ABSTRACT. My wrestling with (not) belonging, which started almost a decade ago with my arrival to Aotearoa/New Zealand, was prevalent during my re-turn (Barad, 2014) to my birthplace, the Canary Islands, seeking to revive my connections to the land, its histories and its/my Indigeneity. My engagement with te ao Māori (‘the Māori world’) was essential to (re)connect with the whenua (‘land’) in a way I had never done before, as an ancestor, cradling (non-)descendants of the Indigenous Canarians (see Ramirez & Pasley, 2022; Ramirez, 2024). The im/possibilities of the in/determinacy of Canarian Indigeneity’s nothingness/openness (Barad, 2012) require an engagement with our Indigenous Canarian inheritance beyond Western thinking. While questions that emerged during my re-turn produced more questions, my travels also offered strategies to move forward. Developing a Canarian onto-epistemology is imperative not only to decolonise the Canary Islands but also to save what is left (cultural and (hi)storical preservation) and save the whenua (from unstainable tourism). This begins with initiating necromantic hauntological practices of the void to ‘heal’ wounds left in the Canary Islands by colonisation and subsequent colonialities. The pasados que (nunca) fueron y futuros que (nunca) pueden ser (‘pasts that were (not), futures that can (never) be’) that materialise in the current culture, language, peoples and institutions (legal and educational), revive and reconfigure my relationship to the land, its histories and its/my Indigeneity. A process of in/re-surrection started. It is now that I am un/becoming Indigenous.

Keywords: Canary Islands; guanche; Indigenous Canarians; coloniality; te ao Māori; hauntology

How to cite: Ramirez, E. (2024). A necromantic hauntology of the void in the Canary Islands: In/re-surrection. Knowledge Cultures, 12(2), 130-151. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc12220248.

Received July 23, 2024 • Received in revised form August 1, 2024
Accepted August 2, 2024 • Available online September 1, 2024