Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
2009
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 3, Summer 2009, pp. 256-257
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.
Comments
Copyright 2009 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska- Lincoln