We are thrilled to announce the arrival of Canadian Literature, Issue 230-231 (Autumn/Winter 2016), Indigenous Literature and the Arts of Community! Guest Editors Sam McKegney and Sarah Henzi write:
Indigenous literatures not only emerge from, depict, and address particular communities; they grapple with the meaning of community itself, while expanding our understandings of how communities might be imagined, lived, and sustained in pursuit of decolonial futures. Indigenous literatures don’t just represent communities; they call communities into being. This special issue considers what Kristina Fagan Bidwell calls “the messy multiplicity of communities” as they manifest in Indigenous literature and its study. We invited Indigenous creative artists and scholars, along with settler, diasporic, and allied artists and scholars, to explore the relationships among (i) diverse expressions of Indigenous literary art, (ii) the myriad Indigenous (and other) communities out of which such art emerges and toward which it is directed, and (iii) the responsibilities embedded in such art’s ethical study. In this “Afterword,” we are interested in whether the ethics of community implied by the Indigenous Literary Studies Association’s support of the “ongoing production of Indigenous literatures” are in fact commensurate with those implied by its advancement of “the ethical and vigorous study and teaching of those literatures”—in other words, whether “community” means the same thing(s) in creative and critical contexts; if it doesn’t, we wonder if maybe it should and whether this might be the direction in which the Indigenous literary arts are, in fact, guiding us.
—Sam McKegney and Sarah Henzi, “Indigenous Literatures and the Arts of Community: Editors’ Afterword”
This double issue also features:
- An Opening Note by Daniel David Moses
- Articles by Dallas Hunt, Michele Lacombe, Max Karpinski, Lianne Moyes, June Scudeler, Pauline Wakeham, Keavy Martin, Brandon Kerfoot, Sophie McCall, Sarah Henzi, and Judith Leggatt
- Extraordinary Poetry by Janet Rogers, Sharron Proulx-Turner, Jordan Abel, angela semple, Garry Gottfriedson, Shannon Webb-Campbell, Armand Garnet Ruffo, annie grace ross, Sonnet L’Abbé, and Dani Spinosa
- Reviews by Lourdes Arciniega, Alison Calder, Susie DeCoste, Jeff Fedoruk, Graham Nicol Forst, Rebecca Fredrickson, Evangeline Holtz, Madelaine Jacobs, Suzanne Jacobs, Kyle Kinaschuk, Ariel Kroon, Tina Northrup, Catherine Rainwater, Michael Roberson, Dale Tracy, and Paul Watkins
The new issue can be ordered through our online store. Happy reading!