CANADIAN LITERATURE

Aboriginal Writing

A general understanding of some terms generally used by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC)

Aboriginal Peoples ( original inhabitants of North America)

Inuit Metis

Indians (Indian Act 1867) Status Non – status

Kahkewaquonaby

Ojibway Credit River

Not a written text

Oral Tradition: according to the

government oral culture is successive

mutually exclusive stages in a single, unavoidable path of cultural evolution.

Assimilation

For Natives oral tradition is two folded

Cultural Heritage

Source of their writings

Aboriginal orature has been misunderstoodOral literature

For Natives:

Spiritual beliefs

Moral values

Preserve knowledge of history and culture

Framework

Certain common motifs

Trickster: our attitude that things are funny even though horrible things happen (Daniel David Moses )

Aboriginal writings

Own conventions

In European norms: risky

Generalization of both cultures

Writing If it is a physical composition of text = Missionary teaching Natives approx. 1780

Text-making process (missionaries dictating their stories:1652)

Pictographs of Stein River Valley British Columbia

Roman alphabet or co-evolutionary: diverse writing system in different places

Mi'kmaq hieroglyphic writing

Micmac book culture

Cultural superiority

For Natives

Sacred objects

Or useless

Books and writing were (are) used as tools of deception, destruction

In the 19th century native played the role of Noble

Savage

European fascination by primitives, disappearing race

Peter Jones – dual identity

Oratorical skills were more important – first

generation Natives, preachers, performers, lecturers

Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) Mohawk (1861 -1913)

Cry of an Indian WifeAs Red Men DieThe White Wampum (1895)

Later in the 20th century non aboriginal published Aboriginal stories Archibald Belaney

A CRY FROM AN INDIAN WIFE 

MY Forest Brave, my Red-skin love, farewell;

We may not meet to-morrow; who can tell

What mighty ills befall our little band,

Or what you’ll suffer form the white man’s hand?

1968 – Trudeau „ a just society, participatory democracy

We must all be equal….We can’t recognize aboriginla rights

1969 – White paper

Indian status be abolished Native services be mainstreamed Just one element of multicultural society

Aboriginal writing mainly political

The only Indian is a non-Indian

I write this for all of you, to tell you what is it like to be a Halfbreed woman in our country. I want to tell you about the joys and sorrows, the oppressing poverty, the frustrations and the dreams

Maria Campbell: Halfbreed (1973)

Rita Joe (1932 -2007) Song of Eskasoni

Tomson Highway: Kiss of the Fur Queen

Thomas king: Green Grass, Running Water

Assimilation to western literary paradigms

Aboriginal writing still seen as:

Other Changeless Nothing to say to humanity on a larger scale

To fight for their own right they use a language and writing system that were forced upon them as weapons

Meegwetch