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

Abstract

Abstract:Grounded in the belief that storytelling can act as an embodied form of resilience and can bring together voices in collective healing, this study uses general inductive analysis and Baez’s Sweetgrass Method to focus on how the Indigenous women contributors of #NotYourPrincess: Voices of Native American Women use writing, artwork, and media as a form of healing. Analysis focused on how the contributors described or depicted their strength and opportunities for healing through story (in many creative forms) in this edited collection marketed for young people. Findings reveal that the contributors demonstrate collaboration, introspection, and continuity as forms of healing in their connectedness with others, culture, history, spirituality, and land. The women describe how they confront fear with strength and reposition trauma and adversity using collaboration and introspection to retell histories, challenge dominant narratives, own and signal their pride, and rewrite their stories as activists and as their own heroes. The words and images demonstrate a commitment to themselves and others to share stories of community, culture, and land that show intergenerational and collective approaches to healing within and across tribal nations. This study demonstrates that writing can serve as a form of decolonial resistance and a source of deep understanding, connectivity, and activism in the way that it is strength-centered, power-centered, and healing-centered. The works in the collection speak to each other and together and demonstrate the power of storytelling as testament.