Gwayakooshgawiin (Living in Truth) is a relational theory which offers a framework for understanding knowledge, power, and responsibility to create new visions for a shared future. It draws on matriarchal governance, lived systems, Anishinaabe epistemologies and Indigenous worldviews.
As I sat with Elder Jim Dumont’s creation story over many years, I noticed that it contained a complete architecture of knowledge. The four directions. The elements. The medicines. The seasons. The animals. The life stages. The dimensions of well-being. I came to understand that none of these are discrete categories. They are relational fields that intersect and inform one another. What mattered was not memorizing their components, but understanding their relationships.
To honour this, I wanted a way to represent the story without reducing it. Before I could write it, it first came out in my art. Each dream, each colour, each brush stroke, each vision was a way of holding what could not yet be spoken. It wasn’t until several years later that the art became animation. It was through animation that we brought the images to life. And as they moved, as they breathed and unfolded, I saw something I had not been able to see before. I saw movement. And from that movement, I finally found the words. Not to explain my research journey, but to live it.
My work draws on Indigenous law, matriarchal governance, lived systems, and community epistemology, and is dismissed as “irrelevant” because it does not cite the dominant lineage. My work reframes the problem itself, and has been judged irrelevant because it does not answer pre-determined questions. My theory does not come from institutions, geographies, or mainstream traditions so my work is read as experience rather than knowledge. Relevance, I learned, is not about usefulness. It is about alignment with existing structures and power.