Emotional Eco-Maternity and the Sovereignty of Animal Feeling: Decolonial Kinship in Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau’s Works
Emotional Eco-Maternity and the Sovereignty of Animal Feeling: Decolonial Kinship in Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau’s Works

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the intersection of animal emotionality and Indigenous maternal experience in the literary works of Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau. Through the theoretical framework termed emotional eco-maternity, an onto-epistemological praxis of care situated at the nexus of affect theory, Indigenous cosmology, and feminist ecology, the study examines how Bordeleau’s Indigenous perspective challenges Western epistemological boundaries separating human and animal emotional lives. While contemporary environmental humanities and affective neuroscience have only recently begun acknowledging animal emotions, Indigenous literature, particularly that authored by women, has long articulated complex understandings of interspecies emotional connection through maternal perspectives. Focusing on Bordeleau’s works L’Enfant hiver, De rouge et de blanc, and Ourse bleue, this article demonstrates how the author constructs narrative spaces in which maternal experience serves as a privileged ground for recognising and representing animal subjectivity. The framework of emotional eco-maternity reveals how these texts resist the colonial erasure of both animal emotion and Indigenous maternal practices. By portraying motherhood as an emotional ecology transcending species boundaries, Bordeleau’s writing performs a form of decolonial resistance that reconnects Indigenous maternal identity with “more-than-human” kinship networks. Ultimately, this study contributes to zoopoetic and decolonial literary criticism by reclaiming Indigenous perspectives on interspecies emotional relations that challenge hierarchical Western divisions of being and affirm reciprocal ties amongst humans, animals, and ecological systems.

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