Forging is a digital-first journal for critically imagining Native futures. Its editors and contributors are deeply committed to changing the way we study and interpret Indigenous survivance in the face of settler colonialism, with a focus on engaging, highlighting, and learning from Native voices. Find our current open calls and read our pitch guidelines here.

Collecting, Essay

Gluhá máni: Collecting to hold, not to keep

Clementine Bordeaux & mary v. bordeaux

Apr 18, 2025

In this essay, Lakota sisters Clementine and mary v. bordeaux consider the significance of a traditional, community-centered bison harvest outside the collecting practices of institutions.

Collecting, Essay

On Being Nosy

Wolf Babe Collective

Apr 9, 2025

In this essay, Wolf Babe, a collective of nêhiyaw, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee artists and curators, argue for a methodology of nosiness in traditional museum and archive spaces that counters Western notions of linear time and knowledge unfolds cyclically and relationally through reciprocal connections.

Collecting, Feature

The Seed-Saving Movement Is Bigger Than Banks

Mary Ladd

Mar 14, 2025

Seed banks housed in universities, governments, and even global institutions such as Norway’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault serve as biodiversity archives, but their structure reflects a colonial approach to preservation and perhaps inadequate solutions to a problem that requires active cultivation, rather than passive storage. For Indigenous communities, the ability to save and exchange seeds is an assertion of sovereignty, a powerful act of reclamation and resilience—a resurgence of Indigenous wisdom that industrial and colonial agricultural systems have suppressed.

Archive

Collecting, EssayGluhá máni: Collecting to hold, not to keepApr 18, 2025Collecting, EssayOn Being NosyApr 9, 2025Collecting, FeatureThe Seed-Saving Movement Is Bigger Than BanksMar 14, 2025Governance, ConversationThe Politics of Naming Within Kayanręhstì·yu·Dec 18, 2024Governance, EssayReclaiming Birth SovereigntyNov 14, 2024Governance, Q&A‘Our way of life doesn't mean anything to them’: A Q&A on cultural resistance in Gayogo̱hó:nǫ’ NationOct 23, 2024Correction*, Essayevery pattern needs a passageMay 30, 2024Connectivity, Essay‘We Connect Whole Families’May 6, 2024Connectivity, Art HistoryGagizhibaajiwan, or Living With ParadoxApr 30, 2024Connectivity, AnalysisMaintaining Diné K'é OnlineApr 23, 2024Connectivity, EssayReimagining Native MotherhoodApr 15, 2024Connectivity, Design CriticismThe Impermanent Beauty of Cree DesignApr 5, 2024Language, ConversationSpeaking With Your Cat: An Artist and Researcher Talk Artificial Intelligence, Community, and Cultural ExpressionJan 26, 2024Language, Analysispiyêsiwak wâhkôhtowin/thunderbird’s kinshipJan 18, 2024Language, HistoryRadical Indigenous Contemporaneity in ʻKe Aloha O Ka Haku’Jan 8, 2024Language, Art History(Un)seen: Rotuman Fạ’iDec 27, 2023Language, EssayAsking for Permission/Listening for ConsentDec 18, 2023Knowing, EssayPostmodernism Is Not PermissionOct 18, 2023Knowing, Q&A‘Clay. . . Lets You Leave Your Mark Exactly How You Put It Down’: An Interview With Raven HalfmoonSep 30, 2023Knowing, FeatureFinding HomeSep 28, 2023Seed, Feature‘A Love Song to Ohlone Culture’Jun 23, 2023Seed, How-toHow to Make a Goathead SoftJun 23, 2023Seed, Q&AQ&A With Lucy GrignonJun 23, 2023Seed, Nonfiction essayPlanting Tobacco While the Ancestors LaughJun 23, 2023Seed, Photo essaySeeds, Bodies & Territory in Cerro QuilishJun 23, 2023

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