Anguilla Rostrata, Our Teacher: Addressing Anishnabe Epistemicide through Eels

Epistemicide is proposed in global social theory to describe the deliberate decline of pluralistic knowledge that results from sweeping processes of assimilation and coloniality, including the introduction of settler colonialism as a way of being in place throughout North America. Attention to ontological pluralities demonstrates that individuals and groups are living in and from different Lebenswelt, or lifeworlds, a concept that supports different understandings of constructed and overlapping places and spaces to include epistemological foundations, phenomenological orientations, behaviours and institutions.

Anguilla rostrata, also known as eels, are migratory fishes with a deep saltwater origin who can traverse an aquatic path over two thousand miles; they migrate to and enter some freshwater environments across the North American continent. Anguillid species have been historically crucial to Indigenous societies and cultures around the world and are presently threatened by human behaviours. Anguilla rostrata has experienced massive decline in recent decades throughout North America, evoking an uneven response in multiple sectors. This dissertation seeks to align with methods and conventions in Anishnabe studies, informed by concepts in critical Indigenous geography and Indigenous environmental justice scholarship. The methods develop an embodied lifeworld that inquires about Anguilla rostrata through Anishnabe epistemological framing. The research is informed by an emerging Anishnabe geography along with Indigenous legal traditions for the revitalization of Indigenous lifeways as viable methods by which to frame possibilities for improved relationships with ecologies where Anguilla rostrata migrate.

Using place-based research, digital surveys, and interviews, the research offers possibilities for an enhanced understanding of eels through pursuit of epistemic justice. Approach of relationships with Anguilla rostrata involves temporal, environmental, and cognitive justice that argues for the eel’s right to be and for amelioration of an inverted, destructive social and environmental order. The research demonstrates that violence rendered against eels must be acknowledged as a tangible effect of imposed governance regimes installed through brute force and ignorance in settler colonial modes of land seizure and occupation.