Personal Belonging(s)

Abstract

In this thesis, I conduct a series of object-based studies around my family’s material history, exploring how narratives of belonging, settler anxiety and attempts to secure the future emerge around each artifact. I then conduct a thematic analysis of these studies, reflecting on how, through attempts to secure the future or assert belonging, settlers have often damaged our relationships to one another and to the land. I concluded by offering strategies which settler educators, artists and cultural practitioners may find helpful for developing methodologies for embracing uncertainty. I discussed how practices of slowness, of land-based learning, embodiment and the use of creative practices may be vital in helping us find our way back to one another and to what it truly means to belong.