Taking Care of Water: Katherena Vermette's river woman and Rita Wong's undercurrent

Abstract:This article examines water as a site of resistance to environmental and colonial damage in the poetry of Métis author Katherena Vermette and Chinese-Canadian activist Rita Wong. I situate my poetic analysis within the critical context of ecological criticism and, in particular, Indigenous environmental ethics, material feminisms, and the feminist ethics of care. The articulation of water's particularities, irreducibility, autonomy, agency, and mode of human and nonhuman kinship constitutes the micro-poetics of Vermette's river woman and Wong's undercurrent. Water thus provides an epitome for the care ethics advocated by both poetry collections and their emphasis on ecological interdependency. I conclude by arguing that "feminist ecologies" is a useful nomenclature to denote the environmental care ethics developed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous feminists who adopt an intersectional and decolonial lens for identifying the differential power dynamics and ecological and social costs of environmental exploitation.