Aboriginal Writing in

Canada
 Transformations of oral traditions
 Power and meaning resided in the oral
document
 Cultures of the voice
 Cultures of the written word
 A complex entaglement of both
 Not successive but complimentary
 Assimilation policies

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 “Orature”
 Misunderstood when evaluated in terms of
Eurocentric aesthetic criteria
 When disseminated by the mass media they
may be misused
 “Oral literature” – contradiction in terms
 Process of petrification
 Cultures are not static in time

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 Oral genres
 Songs
 Orations
 Prayers
 Secret
 Performed in ceremonies
 Express spiritual beliefs
 Encode moral and social values

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 Common motifs
 Creation events
 Sentient animals, birds and sea creatures
 Dreams
 Vision quests
 Songs and ceremonies
 Models of proper and improper behaivior
 Transformations back and forth between human
and animal forms

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 Trickster figures
 Coyote
 Raven – British Columbia
 Old Man – on the plains
 Wisakedjak – Cree
 Nanabozho – Ojibway
 Glooscap - Micmac

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 Trickster figures
 In contemporary narratives:
- spiritual entities
- literary device
- introducing
- twists
- jokes
- word games

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 The Trickster
 Daniel David Moses: crucial to our attitude that
“things are funny even though horrible things
happen”
 Tomson Highway: “straddles the consciousness of
man and that of God, the Great Spirit”
 Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, The Magazine to Re-
Establish the Trickster: “We can learn through the
Trickster’s mistakes as well as the Trickster’s
virtues

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 Conventions in terms of expression
and structure
 No deep psychological intricacies
 No individual characterization

- but in Inuit “mood songs” – moments of

intense emotion and perception
 Rambling and episodic

 No single, revelatory climax

 Some combine farce, tragedy, religious

allegory, secular history, didactic messages,

foreign-culture elements
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 Written cultures
 Different scripts
 The history of writing - not a single
evolutionary path leading to the Roman
alphabet
 The Nanavut territory, est. 1999, two official
writing systems: Cree syllabics and Roman
alphabet
 Micmac hieroglyphics
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Aboriginal writing systems

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Micmac Hieroglyphs

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 The Nineteenth Century
 Not a decisive shift from native orality to
European literacy
 Moving back and forth between oral and
literary institutions
 Within European culture
 Between European and Native cultures
 Mediators: Peter Jones, George Copway,
George Henry, Peter Jacobs: Wesleyan
Methodist Missionary Society, mid 1820s
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 The Nineteenth Century
 Metis writing
 Pierre Falcon’s songs
 Meant for singing and reciting
 Heroic subjects
 Native American women: poetry
 Exception: the first Inuk autobiography: Lydia
Campbell’s Sketches of Labrador Life (1894)

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Emily Pauline Johnson
(1861-1913)
 Mohawk father
 English mother
 Poetry: lyrics, narratives,
dramatic monologues
 The White Wampum, first
poetry collection, 1895
 Legends of Vancouver,
stories told by Coast Salish
Chief Calipano
 Questrions of cultural
transmission, identity,
gender, agency and
performance

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 First half of the Twentieth Century
 No Native writers
 Pseudo-native writers:
- Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney)
- Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (Sylvester
Clark Long)
 Romanticised vision of Native life
 Frederick Ogilvie Loft, The League of Indians
in Canada, 1919
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Second half of the twentieth century
 Social protest
 Pierre Trudeau, 1968: equal, no recognition of
aboriginal writers
 The Unjust Society, 1969, Harold Cardinal
 From the mid-seventies – “soft” approach
 Life narratives, children’s stories, interviews
with elders, legends

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 Aboriginal writings
 Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed, 1973
 To challenge white ignorance and apathy
 Co-produced texts:
 Lee Maracle’s Bobbi Lee: Indian Rebel, 1975,
under the name of Don Barnett
 Anthologies and collections of Native poetry
and stories in the 1970
 Political issues
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 Aboriginal writers of
the 1970s and 1980s
 Jeannette Armstrong
 Ben Abele
 George Clutesi
 Duke Redbird
 Wayne, Ronald, and Orville Keon
 Daniel David Moses, Delicate Bodies, the
“Calendar” series
 Rita Joe, Song of Eskasoni, 1988, lines of cultural
transmission
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 Recent Developments
 Beatrice Culleton, In Search of April Raintree, 1983,
the first modern novel
 Jeannette Armstrong

Slash, 1985
Whispering in Shadows, 2000
 Tomson Highway

Kiss of the Fur Queen, 1998

 Thomas King

Green Grass, Running Water, 1993

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 Contemporary Writings
 Questions of representation and sovereignty
 Oka town blockade, 1990
 Indian and Canadian – mutually exclusive
 Personal sovereignty right:
 Maria Campbell and Linda Griffiths The Book
of Jessica 1989
 Major publishing houses

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