Ikpíkyav (to fix again): Drawing from Karuk World Renewal to Contest Settler Discourses of Vulnerability
This dissertation concerns itself with a critical examination of scientific and political discourses of Indigenous vulnerability. Dr. Vinyeta's findings reveal the ways in which the settler state employs settler colonial and racist logics to justify ongoing Indigenous dispossession.
Karuk World Renewal Ceremonies, including those such as the White Deerskin Dance, continually implement Karuk concepts of spirituality, community, and land management through direct acts of human intervention, including cultural fire practices. Contemporary Karuk People continue to enact our sovereign right to manage cultural places and Relatives with fire and other traditional methods of plant and animal management which include protocols developed generation after generation of living in place on the landscape of the Klamath River Basin.
This dissertation intends to contest settler discourses of vulnerability by illustrating the complexity, relationality, and resilience that characterizes Karuk World Renewal, which the author considers "the epistemological and spiritual backbone of Karuk land management". The text considers visual images and specifically focuses on illustration to serve further understanding and engagement with Indigenous environmental sociology and contemporary practice.
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