Contesting reconciliation, foregrounding relationality: contemporary Indigenous women’s writing in Canada

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de Riso, V., 2023. Contesting reconciliation, foregrounding relationality: contemporary Indigenous women’s writing in Canada. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

In an era of ‘reconciliation’ marked by the work of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), active from 2008 to 2015, this thesis examines how contemporary Indigenous women’s writings challenge and rethink established models of testimony and relationality. It explores how Lee Maracle (Stó:lō), Katherena Vermette (Métis), Tracey Lindberg (Cree), Terese Marie Mailhot (Nlaka’pamux), and Norma Dunning (Inuit) widen understanding of testimony in imaginative, personal, and collective ways through novels, life-writing, and short stories in which the dominant tenets of reconciliatory discourse advocated and advanced by the TRC can be seen to be challenged and complicated. Focussing on mutual understanding, attentive listening, anger, pain, empathy, forgiveness, and healing, this thesis intervenes in and expands discussions of ‘reconciliation’ and puts under scrutiny a colonial narrative of ‘Indigenous deficiency’ and the role of epistemic injustice in Indigenous-settler relations. Its theoretical lens is wide, encompassing Indigenous theory, postcolonial studies, queer theory and affect studies, and an interdisciplinary approach to literary analysis that draws on adjacent fields of philosophy, sociology, politics, law, and health studies. It argues that selected literary texts authored by Indigenous women offer alternative and more equitable pathways for establishing, mending, and nurturing meaningful relationships between Indigenous peoples, settlers, and other beings on the land. These pathways chart forms of engagement that require an accommodation of refusal and a respect for complexities and opacities. This thesis contributes to a growing body of literature that centres the voices of contemporary Indigenous writers and emphasises the importance of storytelling in illustrating alternative forms of action and healing.

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Thesis

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de Riso, V.

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