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Paper short abstract

This paper interprets Madeline Katt Theriault’s Moose to Moccasins through eco-mnemonics, showing how land, species, and material culture anchor memory, positioning Indigenous autobiography as an ecological archive central to environmental humanities and climate ethics.

Paper long abstract

This article theorises Madeline Katt Theriault’s Moose to Moccasins: The Story of Ka Kita Wa Pa No Kwe as an Indigenous econarrative that exemplifies eco-mnemonics—a mode of life-writing in which memory is distributed across plants, animals, materials, and landscapes. Theriault encodes ecological relations as mnemonic scaffolds, showing how rivers, moose, birch, moccasins, foodways, and photographs function as repositories of survival knowledge. Remembering emerges as a relational practice enacted with more-than-human kin, positioning autobiography as an ecological archive of belonging.

Methodologically, the study combines close reading with ecolinguistics, Indigenous research paradigms, and climate humanities. Stibbe’s (2021) “stories we live by” framework identifies life-affirming discursive patterns, Wilson’s (2008) relational accountability and Ermine’s (2007) ethical space orient interpretation within Indigenous epistemologies, and Salmón’s (2000) kincentric ecology grounds memory in interspecies kinship.

The analysis demonstrates how rivers operate as route-mnemonics, moose and birch as species-cues, moccasins as material archives, foodways as mnemonic calendars, and photographs as multimodal anchors of ecological knowledge. Together, these eco-mnemonic practices challenge Eurocentric models of solitary, linear selfhood and extend ecolinguistics into Indigenous life-writing.

By advancing eco-mnemonics as a conceptual vocabulary, the article positions Indigenous autobiography as a climate text that encodes resilience, ecological ethics, and relational survival, affirming its central role in environmental humanities.