“No Landfill Is a Grave”

Learning to Listen to Indigenous Women’s Poetry in wînipêk

Abstract

In wînipêk (Winnipeg), Indigenous women poets like Denise Cook, Brianna Jonnie, katherena vermette, Cambria Harris, and Emma LaRocque have been theorizing the intersection of colonial violence and misogyny since the 1980s, offering both analysis and resistance strategies that transform how we understand urban Indigenous experiences. Yet their voices often go unheard—not because they aren’t speaking, but because settler audiences have learned to hear Indigenous women’s words as noise rather than knowledge. This crisis of listening has material consequences, from policy failures to ongoing violence against Indigenous women. This paper builds on Warren Cariou’s concept of critical humility to argue that some of the violence against Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and their families in wînipêk could have been avoided if settlers learnt how to listen to Indigenous women, and it will argue that Indigenous women poets offer us nuanced understandings of the systems of colonial power that make their safety precarious.