Indigenous Languages

"Reading this book has reminded me what the best of literary and cultural criticism can and should do: to surprise and delight with insightful commentary and convincing arguments whose implications are, potentially, paradigm-shifting." Sophie McCall, author of First Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Collaborative Authorship In The Decolonizing Poetics of Indigenous Literatures , Mareike Neuhaus uncovers residues of ancestral languages found in Indigenous uses of English. She shows how these remainders ground a reading strategy that enables us to approach Indigenous texts as literature, with its own discursive and rhetorical traditions that underpin its cultural and historical contexts. "Breaks new critical ground in the understanding of Indigenous literatures. This book will appeal to a wide range of readers." Paul DePasquale, co-editor of Across Cultures/Across Borders: Canadian Aboriginal and Native American LIteratures

Across Cultures/Across Borders is a collection of new critical essays, interviews, and other writings by twenty-five established and emerging Canadian Aboriginal and Native American scholars and creative writers across Turtle Island. Together, these original works illustrate diverse but interconnecting knowledges and offer powerfully relevant observations on Native literature and culture. - Publisher

"Stories Through Theories/Theories Through Stories "explores the uneasy relationsoften contentious, sometimes complicitbetween American Indian Literature and literary theory. Some of the essays in this book open American Indian narratives to theoretical critique based on "western depth models." Others work from a very different direction, finding critique in storytelling and processes of narrative production, thereby exposing dimensions of literary theory that grow from the indigenous ground of Native stories themselves. This collection of essayssometimes playfully but always insistentlychanges our readings of Native works and challenges our roles as intellectual guides until we step deeper into the ambiguous territories where writer, listener, reader, and critic intersect. Taken together, these essays provide compelling evidence for looking at primary Native cultures, authors, and histories as enrichments of Native literature."

Spiraling Webs of Relations takes the fundamental precept of Aboriginal thought - the vast, pervasive and vibrant connectedness of all existence - and situates it firmly within the context of the Western Academy. To suggest the suitability of Aboriginal thought for application in serious scholarship is, strangely, an almost radical idea. Aboriginal thought is more frequently cast as a suitable object for study; rarely has it been taken as a suitable basis for study. Bringing Aboriginal thought into Western scholarship forces a re-examination on Western thought and social practice. Western thought is then understood as one culturally based worldview among a number of possibilities, and social conditions facing Native people are then understood as predictable outcomes of this dramatic conflict in thought systems. Furthermore, while Western thought currently predominates in academic discussions, the results of such thought have tended to be unsustainable.

In an impressive and powerful first book, Janice Acoose deconstructs stereotypical images of Indigenous women in popular literature. Exposing "literature" as an institution of a Euro-Canadian nation shaped by white, Christian patriarchy, Acoose calls attention to its projections of Indigenous women as Indian princesses, easy squaws, suffering helpless victims and tawny temptresses. With clarity and depth, Acoose traces the bars of literature imprisoning Indigenous women in images born of racism and sexism. From Margaret Laurence to William Patrick Kinsella, she interrogates the words that hurt, challenging liberalism, upending complacency and leaving the prison doors gaping. Iskwewak: Neither Indian Princesses nor Easy Squaws is a strong addition to literary and cultural criticism and an important resource for teachers and students alike.