Reading Practices for Indigenous Literatures:

• Main Author: Trunjer, Lene
• Other Authors: Coleman, Daniel, English and Cultural Studies
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Indigenous literature; Canada; anishina*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11375/20412

This project explores ways of engaging with "impossible moments" that unsettle our reading practices. This project arose out of restlessness, on my part, regarding how to read and engage with elements in Indigenous literatures written in Canada, which I could hitherto label as supernatural occurrences. Indeed, my Euro-Western literary education has been unable to provide appropriate tools for profoundly exploring the supernatural occurrences that I was encountering in the literature—a limitation that is made clear by scholars like Vine Deloria Jr. (Sioux), whose work calls for considering origin stories as literally possible. Through this thesis, I re-conceptualize these “supernatural” occurrences as “impossible moments”—a term that I use to avoid the connotations of Euro-Western rationalist nomenclature while also remaining aware that I read from an outsider position. My literary archive consists of Richard Wagamese’s (Anishinaabe) novel Keeper ’n Me (1994), his autobiographical book For Joshua (2002), Lee Maracle’s (Stó:lō) novel Ravensong (1993), and its sequel Celia’s Song (2014). Through the project, I establish two ethical, self-reflexive reading practices: one considers my active participation as a reader within the narratives and the other attends to my role as a reader in the “real” world. These reading practices are established both within the body of the thesis, as well as in extensive meditations within the footnotes. As an outsider, I employ my reading practices with the intention of bringing awareness to the limitations of Western literary reading practices, while at the same time not assuming an authoritative voice. Particularly important for my explorations of impossible moments is Daniel Heath Justice’s (Cherokee) principles of “kinship,” a term that identifies relational responsibilities between all living things. Utilizing the principles of kinship throughout this project allows me to demonstrate that impossible moments occur through narrations of the relational engagements that exist between all living things and the characters’ spiritual practices. Thesis Master of Arts (MA) This project presents close readings of what are conceptualized as “impossible moments” in four literary works : Richard Wagamese’s (Anishinaabe) books Keeper ’n Me (1994) and For Joshua (2002), as well as author Lee Maracle’s (Stó:lō) novels Ravensong (1994) and its sequel Celia’s Song (2014). The term “impossible moments” may be understood as characterizing unsettling reading experiences, particularly those that leave the outside (i.e. non-local and, or non-Indigenous) reader on unfamiliar ground regarding how best to interpret the “impossibilities” that occur within a given narrative. The critical framework in this project demonstrates that “impossibilities” in Wagamese and Maracle’s works are expressions of kinship between all living things (i.e. humans, the land, the animals, and spirits) as well as expressions of spiritual traditions and ceremonies. Indeed, this project demonstrates the need to reassess our reading practices to encompass differentiated ways of knowing.