I think the author challenges Brathwaite's perception of the older black woman sweeping the sand outside of her home. The author incorporates the black shoal as a representation of the lady performing her morning routine. The sand travelling to her house was also once on shore, now reaching the Land including her house; this completes the black shoal.

To summarize this introduction, shoals are the outcome of years of friction and contact between Land and Water, often not trackable in certain typography, man-made maps and technologies. Nature forms these shoals at its own time, and not by the expectations of our materialistic times.

The relation of the shoal for other humans and nature. Similar to the Sap Tree story mentioned at the Tipi.

As Professor Sherwood had mentioned in this week's lecture, a shoal is a natural bank or ridge made up of rocks or gravel in the sea, often hazardous for ships.

After what occurred on October 7th 2023, Israel and the United States had completely displaced the Middle East and Gaza to this very day. I am not a fan of comparing violence and I don't believe anyone deserves it. At a moment like this where Palestinians are at a moment of life and death, they are closer to violence than any other Israeli and American is due to the generations affected by an ongoing settler colonial project.

I am going to take this quote and retain it for every experience and opportunity I recieve at the NGO i am currently in, and observe if similar movements are happening. I am aware that the research wing I am in does work with anti-colonial frameworks and we are always in disagreements with other teams on what kind of data to work with and such.

Yeah this really shocked me. I was conditioned by UofT and the culture of students to be applying for internships. Especially as a social science student I am supposed to either work at a law firm or an NGO. This paragraph makes NGOs look like a puppet for corporations and government to utilize data and monetize communities.

This makes me question the future of our research and social science fields. The fact that many NGOs are neoliberal and extremely toxic in workplaces, still reinforcing the abuse similar to colonial aspects.

This reminded me of the ongoing privatization of Land and Water at Kashmir while under both India and Pakistan occupation. Uber launched a water transport hailing service on the Dal Lake of Kashmir, where ubers are done at the Shikara boats. This was agreed on the basis of India owning that region, and there expands entrepreneurship and privatization of the Dal Lake, and the exploitaiton of the Water, the fishermen and locals.

To sell back or gain some kind of monetary benefit from western institutions when working with Indigenous groups is clearly a post-colonial action. This affirms the ideas and ethnographical fetishism of Indigenous groups as uncivilized and requiring progression.

This reminds me of the terra nulius concept. The concept of an empty land and to create progression from it.

This reminded me of the NGO market day that happened at the MN building in UTM last year. Where many NGOs sold similar art work from Nicuraguan and Ecuadorian villages, such as Llama keychains, and other trinkets. I bought one because I was conditioned to fall for such marketing, and how the product looked to me. I thought I was buying from an ethical source. But after this example, I really was just a consumer of internationalism.

This is relating to the next reading on the "damage centered research" to advertise a product on a sob story to the consumers of the Imperialist.

The author kind of projected these capitlist ideas from the imperialist notions of the US that impacted the Navajo Nation's land base. The author did not have any negative intentions but the capitalist connection reinforced a sort of contract to treat their art as a commodity.

This is the kind of themes marketed in gentrifying advertisements. The life to get away from capitalism, to slow down life, and romanticizing this on the cost of Local's living conditions.

Relational, collective movemement.

The IDF soldiers are currently vacationing at Goa, India as a resort from the genocide and crimes they have committed. Indian PM, Nahrenda Modhi made agreements with Benjamin Netayahu and Donald Trump to keep a consistent relation of trade, and tourism. The marketing calls it a "detox trip" for the IDF soldiers from the "military action" they have taken, to vacate and gentrify South Asian countries.

To see the agreements that India and other South Asian and MENA countries have with the US, contributing to the Palestinian genocide.

I am surprise for people to be unaware of how these connect. But I also understand the power of history and archives place in Western educational curriculums which have erased Indigenous cultures and true history.

As a non-Indigenous person I do not understand what is there to feel guilty about. I am ashamed of the outcome this Land and how it became a place for my parents to settle. I don't feel guilty about it because I am aware of my privilege and I want to use my power to join the liberation.

Reading this introduction and to see this author connect with other people affected by imperialism. Relation connection is liberation from the oppressors. I am learning from this that collective movements do have relationality.

I mean, with a more casual and general example, I do not think the desire framework could always work with consumerist ideals. Especially at a current time where companies are in the BSD list, things to be boycotted, I wouldn't make someone feel bad for consuming those products, I am aware of the accessibility it has on people, but how its money affects others halfway across the world. I'm afraid that is not damage-centrered, it's the truth.

I volunteered for the UTM powwpow and definetely felt moments of desire all around the gym where Indigenous dancers performed their ceremony, as well as seeing Indigenous artists and students sell their paintings, beadwork and jewelry. I saw a pair of beaded earrings, which was beautifully made with the term "Land Back"; it erases that insecurity, resists all forms of settler-colonialism, and to sell and show that in its art form defeats the binary social science perspective.

This reminds me of many artists with disabilities who have created art with their prosthetics and physical conditions. Such as Lisa Bufano who created doll-like prosthetics for her amputated legs, and danced with it on stage. I am bringing a disability perspective into this reading to expand the author's point of desire research.

Desire contradicts the social science aspect (which believes that people can reproduce social inequity or resis unequal social conditions). Desire seems to challenge those power dynamics where people can represent themselves in a specific way that individualizes them instead of stereotypes; just like that example of the African american photography at the meausum from the previous pages

The projection of older generation insecurities on children. The damage centered approach rehashes generational trauma! It repeats the violence that ancestors have gone through, generalizing their children to the systems of oppresion,

The desire framework decentralizes its methodologies from racist ideologies that assume weakness and insecurity in BIPOC people.

The author notes that this is possibly a vicious cycle where these communities have no choice but to tolerate damage centered research to refrain from getting in trouble for not complying and seeking compensation or very little benefit from these greedy political research groups.

Foucault..how you appear everywhere.

I first had a thought about one of the research articles I analyzed for a mental health project where a mental health service conducted a similar experience at a remote town in Nunavut to see how mental health services can be distributed at low remote communities. But I want to avoid the relational assumption of different Indigenous communities.

Project Two could be breaking the intergenerational trauma amongst the Indigenous students at their school system.

Our class session at the Tipi fulfilled these aspects of Indigenous methodology and was a very successful approach. I am sad to graduate and miss out on seeing Indigenous methodologies like this.

Tribal epistemology

This should be the relational aspect.

I need to remind myself not to generalize the workshops and groups I was apart of as most of them did not involve tribal epistemology.

Similarly, I supported a recent workshop at UTM where Iranians came together to explain their stories, and to also hear my Iranian professor being first-hand affected by the war in the Middle East really made my realize my standpoint of being a privileged Canadian person, to be "geographically lucky"

As a student enrolled in Indigenous courses for over 2 years now, I hadn't realized how recent Residential schools lasted. To hear out my Indigenous friends, classmates and professors and see how they have been affected by it really impacted my point of view.

I felt this exact same way while hearing out my classmates and Professor's Sherwood's recollection of memories with nature at the Tipi. The mixed stories of the positive and negative associations not only brought our group together but it highlighted the influence that post-colonial systems have on Earth and our relations with it.

This resonates with me because my WGS373 course with Dr.Farokhi involved a trauma-informed workshop where we had to recite to each other our stories, anything significant, which not only brought out emotions but an appropriate, consented and ethical way of sharing information with one another.

How does a researcher exactly execute this? To navigate Indigenous-settler relationships involves reviews and analysis of archives and contracts signed off between settlers and Indigenous people. It does not capture the context of the Indigenous perspective whatsoever. There was no significant relationship besides a contract.

correct.

anticolonial* I'm sorry but I believe we need to stray away from the term decolonization in order for the Indigenous paradigm to exist and function.

Following up with the introduction of this reading, to research in Indigenous methodologies requires to unlearn and dismantle from Western knowledge.

Relational assumption. So there are assumptions of Indigenous communities and their families in Western research?

So the issue is that the western perception of a paradigm is only the the basis of ontology, epistemology and methodology, which is not flexible at all to different kinds of knowledge outside of Western institutions.

The research framework should be consistent with the paradigm that it is supposed to follow. In terms of Indigenous frameworks, the research should not be extractive by any means, regardless if it is Indigenous or not. But I do believe if a non-Indigenous researcher is researching with an Indigenous framework, it requires a lot of guidance, check-ins, and working simultaneously with Indigenous communities, and getting feedback from them, not as participants but as the audience who are also the experts.

Article focuses on conversational method

I find this crazy because in my city we have city laws for the gardens of our properties. The obligation to trim our lawns that are shaped within acres and measurements of fences, shaped into the commodities of our homes. The panoptic view, where my neighbours or my parents garden their lawns, despite the privacy, our treatment towards it effects us all, but the gaps of my white picketed fence leaves a story for my neighbours to look and judge.

The concept of a state and a country is then a post-colonial legacy, a westminster model. Reflecting from my political science classes, states and sovereignties are coined and developed by European history, which was clearly involved in the dispossession and misrecognition of Indigenous communities and Lands.

Fanon's concept of colonized people projecting their insecurities and labeling themselves and Indigenous people in derogatory images and sayings claimed by the masters. When Canadians complain about the density of Ontario and how huge Canada actually is, wanting our population to disperse in the "empty lands" of northern Canada.

The ethnography of Indigenous people are based on capitalist progression. The land was perceived to be underdeveloped and not utilized, calling it terra nullius, but colonialists only have a narrow idea of what a land of nothing is. Reflecting from my previous classes, the research and relations of nature were not recognized, or were deemed inappropriate to the colonialists.

When the culture of Indigenous communities are generalized into commodities that appeal to the eye of the settler society and government: prisons, crime, poverty and the context of pre-modernism.

The author's thesis mentions how the representation of difference amongst human beings are derived from ethnological formalism and fetishism. As discussed in class 3/20, Prof. Sherwood and a few other classmates like Cherise mentioned examples of ethnography, such as the way Indigenous people were labeled as savages.

This correlates with Sarah Ahmed' feminist killjoy, the homework to unlearn everything, including the sciences; this is the works of becoming a feminist (Ahmed 2016).

I came back to this after reading the disability and paragraph and the authors' prospective at the end. I realize that scientists like this are ignorant on understanding plants. He clearly lacked the initiative to study plants and instead plastered his perception of plants based on societal expectations.

I notice a common pattern from sex to disability, where plants are always humanized when being studied.

How can we correlate ableism to plants?

I was always very confused about this as well. How do plants and animals without mammal genital get involved in "sex"? Why is their reproduction always sexualized?

This reminds me of an aspect of eco-fascism where living things are priortized over human beings. This becomes racialized when Global South countries are judged for poor environmental practices. https://earthworks.org/blog/eco-fascism-a-tangible-present-danger/

This reminds me of the invasive species of the European Pine trees placed in Palestine during the Nakba. The Israeli forces planted pine trees while occupying Palestinian villages to replicate the European infrastructures, this is a biological warfare of colonialism (Josephson 2025). https://origins.osu.edu/read/environmental-nakba-israel-palestine-water

With the rise of anti-South Asian sentiment, South Asian countries are posted on social media with negative criticism of the polluted rivers, and littered streets; media consumers use this as an excuse to dehumanize South Asian people. But South Asian countries are lack the studies and sources for environmental work, as well as the politics involved, lobbyed by the BJP right wing Indian party and the Trump administration.

The author explains that botany has only been properly studied at Europe and North American institutions, compared to the rest of the world such as Africa and Asia where specimens are barely discovered.

Banu's introduction is very metaphorical to the term Labyrinth, making her book very enaging for readers, especially non-stem students like myself.

Science is often very exclusive to stem students, or its western epistemologies as Harding explains is only comprehensible from a anglo saxon male perspective. Banu encurages botany to be accessible to everyone, making learning and findings unlimted, and creating that change of feminist science.

Banu reassures to her readers that botany and this book is for everyone to read, which is why she is inclusive with these scientific terms.

This challenges Linnaeus notion of the male and female genitalia of plants, and his concept and time of the sex reproduction of plants correlating with the nuclear family tradition. If scientists like Linnaeus could not comprehend the difference of time with the growth of plants, they would be labeled as weird, or the way human beings are labelled, "queer", a term now reclaimed by the queer community.

I appreciate how Banu correlates the growth and sciences of a plant to queer theory. She pulls apart the definition of queer as not only a homosexual term but something does not align the strict labels and frameworks that human beings apply. She explains in a way that nature and plants are queer in itself if humans wanted to label it.

The author explains decolonization to not be a simple process, and they previously mention how colonization was a huge project. For that reason, we need to approach colonization with variaety of other resources also affected, creating a bigger alternative project.

This is the author's thesis to challenging the colonial science and overturning it with feminist science and botany.

This reminds me of a conversation I had in my sociology class about hate crime and racial discrimination in the healthcare systems. How the demographics of nurses are BIPOC and women, and have faced tremendous racism and sexism at workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How the colonial mindset truly affected the kinship and families in South Asia, leaving countries like India truly displaced and underesourced. How this broke families apart by not believing in disabilities and making children feel less valuable in a competitized society, catching up to the first world countries.

These are the multitude of genres the author speaks on, to taking epistemology at a radical stance.

The author encourages to expand epistemology across variety of metholodologies to find more findings, implications and overall increase the studies of the botany field.

The author challenges Linnaeus concept of labeling human beings and living things from a negative perception, the way that hethinks. Lorde is used here to explain that studying plants can involve celebrating their differences.

The author answers their question so beautifully at the very end of this paragraph. Instead decentering the human out of plants, the author visualized a space where humans, living things and plants exist without a hierarchy, an eco-cosmipolitanism, the idea that all humans, animals, and living things are members of a single community.

In what way nature is considered feminine as mother nature? What are "the maternal instincts" of nature that are constructed by the patriarchy to call something mother nature?

This is the kind of feminist epistemology that Hardings encourages in her reading about the feminist research method.

I find it quite pathetic how easily people sexualize objects and living things and I cannot understand how that works, but I see the influence of scientists like Linnaeus encouraging this type of objectification in scientific studies. This reminds me of Paasnonen's concept of objectification, where people and things simply exist to be objectified, and that is due to the cultural dynamics and social constructions of a society.

The author beings with a strong evidence of the sexism uprooted in the plant biology of the classification of species. This correlates with Mulvey's concept of phallocentrism, where the attraction of a woman is centred by the male genital. In the sense of this reading. Linnaeus has labeled plants based on human anatomy, aligned with social contructions of rigid gender roles.

The author's main point of this chapter and this book is to highlight the colonial epistemology and influence on plant biology and how it lacks accuracy on the study of plants. The author recommends different epistemologies, especially the field of botany and how it is beneficial for the study of plants, also encouraging social justice. (p.1-2).