Looking at the Words of Our People: First Nations Analysis of Literature

I went to Tsleil-Waututh for a coastal jam this weekend. It was really awesome to hear the songs and to see so many youth out on the floor. Ever since I finished my studies I have been challenging myself to become socially connected again. After several years of saying no to fun activities, it's so nice to say yes to things. Speaking of my studies, my dissertation is online. I feel weird about it. A dissertation is not a view of the butterfly. It's a view of the messy process that happens inside of the cocoon. I feel very self-conscious about it. But it exists. I'm going to try to take some sections and make them into articles. Having been a student for long and thus having benefitted from the scholars who went before me, I now feel called to contribute to the scholarly world by creating scholarly writing. I have some articles in my head... it's just a slow process to get them on paper. 

Tsleil-Waututh has the most awesome traffic safety campaign in the world

In other news, I went to a CLEBC conference on Indigenous legal orders a few weeks ago. The keynote was the Honourable Madam Justice Ardith Walpetko We’dalx Walkem. She wrote the Expanding our Vision: Cultural Equality and Indigenous Peoples Human Rights report for the BC Human Rights Tribunal. In 2020 she was the first Indigenous woman to be appointed as a Judge to BC's Supreme Court. Her keynote was awesome. She talked about learning from elders in Lytton and about all of the work going on across Canada in order to bring Indigenous legal orders into the Canadian legal system. She also gave some examples of how traditional stories contain laws and/or influence interpretation of laws.  I thought she was an excellent keynote and I feel so lucky that I had the opportunity to hear her speak. One of the things that she mentioned is that the legal system may have to look outside of the legal profession for expertise, and she referred to Dr. Jeannette Armstrong as an absolute expert. Jeannette Armstrong is a Canada Research Chair and also recently was awarded an Order of Canada.

Speaking of Jeannette Armstrong, she is the editor of today's book - Looking at the Words of Our People: First Nations Analysis of Literature. This book is out of print. One site that I saw had it listed for over $350. I had a family member get it for much less on eBay (I can't use eBay because of a weird glitch or maybe it's user error). It was published in 1993 by Theytus. A lot of the ideas in the book stand the test of time. However, some of the content is also like a snapshot of a particular period of time within Canadian publishing. For example, the late Greg Young-Ing has a chapter in which he examines the marginalization of Indigenous people within publishing, and as a conclusion, he states that this is why we need Indigenous publishing houses (Young-Ing, 1993, p. 187). 

The book is a collection of essays by a variety of Indigenous scholars. It is the product of a forum, which was held in Oklahoma in 1992. Jeannette makes reference to it in her editor's note, and then D.L. Birchfield dedicates an entire chapter to it. The forum included 368 Native writers (Birchfield, 1993, p. 191). It was four days long (p.191) and held in a theatre in the round space (p.193). There is a considerable amount of affection in their description of the event. They note that on one of the evenings, twenty-two poets got together and collaborated on "A Really Big, Group Indian Poem" (p.195). In order to underscore the special-ness of this event, the author writes:

one must realize that man university-educated Indians went through a difficult period of engagement. Many were teaching at colleges far from home, where they were often the only (token) Indian on the faculty. Others were off working in the Western world where their circumstances were often very similar.. It took them some time to discover that there were other Indians, scattered throughout the continent, who were very much like them.  

Estranged from the home folks by distance and by multiple layerings of education, estranged from their colleagues by their Nativeness, the second half of the 20th century has produced few crueler, more lonely paths to privileged agony. Their spirits were dying. Imagine their joy when they discovered they were not alone. As they began discovering one another, mostly by reading one another's published poetry, the emotional explosion of affirmation and celebration created a new literature, now still in its infancy, as literature goes, now as old as the earth, as literature goes, changing, remaining constant, alive. (Birchfield, 1993, p.204). 

The author references a photo taken at the event (but the photo is not included in book), and names people in the photo, such as: Beth Brant, Basil H. Johnston, Joy Harjo, Jeannette Armstrong, Lee Maracle, Simon J. Ortiz, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Gret Young-Ing, and Alootook Ipellie. Even though I can't see the photo, I feel happy imagining all of these people who are like literary elders as young(er) people experiencing the joy of connecting with each other and talking about ideas. While reading this book, that energy is present throughout. 

There were several chapters that focused on analyzing In Search of April Raintree and Maria Campbell's Halfbreed, which were the major texts at that time. I particularly appreciated the editor's note by Jeannette Armstrong. She states: 

I suggest that First Nations cultures, in their various contemporary forms, whether an urban-modern, pan-Indian experience or clearly a tribal specific (traditional or contemporary), whether it is Eastern, Arctic, Plains, Southwest or West Coastal in region, have unique sensibilities which shape the voices coming forward into written English Literature.  

In that sense, I suggest that First Nations Literature will be defined by First Nations Writers, readers, academics, critics and perhaps only by writers and critics from within those varieties of First Nations contemporary practise and past practise of culture and the knowledge of it. (Armstrong, 1993, p.7). 

As a blogger, I find this very affirming. I don't think of myself as a critic. I think of myself as someone who likes to blog about Indigenous literature and share my experience of it. There is a sentiment that I encounter once and awhile where there sort of an implied message that Indigenous literature should not be criticized, or that one should either be silent about Indigenous texts or just promote them. But I come from a tradition where we take stories seriously, and we talk about what they might mean. And so my desire to write about literature is a reflection of that tradition. When I talk about a text, that means that it did something to me. When a text does something to me, I try to unpack it. I think that there is value in reflecting aloud on my experience of a text. So I love that Jeannette affirms that Indigenous academics and critics have a role to play within the world of Indigenous literature. Jeannette goes on to say:

I suggest that in reading First Nations Literature the questioning must first be an acknowledgement and recognition that the voices are culture-specific voices and that there are experts within those cultures who are essential to be drawn from and drawn out in order to incorporate into the reinterpretation through pedagogy, the context of English Literature coming from Native Americans.  

I suggest that the pedagogical insistence of such practise is integral to the process. In doing so, I suggest that First Nations literature, as a facet of cultural practise, contains symbolic significance and relevance that is an integral part of the deconstruction-construction of colonialism and the reconstruction of a new order of culturalism and relationships beyond colonial thought and practice. (Armstrong, 1993, p.8). 

Something that I like about this collection is that it contains models of how to talk about Indigenous literature by people like Kateri Damm, Gerry William, Armand Garnet Ruffo, and Kimberly Blaeser. Janice Acoose has two essays, "Post Halfbreed: Indigenous Writers as Authors of their Own Realities" and "Halfbreed: A Revisiting of Maria Campbell's text from an Indigenous Perspective." After years of referring to Acoose's 1995 book Iskwewak Kah’ Ki Yaw Ni Wahkomakanak, and then the 2016 second edition, it's cool to see earlier iterations of her thinking within these essays. 

I also really liked Marilyn Dumont's essay "Popular Images of Nativeness." She starts off by stating: 

If you are old, you are supposed to write legends, that is, stories that were passed down to you from your elders. If you are young, you are expected to relate stories about foster homes, street life and loss of culture and if you are middle, you are supposed to write about alcoholism and residential school. And somehow throughout this, you are to infuse everything you write with symbols of the native world view, that is: the circle, mother earth, the number four or the trickster figure. In other words, positive images of nativeness. 

But what if you are an urban Indian, have always been, or have now spent the greater part of your life living an urban lifestyle? Do you feign the significance of the circle, the number four, the trickster in your life? Do you just disregard these things? Or do you reconstruct these elements of culture in your life so you can write about them in "the authentic voice," so you can be identified (read 'marketed') as a native Artist? (Dumont, 1993, p.47). 

She goes on to explain the harmful impact of such pigeon-holing, and commits to speak in her own voice, regardless of expectations placed upon her. For, "if I, as a native person, engage in the denial of my own image then I am participating in just another variety of internalized colonialism which blinds me and fosters my disempowerment." (Dumont, 1993, p.49).  When I read her essay, I felt encouraged to stay true to my own authorial instincts, regardless of whether or not they adhered to popular expectations.

Overall, this is one of my favourite collections of Indigenous literary analysis. Perhaps even my very favourite. 

Armstrong, J. (1993). Editor's Note. In J. Armstrong (Ed.), Looking at the Words of Our People: First Nations Analysis of Literature (pp.7-8). Penticton, BC: Theytus Books. 

Birchfield, D.L. (1993). In and Around the Forum.  In J. Armstrong (Ed.), Looking at the Words of Our People: First Nations Analysis of Literature (pp.189-214). Penticton, BC: Theytus Books. 

Dumont, M. (1993). Popular Images of Nativeness.  In J. Armstrong (Ed.), Looking at the Words of Our People: First Nations Analysis of Literature (pp.45-50). Penticton, BC: Theytus Books. 

Young-Ing, G. (1993). Aboriginal Peoples' Estrangement: Marginalization in the Publishing Industry.  In J. Armstrong (Ed.), Looking at the Words of Our People: First Nations Analysis of Literature (pp.177-188). Penticton, BC: Theytus Books. 

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Having taken the time to blog about this book, now I am going to go bead. Check out my recently taped loon set. Not for sale because it was donated as a prize for the coastal jam so it's already gone.