Student Portfolio
queer, indigenous, and feminist theory
About Dani
Hello! I am Dani (she/her), and I am a SSHRC-funded Master’s student at UBC Okanagan in the Interdisciplinary Power, Conflict, and Ideas theme. I am Metis/Settler from Treaty Eight territory (Northern Alberta), but I am currently living, working, and learning on unceded Syilx territory.
This website holds the work I am most proud of from my undergraduate degree. It features guidebooks, essays, and blogs that I have completed as a part of my degree. I have also linked to other projects I am working on outside of my education. I hope you gain knowledge and new perspectives from looking at my work. Enjoy!
Summary of Master’s Research
Through my research at UBCO, I intend to develop an Indigenous feminist
theory of rest as resistance. As a Metis, queer, femme person, I find that colonial structures deny Indigenous communities the right to peaceful rest. An Indigenous feminist theory of rest as resistance will generate alternative modes of confronting harmful colonial action through prioritizing community well-being. The development of this theory began in a Directed Studies course I completed with Dr. Ilya Parkins at UBC Okanagan in fall 2021. I aspire to articulate a way to respond to the deeply exhausting ways that the settler state has (historically and presently) attempted to subdue/oppress/assimilate/anihilate our communities. This response sees rest not as succumbing to these oppressive powers but as a method to actively resist them. My work is deeply indebted to Black activists and scholars, like Tricia Hersey, and disability activists and scholars who ignited this work in their communities.
Creative Projects
Trans Artivism Archive
This archive is meant to celebrate the ways that trans activists have expressed their work through art and, conversely, the ways that art has had “activist” effects for trans movements and people. To encompass all activism or all art would be a near-impossible task. Instead, our archive is meant to invite you to a quick dip into the amazing work trans artists and activists have created. What you’ll find here is just a snapshot into the expansive worlds of trans art and activism, historical and contemporary.
Rest as Resistance Guidebook
This booklet is a guide for activists and students invested in social justice’s often emotionally exhausting work. This piece will take you through some brief theorizations of the concept of rest as resistance and introduce ways to prioritize rest for yourself and your community. Black feminists and activists like Audre Lorde and Tricia Hersey have deeply influenced this guide.
Field Guide to Dry Meat
This field guide offers an Indigenous eco-feminist analysis of dry meat. Dry meat exists in this intricate corner of environmental justice issues. It holds the weight of reconnecting for some Indigenous peoples, but it also holds the weight of (racist) settler criticism on food. It asks us to consider our animal relations and perhaps pushes us to reconsider how we engage in these relations. It illuminates the anti-Indigenous atmosphere that we live within.
Noticing Place Reflection
This reflective essay incorporates eco-feminist analytical tools into an analysis of an environment or place that I interact with daily.
Essays
Harry Styles as a Feminine Spectacle
This essay analyzes Harry Styles’s stage persona as a performance of spectacular femininity. I argue that the way Styles embraces his femininity allows him to transcend gender expectations.
Queer Identity and Indigenous Communities
This essay calls for the centring of queer and two-spirit perspectives in Indigenous communities and in LGBTQIA+ communities. This essay works through how colonialism has harmed queer Indigenous folks to urge settlers and Indigenous folks alike to prioritize queer Indigenous peoples.
Connection and Indigenous Education
This essay considers Dr. Jo-ann Archibald’s work in Indigenous-centred education and other Indigenous scholars’ work to emphasize the importance of implementing cultural knowledge in all parts of school.
Ongoing Projects
That’s What [We] Said Student Journal
I am a member of the editorial board for UBC Okanagan’s Gender and Women Studies Undergraduate Student Journal. The mission of That’s What [We] Said is to challenge social norms, facilitate a creative platform for an intersectional feminist discourse, and offer an approachable commentary. We believe that gender studies stand to benefit from being put into more intimate conversation with other disciplines. We seek to amplify the voices of people from various backgrounds and to provide them with a space to be critical and creative. In so doing, we hope to deepen our connections with one another, acknowledging that community counters isolation.
We launched the 2022 volume in March with the theme Re-Creation, which you can read on the link below!
The FEELed Lab
I currently hold the position of Administrator in Canada Research Chair Astrida Neimanis’s humanities field lab at UBC Okanagan, the FEELed Lab. The FEELed Lab is a collaborative and interdisciplinary environmental humanities field lab located on unceded Syilx territory, in Kelowna, BC. Our activities support curiosity, inquiry and action for living well with human and non-human beings in the Okanagan watershed and beyond. Our work is grounded in hydrofeminist principles that insist on the messy and necessary amplification of feminist, queer, crip, anticolonial, and antiracist perspectives to address the tangled challenges of social and environmental crisis. We also make room for joy.
Contact
danielle.pierson@ubc.ca
Dani Pierson: Student 