Great Plains Studies, Center for

 

Date of this Version

2009

Document Type

Article

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3, Summer 2009, pp. 256-257

Comments

Copyright 2009 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska- Lincoln

Abstract

Encompassing an approach to the study of Canadian -literature that resulted in a conference held in Vancouver in 2005, this collection of a preface and thirteen chapters begins with Diana Brydon's keynote address setting up the "superordinates"-Literature, Institutions, and Citizenship-to explore a discourse on Canadian literature's future. That process leads toward "our national literature in global contexts and in dialogue with Indigenous concerns." In effect, Trans.Can.Lit. means translation, transcontinental railroad, travel, trance, and globalization.

Lee Maracle's chapter on Salish thinkers and orators who help their people to see "Ourselves Through Story vs. Western Models" criticizes the Institutions of the diaspora that claim the right to establish dominion over other people's educational and literary values. Dismissing the preponderance of global privilege, she claims the Salish are free to challenge the powerful by claiming their own narrative history which "has created the body of knowledge of the nation and shaped the oral tradition, which then the listeners use to govern themselves." Thus, the past leads to the future.

Share

COinS