NativeLit 101

I am about half-way through my NativeLit research project for my final Honours course before graduating this spring, and have found a plethora of interesting reading to share with you. Be warned - I am not an expert in this field, but I am passionate about it.

NativeLit is possibly the hottest literary genre in Canada right now. There are many reasons for this: it’s a relatively new genre in the scope of CanLit, making its debut, arguably, between 25 and 40 years ago. Another reason people are chattering about NativeLit is the controversial discourse: This isn’t a fluff genre, there are real social topics coming to a head in Canadian politics - like land claims, residential school abuse, racism, and stereotyping - being represented in the new NativeLit of our country. So, I am passing on a brief who’s-who on the genre so you can get started on reading some excellent texts.

Phase One: The Old-School

Around the early 18th century, in the earliest days of Canada’s formation, there were some interesting texts being written in the New World by the colonisers. A lot of travel-logs, frontier novels, and general creative fiction obsessed with the colonisation of North America. As a reference point, early Canadian writing gives a glimpse of how the colonisers perceived North America. However, it does not tell the whole story. Before the mid 20th century, there were no Native authors in Canada being published. The vision of Canada represented in literature was biased - and out of this vision comes a clear stereotypical Native archetype in literature that was recycled in nearly all texts concerned with Native topics.

Essentially, the Native was used as an objective tool: The Native character is flat, one-sided, and almost always represents the Other compared to the coloniser. They are one with nature, uncivilised, the “noble savage.” This may not sound too ignorant at first, but think about what is not conveyed about Native peoples at the time. Topics like assimilation, dying cultures and languages, unfair land treaties, and the industrialisation of a previously unhindered land mass. The writing of the colonisers paid no attention to these themes.

Look up John Richardson’s Wacousta, a frontier story written in 1832 about the first encounters between Natives and Colonisers, and which also happens to be the first published Canadian novel. Also, the poetry and legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott from the early 1900s offers examples of the flat Native archetype. Campbell Scott actually was head of Indian Affairs during the early 20th century, and worked to outlaw traditional Native dance ceremonies, on a loosely based argument that they wasted time and produced no good. American literature during the time also produced biased images of the Native, like in some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories, for example.

1972: A National Recognition of CanLit, and the Dawn of NativeLit

In 1972, Margaret Atwood published Survial: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature with help of a small publishing company, Anansi. The book was firstly intended to generate revenue for the young author, and also provide Canadian teachers with a guide on how to go about teaching CanLit. Up until this point, there was little recognition in Canada, or globally, of an actual Canadian literature scene. Miraculously, the book sold over 30,000 copies in its first year. People started to recognize Canada’s own literary genre, and the unique Canadian themes it projected.

In Survival, Atwood broke ground by addressing the problem of Native representation in CanLit up to that time. The chapter, entitled “First Nation,” acted as a battle-cry for the need of real, positive, Native themes to be recognized within CanLit. Thank Atwood, because almost instantly Canada was reading literature written by Natives authors and Native activists alike, writing about the opposite of what the colonisers saw: the negative effects of colonisation. Before long, post-colonial literature in Canada had a sore thumb for all to see, the genre of NativeLit.

After the ‘70s, Until Today

NativeLit is established, recognized, and in full force. First on the scene were the unrecognized Native writers of the past: Margaret Laurence, Pauline Johnson, and Maria Campbell, for example, were pulled out of CanLit’s camouflaging woodwork for all to hail as forgotten prominent authors. Thomas King also got his start in the early ‘80s, a man who is now considered new NativeLit’s forerunner. King is still a proficient novelist. Check out a book entitled The Native in Literature, a compilation of essays that were presented at the University of Lethbridge Native in Literature conference in 1984, for which King provides the introduction. King’s most famous work is Green Grass, Running Water, which takes an honest look at the state of North American Native culture in the ‘90s.

Also getting started in the ‘80s was Canadian playwright/author Tomson Highway whose first play, The Rez Sisters, first staged in 1987, made huge waves in the CanLit scene. He is still writing new plays in his residential school themed series, and has a new novel, Kiss of The Snow Queen, largely about the same topic. You also may have seen some of Highway's tragi-comedies that were adapted to the big screen.

I won’t be able to list off all of the new NativeLit authors, but here are some great ones to consider checking out: Joseph Boyden, who has written two novels, Three Day Road, and Through Black Spruce, which are excellent reworkings of the original Native archetype in CanLit. Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach is also great. Not only is it a suspenseful read, it addresses many current Native themes like residential schooling and stereotyping. Also, I praise Beatrice Culleton’s novel In Search of April Raintree, which addresses, among other issues, the niche problem of inner city violence on Native women.

So there you have it. Now all you have to do is read, and remember how NativeLit came to be.

Originally published at campusintel.com