Pınar Ateş Sinopoulos-Lloyd

Call me by my lineage:  An Indigenous Perspective on Attachment Theory. I experience people often wanting Indigenous wisdom or ways of knowing without Indigenous existence — as if we can have one without the other. This comes from an insecure attachment to place and its understandable impulse to heal.  One cannot remove Indigenous ways of being from Indigenous ways of knowing. Indigenous ways of knowing cannot be isolated, extracted, synthesized, or removed from entanglement to place. Indigenous ontologies are a multi-directional affective response. It’s a woven psychonautics that requires humility and accountability built over thousands of generations. It’s an autochthonic curiosity of intimacy-building. Our ecological attachments since time immemorial are an interactive ontology. The disruption of our Lifeways may have impacted our ecological attachment, yet the soil and water still call us by our shared lineage. This land unceasingly reflects our autochthonous entanglement. I’ve been writing about ecological attachment over the past decade, including my undergraduate studies in “Somatic and Depth Ecopsychology.” A few through-threads in my anti-disciplinary research have been ecological attachment, entanglement, psychonautics, psychiatric abolition, wildlife tracking, and developing Queer Ecopsychology and Critical Natu History/Futuring. 
Call me by my lineage like the tracks of the earth do. Some ontological queries I've been asking with the prayer of psychiatric abolition + multi-species futures: Can self-regulation exist within entanglement? Can self-initiation exist as animists? Is stimming self-stimulation, or is it a conversation of somas — co-stimulation, co-proprioception, co-regulation? I've been noticing others start to write about ecological attachment. Let it not become another pop psychology trend or eco-trend. If you are writing about ecological attachment and are non-Native, remember to center Native perspectives, especially racialized ones. And cite us. Lineage is Place. Call me by my lineage; I’ll call you by yours. (from a fellow mutant; a mutation of place) 📷: self-portrait + 🌸 @queerquechua

Attachment theory that remains humancentric is a fatally missed opportunity. Colonialism is the systemic severance of relationship. Our place-based attachments and multi-species attachments are critical to the unraveling of modernity. May you quake awake to the ecological attachments you already carry. We need multi-species, multi-systems and multi-verse attachment theories. We need wild attachments. 📷: An Indigenous Creature with a wasimasiy (neighbor) grouse that @cyberpunkecology was found by. This fresh ancestor died in our garden after a fatal injury. Our last harvest from the garden of the season in a willow basket that wove me/I wove.

I want my transness to haunt you. Haunt you into imagining beyond the suffocating colonial binary. Haunt you into dreaming gender-prismatic futures. Haunt you into the co-liberation that is in it for you, too. Do not just be aware of us this week leading up to Transgender Day of Remembrance Day honoring our transcestors. Let us seep into your dreams and nightmares — into your psyche so the earth can remediate the cisheteropatriarchial barriers and make it food for our shared liberation and collective joy. Let us be the monsters, mutants and beautiful horrors that we are. A sign. A reminder. An omen of the inevitable death of the limited imagination of white supremacy. Let our stitches and scars be reminders of your own monstrosity and regenerative power. Let your preconceived notions of gender come bursting apart at the seams. Let our injections and sublingual intake of hormone therapy remind you that gender-play is sacred psychonautics. We are navigators of the liminal and between worlds. We surrender fully into the Unknown to fully say yes to our Dignity. This is our birth right. This is our Earth right. Trans Decadence is your holy nightmare unraveling the seams of settler colonialism. Let us haunt you with Dreams of Justice. Your wholly becoming tied to ours. #TransAwarenessWeek

An ode to my fellow quiet weirdlings and neuroqueers: Go Tiny, Be Home. Why fear being small, gentle, and quiet? Why the obsession with loudness, exhausting ambition, and gregariousness? As if gentleness (not niceness) oppresses our inherent animality—when, in reality, it is an expression of it. As if we could soothe an insecure attachment to the vast Unknown. There is grandeur in the Minuscule. What of the epic tales of our minute kindred, our microscopic relatives? “Go Big or Go Home,” they say. Go Tiny and Be Home. Don’t boisterous at the expense of your integrity. You do not need to perform ostentation for a cacophonous standard that was never yours. You do not need to mask. You do not need to perform. You do not need to entertain. Try softer—like the silent feet of a Puma, like the smooth belly of a Rubber Boa, like the delicate wings of a Rosy Maple Moth. Put down the facade of compulsory ambition. Lay internalized neuroconformity to rest — give it a good death, a relief in its last breath. Your dignified Smallness, Gentleness, and Softness are welcome and necessary. The Periphery is Holy and Sacred. I see you beholding nuance, subtlety, intricacy. I see your devotion. I see wildness in your softness. Do not mistake Smallness for Insignificance. Insignificant is from Latin significans, from significare— “to signify,” from signum “a sign, mark” plus facere “to make.” There is nothing Insignificant about Cryptobiotic Soil; fungi, bacteria, and microbes in other microbiomes; tardigrades; damp moss; Carrion Beetles; the delicate touch of a willow bud in spring; the parallel incisor patterns etched in a prickly pear cactus barely an inch above ground. The earth is adorned with their signified marks, just as you have allowed them to imprint your porous heart. Intricacy is a poet’s kink — melt the wild world with the particularity of your devotion. Adore your Smallness, as you diligently adore the small beautiful weirdlings that often go unnoticed. Do not underestimate the boldness of the Small—it builds and decomposes worlds. Inhabit the immensity of your quiet wildness. In doing so, we enchant Others to our Smallness in the vast Cosmos.

This is 36. 🎂 About to start an MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts.* Here for Indigequeer joy. Here for the gift of the Tiny and wisdom of the Periphery. Here for Sincerity and being done with Righteousness. Here to become ever-more Porous. Here to Destroy the Casual given Nothing is Casual. Here to adore with fervor. My heart feels like a porcupine quill — designed by Mystery to self-penetrate. Quills coated in antibiotic oils and one-way barbs to move through the other side. An ethical protection; a prayer for porosity to soften enough to allow my externalized nervous system to completely unravel me. My soul is hyperromantic, like the Yellow-Breasted Chat who wakes me up at 2AM with his loud song reverberating from the thicket of aspen by my bedroom window. He who makes his longing heard in the middle of the summer night and, by doing so, makes himself a vulnerable in darkness. My heart is as unruly as my mind since they unabashedly sing/love with relentless adoration. Here was the lament I went out on the land with while I fasted over a month ago: “Syrinxless Lament/Wildfire May the Charcoal Lace of Mystic Fury upon my fire-scarred heart weave a tantalizing tapestry for the Entangler, amplifying my curiosity/capacity to be envisaged by Ukhu Pacha for futures of multi-specied mycelial webs of visceral kinship. May we keep each other safe enough for our Wild Porosity to flourish so that we can become ever more permeably dangerous together. May we make sure that all kin have access to rest to dream ferociously. May we ensure that all creatures have access to soulcentric refugia to be able to sing dangerously and fiercely harmonize in a Many-voiced Landscape of Threatening Porous Chorus.” I love you, Porous Weirdlings. *For my MFA, I’m designing a series of tracking residencies in the deserts of California, the Colorado Plateau and the Sonoran. It’s my prayer for it to be community-generated with a potential to be courageous enough for a fundraiser. Calling in any potential places for my residencies for Wild Porosity to land in. Will y’all support me if I courageously put it out there? first 📷: @sarahwestartist_

Assisted Ecdysis in an Operating Room. It’s been 3 years since my top surgery. Emerging from a desert canyon, revisiting after a decade, amidst ocotillo, desert lily, and cactus blooms, the desert stirs a visceral response. As I sit admiring scorpions at night, gravity beckons, urging me to lower my center of gravity while scrambling coarse granite boulders. As I dance with the desert as lead, I stumble upon perfect crevices where snakes shed their skin. One notable spot is a cliff wall that boasts a narrow horizontal crack, an inverted ledge too snug for my full-breathed torso or any arm range. After ensuring no other rattlesnakes are nearby besides myself, I assess my route options. Facing the alternative of stemming down a parallel-sided chimney, I remember my gravitational promise to the canyon: Be low, Below, Belly. I say Yes to the sun-warmed, south-facing, and constricted Rattlesnake Portal. Moving inch by inch, with my belly exposed and relying solely on my toes to find friction, I press forward in rectilinear locomotion. Emerging with abrasions on my soft belly, I realize that traversing this portal would’ve been impossible pre-op. I also embraced that portal — a portal for assisted molting under sterile hands in fluorescent-lit gowns. An ecdysis in an Operating Room, shedding not just mammary glands and nipples but also a carefully choreographed peeling back of the skin that once insulated my heart. “No nipple grafts, please,” — a farewell to the quintessential aspects of mammalian existence. Later, I am found by a narrow pool of water nestled between large boulders and waterfalls in the desert oasis — a sanctuary where a Green Anaconda (Yakumama) might be enticed to shed their skin. I respond with an underwater shed — sensing pressure and the stone’s response. I pause on the water-cooled and smoothed granite to feel the warmth radiating from my fresh belly abrasions, inviting Mystery to use their infrared-sensitive heat pits to locate me. An arid mutual recognition of skin and desert stone. As I run my fingers over my scabs, I remember the Belly as an instrument for softness, whether adorned with serpentine ventral scales or not.

Tradition Is Never Static. They are ecological forces — animate, sovereign, and breathing along with Their People. As Trans Natives, we are often seen through the lens of the colonized eye — both Native and non-Native — as deviations from Tradition. Yet Tradition can never be removed from our blood, Genders, lands, or waters. Tradition is palpably alive — a vibrant force that resists stagnation. Emergent. Pulsing. Tradition did not come to a standstill when settlers arrived in the Americas in 1492. There is no pure version of Tradition — puritan ideology was never ours to begin with. We mustn’t confine our minds to colonized museums of the “what was.” It’s a self-erasing anachronism as if we discuss ourselves in the past tense—an act of autogenocide.* Trans Natives, Two-Spirit, Indigenous gender-liminality are our Heritages. Our Genders are unceded. Seeded with transcestral wisdom. Unseating false Gods and power. Our genders unfold prophetically, embodying Native gender technology of GenderBack/GenderForward —a breathing Indigenous futurism. Tradition Is Never Static. Just as we can’t ask a River to stand still, or command a Cloud to cease their movement, we cannot demand the Tides and moon to pause their collaborative inhale and exhale, insist Galaxies to halt, nor command Nex Benedict to cease their dance. Nex, I sense your dance between worlds and with our transcestors. Dance, sibling. Munayki, masichay. Nex Benedict should still be alive today. They were murdered as a result of both anti-Indigeneity and transphobia; it’s crucial to recognize and not overlook this reality. Trans youth deserve to become trans elders. “Queer Indigenous bodies are political orders. Queer Indigenous bodies house knowledge, relationships, and responsibilities. Queer Indigenous bodies are a threat to settler sovereignty, which is why queer Indigeneity has been and is violently targeted by colonial and settler colonial powers in an ongoing way in order to dispossess [land]. Queer Indigenous bodies therefore also house and generate a wealth of theory and critical analysis regarding settler colonialism that straight bodies cannot.” - Leanne Betasamosoke Simpson

Valentine’s Day rope practice shenanigans with Yaku 🐱 wanting to be involved. 🪢🌽💥 My first attempt without sight was a bit clunky but got smoother. Do you think Yaku is curious about being tied too?

How I feel I am perceived while I’m just existing. 😮‍💨 “‘In my villain era’ — me advocating for my needs.” Any guesses which cutie those tracks belong to? 🥹 Sneak peek! 👀 Check out our metal tool card for @queernature featuring a quote by queer ancestor, Mary Oliver. Available in our shop tonight, open for a week before a temporary closure of 5 weeks.

In this enduring nonverbal state that swallows me these days, time continues to take on a fluid and altered essence. I have no choice but to unveil my screeches and slithers when I am ripened by this Still Vehemence. Sensing an imperative demand from Mystery themself, I yield to the nonverbal realm—an assertive space made for the chthonic chorus of multi-species poetics to resonate. Not the trap door to Entanglement I expected. 🕳️ Here are some tendrils that have been tugging my heart during the skills regression that this extended 16-month Autistic burnout brings. 🌕 The 3rd slide is giving Scorpio Moon vibes. 🦂 Feeling for us neuroqueer Scorpio Moons in our nonverbal states. To my fellow Autistic community, how would you describe/paint a picture of your experiences of nonverbal? ♾️ 🎥 : please tag the original videographer of the female chameleon footage in the comments.

On Thanks-taking, I immerse myself in what remains untouched — our kinship ties. Trailing is a practice of entanglement — where our multi-species covenant reverberates through the marrow of our bones. We find ourselves in an era marked by profound revelations of entanglement, both within our species and across species. It’s a time when we need our kinship ties the most, fighting for others to reclaim theirs—a birthright, an earth-right. As a species, we cannot bear this collective grief and rage alone — we must remember the expansive embrace of place that envelopes us, strengthening our prayerful acts of disruption. We call upon Bighorn Sheep. We call upon Chinook Salmon. We call upon Olive Tree. We call upon Palestinian Sunbird. We call upon Golden Jackal. And they, in turn, call upon their people. This multi-species futuring extends beyond decolonization — it’s about revitalizing Indigenous lifeways. Reindigenizing fortifies our resistance, as dreams of liberated futures take root in the essence of place and reshape us. Through entanglement practices that widen and deepen our relations, we emerge as multi-voiced invocations of place, not to be reckoned with.

On Indigenous Peoples Day, I recognize unconsensual resilience — our survivance. I recently became the first racialized Track & Sign Professional in the 18 years these evaluations have taken place on Turtle Island. Sharing this brings complex emotions — is 18 years something to be proud of? Celebrating has been challenging as I reflect on the forced resilience as a racialized Native in these systems on stolen lands, with our Lifeways interrupted (including wildlife tracking). Clutching my bottle adorned with a tardigrade sticker proclaiming, 'Still Here,' I ponder the fascination of these soft-bodied water bears with the obstacles forced upon them. They’ve become a spectacle of resilience for those for whom stress is a novelty — labeling them extremophiles as if they somehow love the extremes they didn’t choose. This obsession with the novelty of stress is actively promoted in educational settings. This pedagogical doctrine lacks awareness of the baseline stress experienced by racialized individuals without choice. It stems from a dominant nervous system privilege with the perception that intermittent stress is beneficial, a privilege many systemically targeted cannot access. I clutch my certification in my pastel claws with a Two-Spirit flag crosswalk on Syilx Okanagan land. Truth & Reconciliation Day coincided with our first day. Sharing this achievement requires acknowledging the extraneous barriers faced since portraying polished optics doesn't convey the whole story (refer to comments for details, as there's no need to center anti-Indigeneity on IPD). Striving to reclaim our disrupted Lifeways as racialized Natives entails risking our lives on the lands from which our blood originates. Indigenous sovereignty encompasses more than just Land Back — it has always simultaneously been Lifeways Back. This achievement isn't solely mine — it’s for our unceded kinship ties that can never be evaluated. It’s for our interrupted Lifeways residing in our blood memory. I celebrate Indigenous tenderness, steering away from the imposition of callousness in extreme conditions. I celebrate our unyielding kinship ties to Place. Kusisqa Indígena Runakunaq P’unchaw ✊🏽