CFP: Matrix Journal Seeks Contributions for Special Issue on Myth, Storytelling, and Matriculture

The editors of, Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies, are compiling a special issue that will center around the theme: “The Energy Force of Matriculture in Mythology and Storytelling Around the World,” with a publication date of May 2022.

Mythology, storytelling, and story-work hold the parameters of conscious (and unconscious) transmission of valorizing identifiers for a culture, engaging and permeating everyday values. These values and teachings, handed down within traditional stories, are being reinvigorated and even reinterpreted in contemporary times. These features are embedded in language and mythology, and many of these cultures share ancestral heritages which have been handed down through centuries, spanning millennia – even though their original languages experienced colonizing factors and may be diluted today. This issue of Matrix will feature current understandings of matricultural mythologies and ancient knowledges that are based in oral traditions, as well as historical accounts of pre-colonial protocols and their manifestations in contemporary life cycles and ceremonies.

Today, there is a decisive revitalization of Indigenous traditional knowledge and oral history through the revealing of ancient ceremonies and myths passed on in stories, song, and art. This reclaiming has direct links to the social well-being of clans and communities, and it heightens an understanding of matriculture.

This issue of Matrix urges a decolonizing effort by showing how ethnographic records and oral knowledge are examined through the mythology and belief systems of the peoples themselves. The editors also encourage research about rites of passage, rituals, ceremonies, festivals, and seasonal honorings, showing how they are centered in the identities of a people, within their creation stories, and their life teachings.

Possibilities for papers include the discourse of mythology as well as contemporary notions and adaptations of storytelling and storywork, yet are not limited to the following:

• The link between the seasons, celebrations, festivals, ritual life, and matriculture;
• Traditional plants, food, and medicines;
• The significance of animal, fish, and plant in nationhood storywork and ritual;
• Ceremonies such as the Sundance, Moondance, Potlatch and their ties to matriculture;
• Kinship interactions, as in the role of grandmother/mother/daughter, sister/sister, brother/sister, uncle/niece & nephew relationships;
• Ethnographic or oral knowledge accounts;
• Linguistic markers which define matrilineality and myth as realism;
• Myths as they illustrate economic or sustainable development within matricultural societies.

Margaret Kress (University of New Brunswick) and Idoia Arana-Beobide (Network on Culture) are the issue editors.

Please submit a 300-word abstract (max) via email to: Margaret Kress at [email protected], Idoia Arana-Beobide at [email protected], or [email protected] with the subject line: Matrix Vol 3, Issue 1.

The deadline for the abstract submission is March 31, 2021.

For more information, see the journal website.