大象传媒

大象传媒 (大象传媒) professor of Indigenous studies and English Deanna Reder is helping emerging Indigenous writers to find their voice, while also helping long-forgotten authors find an audience. 

While growing up Cree-M茅tis scholar Reder observed that among her relatives, sharing personal and often humorous anecdotes鈥斆imisowina鈥�was a favoured genre in family storytelling. As she grew older she recognized that these autobiographical stories expressed a foundational Cree and M茅tis, or n锚hiyawak and 芒pihtawikosis芒nak intellectual value, to speak about contexts from one鈥檚 own position, with the understanding that others necessarily see things from another perspective. 脗cimisowina, she recognized, not only served as an intergenerational conduit to pass on knowledge and experiences, but also worldview.

In school and university Reder was disappointed to find little or no mention of Indigenous literature or writers. She began to seek out texts by Indigenous鈥攁nd especially Cree and M茅tis鈥攁uthors that had long been ignored by English settler scholars in favour of their own historical narrative.

For the past two decades Reder has been researching and bringing attention to the longstanding and critically neglected Indigenous archive and has made significant contributions to the field of Indigenous literary studies. Her collaborative work has produced some of the first anthologies of Indigenous fiction and literary criticism in Canada, including a major database on Indigenous writing in North America, . She is one of the founding members of the , establish in 2013, and the Indigenous Editors Association, established in 2019. In 2018 she was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Canada鈥檚 highest academic honour.

Reder鈥檚 latest work, calls attention to longstanding autobiographical practices that are engrained in Cree and M茅tis culture. Using examples of Indigenous life writing, including 芒cimisowina, Reder鈥檚 book explores over 200 years of Indigenous storytelling.  

We spoke with professor Reder about her recent book and collaborative work.

In your book, you talk about 芒cimisowina, and how European scholars believed that the autobiography was their invention. Why is it significant to emphasize that autobiography is Indigenous? 

In Indigenous literatures written in English, there is a clear preference for writing autobiographically.  For example, look at all the writing by nineteenth century Anishinaabe authors, including George Copway, who in 1847 published The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-Ge-Ga Bowh. Too often Euro-western scholars have dismissed Indigenous autobiography as the result of colonization rather than as continuations of Indigenous intellectual traditions, as though our people have not always adopted and adapted all forms of technology and media to tell our stories, to express our epistemologies and our ontologies.

The assumption that autobiography is a European invention is connected to the mistaken idea that Eurowestern cultures are fundamentally literary while Indigenous cultures are primarily oral, while ignoring the oral traditions of Europe and the literary traditions of Turtle Island. This divide is harmful because it diminishes the contributions by Indigenous creatives all along the oral-literary spectrum.  

Your book talks about waweyasinikewin, telling a funny or self-deprecating story in order to entertain the audience. Can you tell us more about the use of humour in Indigenous storytelling?

A key value in Indigenous research is what M茅tis scholar Warren Cariou calls 鈥渃ritical humility.鈥� While European autobiographical traditions originally promoted work by 鈥渢he great individual鈥� or 鈥渢he genius,鈥� Indigenous traditions emphasize the value of stories that can help the listeners relate to and navigate all that is living in the world around them, which sometimes includes the shared hilarity of life. I don鈥檛 want to suggest that all of our stories have to be funny鈥攂ut humour is a way to encourage one another.

Tell us about the work involved with The People and the Text to uncover two centuries of lost and neglected texts. Where and how did you find some of these works? 

I would love to say that so far my The People and the Text (TPatT) colleagues and I have undergone a systematic search for materials. We have been able to find materials through archival searches, but what has been surprising is all we have found through our relationships with interested collaborators. By beginning with community contacts and also through conversations with retiring scholars in the field, we keep coming across gems we did not expect to find.

For example, I am very proud that TPatT research assistants transcribed the novel by Cree cleric Edward Ahenakew, written circa 1918 but never published despite his best efforts. Ahenakew鈥檚 literary executor and great-niece, Cree editor Heather Hodgson, is bringing Black Hawk to publication in May 2023 through the University of Regina Press. 

Likewise, TPatT helped support a research visit by poet Joanne Arnott to see Emalene Manuel, the sister of late Ktunaxa and Secwep鈥檈mc dramatherapist Vera Manuel. My colleague Michelle Coupal and I were overjoyed to hear that besides the plays and poetry we knew about, Emalene had carefully preserved some of the best short stories even written about residential schools, authored by Vera in the 1980s for a creative writing class, but never published. We were able to release Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry by Vera Manuel in 2019 through the University of Manitoba Press.

Also, the late Cree editor Gregory Younging gave us permission to share online more than a dozen volumes of the literary journal Gatherings, published between 1990 and 2003, so that these writers would be able to better access their own work. You can visit website for more information and browse the multimedia database.

As well, scholar Christine Bold has shared with us plays she found through her research by 19th Century Seneca vaudeville artist Go-won-go Mohawk, as well as contemporary conversations about these plays. Following instructions from the author鈥檚 community, Bold wants the plays to be accessible so that future Seneca people can read Mohawk鈥檚 work themselves. We were also recently contacted by scholars Julie Rak, Keavy Martin, Warren Cariou, Heather Igloiorte and Armand Ruffo who want us to care for a body of work completed by Inuit writers. We will work with them to determine how to proceed.   

Who are some of your favourite authors鈥攂oth past and present? Who do you consider a must read author?

The editors of the original 1973 version of Halfbreed cut out a section at the last moment against author Maria Campbell鈥檚 wishes, and 44 years later TPatT project manager and settler archive-ninja Alix Shield found the redacted passage and returned it to the author, allowing Campbell to have Halfbreed restored and re-released in 2019. It is a book that still inspires so many.

For a taste of the future, everyone should keep their eyes open for Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology to be released by Penguin in May 2023. Since 2018, I have been working with 大象传媒 colleagues Sophie McCall and Sarah Henzi and several others around the country to manage the Indigenous Voices Awards (IVAs). 大象传媒 colleagues June Scudeler and Eldon Yellowhorn have also worked as jurors for different awards. This year, to mark five years of the IVAs, 大象传媒 alumnus and Nisga鈥檃 poet Jordan Abel, M茅tis writer Carleigh Baker and M茅tis scholar Madeleine Reddon have edited a collection of work from finalists since 2018. It includes emerging luminaries such as Tanya Tagaq and Billy-Ray Belcourt, to writers who got their first publishing contracts after recognition from the IVAs鈥攚riters like Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano and Francine Cunningham. For more information visit the website, . And below (far right) is a sneak peek at the book cover.

For More: Check out at 大象传媒 Library and visit online database. Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology is due out in May 2023.

This work has been supported by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada and the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory.

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