Welcome to the 59th issue of The Funambulist (May-June 2025), dedicated to Black Indigeneities. The association of these two terms will certainly appear obvious to many, while it might surprise others, depending on readers’ personal and regional imaginaries. The issue examines the Indigeneity-Blackness nexus in Melanesia —in Fiji (Mara Mahoney and Ratu Ropate Rakūita Wailutu Kama) and beyond, in Aotearoa New Zealand (Nathan Rew and Makanaka Tuwe)—in several regions of the African Continent—South Africa (Zoé Samudzi and Mpho Matheolane/Nolan Oswald Dennis), Nubia (Menna Agha), Eritrea (Semhar Haile), and the Gabonese forests (Maya Mihindou)—in the Caribbean—Guiana (Karl Joseph and Marc-Alexandre Tareau) and Haiti (Tessa Mars)—as well as in the diaspora.
You can read Léopold Lambert’s full introduction here.
In the News from the Fronts section, you can read a research on weaving and architectural means to represent the journey of a Vietnamese refugee (Meena Chowdhury) and a text/maps bridging the Indigenous struggles of the Karuk nation and Nubians against dams on the Klamath River and the Nile (Ron Reed and Alaa Suliman Hamid). The cover artwork by Tessa Mars.
You can also order the francophone version and the hispanophone version.
Editor-in-Chief: Léopold Lambert
Head of Communications: Shivangi Mariam Raj
Hispanophone Communication Manager: Sofía Kourí
Office Manager: Assia Tamerdjent
Translators: Virginie Bobin (fr), Rosanna Puyol Boralevi (fr), Amina Belghiti (fr), Léopold Lambert (en), Valentina Sarmiento Cruz (es), Felipe Guerra Arjona (es), and María Vignau Loría (es)
Graphic Design: Adapted from a model designed by Akakir Studio
Carol Que
