Introduction Reading Indigenous Women’s Life Writing in Australia and North America: A Twenty-first Century Perspective The main goal of this introductory section is to outline some of the general characteristics of Indigenous women’s life writing 1 in Australia and North America and indicate the motives for a comparative structural and thematic analysis of the chosen narratives. Although it is not my intention to give the impression that Indigenous women’s life writing is a homogenous textual group, I want to foreground certain parallels this genre offers in both regions. These parallels derive first and foremost from the common histories of European invasion of the two continents and the subsequent process of colonization of 1 Throughout this work, I use the term “life writing,” rather than “auto/biography,” to refer to the genre of personal narratives. Generally speaking, I understand the term “auto/biography” as being closely related to the Euroamerican literary tradition which has developed its own theory of auto/biography. I use the term “life writing” as a broader term, which can incorporate auto/biographical accounts, as-told-to auto/biographies, collaborative oral history projects, confessional and trauma narratives, testimonies, as well as collective and communal life narratives. In my view, this term is particularly relevant as it is often positioned as challenging the foundations of Western auto/biography of portraying one’s own or the other’s individual life and self. In Australia, the term “life writing” is used almost exclusively to designate Indigenous women’s life stories, hence the rationale provided by Moreton-Robinson: “The term ‘life-writing’ has been used because Indigenous women’s texts that have been analysed do not fit the usual strict chronological narrative of autobiography, and they are the products of collaborative lives” ( Talkin’ Up to the White Woman 1). On the other hand, the term “auto/biography” (e.g. Arnold Krupat) as well as the term “personal narratives” (e.g. Kathleen Mullen Sands) are usually used in scholarly debates about Native North American life writing. Even here, however, the relevance of the term “auto/biography” for Native North American narratives has been contested (e.g. in Hertha Dawn Wong’s Sending My Heart Back Across the Years ). Therefore I use the term “life writing” as the best one possible, although there are certainly texts, such as the life narratives discussed in my first chapter, that do transgress even this broadly defined term. 1 the peoples native to both areas. The similar treatment of Indigenous people in Australia and North America 2, which included genocide, relocation, assimilation, and omnipresent oppression and discrimination, has lead to a shared sense of injustice and disempowerment among Indigenous communities.3 Since Indigenous literary production in Australia and North America is chiefly concerned with the aftermath of colonization in the form of racism and cultural imperialism on the part of the dominant societies, I have decided to apply a thorough comparative approach to Indigenous women’s life writing in both areas and trace the characteristics that the texts share. Some of the suggested features are not exclusive to the genre of Indigenous life writing and can relate to Indigenous literatures in general (e.g. re-writing history, political and representational nature), some of them are more relevant to Indigenous life writing only (e.g. testimonial and scriptotherapeutic elements, collective selves), and some are specific for Indigenous women’s personal narrative (e.g. writing life 2 At this point, I would like to justify the exclusion of New Zealand Maori life writing from this dissertation, even though Maori women’s narratives would certainly fit my arguments here and New Zealand comes forward somewhat naturally as a fourth settler colony where the process of colonization by the British Empire and the subjugation of Indigenous population is historically, socially and politically comparable with the situation in Australia, Canada, and the USA. However, being trained in North American literature, the research on Aboriginal women’s literary production in Australia for the purposes of the comparative analysis has started as a kind of a self-study and has proved to be such an extensive area that to include another, i.e. Maori literature, would simply be impossible to manage. Nevertheless, this particular area remains something that can be elaborated on in the future. 3 A note on terminology: although, especially when drawing more general conclusions, I use “Indigenous” as an umbrella term for Aboriginal people in Australia, First Nations in Canada and Native Americans in the USA, I also refer to “Aboriginal,” “Native North American,” “First Nations” or “Native American” people where I speak about a particular area, e.g. Aboriginal women in Australia, and where my sources explicitly use these specific terms. I am aware that some of these terms are considered problematic by some Indigenous scholars and writers who prefer to be identified, for example, by their tribal affiliations rather than by a homogenizing, Western-constructed category. 2 as an act of empowerment, re-presenting Indigenous womanhood, motherhood and sisterhood). Thus I want to emphasize that it is possible and desirable to theorize Indigenous women’s life writing from a wider, comparative perspective, linking the narratives to a larger framework of human rights, social injustice, the process of healing from the colonization trauma, and subsequent reconciliation. The texts also invite exploration of the various ways in which they may impact the mainstream readership’s sense of the self and the other, its own whiteness as a category of power and privilege, so that readers can interpret Indigenous life stories through the lens of what Kay Schaffer calls the “ethics of recognition” (“Narrative Lives” 22). In other words, this introductory section should answer the question of why it is important, enriching and rewarding to read and interpret Indigenous women’s life writing in the twenty-first century. ***** global perspectives and human rights In Human Rights and Narrated Lives , Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith underscore an important connection between the enormous popularity of life stories and memoirs published since the 1990s and the coincidentally increased public interest in the domain of human rights around the world (1). Even though these two contemporary interests have been, until recently, explored in the separate disciplines of literature and politics, Schaffer and Smith relate them in an interdisciplinary approach that “understands ‘the political’ as inclusive of moral aesthetics and ethical aspects of culture,” treating life narratives and human rights campaigns as “multidimensional domains that merge and intersect at critical points” (2). The genre of life writing has become an extremely important source for human rights campaigns since many of the personal, eyewitnessed accounts tell of human rights violations. Publicizing accounts of Indigenous people’s painful histories in Australia, Canada and the USA – some of the richest and most privileged countries in the world – has 3 become a significant means of addressing the global abyss between the powerful and the disempowered within the so called “first world.” In a situation in which Indigenous voices had been historically silenced and excluded from the public discourse, published life stories have become an alternative site for Indigenous people’s resistance to various oppressive regimes imposed by the dominant society. Life writing at least partially redresses the previous invisibility of Indigenous people who can at last assert control over their representations and tell their versions of colonial histories. The Australian historians Bain Attwood an Fiona Magowan situate Indigenous life writing within the context of globalization and the rise of identity politics, arguing that Indigenous issues have been “accorded a critical place” in the settler colonies’ nationalism (xi). Attwood and Magowan draw attention to the intrinsic relation between storytelling and history-making in Indigenous communities that stems from the basic functions of telling stories – to understand and to remember (xii). Since Indigenous people used storytelling as a means to make sense of the colonial appropriation of their lands and cultures and as a way to remember the past at the same time, their life stories are mementos of both individual fates and of the global process of colonizing Indigenous populations. Thus telling stories and telling history has recently acquired a strong political charge because the recounting of what I later call “alternative (hi)stories” can construct a powerful critique of the nationally accepted myths of the European settlement in Australia and North America. Additionally, the political nature of life (hi)stories becomes increasingly important to establishing Indigenous identities and human rights in contemporary Australian and North American societies. Using the optics of global perspectives may prove beneficial for Indigenous civil rights struggles, particularly regarding land claims, environmental justice concerns, sovereignty and self-government issues, and control over education. In these areas, 4 Indigenous peoples may be inspired by similar struggles in other countries or even cooperate across national borders in gaining access to power and resources. The role of Indigenous life writing in the process