Interlude: Little brother

In "interlude: little brother," a work of autobiographical criticism, Yurok-Diné scholar Natalie Knight recalls her experiences growing up in a white rural community in western Washington state with her two black siblings, all three children adopted by white parents. Knight felt an obligation to protect her little brother from the anti-Black racism he encountered on a daily basis at his school and in their town by exposing him to books, films, and music by Black creators whose perspectives reflected his experiences. Yet Knight, a young Indigenous woman, did not receive the same kind of guidance or protection. Through reading works by Black and Red Power Indigenous authors Knight found a way to put into words and contextualize her experiences. At the same time, the antagonisms between activist works and European traditions of philosophy, political science, and history, combined with the invisibility of Indigenous intellectual traditions in these discourses, created a profound sense of dissonance in Knight. Finding ways to navigate these traditions of thought within a framework of social justice energizes Knight's search for a language and critical framework that addresses her experiences and provides context for the histories she carries.