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Exploring Modern First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Authors in Canada

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Exploring Modern First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Authors in Canada Conrad 1 Tell Me a Story: Exploring modern First Nations, Métis, and Inuit authors in Canada Introduction It all started with The Inconvenient Indian. Actually, maybe it started back in 2013 with The Orenda. Perhaps it never “started” at all, but instead gradually grew on its own over time, fed by curiosity and evolving from a shadow, to a reality, to a question. “Are works by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit authors becoming more popular in Canada?” From Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian, nominated for Canada Reads in 2015, to Joseph Boyden the author gaining as much mainstream attention as the books he writes, works by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit authors in Canada appear to be increasingly popular. In setting out to determine if this is true, an answer was found quickly and easily. In her book Dhuuluu- Yala, Wiradjuri author Anita M. Heiss says that “many now see the emergence of contemporary First Nations’ authors onto the literary scene in Canada as the major development in the literature of North America in the last three decades” (155). According to Heiss, this increase followed the political movements of the 1960s and 70s (155). Eventually, after a dip in the 80s, it Indigenous literature evolved into what Lee Maracle calls “the contemporary Aboriginal voice” (Heiss, 156). After accepting that works by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit authors are becoming more popular, one must ask how and why. Is this a media-driven agenda, or are readers discovering these books on their own? To simply read a book is not enough of an education or an action. The road to reconciliation may be paved by many good intentions, but the notion of the settler “move to Conrad 2 innocence” looms. The terminology was used by Janey Mawhinney in her 1998 Master of Arts thesis at the University of Toronto and subsequently applied to decolonization by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang in Decolonization is not a metaphor. Chelsea Vowel also references this term in Indigenous Writes, A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada, where says that ““becoming the Native” furthers colonial erasure of Indigenous peoples” (46). More related ideas were explored by Philip Deloria, as part of what he calls “playing Indian”. It is Tuck and Wang who say, “Directly and indirectly benefitting from the erasure and assimilation of Indigenous peoples is a difficult reality for settlers to accept. The weight of this reality is uncomfortable; the misery of guilt makes one hurry toward any reprieve” (9). In other words, consuming and indeed championing books by Indigenous authors could be seen as a way to absolve settler guilt with regard to transgressions committed against First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. Many well-meaning settler communities and groups are eager to approach reconciliation with those who populated Canada long before colonization. However, questions must be asked about how and why these offerings are being made, and by whom. The question now becomes not simple “Are works by Canadian Indigenous authors becoming more popular?” but in fact, “How does Canada present the works of its modern Indigenous authors?” It is essential to consider the colonial nature of literature itself. Indigenous literature has a past that is divergent from Eurocentric models of short stories, novels, poetry and screenplays. To look at modern Aboriginal works as part of the broader landscape of contemporary Canadian literature is, still, to examine them through a colonial framework. To maximize cultural understanding, these works need to be viewed as part of the Indigenous nation and community from which they originate (Vowel, 94). Conrad 3 Research While literary prizes are specific to a certain subsection of literature and are a subsequently small view of “popularity”, they provide a starting point from which to view changes and trends in Canada for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous works. Data used for analysis was gathered from the biggest three prizes in Canada—“biggest” meaning largest in the most objective way, as in worth the most money. Canada’s largest is the Scotiabank Giller Prize ($100,000) followed by The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize ($25,000) and Governor General’s Literary Awards (also worth $25,000). The Wikipedia pages for each list comprehensive details dating back to 1994 for the Giller Prize, 1997 for the Writers’ Trust, and 1936 for the Governor General’s. This project focuses on the years 1997-2016. Methodology For each of the three prizes, the name and book of the author was recorded, as well as whether they won or not. Determining the Aboriginal heritage of individual authors was less straightforward. Diversity of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit language and culture means there are a number of ways to approach and define identity. There is no a widespread acceptable term for Indigenous peoples because each First Nation is a distinct society, the Red River and other Métis have many families, the Inuit are a specific community. How to proceed? Considering the nature of contemporary digital society, most of the authors nominated for these prizes have a Wikipedia page (97%). This project assumes they are aware of their own Wikipedia page and the biographic information contained therein. To determine ancestry, individual Wikipedia pages were read for each 179 unique nominee. In looking for any connection to nationhood, six were found--Sandra Birdsell (Métis), Eden Robinson Conrad 4 (Haisla/Heiltsuk), Joseph Boyden (Anishinaabe), Drew Hayden Taylor (Ojibwa), Thomas King (Cherokee), and Katherena Vermette (Métis). To double-check this work and reinforce finding from the manual research process, a list of Aboriginal Authors compiled by the University of Saskatchewan was consulted. Results from Wikipedia were compared to the Fiction and Non- Fiction lists from the University of Saskatchewan to ensure no missing information. Five authors did not have Wikipedia pages, and their names are marked with an asterisk. Biographical information from their publisher was used instead Interpreting and expressing ancestral background as effectively and objectively as possible required the creation of three rules. Because each author’s biography was read individually, it was also possible to take notes on other non-Indigenous and non-Canadian backgrounds. 1. Any specific reference a First Nation, Métis or Inuit community is considered “Indigenous”. 2. Any author who predominantly cited “Canadian” was labelled as such, except when having a connection to a First Nation, or Métis or Inuit community. 3. Any author who cited other ancestry with the same frequency as Canadian was marked as such. Again, these are the most prominent affiliations are made within the author’s Wikipedia page as categorized for this project, and are not all-encompassing. Indeed, it ignores many ancestral backgrounds and homogenizes many first-generation Canadians. It assumes reflexive knowledge on the part of the author and/or their publisher. It assimilates many authors who lived in another country for most of their lives, or moved to work outside of Canada later in life Conrad 5 and it does not consider the non-Indigenous backgrounds of those First Nations, Métis, or Inuit authors with mixed ancestry. The intent is not to dismiss or generalize the ancestral background of any person, settler or Aboriginal, but rather to obtain a manageable, intelligently sourced and ethically considered data set to work with. Part A Once obtained, data was transcribed into Excel and scatter-graphed with the year plotted along the X-axis and number of nominations on the Y-axis. The graph “Nominations for Top 3 Canadian Literary Prizes 1997-2016” compares the total number of nominations (around 15 per year; each prize usually has 5 nominations, with a few exceptions), the number of unique nominations (some authors were nominated more than once per year for the same novel but for different prizes, and it is important to note this only counts as one, for reasons forthcoming), the number of non-Indigenous authors nominated (based on the same research methods of counting each author only once per year) and number of Indigenous authors nominated (one author once per year). The graph “Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Nominations for Top 3 Canadian Literary Prizes 1997-2016” is as above but removes the total number of nominations and number of unique nominations to more clearly display the data at the heart of this analysis. The choice to use the number of unique nominations instead of total nominations was made to compare the number of First Nations, Métis or Inuit authors with those of Canadian/other backgrounds over time to see if what Heiss says about the emergence of Indigenous works and literary scene in Canada over the last 30 years is reflected in our literary prizes. Conrad 6 Part B The second part of this project compares events of reconciliation to literary prize nominations, in order to evaluate the settler “move to innocence”. Instead of the unique number, the total number of nominations each year was used. This means that if an author with First Nations, Métis or Inuit ancestry was nominated twice in one year for two different prizes, both are counted. This method was chosen to analyze the number of instances in relation to events on the timelines of reconciliation in an effort to investigate further into the theory that works by authors with First Nations, Métis or Inuit ancestry may be championed by the media or other industries as Canada as a way to absolve settler guilt. Data and Interpretation Part A Conrad 7 They say “a picture is worth 1000 words”. As one can see, there has been no increase in popularity of works by First Nations, Métis, or Inuit authors over the last 19 years.
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