The 'Gated Community' of North American Women's Nature Writing: Reclaiming Indigenous Epistemologies and Literary Environmental Activism since the 197

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By historicizing and comparing contemporary responses in female Indigenous and Euro-North American literature to environmentalism since the 1970s, my project will explore and demonstrate its historical appropriation of Indigenous relationships to land. The significance of twenty-first-century Indigenousknowledges is largely unacknowledged in scholarship regarding climate change and environmentalism. Although the post-1970s eco-literature wave, predominantly written by white American women, garnered mainstream acclaim for its examination of America's relationship with nature, it also deployed Indigenous ideologies surrounding the environment. Examining the eco-writing of Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Naomi Klein, Mary Oliver and Rebecca Solnit, alongside Indigenous authors Cherie Dimaline, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Eden Robinson, I will prove that whereas Indigenous beliefs contrasted with Christian narratives in earlier nature-writing, late-twentieth-century Euro-North American writers increasingly embraced or appropriated Indigenous knowledges and literary tropes regarding women's relationship to nature, aliveness of the Earth and ethical consciousness (Gunn Allen, 1986; Dreese, 2002). I argue that movement towards acknowledging Indigenous epistemologies in white literature has especially galvanised non-Indigenous environmental activism. Indigenous-led online campaigns (#IdleNoMore, #MniWconi, #NDAPL), during Idle No More and the Dakota Access and Trans Mountain pipeline protests, have acquired support through increasing dissemination and adoption of Indigenous attitudes and literary tropes by non-Indigenous activists (LaDuke, 2010; Kino-Nda-Niimi, 2014). Such moves demonstrate a progression towards international solidarities of diverse activist groups, which are crucial in the face of the ongoing climate crisis and the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.My MA dissertation explores artistic and literary responses by Indigenous women to the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in North America, which has deepened my understanding of Indigenous history, literature and culture and the contemporary issues Indigenous peoples confront. My final-year undergraduate dissertation (first-class) also explored the relationship between place and identity for Indigenous writers. Having completed my American and Canadian Literature, History and Culture BA (1st) at UoN, where I achieved the highest graduating average in my cohort, I will complete my MA in American Studies in September 2020. UoN's Centre for Research in Race and Rights, its interdisciplinary American and Canadian Studies department and the expertise of my supervisors-Susan Billingham, Gillian Roberts, and Stephanie Lewthwaite-in North American Indigenous studies, make this the ideal place to conduct my research.