The People and the Text: Indigenous Writing in Lands Claimed by Canada is collecting and studying one of the most neglected literary archives in English Canada, an archive neglected because settlers used literature to consolidate a narrative of Canada starring the British-descended.
What We Have Accomplished to Date:
In the first stage of The People and the Text (TPatT, funded by SSHRC from 2015-2021) we brought scholarly attention to understudied or forgotten works, including Edward Ahenakew, An Antane Kapesh, Maria Campbell, and Vera Manuel, as well as several other key authors.
Since 2021 TPatT has released further research on:
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James Settee, Ahenakew, Campbell, James Brady, Harold Cardinal, and E. Pauline Johnson.
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See, for example, Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition (2022) by Deanna Reder
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and a critical edition of Legends of the Capilano (2023) by E. Pauline Johnson, Joe Capilano, and Mary Agnes Capilano, edited by Alix Shield.
In the first stage of TPatT, (2015-2021) we built a sustainable open-access bibliography of Indigenous texts, in partnership with Collaboratory of Writing and Research on Culture (CWRC).
Since 2021 TPatT has continued to expand our database; we have:
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Incorporated the VOA (the Voices of Ancestors) database, on 18th and early 19th Century Indigenous authors, with VOA Principal Investigator, Susan Glover;
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Included the work Go-won-go Mohawk, contributed by Christine Bold, into the database;
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Included the work on the multiple authors of Inuktitut Magazine from research team members for GALA (Government Agents, Literary Agents: Inuit Books and Government Intervention, 1968-1985 including Keavy Martin, Julie Rak, Warren Cariou, Armand Garnet Ruffo, and Gregory Younging).
As part of our ongoing relationship with Susan Brown (UGuelph) and Diane Jakacki (BucknellU), we are working with the Linked Editing Academic Framework (LEAF) to redeploy our database to be more accessible and stable.
In the first stage of TPatT, (2015-2021) TPatT advocated for systemic change in collection systems and the Indigenization of pedagogical approaches.
Since 2021 TPatT has:
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released this book chapter on decolonizing curriculum: "First Peoples, Indigeneity and Teaching Indigenous Writing in Canada" with Margery Fee and Deanna Reder. Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum, edited by Ato Quayson and Ankhi Mukherjee. Cambridge University Press Syndicate, 2024. 60-79.
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Identified Barriers to Indigenous materials in standard library systems (see Deanna Reder and Margery Fee’s article, “The People and the Text: An Inclusive Collection” (2023). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003282303
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Worked to incorporate land acknowledgements into library structures (see Alix Shield’s article, co-authored with Edwards, Lane, and Sohal on “Bringing the Land into the Library: Land Acknowledgements in an Academic Library” (2023)
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Worked with co-editor Michelle Coupal to dedicate a special double issue of Studies in American Indian Literature (volumes 34:1-2 in Spring-Summer 2022) to the topic “How We Teach Indigenous Literatures.”
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Contributed to research that interrogate the power structures and biases embedded in the information systems, tools, and platforms used to conduct research, in collaboration with head researcher Constance Crompton.
In all this work we continue to prioritize Indigenous literary research methods that consider our responsibilities to relevant Indigenous communities and individuals.
Books
Younging, Gregory. Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing By and About Indigenous Peoples, 2nd Edition. Edited by Warren Cariou, Deanna Reder, Lorena Fontaine, and Jordan Abel. Brush, 2025. 230 pp.
Shield, Alix, ed. Legends of the Capilano by E. Pauline Johnson, Joe Capilano, Mary Agnes Capilano. U of Manitoba P, 2023. 256 pp.
Reder, Deanna. Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowina. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2022. 182 pp.
Henzi, Sarah, ed. I am a Damn Savage; What Have You Done to my Country? By An Antane Kapesh, translated by Sarah Henzi. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2020. 216 pp.
Fee, Margery. Introduction. On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space, and Race in the Colonization of British Columbia: Essays by Jean Barman. Edited by Fee. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour, 2020: xi-xviii.
Fee, Margery. Polar Bear. London: Reaktion, 2019. 224 pp.
Manuel, Vera. Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poems. Eds. Michelle Coupal, Deanna Reder, Joanne Arnott, and Emalene Manuel. U of Manitoba P, 2019. 391 pp.
Justice, Daniel Heath. Why Indigenous Literatures Matter. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2018. 306 pp.
McCall, Sophie, Deanna Reder, David Gaertner and Gabrielle Hill. Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island. Eds. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2017. 390 pp.
Reder, Deanna and Linda M. Morra, Eds. Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2016. 500 pp.
Fee, Margery and Dory Nason, Eds. Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson’s Writings on Native North America. Peterborough: Broadview, 2016. 359 pp.
Fee, Margery. Literary Land Claims: “The Indian Land Question” from Pontiac’s War to Attawapiskat. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015. 326 pp.
Books Chapters & Papers
Fee, Margery. “George Clutesi: Tseshaht Story, Ceremony and Social Action,” BC Studies, no. 220, Winter 2023/24: 45-65.
Fee, Margery and Deanna Reder.”First Peoples, Indigeneity and Teaching Indigenous Writing in Canada.” Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum. Edited by Ato Quayson and Ankhi Mukherjee. Cambridge UP, 2023, pp. 60-79. Open access.
Lane, Julia, Alix Shield, Dal Sohal, and Ashley Edwards. “Bringing the Land into the Library: Land Acknowledgements in an Academic Library.” Land in Libraries: Toward a Materialist Conception of Education, edited by Lydia Zvyagintseva and Mary Greenshields, Library Juice Press, 2023.
Fee, Margery. “Diplomacy before Reconciliation.” Land / Relations: Possibilities of Justice in Canadian Literatures. Ed. Smaro Kamboureli and Larissa Lai. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2023, pp. 185-97.
Fee, Margery and Deanna Reder. “The People and the Text: An Inclusive Collection” Collection Thinking: Ontologies, Agents, Communities, eds.. Edited by Jason Camlot, Martha Langford, and Linda M. Morra. Routledge, 2023. 292-305. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003282303
Okot-Bitek, Juliane and Kesha Febrier, Vidya Shah, Sue Shon, Deanna Reder, Jules Gill-Peterson. “Critical Race Theory Today: A Roundtable Conversation” Journal of Critical Race Inquiry 9:2 (2022) https://jcri.ca/index.php/CRI/article/view/16273
Coupal, Michelle and Deanna Reder. “A Call to Teach Indigenous Literatures” co-authored with co-editor Michelle Coupal. Studies in American Indian Literature 34:1-2 (Spring-Summer 2022): ix-xxi
Reder, Deanna. “Using Indigenous-Informed Close-Reading to Unlearn: Teaching Indigenous Perspectives of History in Literature.” Studies in American Indian Literature 34:1-2 (Spring-Summer
2022): 59-74, 245-250
Shield, Alix. “‘You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned’: Or, How Yoda, Decolonization, and Indigenous Digital Media Fit Together.” How We Teach Indigenous Literatures, special issue of Studies in
American Indian Literatures, vol. 34, no. 1, 2022, pp. 75-91.
Gerson, Carole and Alix Shield. "Picturing E. Pauline Johnson/Tekahionwake: Illustration and the Construction of Indigenous Authorship." The Cultural Performance of Authorship in Canada, special issue of Authorship, vol. 10, no.1, July 2021. https://www.authorship.ugent.be/article/view/20629
Reder, Deanna and Alix Shield. “‘I write this for all of you’: Recovering the Unpublished RCMP ‘Incident’ in Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973).” On The Other Side(s) of 150: Untold Stories and Critical Approaches to History, Literature, and Identity in Canada. eds. Linda M. Morra and Sarah Henzi. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2021: 41-51.
Reder, Deanna. “Recuperating Indigenous Narratives: Making Legible the Documenting of Injustices.” On The Other Side(s) of 150: Untold Stories and Critical Approaches to History, Literature, and Identity in Canada. eds. Linda M. Morra and Sarah Henzi. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2021: 27-40.
Reder, Deanna and Sophie McCall. “Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies: Tensions and Interrelationships, Creative and Critical Interventions”. ARIEL A Review of International English Studies 51.2-3 (April-July 2020): 1-25
McCall, Sophie, ed. “Conversations at the Crossroads: Indigenous and Black Writers Talk” with David Chariandy, Karrmen Crey, Aisha Sasha John, Cecily Nicholson, Samantha Nock, Juliane Okot Bitek, Madeleine Reddon, & Deanna Reder. ARIEL; A Review of International English Studies 51.2-3 (April-July 2020): 57-82
Fee, Margery. “Thomas D’Arcy McGee and Louis Riel: Minority Nationalists, Extreme Moderates.” On The Other Side(s) of 150: Untold Stories and Critical Approaches to History, Literature, and Identity in Canada. eds. Linda M. Morra and Sarah Henzi. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2021: 271-84.
Edwards, Brendan F.R. “Print Culture and the Reassertion of Indigenous Nationhood in Early-Mid-Twentieth Century Canada.” Comparative Print Culture: A Study of Alternative Literary Modernities. Ed. Rasoul Aliakbari. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 225-244.
Fee, Margery. “What Can be Learned from Dining with Bears?: Food, Indigenous Worldviews and the Environment.” Canadian Culinary Imaginations. Ed. Shelley Boyd and Dorothy Berenscott. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2020: 37-56.
Fee, Margery. “Respect or Empathy?: Affect/Emotion in Indigenous Stories.” All the Feels / Tous les sens: Affect and Writing in Canada / Affect et écriture au Canada , edited by Marie Carrière, Ursula Mathis-Moser, and Kit Dobson; Edmonton: U of Alberta Press, 2020: 203-24.
Reder, Deanna and Sophie McCall, Sam McKegney, Sarah Henzi, and Warren Cariou. “Introduction” Special Section - Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada, Alaska Quarterly Review 36: 3 & 4 (Winter & Spring 2020): 190-198.
Justice, Daniel Heath. “Letter to an Emerging Writer.” Alaska Quarterly Review. Vol 36: 3 &4 (2020): 199-204.
Reder, Deanna. “Foreword”. Unsettling Spirit: A Journey into Decolonization by Denise M. Nadeau. McGill-Queens UP, 2020.
Fee, Margery. “Indigenous Cosmopolitics and English Literacy in the Pacific Northwest.” Worlds At Home: On Cosmopolitan Futures, guest ed. Chris Lee, Renisa Mawani and Sheila Giffen. Special issue of Journal of Intercultural Studies 40.5 (2019): 580-94.
Reder, Deanna and Alix Shield. “‘I write this for all of you’: Recovering the Unpublished RCMP ‘Incident’ in Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973)” Canadian Literature 238 (2019); first on-line May 28 2018, https://canlit.ca/article/i-write-this-for-all-of-you-recovering-the-unpublished-rcmp-incident-in-maria-campbells-halfbreed-19731/).
Fee, Margery. “‘We Indians Own These Lands’: Performance, Authenticity, Disidentification, and E. Pauline Johnson/Tekahionwake (1861-1913),” rpt. chapter from Literary Land Claims, rpt. in Poetry Criticism, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 199. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2018.
Cariou, Warren. “Sweetgrass Stories: Listening for Animate Land.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, vol. 5, no. 3, 2018, pp. 338–352.
Makmillen, Shurli and Margery Fee. “Disguising the Dynamism of Law in Canadian Courts: Judges Using Dictionaries.” The Pragmatic Turn in Law: Influence and Interpretation in Legal Discourse. Ed. Janet Giltrow and Dieter Stein. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 2017, 233-46. Vol. 18 Series in Pragmatics. (deals with the SCC Van der Peet decision)
Reder, Deanna. “Exploding the Canon: The Founding of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association,” WRITE: the magazine for the Writers’ Union of Canada (Fall 2017): 24.
Cariou, Warren, and Isabelle St-Amand. “Introduction Environmental Ethics through Changing Landscapes: Indigenous Activism and Literary Arts.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne De Littérature Comparée, vol. 44, no. 1, 2017, pp. 7–24.
Reder, Deanna. “Indigenous Autobiography in Canada: Recovering Intellectual Traditions.” The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature. Ed. Cynthia Sugars. Oxford UP, 2016. 170-190.
Fee, Margery. “Extinction Affect and the Case of the Polar Bear.” Spec. issue on Decolonizing Theories of the Emotions, ed. Sneja Gunew. Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture 16.1 (2016): 158-70.
Cariou, Warren. “Life-Telling: Indigenous Oral Autobiography and the Performance of Relation.” Biography, vol. 39, no. 3, 2016, pp. 314–327.
Fee, Margery. “Publication, Performances, and Politics: The ‘Indian Poems’ of E. Pauline Johnson / Tekahionwake (1861-1913) and Duncan Campbell Scott (1862-1947).” Anthologizing Canadian Literature: Theoretical and Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Robert Lecker. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2015. 51-77.
Reder, Deanna. "Native American Autobiography: Connecting Separate Critical Conversations," Lifewriting Annual 4 (December 2015): 35-63.
Fee, Margery. CanLit Guides. Co-edited with Laura Moss and Kathryn Grafton. With the assistance of Donna Chin, Matthew Gruman et al. canlitguides.ca.
Web-Based Publications
McCall, Sophie, ed. Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island Reader’s Guide. Website with teaching and learning resources (hosted by Wilfrid Laurier UP). Launched in Spring 2022. https://readlistentell.wlupress.ca/
Reddon, Madeleine. “Literature Guide: Summit with Sedna, the Mother of Sea Beasts by Alootook Ipellie,” Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island Reader’s Guide, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2021.
Shield, Alix. Halfbreed Publishing Timeline, Aug. 2020, https://halfbreedpublishingtimeline.com/
Shield, Alix. “Incorporating Indigenous Editorial Practices into Our Work.” Active Voice, 29 June 2018, https://activevoice.editors.ca/spring-summer-2018/incorporating-indigenous- editorial-practices-into-our-work/
Recorded Talks
Reder, Deanna and Chaired by Alix Shield. The People and the Text, Neglected Indigenous Works, and Making Relationship with Research. Digital Humanities Institute, virtual. June 6, 2022. https://echo360.ca/media/db547e87-752e-46af-95ee-a201a05ecdaf/public
Reder, Deanna. “Using DH Tools to Examine Neglected Indigenous Texts: Edward Ahenakew’s Old Keyam”, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, virtual. October 29, 2020. https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/472459201