Bad Cree

This thesis consists of a hybrid form fiction and poetry manuscript called Bad Cree. This work articulates the themes of nehiyawak (Cree) ways of knowing, love, and kinship networks through the first-person account of Bailey, an urban nehiyaw iskwew (Cree woman), as she develops the ability to transfer objects from the dream-world to the waking-world, and the ability to speak to her ancestors and dead sister in her dreams. The novel opens with Bailey bringing her first object from her dream into the real world and follows her as she attempts to figure out if what is happening is real, and what it means if it is. The chapters are interspersed with poems which show Bailey's gradual understanding of her abilities as she travels back to her home territory and reconnects with her aunties, cousins, sisters, and her mom. Bailey discovers a family history filled with powerful nehiyawak dreamers and medicine women who help her unpack her identity, and who validate her understanding of blood memory and dreaming as Cree ways of knowing. By delving into her family history, Bailey gains a more profound understanding of the ways her feelings of disconnect with her communities and cultural knowledge intersect with the fraught relationship she had with her sister before her death. By attempting to mend the severed relationship with her sister through dreaming, Bailey also starts to reconnect with her family. Through all of this, she comes to understand the importance of kinship networks in shaping and preserving identity and how these networks are, ultimately, essential to survival for Indigenous communities. Bad Cree attempts to disrupt and re-imagine the colonial framework of knowledge production and intentionally approaches understandings about dreaming and kinship from the perspective of a nehiyaw iskwew. In addition, the concept of dream transference and being in-between, the juxtaposition of inner-body and outer-body experiences, illustrates the importance of Indigenous body sovereignty and what it means to live as an Indigenous body within colonial systems.Arts, Faculty ofGraduat