Last Updated on April 10, 2025
dän-dhá k’é | northern tutchone
nétsät | strong
chúní | medicine
Ìhtsųma | great-grandmother
níkhti | dream
huzhe | shame
When I think about my identity as a Northern Tutchone woman who has grown up away from her homelands and largely within a mainstream, urban setting, collage helps me reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable. Collage creates a space where home/away, insider/outsider, new/old, native/non-native, city/bush can exist is productive juxtaposition. In reality, I struggle with these dichotomies. They are riddled with judgement, pain, loss and disconnection.
We left the Yukon—the home of my ancestors—when I was six years old. Although I have visited numerous times since, when I move there in a year, it will be the first time in my adult life that I will live there. While I am very excited about returning to the Yukon, I realize that it will not come without its challenges. Blood-ties and memories will fuel the initial reconnection with my relatives and the broader community; but there will be a lot to learn about life in the North and a lot of people, places and things to be reacquainted with.
It is precisely because of these challenges that I find the lessons embedded in collage so helpful. Collage invites us to work with the fragmented realities of Indigenous identities, families, communities, cultures, and lands that have been created (sometimes violently, often intentionally) by historical and contemporary colonialism. It brings seemingly unrelated and diverse pieces—people, places, texts, contexts, experiences, practices, histories, traditions, ontologies—into purposeful and productive juxtaposition (Allen 2012); essentially allowing for multiple and sometimes incommensurable elements to be placed within new proximities to one another (Tuck and Yang 2012).
When our communities or our lives are looked at as collages, there is room for the addition of new pieces. These pieces play a role in changing the composition of the collage. They can spur re-ordering, fill gaps, or serve as connectors between disparate pieces. There is a place for them, regardless of how different or similar they may be and regardless of how much time has passed.
Allen, Chadwick. 2012. Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies. University of Minnesota Press.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. 2012. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1). http://decolonization.org/index.php/des/article/view/18630.
Across the world right now, Indigenous peoples are facing a renewed assault on their lands, rights, and ways of life.
From extractive industries pushing deeper into ancestral territories, to governments rolling back hard-won protections,
the threat is global—and it is growing.
What makes this moment especially dangerous is how little attention it receives.
Stories like this are disappearing in real time. Mainstream media
barely covers it and the coverage is fragmented. The public is left without the context
needed to understand what is truly at stake.
That is exactly why IC Magazine exists..
For more than 20 years, IC has reported on Indigenous struggles worldwide — consistently, independently, and without compromise.
We don’t follow news cycles; we trace patterns. We don’t sensationalize; we provide context.
And when the world looks away, we stay focused.
But this work is increasingly difficult to sustain.
We refuse to lock our reporting behind a paywall. We don’t sell access through subscriptions.
And we don’t answer to advertisers. IC Magazine survives solely because readers like you choose to
support independent Indigenous journalism.
Please donate today if you can. Every contribution helps us to continue this crucial work.
Thank you,
John Ahni Schertow
Founder and Editor in Chief
