- Abstract -

Through ways of forming and reforming via unstitching and restitching, Caribou-being beyond the Boreal imagines new futures born from Denesųłiné love and ways of knowing. This work tells a story of Caribou reciprocity, inter-connectedness, and transformation. Stitchwork as a methodology, informed and strengthened by story work, opens a possibility of the Dene and Caribou interspecies-ness that has inspired this research creation. Woven together are Denesųłiné oral histories and family stories that investigate what it means to be a Caribou-person. Caribou-being beyond the Boreal considers inter-species-ness and inter-related-ness through material investigation, ancestry, and land-based knowledges. Through methods of rerouting, reconstructing, and reconsidering, this research continues to wrestle with ideas of resistance informed by Albert Marshall’s concept of “two-eyed seeing” and the binocularity it describes. Bound through love and memory, and explored through garment construction, this research creation speaks to the embodiment of Indigenous dress as living vessel. Caribou-being beyond the Boreal reflects Denesųłiné futurisms as a strategy that centres my body as a time machine that carries ancestral knowledges. These material explorations focus the intricacies and complexities of love to land, and the shared ingenuity found in both Denesųłiné and Caribou survival. Through an investigation of self, and the identity of my community as ‘The Caribou People’, I was led to research this question, ‘What if I am Caribou?’

Keywords: decolonial love, re-construction, re-stitching, garment construction, beadwork, stitchwork, inter-species beingness, Denesųłiné, Caribou-being, Two-Eyed Seeing