Podcast on First Nations writing

Here's a podcast I recorded last spring for my English 182 class that will go over some of the things we talked about in class on 9/19. It will also give you some more information on First Nations writing in Canada.

I've posted it for you here and you should be able to see, I hope, the slides that I would have been showing you tonight on the big screen. You can download that enhanced podcast here so that you can listen to and watch it in iTunes or on a color iPod if you like.

If that doesn't work, just download this regular mp3 file (7 mb) and read this full blog posting to get the text of the slides I've been talking about.

First Nations writing:
Some important characteristics

• influence of oral tradition
• elements of Native mythology and world view
• humour
• social criticism
• didactic

Thomas King “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial”

1. Tribal
2. Polemical
3. Interfusional
4. Associational

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial” World Literature Written in English. vol. 30 No. 2
(1990), 10-16.

tribal literature
“that literature which exists primarily within a tribe or community, literature that is shared almost exclusively by members of that community and literature that is presented and retained in a Native language. It is virtually invisible outside its community, partly because of the barrier of language and partly because it has little interest in making itself available to an outside audience” (12-13).

Polemical literature
“literature either in a Native language or in English, French, etc. that concerns itself with the clash of Native and non-Native cultures or with the championing of Native values over non-Native values. [. . .] polemical literature chronicles the imposition of non-Native expectations and insistences (political, social, scientific) on Native communities and the methods of resistance employed by Native people in order to maintain both their communities and cultures” (12)

Interfusional
“a blending of oral literature and written literature. [. . .] the only complete example we have of interfusional literature is Harry Robinson’s Write It On Your Heart. [. . .] Robinson, within the confines of written language, is successful in creating an oral voice. He develops [. . .] an oral syntax that defeats readers’ efforts to read the stories silently to themselves. [. . .] by forcing the reader to read aloud, Robinson’s prose, to a large extent avoids this loss [of the voice of the storyteller], re-creating at once the storyteller and the performance” (13)

Associational
• “the body of literature that has been created, for the most part, by contemporary Native writers” (14).
• “Associational literature, most often describes a Native community. [. . .] it avoids centring the story on the non-Native community or on a conflict between the two cultures, concentrating instead on the daily activities and intricacies of Native life and organizing the elements of plot along a rather flat narrative line that ignores the ubiquitous climaxes and resolutions that are so valued in non-Native literature” (14).

Important First Nations Writers today

• Thomas King
• Lee Maracle
• Tomson Highway
• Basil Johnston
• Eden Robinson
• Richard Van Camp