In the post-Truth and Reconciliation era of Canada, it is important to read, study, and teach the words of Indigenous peoples in a way that is respectful to cultural perspectives. This writing is not now the focus of literary research or featured in curricula. Little recent historical or theoretical work has focused on the material we propose to examine in this project. We hope to change that.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (1999) made it impossible to see the division of research activity into theory, methodology, data collection, and reporting, etc. as culturally neutral. We cannot purify our disciplinary ways of knowing or pretend to understand everything we read. Our main strategy is to read and seriously consider as many Indigenous writers, past and present, as we can, and to open up the many perspectives on the subject responsibly and respectfully.

Selected Research Outcomes  (books, chapters, articles)

2021

Fee, Margery. "Thomas D'Arcy McGee and Louis Riel: Minority Nationalists, Extreme Moderates" The Other Side of 150,          eds. Linda M. Morra and Sarah Henzi. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2021. 271-284.

Reder, Deanna. “Recuperating Indigenous Narratives: Making Legible the Documenting of Injustices” The Other Side of 150,          eds. Linda M. Morra and Sarah Henzi. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2021. 27-40.

2020

Edwards, Brendan F.R. “Print Culture and the Reassertion of Indigenous Nationhood in Early-Mid-Twentieth Century Canada.” Comparative Print Culture: A Study of Alternative Literary Modernities. Ed. Rasoul Aliakbari. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 225-244.

Henzi, Sarah, Ed. I am a Damn Savage; What Have You Done to my Country? By An Antane Kapesh, translated by Sarah Henzi. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2020. 216 pp.

Reder, Deanna and Sophie McCall, Sam McKegney, Sarah Henzi, and Warren Cariou. “Introduction” Special Section - Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada, Alaska Quarterly Review 36: 3 & 4 (Winter & Spring 2020): 190-198. 
Fee, Margery, Ed. On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space, and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia: Essays by Jean Barman. Harbour Publishing, 2020. pp 468.

Reder, Deanna. “Foreword”. Unsettling Spirit: A Journey into Decolonization by Denise M. Nadeau. McGill-Queens UP, 2020.  

2019

Manuel, Vera. Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poems. Eds. Michelle Coupal, Deanna Reder, Joanne Arnott, and Emalene Manuel. U of Manitoba P, 2019. 391 pp.

2018

Cariou, Warren. “Sweetgrass Stories: Listening for Animate Land.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, vol. 5, no. 3, 2018, pp. 338–352. 

Fee, Margery. “‘We Indians Own These Lands’: Performance, Authenticity, Disidentification, and E. Pauline Johnson/Tekahionwake (1861-1913),” rpt. chapter from Literary Land Claims, rpt. in Poetry Criticism, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 199. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2018.

Justice, Daniel Heath. Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2018. 306 pp.

Reder, Deanna and Alix Shield. “‘I write this for all of you’: Recovering the Unpublished RCMP ‘Incident’ in Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973)” Canadian Literature 238 (2019); first on-line May 28 2018, https://canlit.ca/article/i-write-this-for-all-of-you-recovering-the-unpublished-rcmp-incident-in-maria-campbells-halfbreed-19731/).

2017

Reder, Deanna. “Exploding the Canon: The Founding of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association,” WRITE: the magazine for the Writers’ Union of Canada (Fall 2017): 24.

2016

Cariou, Warren. “Life-Telling: Indigenous Oral Autobiography and the Performance of   Relation.” Biography, vol. 39, no. 3, 2016, pp. 314–327.

Fee, Margery and Dory Nason, Eds. Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson’s Writings on Native North America. Peterborough: Broadview, 2016. 359 pp.

Reder, Deanna and Linda M. Morra, Eds. Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2016. 500 pp.

Reder, Deanna. “Indigenous Autobiography in Canada: Recovering Intellectual Traditions.” The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature. Ed. Cynthia Sugars. Oxford UP, 2016. 170-190.

2015 

Fee, Margery. “Publication, Performances, and Politics: The ‘Indian Poems’ of E. Pauline Johnson / Tekahionwake (1861-1913) and Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947).” Anthologizing Canadian Literature: Theoretical and Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Robert Lecker.  Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015. 51-77.
 
Reder, Deanna. "Native American Autobiography: Connecting Separate Critical Conversations," Lifewriting Annual 4 (December 2015): 35-63. 
 

Researchers

Deanna Reder
Margery Fee
Daniel Heath Justice
Rick Monture
Rudy Reimer
Warren Cariou
Brendan Edwards