The final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) issued 94 “Calls To Action.” These included a call for educators to increase “curriculum on residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada.” and to educate “teachers on how to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms.”
We invite educators to turn to the Indigenous Literatures in Canada Guide, in the CanLit Guides Series, for detailed notes on writing by Indigenous authors, poets, and playwrights in a frame of literary and cultural contexts.
This guide uses Canadian Literature’s online archives to encourage students to consider the complicated relationship between colonialism, literature, history, culture, and language.
Indigenous Literatures in Canada includes case studies of The Rez Sisters by Tomson Highway, Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King, Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson, the poetry of E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), and a discussion of visual poetry and Indigenous-Settler issues through the work of Shane Rhodes and Jordan Abel.