When I looked at education from an Indigenous perspective, I saw everything was a problem. . . . ... more When I looked at education from an Indigenous perspective, I saw everything was a problem. . . . I could not escape the discursive Eurocentric lens that measured everything against itself, and therefore, Indigenous peoples were always found lacking and ultimately to be acted upon by some government initiative.
Over the last forty years, three groups of scholars-scholars of Native American autobiography, au... more Over the last forty years, three groups of scholars-scholars of Native American autobiography, autobiography theorists, and Indigenous theorists-have been holding three similar yet separate critical conversations. 1 The many intersections of interest within these three conversations notwithstanding, each group of scholars seems largely unaware of the work by the others. I contend that each group could benefit from knowledge of this work. In particular, scholarship on Native American autobiography would benefit from the concepts and vocabulary of autobiography theory, and both of these fields would benefit from the introduction of Indigenous theory. In this essay I trace one point of discussion-on the composition of Native American identity-to illustrate how diminished the conversations of the first two groups are without the presence of Indigenous perspectives. My work on Canadian Indigenous autobiography has been informed by all three of these groups, not the least the recent burgeoning of the field of Indigenous literary nationalism combined with my position as a Cree-Métis literary critic. I began my inquiry by reading seminal texts by scholars of Native American autobiography whose work emerged over the past three decades in the United States. 2 While recognizable names in this field include Lynne Woods O'Brien (1973), David Brumble III (1981), Gretchen Bataille and Kathleen Sands (1984), and Hertha Dawn Wong (1992), probably the most eminent scholar in this field is Arnold Krupat, a prolific writer
Dr. Reder's research focuses on Indigenous literature and literary history. A Cree-Métis scho... more Dr. Reder's research focuses on Indigenous literature and literary history. A Cree-Métis scholar, she is a founding member of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA), co-chair of the Indigenous Voices Awards, and the Editor for the Indigenous Studies Series at Wilfrid Laurier University Press. She also helped found, in 2020, the Indigenous Editors Association. Dr. Reder co-edited the fiftieth anniversary issue of the journal, Ariel, and has co-authored the recently released book, Cold Case North: The Search for James Brady and Absolum Halkett. Dr. Reder is the co-editor of four additional collections, including Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry (2019); Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures (2016); Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island (2017); and Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations (2010). In 2018, Dr. Reder was inducted into the College of New Scholars, Artist, and Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada.
This dissertation examines autobiographical writings by Indigenous authors in Canada, giving atte... more This dissertation examines autobiographical writings by Indigenous authors in Canada, giving attention to a rich archive that has been understudied or misunderstood. Drawing on the insights of autobiography theory and Indigenous studies, I critique the still prevailing influence of founding scholars of Native American autobiography who disseminated the belief that autobiography is a European invention, that there are no prior models in Indigenous cultures and that Indigenous autobiographies must therefore be the result of European contact. The lack of Indigenous perspectives in the academy has left many of these assumptions unchallenged and I introduce personal stories modeled on Cree-Metis storytelling methods as a corrective. Inspired by the work of previous Indigenous scholars who have relied on autobiography as theoretical practice, I introduce a version modeled on dcimisowin, Cree autobiographical narratives, to support my contention that Indigenous authors in Canada write autobiographically as part of varying Indigenous intellectual traditions. This approach prioritizes Cree intellectual and cultural perspectives that considers one's identity and position to be a central rather than peripheral concern in research. Focusing on wahkotowin, the Cree value of kinship or interrelatedness, as well as kisteanemetowin, respect between people, I provide new readings of texts that accommodate Cree and Metis epistemologies. In this work I ally myself with members of the Indigenous literary sovereignty movement that insist that attention be paid to the innovations and contributions of Indigenous intellectuals that to date have been neglected. Seeing autobiography as an Indigenous intellectual tradition allows us to move beyond colonization as a prism with which to examine Indigenous life and literature. It allows us to see Indigenous identity not as hybrid but as living with contradiction. Some of these contradictions, like anxieties, are produced by the multiple and conflicting discourses that place special demands on Indigenous autobiographers, subject to a scrutiny that non-Indigenous autobiographers evade.
Résumé This collaborative paper emerged from a roundtable held on June 1, 2008 at the annual conf... more Résumé This collaborative paper emerged from a roundtable held on June 1, 2008 at the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (CACLALS). The purpose was to reflect on the usefulness of “American Indian Literary Nationalism” to the study of Indigenous literatures in Canada, and to probe such questions as: is this somewhat American Indian-led movement applicable in Canadian Indigenous contexts? Can (and should) Indigenous literary self-determining efforts in Canada be localized? Does dealing with different colonial regimes result in different senses of “rhetorical sovereignty?” And, perhaps most simply, what are the benefits of this vein of analysis and what are the challenges? L’article collectif est le produit d’une table ronde tenue le 1 juin 2008 lors du congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne pour l’étude des langues et de la littérature du Commonwealth. La table ronde visait à réfléchir sur l’utilité du « nationalisme lit...
In these three short essays, Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, and Eric Gary Anderson discuss possibil... more In these three short essays, Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, and Eric Gary Anderson discuss possibilities and limitations for building comparative platforms between their respective areas of research in Indigenous Studies in Canada and American Indian Studies in the US South. McCall, noting Canada’s recent political history of emphasizing “reconciliation” with Indigenous communities and apologizing for its 150-year legacy of forced Indian Residential Schools, asks what gets silenced, lost, and/or gained in comparative frameworks that attempt to identify new potential affiliations by rhetorically or intellectually remapping historic differences. Reder continues by describing the often fraught debates surrounding the application of postcolonial theory to Indigenous Studies in Canada, examining both the reticence many scholars feel against using approaches that “overdetermine[] the role of the nation and state” as well as a preference for models that privilege Indigenous cultural production and forms. Anderson, a US Native American Studies scholar, returns to the question of comparative frameworks with an analysis of regionalist and deep historical approaches as well as global comparative models, concluding that the kinds of Indigenous-centered approaches that are most needed are also the most difficult to employ due to limitations in resources and pedagogical training.
In a 1989 interview, Metis author Maria Campbell complained to Hartmut Lutz that a section of her... more In a 1989 interview, Metis author Maria Campbell complained to Hartmut Lutz that a section of her autobiography, Halfbreed, first published in 1973, was removed by the publisher against her wishes. During a chance meeting with Campbell in Dublin in 2017, and following Indigenous protocols, Deanna Reder and Alix Shield asked her for permission to search for early versions of Campbell's text. With Campbell's blessing, Alix Shield conducted an archival search for any early material, and discovered the excised passage that revealed that when Campbell was a teenager, she had been raped by RCMP officers. This article includes the found text and discusses the impact of its excision.
When I looked at education from an Indigenous perspective, I saw everything was a problem. . . . ... more When I looked at education from an Indigenous perspective, I saw everything was a problem. . . . I could not escape the discursive Eurocentric lens that measured everything against itself, and therefore, Indigenous peoples were always found lacking and ultimately to be acted upon by some government initiative.
Over the last forty years, three groups of scholars-scholars of Native American autobiography, au... more Over the last forty years, three groups of scholars-scholars of Native American autobiography, autobiography theorists, and Indigenous theorists-have been holding three similar yet separate critical conversations. 1 The many intersections of interest within these three conversations notwithstanding, each group of scholars seems largely unaware of the work by the others. I contend that each group could benefit from knowledge of this work. In particular, scholarship on Native American autobiography would benefit from the concepts and vocabulary of autobiography theory, and both of these fields would benefit from the introduction of Indigenous theory. In this essay I trace one point of discussion-on the composition of Native American identity-to illustrate how diminished the conversations of the first two groups are without the presence of Indigenous perspectives. My work on Canadian Indigenous autobiography has been informed by all three of these groups, not the least the recent burgeoning of the field of Indigenous literary nationalism combined with my position as a Cree-Métis literary critic. I began my inquiry by reading seminal texts by scholars of Native American autobiography whose work emerged over the past three decades in the United States. 2 While recognizable names in this field include Lynne Woods O'Brien (1973), David Brumble III (1981), Gretchen Bataille and Kathleen Sands (1984), and Hertha Dawn Wong (1992), probably the most eminent scholar in this field is Arnold Krupat, a prolific writer
Dr. Reder's research focuses on Indigenous literature and literary history. A Cree-Métis scho... more Dr. Reder's research focuses on Indigenous literature and literary history. A Cree-Métis scholar, she is a founding member of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA), co-chair of the Indigenous Voices Awards, and the Editor for the Indigenous Studies Series at Wilfrid Laurier University Press. She also helped found, in 2020, the Indigenous Editors Association. Dr. Reder co-edited the fiftieth anniversary issue of the journal, Ariel, and has co-authored the recently released book, Cold Case North: The Search for James Brady and Absolum Halkett. Dr. Reder is the co-editor of four additional collections, including Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry (2019); Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures (2016); Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island (2017); and Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations (2010). In 2018, Dr. Reder was inducted into the College of New Scholars, Artist, and Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada.
This dissertation examines autobiographical writings by Indigenous authors in Canada, giving atte... more This dissertation examines autobiographical writings by Indigenous authors in Canada, giving attention to a rich archive that has been understudied or misunderstood. Drawing on the insights of autobiography theory and Indigenous studies, I critique the still prevailing influence of founding scholars of Native American autobiography who disseminated the belief that autobiography is a European invention, that there are no prior models in Indigenous cultures and that Indigenous autobiographies must therefore be the result of European contact. The lack of Indigenous perspectives in the academy has left many of these assumptions unchallenged and I introduce personal stories modeled on Cree-Metis storytelling methods as a corrective. Inspired by the work of previous Indigenous scholars who have relied on autobiography as theoretical practice, I introduce a version modeled on dcimisowin, Cree autobiographical narratives, to support my contention that Indigenous authors in Canada write autobiographically as part of varying Indigenous intellectual traditions. This approach prioritizes Cree intellectual and cultural perspectives that considers one's identity and position to be a central rather than peripheral concern in research. Focusing on wahkotowin, the Cree value of kinship or interrelatedness, as well as kisteanemetowin, respect between people, I provide new readings of texts that accommodate Cree and Metis epistemologies. In this work I ally myself with members of the Indigenous literary sovereignty movement that insist that attention be paid to the innovations and contributions of Indigenous intellectuals that to date have been neglected. Seeing autobiography as an Indigenous intellectual tradition allows us to move beyond colonization as a prism with which to examine Indigenous life and literature. It allows us to see Indigenous identity not as hybrid but as living with contradiction. Some of these contradictions, like anxieties, are produced by the multiple and conflicting discourses that place special demands on Indigenous autobiographers, subject to a scrutiny that non-Indigenous autobiographers evade.
Résumé This collaborative paper emerged from a roundtable held on June 1, 2008 at the annual conf... more Résumé This collaborative paper emerged from a roundtable held on June 1, 2008 at the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (CACLALS). The purpose was to reflect on the usefulness of “American Indian Literary Nationalism” to the study of Indigenous literatures in Canada, and to probe such questions as: is this somewhat American Indian-led movement applicable in Canadian Indigenous contexts? Can (and should) Indigenous literary self-determining efforts in Canada be localized? Does dealing with different colonial regimes result in different senses of “rhetorical sovereignty?” And, perhaps most simply, what are the benefits of this vein of analysis and what are the challenges? L’article collectif est le produit d’une table ronde tenue le 1 juin 2008 lors du congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne pour l’étude des langues et de la littérature du Commonwealth. La table ronde visait à réfléchir sur l’utilité du « nationalisme lit...
In these three short essays, Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, and Eric Gary Anderson discuss possibil... more In these three short essays, Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, and Eric Gary Anderson discuss possibilities and limitations for building comparative platforms between their respective areas of research in Indigenous Studies in Canada and American Indian Studies in the US South. McCall, noting Canada’s recent political history of emphasizing “reconciliation” with Indigenous communities and apologizing for its 150-year legacy of forced Indian Residential Schools, asks what gets silenced, lost, and/or gained in comparative frameworks that attempt to identify new potential affiliations by rhetorically or intellectually remapping historic differences. Reder continues by describing the often fraught debates surrounding the application of postcolonial theory to Indigenous Studies in Canada, examining both the reticence many scholars feel against using approaches that “overdetermine[] the role of the nation and state” as well as a preference for models that privilege Indigenous cultural production and forms. Anderson, a US Native American Studies scholar, returns to the question of comparative frameworks with an analysis of regionalist and deep historical approaches as well as global comparative models, concluding that the kinds of Indigenous-centered approaches that are most needed are also the most difficult to employ due to limitations in resources and pedagogical training.
In a 1989 interview, Metis author Maria Campbell complained to Hartmut Lutz that a section of her... more In a 1989 interview, Metis author Maria Campbell complained to Hartmut Lutz that a section of her autobiography, Halfbreed, first published in 1973, was removed by the publisher against her wishes. During a chance meeting with Campbell in Dublin in 2017, and following Indigenous protocols, Deanna Reder and Alix Shield asked her for permission to search for early versions of Campbell's text. With Campbell's blessing, Alix Shield conducted an archival search for any early material, and discovered the excised passage that revealed that when Campbell was a teenager, she had been raped by RCMP officers. This article includes the found text and discusses the impact of its excision.
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