#indigenousauthor: locating Tenille Campbell’s erotic poetry, photography, and community-based arts beyond social media

Guided by a desire-centred framework, this article explores how Tenille Campbell (Dene/Métis) uses Instagram as a space for contemporary muiltimedia artistic practice. Her poetry, photography, and other creative endeavours have presented meaningful opportunities for community-building and identity-affirmation as a force specifically for Indigenous resurgence across national, tribal, and geographical lines. The first section begins with a discussion of desire-centred research as it intersects with Indigenous new media studies and decolonial methodologies. Later sections argue that Campbell’s artistic expressions nurture emotional, mental, communal, and spiritual connections to land, thereby growing a virtual landedness—especially in relation to the erotic, which best captures Campbell’s project of community-building and identity-affirmation. Lastly, this article highlights the remediation of Campbell’s poetry into fashionwear, which simultaneously cultivates networks of Indigenous women entrepreneurs. Her poetry, evinced as a co-creative, community-based, multidisciplinary literary arts practice, surpasses its manifestation on social media, and should be understood as a multimodal constellation that has impacts that ripple far beyond digital environments.

Duke Scholars

Author Tanja Grubnic