ESC: English Studies in Canada

Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures, edited by Deanna Reder and Linda M. Morra, constitutes an essential addition to every English specialist's library. This anthology is the result of a 2014 workshop where the editors and participants collaborated to fill a critical [End Page 208] gap in literary studies, by creating a text suited to introduce Indigenous literary theory to "upper undergraduate and graduate student[s]" (Reder 1), or to assist "literary scholars … who might be teaching [Indigenous literatures] for the first time" (Morra 3). Learn, Teach, Challenge brings together an impressive number of previously published works, as well as a few new ones; regrettably, it is not possible to mention all of the contributors here. Each writer, however, offers something significant, and even readers already familiar with Indigenous literary studies criticism will benefit from this collection in which voices converge as a nuanced expression of Indigenous self-determination in North America.

Reder and Morra provide astute commentary and have organized the anthology with care. For example, in the introduction, Reder explains that Craig Womack (Cherokee and Creek) is often credited with the critical approach "Indigenous literary nationalism" or "the pivotal idea that specific tribal epistemologies and stories could be used to interpret stories from that nation" (Reder 2)—a foundational approach that underpins many discussions in this collection. However, when collaborators reminded Reder and Morra that Okanagan critic Jeannette Armstrong and Anishinaabe author Kimberly Blaeser had respectively argued for a similar approach in 1993 (prior to Womack's Red on Red) they chose to include excerpts from all three critics, placing Armstrong and Blaeser before Womack (Reder 2). This focus on collaboration, respect, and inclusion is sustained throughout the anthology.

Learn, Teach, Challenge is divided into five sections, each accompanied by its own introduction and conclusion. Reder introduces the first titled "Position," where she outlines why she provides students in her classes with a territorial acknowledgement and information about her cultural background. Reder who is Cree-Métis explains: "This inclusion of my communities of origin follows local traditions that value genealogies, but is also an act of solidarity with Indigenous students … in a university context not typically sensitive to Indigenous concerns" (7). As this comment predicts, the anthology calls for disciplinary and pedagogical reforms that would allow for equitable inclusion of Indigenous ways of knowing. Janice Acoose, who positions herself as a "politically awakened and widely read Nehiowe-Métis-Anishinaabekwe feminist" (33), describes Canadian literature as "an ideological instrument [that] promotes … canadian patriarchy" (32). Plains Cree Métis critic Emma LaRocque reminds readers that Indigenous literatures are "as much about art and nuance as about colonial discourse" (61). She worries that a Eurocentric education system does not prepare instructors to grasp this point, noting that "those of us teaching [End Page 209] Aboriginal Literatures have an extraordinary mandate to know both Aboriginal and western epistemologies" (62). Sam McKegney discusses the role that non-Native scholars should take to engage with Indigenous literatures, arguing that non-Indigenous scholars have a responsibility to "put in the time and effort … [to] approach valid cultural understandings" (80). Yet McKegney fears that well-meaning scholars often justify maintaining a distance from Indigenous literatures by using "strategies of ethical disengagement" (81), a move that "obfuscat[es] Indigenous voices" (81). While critics articulate different views on position and what this term can mean, transparency, humility, and self reflection are the overall emphasis: as Margaret Kovach (Plains Cree and Saulteaux) summarizes, "I could not proceed … without stating that I write from a specific place. Doing this work shows respect to culture, community, the research audience, and to myself" (98).

The second section, "Imagining Beyond Images and Myths," deals with the misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in literature and criticism and how the stereotypes that settlers have ascribed to Indigenous peoples are tied to the imperialist aims of nation building. It begins with Mohawk author E. Pauline Johnson's "A Strong Race Opinion: On the Indian Girl...