Across Cultures/Across Borders is a collection of new critical essays, interviews, and other writings by twenty-five established and emerging Canadian Aboriginal and Native American scholars and creative writers across Turtle Island. Together, these original works illustrate diverse but interconnecting knowledges and offer powerfully relevant observations on Native literature and culture.
Comments
“Despite the reality that numerous Indigenous peoples live on both sides of the imaginary border separating the United States and Canada, people in both nation-states are too often under-informed about the Native literature and literary criticism produced in the other country. The dialogue represented in Across Cultures/Across Borders is impressive and will go far toward remedying this knowledge gap. The editors have assembled a group of some of the best-known scholars and creative writers, such as Simon Ortiz, Tomson Highway, Lee Maracle, and Craig Womack, alongside important up-and-comers such as Daniel Justice, Steven Sexton, and Niigonwedom James Sinclair. This volume sizzles and pops with creative energy.” — Jace Weaver, Professor and Director, Institute of Native American Studies, University of Georgia
“What really stands out in Across Cultures/Across Borders is a refusal to separate the personal, the political, and the poetic from the academic. The editors are to be congratulated for getting so many excellent writers to engage with what matters most to them, revealing where Aboriginal literary criticism has been and where it will be off to next. Readers will especially value the many pieces that talk about the struggle and delight of working out Aboriginal ways of being in the academy and in the wider literary world.” — Margery Fee, Professor of English, University of British Columbia
“This smartly and insightfully gathered collection is thought-provoking, and it provides an important augur of where we are in the development of an approach to Native literary studies that crosses some borders while respecting others. I learned a lot from reading it and recommend it to anyone who is a serious student of US and Canadian Indigenous literatures.” — Robert Warrior (Osage), President, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Warren Cariou, Foreword, “Going to Canada”
Kristina Fagan, “Code-Switching Humour in Aboriginal Literature”
Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe, “Tawinikewin”
Tomson Highway, “The Time Tomson Highway Went to Mameek and Survived to Tell the Tale”
Tomson Highway, “The Book that Affected Me the Most”
Daniel Heath Justice, “A Relevant Resonance: Considering the
Study of Indigenous National Literatures”
Lee Maracle, “Toward a National Literature: ‘A Body of Writing’”
Lorraine Mayer, “Negotiating a Different Terrain: Geographical
and Educational Cross-Border Difficulties”
Neal McLeod, “Cree Poetic Discourse”
Duncan Mercredi, “Wachea”
Duncan Mercredi, “Writing and Life”
Daniel David Moses, “My Grandfather’s Face” (a radio play)
Beatrice Mosionier, “April, Cheryl, and Me”
Simon Ortiz, “Memory, History, and the Present”
Deanna Reder, “Writing Autobiographically: A Neglected Indigenous Intellectual Tradition”
Armand Garnet Ruffo, “Where the Voice Was Coming From”
Craig Womack, “The Native American Theory Class Room”
Michael Snyder, “From Orion to the Postindian: Vizenor’s Movement Towards Postmodern Theory”
Steven Sexton, “Louis Owens’s Intervention in the World of the Novice Reader: Methodology and Native American Literary Criticism”
Niigonwedom James Sinclair, “Tending to Ourselves: Hybridity and Native Literary Criticism”
Interviews
Jeannette Armstrong and Hartmut Lutz, “A Conversation between Jeannette Armstrong and Hartmut Lutz”
Greg Sarris and Kelly Burns, “Talking Across Borders: An Interview with Greg Sarris”
Gregory Scofield and Tanis MacDonald, “Sitting Down to Ceremony: An Interview with Gregory Scofield”
Richard Van Camp and Junko Muro, “Living in a Time for Celebration: An Interview with Richard Van Camp”
Contributors
Paul DePasquale is a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario. He is Associate Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg and co-editor of
Telling our Stories: Omushkego Legends and Histories from Hudson Bay (University of Toronto Press).
The late Renate Eigenbrod was Associate Professor of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba and author of Travelling Knowledges: Positioning the Im/Migrant Reader of Aboriginal Literatures in Canada (University of Manitoba Press).
Emma LaRocque is Professor of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba. A Plains Cree Métis, she has published widely on Aboriginal literature and is the recipient of an Aboriginal Achievement Award.
