meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration

366) Daniel Heath Justice: Indigenous literature and decolonial libraries

Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration

Kaméa Chayne

Earth Sciences, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.8694 Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2022

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“English embeds certain things just by virtue of its structure. It’s a very thing-ifying language; it’s very noun-heavy. Most of the Indigenous languages that I know of are very relational and verb-heavy. It’s a fundamentally different way of relating to the world and to community. If [the] Indigenous literature [you see] is all in English, then you’re missing a significant reality in terms of Indigenous forms of expression.”

In this episode, we welcome Daniel Heath Justice, a Colorado-born citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He works on Musqueam territory at the University of British Columbia, where he is Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English and holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture. A literary scholar, fantasy novelist, and cultural historian, his critical and creative work considers Indigenous kinship, sexuality, speculative fiction, and other-than-human relations.

Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include the role of storytelling in shaping culture, the politics of what gets validated as literature, the power of speculative fiction in seeding imaginations for other ways of being, and more.

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Tear Down The Wall by Forest Veil. The episode-inspired artwork is by Subin Yang.)

Support our in(ter)dependent show: GreenDreamer.com/support

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I have a quick but important ask. As you're probably aware, Green Dreamer is an independent

0:07.9

podcast and we don't take on corporate advertisers to fund our work because we don't want those

0:13.7

considerations to influence our curiosities or our abilities to question whatever it is that we want to question.

0:22.3

So if you value and believe in our work, this is our call out.

0:26.8

We need your direct support in order to continue this podcast.

0:30.7

And you can help us out so, so much through a paid substack subscription to my newsletter at

0:37.3

camaya.substack.com or through a one-time

0:40.4

donation at greendreamer.com slash support. It really means a lot to have you here and we're so

0:47.6

grateful for whatever form or level of support that you're able to share with us.

0:55.5

Hey, it's your host, Kamea, and you're listening to Green Dreamer, a community-powered podcast.

1:01.3

To be honest, we need more listener donations to be able to keep this show alive because, as you

1:07.0

can see, we no longer do product advertisements, and we really want to keep it this way,

1:11.7

because we don't want to sell you things you don't need, and more importantly, we knew we needed

1:16.7

to shed the incentive of appealing to corporate sponsors so that we can maintain our very critical

1:22.8

lenses and continue to question a lot of mainstream ideas and big green narratives.

1:29.3

And if every listener chipped in just $2 a month, we would meet our fundraising goal in no time.

1:35.0

So join us today to be a co-creator of Green Dreamer at greendreamer.com slash support or at patreon.com slash green dreamer.

1:47.3

English embeds certain things just by virtue of its structure, right?

1:54.1

Like it's a very thingifying language.

1:57.5

It's very noun heavy.

1:59.6

And most of the indigenous languages that I know of are very

2:02.5

relational. They're very verb heavy. And so it's just a, it's a fundamentally different way of

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kaméa Chayne, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Kaméa Chayne and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.