Restful Resistance: How I Use Rest to Dream Métis Futures

Abstract

Positioning rest as a response to biopower acknowledges the exhausting ways the settler state harms communities. I will consider how collaborative, arts-based rest is a method of refusing settler recognition to prioritize community well-being to dream of healthier Métis futures. I begin with an analysis of how biopower is settler colonialism while bringing in anti-colonial critiques of biopower. I will consider the call from these critiques to turn toward community to resist biopower. Finally, utilizing Métis sources alongside texts that theorize on rest, I shape how collaborative, arts-based practices of building community are a method of resisting biopower through rest.