INTRODUCTION—Reinvigorating Ancestral Practices: Honoring Land and Water Defenders, Indigenous Internationalisms, and Community Protocols

Abstract

For Indigenous peoples, boundaries on homelands and waterways often denote places for family, clan and/or community responsibilities regarding stewardship or protection and are not merely lines of exclusion on a map. In this essay I begin by reflecting on the teachings of the late master carver and artist TEMOSEṈŦET (Dr. Charles Elliott from Tsartlip First Nation) and discuss how his artistry embodies Indigenous internationalism and intimate relationships to W̱SÁNEĆ lands and waters. Indigenous internationalism is practiced through diplomacies, activism, trade relations, treaties, solidarities, and other forms of Indigenous international relations which precede the formation of states. In this essay I look at the deeper meaning behind the Cherokee word for nation, ayetli, and discuss how Indigenous internationalism and land/water defense are expressed through stories, activism, and everyday actions that renew relational responsibilities to lands, waters, and more-than-human kin