Avery Mary Katherine Shtykalo

Topic

The Threads that Weave Us Together: The Kokum Scarf as a Site for Expanding and Extending Approaches to Relationality

School of Indigenous Governance

Date & location

• Thursday, August 27, 2026

• 4:30 A.M.

• Virtual Defence

Reviewers

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Gina Starblanket, School of Indigenous Governance, University of Victoria (Supervisor)

• Dr. Heidi Stark, School of Indigenous Governance, UVic (Member) 

External Examiner

• Dr. Daniel Voth, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary 

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Georgia Sitara, Department of History, UVic

   

Abstract

Material aesthetics can reveal political expressions, relational dynamics, and liberatory possibilities. One example is the Kokum Scarf, which is known in Ukrainian culture as the Khutska, Hutska, or Babushka scarf. Originally exchanged between early Ukrainian settlers and Indigenous Peoples in the prairies, the scarf has emerged as a contemporary Indigenous aesthetic in what is currently called Canada. Despite fraught Indigenous-settler relations configuring much of the prairie sociopolitical context, disrupting Indigenous relationality, self-determination, and sovereignty, this item from Ukrainian settlers has woven new threads that express varied forms of connection, generativity, and symbolism. As a result, my thesis explores the scarf as a material aesthetic that, through transformation from Ukrainian settlers to some Indigenous Peoples in North America, reveals crucial insights into cross-cultural relations in the prairie geographical context. Through multi-methods based in Indigenous research methodologies, including social media analysis of creative works that feature the Kokum Scarf, this research explores the conditions in which the Scarf is (re)produced, mobilized, and articulated as a real-world representation of Indigenous relationality. Ultimately, this research argues that the transformation of the Kokum Scarf reveals and emulates approaches to solidarity and relationality that challenge dominant notions under settler colonialism and gesture towards more anti-colonial and anti-oppressive ways of relating.