Footnotes of a Misaabekong Rugrat

Abstract

Footnotes of a Misaabekong Rugrat is an artistic exploration of the stories, infrastructures, and navigations of Indigenous communities who collaboratively create and maintain culturally-affirming community networks along the ridgelines of Duluth in the face of colonial legal policies of displacement, erasure, and dispossession aimed to isolate Indigenous peoples from land and each other. Through the blending of poetry, story, artwork, and theoretical exploration, I contextualize the lived and embodied realities of Ojibwe peoples in the hillside within a framework of Anishinaabe stories, spatialities, community structures, and relations. Written from the perspective of a Misaabekong Rugrat — which I define as a kid who learned the world through navigating the stories, built environment, infrastructures, networks, and creative communities of the hillside, usually on foot — Footnotes of a Misaabekong Rugrat is a love letter to the land, plant, animal, spirited, and people communities that have raised me. Chii-miigwech.