Place(ing) Relations, Embodying Intentions: A Decolonial Feminist Ethnography of Archival Praxis Among Indigenous and South Asian Artists and Curators in So-Called Canada

Abstract

Within escalating conditions of settler colonial violence, Indigenous and South Asian artists and curators in so-called Canada are creating living archives through embodied practices that refuse colonial logics while generating alternative modes of survival and relation. Drawing on autoethnographic reflection and sustained ethnographic engagement between 2022-2024, I argue Indigenous and South Asian diasporic artists and curators enact decolonial feminist archival praxis to create living, embodied counter-archives grounded in place-based accountability that reveals how cultural practice becomes technologies of resistance within ongoing occupation. As a Bengali-Persian refugee-citizen, I offer শুধু নিয়ত| shudho niot (heartfelt intentions) as methodology, rooted in Islamic philosophy and transformed through accountability to Indigenous sovereignty.

I develop key concepts: diasporic mimetic archives, examining Farheen HaQ's transformation of South Asian Muslim wedding rituals into land-based protocols; sovereign ordinariness and archival afterlives, embodied in Christine Toulouse's quillwork practice embracing decay as continuance and asserting Indigenous temporal sovereignty; and cross-cultural-collaborative archival praxis, which informs Naveen Girn and Alanna Edwards' respective place-based curation.

These practices operate through asymmetrical parallelity, acknowledging fundamental differences between racialized settler and Indigenous experiences while creating accountable relations across difference. I advance critiques of Asian settler colonialism by offering models for accountable practice, contribute methodological frameworks that ground decolonial theory in embodied practice, and reveal how intimate refusals maintain cultural sovereignty while navigating institutional demands. This dissertation shows how artists and curators are creating alternatives grounded in place-based accountability and care-centered protocols, demonstrating archives as technologies for collective survival and liberation.