Literary Language Revitalization: Nêhiyawêwin, Indigenous Poetics, and Indigenous Languages in Canada
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Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 12-8-2017 10:30 AM Literary Language Revitalization: nêhiyawêwin, Indigenous Poetics, and Indigenous Languages in Canada Emily L. Kring The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Wakeham, Pauline The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Emily L. Kring 2017 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Poetry Commons, and the Reading and Language Commons Recommended Citation Kring, Emily L., "Literary Language Revitalization: nêhiyawêwin, Indigenous Poetics, and Indigenous Languages in Canada" (2017). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 5170. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/5170 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract This dissertation reads the spaces of connection, overlap, and distinction between nêhiyaw (Cree) poetics and the concepts of revitalization, repatriation, and resurgence that have risen to prominence in Indigenous studies. Engaging revitalization, resurgence, and repatriation alongside the creative work of nêhiyaw and Métis writers (Louise Bernice Halfe, Neal McLeod, and Gregory Scofield), this dissertation explores how creative, literary applications of nêhiyawêwin (Cree language) model an approach to Indigenous language revitalization that is consonant with nêhiyaw understandings of embodiment, storytelling, memory, kinship, and home. Broadly, I argue that Halfe’s, McLeod’s, and Scofield’s creative practices encourage the ongoing use, valuing, and teaching of Indigenous languages in ways that are commensurate with the philosophies and modes of living that are central to the languages themselves. This dissertation puts literary studies into conversation with socio-linguistic, socio-legal, and socio-political/activist paradigms that affirm Indigenous peoples’ rights to develop, use, and teach their cultural traditions, practices, and languages. Through a focused study of the creative work of nêhiyaw poet Louise Bernice Halfe (Sky Dancer), Métis storyteller Gregory Scofield, and nêhiyaw poet, painter, and scholar Neal McLeod, this dissertation attends to how creative writers include nêhiyawêwin and reflect nêhiyaw ways of being, holding relationships, and relating to land through poetry. The body chapters provide genealogical accounts of their respective frameworks, which analyze the invocation of revitalization, repatriation, and resurgence in discourses pertaining to sociology, anthropology, law, policy, activism, and literary criticism since the middle of the twentieth century. Pairing these genealogies with attention to nêhiyaw and Métis i creative writers’ strategic uses of nêhiyawêwin to articulate nêhiyaw- and Métis-specific modes of language use and relationality, this dissertation highlights the complex circulation of creative writing alongside Indigenous Peoples’ efforts to use, learn, and teach their languages. ii Keywords Indigenous literature; Indigenous studies; Cree; Cree literature; Cree language; nêhiyawêwin; Louise Bernice Halfe; Gregory Scofield; Neal McLeod; Blue Marrow; Love Medicine and One Song; Gabriel’s Beach; Singing Home the Bones; The Crooked Good; I Knew Two Métis Women; language revitalization; repatriation; Indigenous resurgence; resurgence; Indigenous poetry; storytelling; Indigenous poetics iii Acknowledgements My thanks to the Department of English and Writing Studies and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Western University for their financial support. My thanks, too, to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for awarding me a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship for Doctoral Research to aid the completion of this research. I am grateful for the years of challenging debate and discussion with my fellow graduate students in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University. Riley McDonald, thank you for your prompt, enduring, and generous patience with multiple iterations of this dissertation and its parts. Adam Bowes, Meghan O’Hara, Kevin Shaw, Jason Sunder, and Andy Verboom: your ideas and your feedback have helped me grow as a thinker, a writer, and a person. Many thanks to Alayna Avery for offering her support, clarity of thought, and deep well of humour as I worked through this project. To Eric Gagné, thank you for your unending store of kindness and positive reinforcement, which I tried my best to empty over the last 5 years. Thanks too to my second reader, Dr. Kim Verwaayen, for her poignant and insightful feedback as I developed and refined this dissertation. I am short of words beyond “thanks” to express my debt and gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Pauline Wakeham. This dissertation would not be possible without her sharp and thorough eye for encouraging nuance, rigour, and critical responsibility at every stage of the research process. I give the most exuberant thanks to my mother, Lynne Kring, and my father, Glen Kring. From tolerating my book-hoarding and love of literature from its early days by iv letting me take out more library books than I could ever read, to nurturing it in recent years by helping me build new bookshelves, I owe my persistence and curious mind to their encouragement. To the two of them: Your kindness to me, support for me, and patience with me have made it possible for me to complete this project. Thank you. LY both. v Table of Contents Certificate of Examination ………………………………………………………………. Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………….. i Keywords ……………………………………………………………………………….. iii Acknowledgements ...…………………………………………………………................ iv Table of Contents ……………………………………………………………………….. vi List of Appendices …………………………………………………………………….. viii Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter One ……………………………………………………………………………. 48 1. 1 Back & Forth: Guiding Etymologies …………………………………………… 47 1. 2 Disciplining Revitalization: From Cargo-Cults to Textbook Terminology …….. 52 1. 3 A Rhetoric of Revitalization: Language Revitalization in Academia, Activism, and Policy ………………………………………………………………………. 64 1. 4 Speaking of Medicines: Storytelling, nêhiyawêwin, and embodiment …………. 84 1. 5 Medicine, nêhiyawêwin, and Loving Bodies in Louise Halfe’s Blue Marrow and Gregory Scofield’s Love Medicine and One Song/ Sâkihtowin-Maskihkîy Êkwa Pêyak Nikamowin …………………………………………………………….. 104 1. 6 “Listen to the Bones”: Skeletal Frameworks, Linguistic Marrow …………….. 115 1. 7 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….. 123 Chapter Two ………………………………………………………………………….. 125 2. 1 Contexts of Repatriation ………………………………………………………. 141 2. 2 Beyond Material(s): Poetic Echoes and Repatriation in nêhiyaw storytelling ... 146 2. 3 nêhiyawêwin and a Poetics of Echolocation: “Coming Home through Stories” in Neal McLeod’s Gabriel’s Beach ……………………………………………... 161 2. 4 Returning Storied Kinship in Louse Bernice Halfe’s Blue Marrow………….... 199 2. 5 Smaller Returns: Song, nêhiyawêwin, and Family Spaces in Gregory Scofield’s Singing Home the Bones ……………………………………………………… 209 2. 6 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………….. 226 Chapter Three ………………………………………………………………………… 219 3. 1 Theorizing Resurgence ……………………………………………………….. 237 vi 3. 2 Reading Resurgence: Creative Writing, Criticism, and Textual Fixations …… 242 3. 3 A Story and its Tellings: Storied Resurgence in Louise Bernice Halfe’s The Crooked Good ………………………………………………………………... 267 3. 4 Language, Poetic Form, and Kinship in Gregory Scofield’s I Knew Two Métis Women ……………………………………………………………………….. 305 3. 5 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………. 326 Postscript ..……………………………………………………………………………. 328 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………….. 338 Appendix 1: nêhiyawêwin glossary ………………………………………………….. 366 Curriculum Vitae ……………………………………………………………………... 369 vii List of Appendices nêhiyawêwin Glossary …………………………………………………………………. viii 1 Introduction In his introduction to Nêhiyawêwin Mitâtaht: Michif ahci Cree, a Michif language textbook, Vince Ahenakew offers by way of dedication “a few of [his grandmother’s] words and the translations” (i), including: “Nimwika pihik pisimohkan / The clock (time) will not wait for you” (i). Likely intended to urge the textbook’s reader to begin and manage their own language education, these words also capture the sense of immediacy that is central to language revitalization paradigms in Canada—paradigms which necessitate respectful, thorough, and culturally-specific engagement with Indigenous languages that have been negatively impacted or devastated by centuries of colonial suppression and derogation through policy and genocide. At its broadest, as linguist Teresa McCarty notes, language revitalization is “an area of study and a social movement that emerged in response to the endangered status of Indigenous and minority languages around the world,” with an express focus on “establishing new contexts for learning the endangered language, [and] thereby creating more language users” (1172). The bitter terminological aftertaste of “endangerment” asidei, it is imperative to include the following questions in one’s critical repertoire when considering the present and political implications of Indigenous