Anishinaabeg Kinship Diplomacy and Animal Nations: A Critical Review of Political Leadership

Abstract

In this thesis I argue that engagement with animal nations to remake the world is an embedded practice of Anishinaabeg stories. From the perspective of my survey of the Anishinaabeg resurgence literature I conclude that these sources point towards Anishinaabeg leaders renewing their engagement with animal nations as a potential route for re-establishing an Anishinaabeg-led grounded normativity across Anishinaabewaki. Within this analysis I foreground the role of the council form as the venue for interspecies communication and collaboration in both Anishinaabeg stories and the historical record. I relate Anishinaabeg stories to Anishinaabeg scholar’s engagement with ethnohistorical literature on the clan system and the Midewiwin to situate the practice of council within the multipolar nature of the Anishinaabeg social formation. Lastly, I contextualize these practices within the embedded practices of a migratory kinship diplomacy.