Articulating Identity

How a UBC researcher used illustrations to represent urban Indigenous identities

Cheyanne Brown Armstrong (n. Connell)

I aim to challenge dominate Indigenous representation that situates natives as of a specific hair and skin colour, and rural existence. This is often done through including a variety of hair styles and colours, skin colour, and aesthetic and environment details. Thus, through all my art and its distinctive elements, I aim to contribute to the expansion and diversifying of contemporary Indigenous representation in public worlds.

– Cheyanne Brown Armstrong (n. Connell); Artist’s Statement

In her research with Dunne-Za Cree communities, UBC Anthropology graduate student Cheyanne Brown Armstrong (n. Connell) explores the role of traditional language in contemporary identity-making and performances through a feminist Indigenous perspective. Armstrong engages multiple registers to build her ethnographic account of identity-making, from online platforms, aspects of self-presentation, and the history and social life of language. She then expresses her work through both writing and illustrations. This multimodal approach develops an expansive and layered sense of everyday diverse urban Indigenous identities in settler states that accounts for the complexities therein. Through illustrations, Armstrong increases the accessibility to aspects of her work, as images draw in and resonate with a wider audience. This also shifts the purpose of her research; rather than working to document and catalog ethnographic information, this technique helps engage an ongoing dialogue and expression of culture. Drawing inspiration from traditional plains Cree art, Armstrong works to incorporate these influences and blend them with her own style. This effort responds to the need for a more public anthropology that works to address social issues beyond the discipline or academic discourse. Accessibility is a central concern in Armstrong’s work and reflects her commitment to advancing more open exchanges of ideas and increasing cooperative engagement, as well as her dedication to the community with whom she works. This kind of accessible and active engagement is particularly valuable in the case of communities that have historically been documented, cataloged, and dispossessed; continually being denied adequate space for self-expression. This work goes beyond charting a critical diagnosis and also reclaims an active form of agency. Armstrong shares her conviction that “having feeling in ethnographic research is really important” and stresses “the importance of striving for rich ethnographies and rich narratives of people’s experiences and stories”. In this sense, her work reflects a future-oriented anthropology that demonstrates a commitment to carving out and reinventing new spaces and radical forms of becoming. Armstrong’s work challenges the idea that Indigenous identities are contingent on externally imposed nostalgic ideas of what might be considered ‘traditional’, and instead works to represent and imagine more dynamic articulations of identity that embrace differing notions of self woven into people’s lived experiences. Armstrong highlights that writing and illustrating complement one another; adding context through writing and tacit depth through illustrations that are able to capture people’s experiences and sentiments in unique ways. This kind of multimodal engagement in anthropology pushes for creativity within the parameters of academic work.

Discussion question

Engaging Diversity: Multimodal Inquiry into Urban Indigenous Identity

How does Cheyanne Brown Armstrong’s multimodal approach to anthropology, integrating writing and illustrations, contribute to a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of urban Indigenous identities and their expression? How does her emphasis on accessibility and active engagement challenge traditional notions of academic research and facilitate broader social dialogue and cultural representation?