UCLA

Representations of indigeneity are noticeably present in countercultural American literature and culture. In contemporary writings by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers seeking to combat oppressive mainstream American value systems like capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy, what Jodi Byrd calls “ideas of the Indian and Indianness” are often tied to a desire to change how humans relate to each other and to lively presences beyond the human. World Ecology, Indigeneity, and Epistemology in Countercultural American Literature focuses specifically on post-1945 American texts that deploy popular representations of Indigenous people in connection with political-ecological imperatives. My methodology throughout the project lingers in the tensions that arise when artists and critics navigate decolonizing objectives and colonial traces in the same text. Placing Indigenous studies, ethnic studies, and posthumanism in conversation, I argue that Indigenous visions of world ecology could help constitute a large-scale transformation of how we conceive of coalition-building in the context of ecological struggle.