Congratulations to Christine Añonuevo for Successfully Defending her PhD Dissertation!

Huge congratulations to Christine Añonuevo for successfully defending her PhD dissertation, Ang Amin Mga Kwento Ay Siyang Magpapagaling: Our Stories Are Our Healing. Christine’s work reflects her dedication and commitment to amplifying the voices of Indigenous, Black, and Filipinx womxn in rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous geographies of so-called British Columbia.

As a SSHRC Joseph-Bombardier Scholarship recipient (2021–2024), Christine’s doctoral research, grounded in adapted critical narrative inquiry and transformative research paradigms, uses story-poems to offer understandings of womxn’s health and well-being rooted in radical decolonial praxis.

Christine is grateful to the co-researchers of the project and to the examining committee for their thoughtful and generative feedback, dialogue, and time.

Abstract: What are the health stories of Indigenous, Black, and Filipinx womxn in rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous geographies of so-called BC? What do these stories of Land, Water, Air, and Body say about the health and well-being in these specific places? This doctoral project privileges the stories and voices of Black, Indigenous, and Filipinx womxn, from and about so-called northern BC, to document their lived experiences. These womxn’s voices, I argue, hold insights into solidarities anchored in relationships to the Land, Water, Air, and Bodies. Taken together and braided into story-poems of dialogue and collectivity, these womxn’s voices reveal experiences amidst past, present, and future colonial injustices in places where industrial, extractive projects are a priority for settler-state governments.

Set within an adapted critical narrative inquiry and transformative research paradigm, and informed by Critical Race Theory, Black Feminist Thought, and Intersectional Feminist methodologies, my research documents and creates a new offering. A collection of story-poems which opens potential pathways for further understandings about womxn’s health and well-being. Using arts-based methods and kuwentuhan, which reflect a collaborative and caring process, my research celebrates insights offered by womxn’s voices and stories. Framed by reviews and discussions about creative literature and academic scholarship (alongside local journalism), I argue that these health story-poems about Land-Water-Air-Body worldviews provide new ways of unlearning colonialism and thus represent embodiments of decolonial knowing.

Story-poems become timely and innovative ways to speak back and speak against multi-scalar racism and other structural determinants across health policies, practices, and institutions. The poeticized voices of Black, Indigenous, and Filipinx womxn in this dissertation, I argue, are ultimately a radical decolonial praxis.

Christine is grateful to the co-researchers of the project and to the examining committee for their thoughtful and generative feedback, dialogue, and time.

Examining Committee:

Chair: Dr. Caroline Sanders, University of Northern British Columbia
Supervisor: Dr. Sarah de Leeuw, University of Northern British Columbia
Committee Member: Tsakiy ze’ We’es Tes (Sandra Harris)
Committee Member: Dr. Rita Wong, Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Committee Member: Dr. May Farrales, Simon Fraser University
External Examiner: Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, San Francisco State University