"Everything Is in Us": Introspection, Collaboration, and Continuity as Healing in #NotYourPrincess

• In Event: Interrogating the Social Imagination: Examining the Renegotiation of Self and Others Through Young Adult Literature

Abstract

Objective
Counselors have connected stresses experienced by Indigenous women to genocide, colonization, and sovereignty (e.g. Smith, 2005). This paper analyzes healing in response to these stresses as described by the contributors to #NotYourPrincess (Charleyboy & Leatherdale, 2017). This multimodal text demonstrates how writing, art, and media offer space for introspection, collaboration, and continuity as forms of healing and critical hope. Centering writing, art, and media in the classroom can similarly foster a personal and communal space for young people.

Perspective
The paper draws upon Duncan-Andrade’s (2009) theory of critical hope and Garcia and Dutro’s (2018) trauma-informed work. The contributors of #NotYourPrincess offer critical hope in the ways they connect with the cracks in the concrete (material hope), demonstrate courage to burst through the cracks (Socratic hope), and demonstrate solidarity and collectivity in their struggle (audacious hope). Garcia and Dutro help us consider how trauma is carried collectively and personally and how classroom communities can be designed as spaces for navigation of personal and shared traumas, beginning with those found in our central text.

Methods
Analysis reflects general inductive analysis (Thomas, 2006) and Baez’s (2016) Sweetgrass Method. General inductive analysis was used to identify explicit descriptions of healing identified by the Indigenous women who contributed to #NotYourPrincess; six themes of healing emerged. Baez’s Sweetgrass Method was used to arrange these six themes into three braided strands of introspection, collaboration, and continuity. Baez recommends these strands for clinicians (in this case, writing, art, and media) and Indigenous people as healing plans for Intergenerational trauma.

Data Sources
#NotYourPrincess is a collection of poems, essays, interviews, social media posts, and art that describes the contributors’ experiences of being Indigenous women. The collection is 112 pages and divided into four themed sections. It features 58 contributors (e.g. writers, artists, photographers) from different nations.

Results
Findings reveal that the women in this text demonstrate introspection, collaboration, and continuity as healing in response to the personal and shared stressors they describe. In the introspective strand, we evidenced how contributors embrace themselves and draw inner strength. In the collaborative strand, we noticed how the contributors describe connection to other women, family, relatives, and the land. In the continuity strand, we witnessed how the contributors rewrite histories, challenge narratives and systemic oppression, own and signal their pride, rewrite their stories, and speak out.

Significance
Student explorations of connectedness within shared identities and mediators of stress in writing, art, and media offer potential for addressing personal and shared trauma in the classroom and world. Media often control the narrative of cultural understanding offered to and accepted by consumers; this text 1) offers a look at how these particular authors share their stories rather than others exploiting and co-opting their stories and 2) attests to the complexity of sovereignty versus shared experiences. An understanding of what these Indigenous women use to gather strength from each other and ultimately within themselves offers creators, educators, and young people opportunities for healing as they mediate trauma and build critical hope.

Authors

• Ricki Ginsberg, Colorado State University

• Wendy J. Glenn, University of Colorado - Boulder