Defamiliarizing The Aboriginal

In Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal, Julia V. Emberley examines the historical production of aboriginality in colonial cultural practices and its impact on the everyday lives of indigenous women, youth, and children.

Examines how colonial and postcolonial violence is understood and conceptualized through Indigenous storytelling. Through the study of Indigenous literary and artistic practices from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, Julia V. Emberley examines the ways Indigenous storytelling discloses and repairs the traumatic impact of social violence in settler colonial nations. She focuses on Indigenous storytelling in a range of cultural practices, including novels, plays, performances, media reports, Internet museum exhibits, and graphic novels. In response to historical trauma such as that experienced at Indian residential schools, as well as present-day violence against Indigenous bodies and land, Indigenous storytellers make use of Indigenous spirituality and the sacred to inform an ethics of hospitality. They provide uncanny configurations of political and social kinships between people, between the past and the present, and between the animate and inanimate. This book introduces readers to cultural practices and theoretical texts concerned with bringing Indigenous epistemologies to the discussion of trauma and colonial violence.

Mary Sch'ffer was a photographer, writer, and cartographer from Philadelphia, well known for her work in the Canadian Rockies at the turn of the twentieth century. Colleen Skidmore's engrossing study asks new questions, tells new stories, and introduces women and men with whom Sch'ffer interacted and collaborated. It argues for new ways of thinking about the significance and impact of Sch'ffer's work on historical and contemporary conceptions of women's experiences in histories and societies in which gender is fundamental to the distribution of power. Scholars and readers of women's photography and writing histories, as well as wilderness and mountain studies, will make new discoveries in Searching for Mary Sch'ffer.

Violence against Indigenous women in Canada is an ongoing crisis, with roots deep in the nation’s colonial history. Despite numerous policies and programs developed to address the issue, Indigenous women continue to be targeted for violence at disproportionate rates. What insights can literature contribute where dominant anti-violence initiatives have failed? Centring the voices of contemporary Indigenous women writers, this book argues for the important role that literature and storytelling can play in response to gendered colonial violence. Indigenous communities have been organizing against violence since newcomers first arrived, but the cases of missing and murdered women have only recently garnered broad public attention. Violence Against Indigenous Women joins the conversation by analyzing the socially interventionist work of Indigenous women poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and fiction-writers. Organized as a series of case studies that pair literary interventions with recent sites of activism and policy-critique, the book puts literature in dialogue with anti-violence debate to illuminate new pathways toward action. With the advent of provincial and national inquiries into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, a larger public conversation is now underway. Indigenous women’s literature is a critical site of knowledge-making and critique. Violence Against Indigenous Women provides a foundation for reading this literature in the context of Indigenous feminist scholarship and activism and the ongoing intellectual history of Indigenous women’s resistance.

For Indigenous students and teachers alike, formal teaching and learning occurs in contested places. In Indigenous Education, leading scholars in contemporary Indigenous education from North America, New Zealand, and Hawaii disentangle aspects of colonialism from education to advance alternative philosophies of instruction. From multiple disciplines, contributors explore Indigenous education from theoretical and applied perspectives and invite readers to embrace new, informed ways of schooling. Part of a growing body of research, this is an exciting, powerful volume for Indigenous and non-Indigenous teachers, researchers, policy makers, and scholars, and a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the contested spaces of contemporary education. Contributors: Jill Bevan-Brown, Frank Deer, Wiremu Doherty, Dwayne Donald, Ngarewa Hawera, Margie Hohepa, Robert Jahnke, Patricia Maringi G. Johnston, Spencer Lilley, Daniel Lipe, Margaret J. Maaka, Angela Nardozi, Katrina-Ann R. Kapāʻanaokalāokeola Nākoa Oliveira, Wally Penetito, Michelle Pidgeon, Leonie Pihama, Jean-Paul Restoule, Mari Ropata-Te Hei, Sandra Styres, Huia Tomlins-Jahnke, Sam L. No‘eau Warner, K. Laiana Wong, Dawn Zinga

Can the specific concerns of Indigenous women be addressed by mainstream feminism? Indigenous Women and Feminism proposes that a dynamic new line of inquiry – Indigenous feminism – is necessary to truly engage with the crucial issues of cultural identity, nationalism, and decolonization particular to Indigenous contexts. Through the lenses of politics, activism, and culture, this wide-ranging collection crosses disciplinary, national, academic, and activist boundaries to explore deeply the unique political and social positions of Indigenous women. A vital and sophisticated discussion, these timely essays will change the way we think about modern feminism and Indigenous women.

Examines how colonial and postcolonial violence is understood and conceptualized through Indigenous storytelling. Through the study of Indigenous literary and artistic practices from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, Julia V. Emberley examines the ways Indigenous storytelling discloses and repairs the traumatic impact of social violence in settler colonial nations. She focuses on Indigenous storytelling in a range of cultural practices, including novels, plays, performances, media reports, Internet museum exhibits, and graphic novels. In response to historical trauma such as that experienced at Indian residential schools, as well as present-day violence against Indigenous bodies and land, Indigenous storytellers make use of Indigenous spirituality and the sacred to inform an ethics of hospitality. They provide uncanny configurations of political and social kinships between people, between the past and the present, and between the animate and inanimate. This book introduces readers to cultural practices and theoretical texts concerned with bringing Indigenous epistemologies to the discussion of trauma and colonial violence. Julia V. Emberley is Professor of English at Western University in London, Ontario, and the author of several books, including Defamiliarizing the Aboriginal: Cultural Practices and Decolonization in Canada.

From the earliest settler policies to deal with the “Indian problem,” to contemporary government-run programs ostensibly designed to help Indigenous people, public policy has played a major role in creating the historical trauma that so greatly impacts the lives of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. Taking Back Our Spirits traces the link between Canadian public policies, the injuries they have inflicted on Indigenous people, and Indigenous literature’s ability to heal individuals and communities. Episkenew examines contemporary autobiography, fiction, and drama to reveal how these texts respond to and critique public policy, and how literature functions as “medicine” to help cure the colonial contagion.