UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Toward a Native Feminist
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Toward a Native Feminist Reading Methodology A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies by Angela Teresa Morrill Committee in charge: Professor K. Wayne Yang, Chair Professor Denise Ferreira da Silva, Co-Chair Professor Zeinabu Davis Professor Yen Le Espiritu Professor Ross Frank Professor Mattie Harper 2016 Copyright Angela Teresa Morrill, 2016 All Rights Reserved. The Dissertation of Angela Teresa Morrill is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ Co-Chair ______________________________________________________________ Chair University of California, San Diego 2016 iii DEDICATION For my grandmother, Lillian Dunham, my mother, Peggy Ball, and my sister Mychele. For all those watching over us and for future ghosts. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page………………………………................................................. iii Dedication ……………………………………….......................................... iv Table of Contents…………………………………………………………… v List of Figures………………………………………..……………………… vi Acknowledgements……………………………………………………….... vii Vita…………………........................................................................................ x Abstract of the Dissertation………………………..………………………….. xi Introduction: Defining a Native Feminist Reading Methodology….….…….. 1 Chapter 1: Refusals and Unknowns: A Native Feminist Reading Practice…. 23 Chapter 2: Time Traveling Dogs (and other Native Feminist ways to defy dislocations)…………………………………………………………………… 58 Chapter 3: Bored with Termination…………………………………………… 98 Chapter 4: Regenerating Families: Making Art and Mapping History……...…. 140 Conclusion: Reading Methodologies, Dreaming Futures….………………….. 171 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………… 178 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: NARA 1895 Census Rolls, N0. 31……………………....…. 42 Figure 2.1: Ball Family in North Portland, 1950……………………….. 67 Figure 2.2: Ball Family, 1959………………………………………….…. 70 Figure 2.3: Uncle Joe’s Photo Album. Ball sisters in Chiloquin……….… 77 Figure 2.4: Uncle Joe’s Photo Album. Ball sisters in lace dresses……… 79 Figure 2.5: Peggy Ball. Vanport. 2014…………………………………… 84 Figure 2.6: Peggy Ball, Blue and Violet Allman. 2014……………………… 89 Figure 2.7: Peggy Ball. Owl Dance. 2014…………………………………. 91 Figure 2.8: Peggy Ball. Lillian and kids. 2014………………………………. 94 Figure 2.9: Peggy Ball. Lillian, Woody and Tom. 2014……………………… 96 Figure 4.1: Natalie Ball. Circa Indian. 2009……………………………….. 150 Figure 4.2: Natalie Ball. “Incident at Fort Klamath”………………………. 152 Figure 4.3: Natalie Ball. “Dancers Ka-ko-ls.”……………………………. 154 Figure 4.4: Natalie Ball Detail “Dancers Ka-ko-ls.” …………………….. 154 Figure 4.5: Natalie Ball. Detail Circa Indian………………………………. 156 Figure 4.6: Natalie Ball. June 12 & 13 1972. 2015………………………… 159 Figure 4.7: Natalie Ball. June 12 & 13 1987. 2015…………………………. 163 Figure 4.8: Natalie Ball. June 12 & 13 1972. 2015…………………………. 166 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my colleagues at the University of Oregon, where my academic journey began as an undergraduate and where I am fortunate to be finishing my dissertation while working to bring more Native students into higher education. I am lucky to have a strong Native community here. Thank you Brian Klopotek, Kirby Brown, Jennifer O’Neal, Theresa May, Leilani Sabzalian, Gordon Bettles, Stephanie Tabibian, the Native students and all of our Native Strategies family. Gena weeqs! At University of California, San Diego I was supported by a cohort of friends and intellectual colleagues including Cathi Kozen, Ma Vang, Tomoko Tsuchiya, Kit Myers, Maile Arvin, Laura Terrance and Kai Azania. Madelsar Ngiraingas and Michael Bevacqua recognized me as a fellow Indigenous graduate student and our conversations became a podcast, Voicing Indigeneity. I am grateful for these conversations as we were doing heavy lifting, attempting to articulate settler colonial themes in Ethnic Studies. I couldn’t have done without my Native feminist sisters Laura Terrance, Maile Arvin and Chris Finley. Long road trips to Los Angeles to meet with Native feminist scholars, articles and books read, conferences attended, wine and karaoke all contributed to some of the richest parts of my understandings of Native feminist theory, activism and experience. I am fortunate to have many people who provided support throughout my dissertation writing process. I especially want to thank Michelle Jacob for her texts asking me what I was working on and my dear friend Drew Pisarra for nearly endless vii encouragement. My cousin Natalie Ball inspires me and pushes me to go hard. I am grateful to Eve Tuck as a scholar and collaborator, and to the Super Futures Haunt Qollective, C. Ree and F. Sam Jung, also known as Agent O and SFAOW for saying yes, for inspiring me, for deep insights, time machines and hauntings, for Year 0 and all the ones to come. We will haunt them queerly together. I am grateful to my dissertation committee, Ross Frank, Yen Espiritu, Mattie Harper, Zeinabu Davis, and my chair and co-chair, K. Wayne Yang and Denise Ferreira da Silva. My co-chair Denise Ferreira da Silva said soon after we met, “You can write whatever you want, but first we will break your heart.” I am grateful for the warning, for her always telling the truth, and for the fierce intellectual support and love. My mentor and dissertation chair K. Wayne Yang offered more than support during the dissertation writing, but also valuable lessons on teaching, mentorship and writing. I am humbled by his generosity, inspired by his creativity and moved by his vision for what the future might be. Thank you for everything. There is so much to know about the academic institution and I would not have been able to navigate and complete this long complicated process without the expertise and encouragement of Yolanda Escamilla, Theresa Aitchison and especially the generous support of Christa Ludeking, all my thanks. My father, Dwight Ball Morrill, always wants to read what I am writing, and has offered me every kind of support. He always does all he can to help me to achieve my goals and lets me know every step of the way how proud he is of my accomplishments, which would not be possible without him. My mother, Peggy Ball viii Morrill also gave me all her love and support. I am grateful she was able to read early versions of the dissertation. Her paintings are an important part of this dissertation, and so is the legacy of her endless love for family and Native communities. When I was a graduate student and struggling to finish my master’s thesis, my younger sister Mychele came to live with me. I owe her a debt I cannot pay, and I miss her every day. My project began with a haunting when my grandmother Lillian asked for my attention. This dissertation is a family project, and no one knows that more than my son, Leroy. All my love, always. Chapter 2, in part, has been submitted for publication of the material as it may appear in Cultural Studies ⇔ Critical Methodologies. Special Issue on Settler Colonialism and Cultural Studies, eds. Aimee Carrillo Rowe and Eve Tuck. Forthcoming 2016. The dissertation/thesis author was the primary investigator and author of this paper. ix VITA 2005 Bachelor of Arts, University of Oregon 2009 Teaching Assistant, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego 2011 Visiting Instructor of Native Studies in the Ethnic Studies Program at Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 2013 Coordinator of Native American Recruitment in the Office of Admissions at University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 2016 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS 2016 “Time Traveling Dogs (and other Native feminist ways to defy dislocations).” Cultural Studies ⇔ Critical Methodologies. Special Issue on Settler Colonialism and Cultural Studies, eds. Aimee Carrillo Rowe and Eve Tuck. Forthcoming. 2016 “Before Dispossession, or Surviving It.” Angie Morrill, Eve Tuck and Super Futures Haunt Qollective. Liminalities: a Journal of Performance Studies. Special Issue: “On Cartographies: Skins, Surfaces, Doings," eds. Stacy Holman Jones and Anne Harris. Volume 12, No. 1, Winter 2016. 2013 "Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy." Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck and Angie Morrill. Feminist Formations, Volume 25, Issue 1, Spring: 8-34. x ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Toward a Native Feminist Reading Methodology by Angela Teresa Morrill Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies University of California, San Diego, 2016 Professor K. Wayne Yang, Chair Professor Denise Ferreira da Silva, Co-Chair This dissertation introduces the Native feminist reading practice, a methodology that resists disappearance and affirms presence. It is a methodology that involves reading against disappearance; it involves reading futures yet in store for Native lives. A Native feminist reading practice is a sort of double-consciousness that sees through the settler reading, and recognizes the Native feminist reading underneath it, and through it all, and beyond all of it. While I offer a definition, it is xi a broad definition because I think that a Native