A Hopeful Decolonial Rhizome: An Invitation

Abstract:As a part of our commitment to the centering of Indigenous worldviews, return of Indigenous lands and authority, and honoring of Indigenous sovereignty, we share this introduction as a way of situating this special colloquium and its focus on Indigeneity and the African diaspora. Despite frequent calls for decolonized solidarity, we are writing amid deep political, economic, and cultural chasms. This colloquium explores the tensions, productivity, and relationships resonant in the conversations around Indigeneity, transnational feminisms, and the African diaspora within the feminist research in which we are immersed. Particularly attentive to how decoloniality is a daily practice, we investigate the ways that decolonial feminisms—in lived experience, in epistemologies and ontologies, and in the material impacts on communities—inform the spaces where Indigeneity and/or African diasporic identity are informed by or transform transnational understanding.