciwâskahikan” at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

In a recent piece (Todd 2014), Zoe Todd examined what it means to expand ‘reconciliation’ discourses in Canada ‘beyond-the-human’,incorporating human-fish relations into broader conversations about Indigenous-State relations and settler-colonial realities. This talk examined the possibilities and potentials offered to us as we heed Anishinaabe legal scholar John Borrows’ call to acknowledge Indigenous legal orders within the legal pluralities that shape Canada (Pohlmann 2014). Taking the intimate and fleshy relationships between humans and fish in Zoe’s hometown of Edmonton as a departure point, she examines how we can shift…