Cover image for Autobiography as Indigenous intellectual tradition : Cree and Métis âcimisowina / Deanna Reder.
TITLE:
Autobiography as Indigenous intellectual tradition : Cree and Métis âcimisowina / Deanna Reder.
Publication Date:
2022
Publication Information:
Waterloo, Ont. : Wilfrid Laurier University Press,
Physical Description:
xii, 179 p. : ill.
Bibliography Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary:
Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition critiques ways of approaching Indigenous texts that are informed by the Western academic tradition and offers instead a new way of theorizing Indigenous literature based on the Indigenous practice of life writing. Since the 1970s non-Indigenous scholars have perpetrated the notion that Indigenous people were disinclined to talk about their lives and underscored the assumption that autobiography is a European invention. Deanna Reder challenges such long held assumptions by calling attention to longstanding autobiographical practices that are engrained in Cree and MÔetis, or nÒehiyawak, culture and examining a series of examples of Indigenous life writing. Grounded in nÒehiyawak ontologies and epistemologies that consider life stories to be an intergenerational conduit to pass on knowledge about a shared world, this study encourages a widespread re-evaluation of past and present engagement with Indigenous storytelling forms across scholarly disciplines.
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781771125543