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Books : Literature & Fiction : World Literature : Canadian : Native Literature : General
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In Rankin Inlet, a small town bordering the Arctic Ocean, the lives of the Inuit are gradually changing. The caribou and seals are no longer plentiful, and Western commerce has come to the community through a proposed diamond mine. Victoria Robertson wakes to a violent storm, her three children stirring in the dark. Her father, Emo, a legendary hunter who has come in off the land to work in a mine, checks to see if the family is all right. So does her Inuit lover, as Victoria’s British husband is away on business.
Thus the reader enters into the modern contradictions of the Arctic—walrus meat and convenience food, midnight sun and 24-hour satellite TV, dog teams and diamond mines—and into the heart of Victoria's internal exile. Born on the tundra in the 1950s, Victoria knows nothing but the nomadic life of the Inuit until, at the age of ten, she is diagnosed with tuberculosis and evacuated to a southern sanitarium. When she returns home six years later, she finds a radically different world, where the traditionally rootless tribes have uneasily congregated in small communities. And Victoria has become a stranger to her family and her culture.
Victoria compounds her marginalization by marrying a non-Inuit, Robertson, the manager of the town store. Over the years, as her children gravitate toward the pop culture of the mainland, and as her husband aggressively exploits the economic opportunities that the Arctic offers, Victoria feels torn between her family and her ancestors, between the communal life of the North and the material life of the “South.” Through Victoria, Kevin Patterson deftly exposes the costs and consequences of cultural assimilation, and the emotional toll that such significant lifestyle changes take on communities.
Spanning countries, generations, and cultures, Consumption is an epic novel of the Arctic, and a penetrating portrait of generational division and cultural dissonance.
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A Chickasaw Indian poet and novelist, author of the prize-winning Mean Spirit, presents a novel about five generations of Native American women and their struggle to preserve their way of life. 20,000 first printing. Tour.
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"Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous." In The Truth About Stories, Native novelist and scholar Thomas King explores how stories shape who we are and how we understand and interact with other people. From creation stories to personal experiences, historical anecdotes to social injustices, racist propaganda to works of contemporary Native literature, King probes Native culture's deep ties to storytelling. With wry humor, King deftly weaves events from his own life as a child in California, an academic in Canada, and a Native North American with a wide-ranging discussion of stories told by and about Indians. So many stories have been told about Indians, King comments, that "there is no reason for the Indian to be real. The Indian simply has to exist in our imaginations." That imaginative Indian that North Americans hold dear has been challenged by Native writers - N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louis Owens, Robert Alexie, and others - who provide alternative narratives of the Native experience that question, create a present, and imagine a future. King reminds the reader, Native and non-Native, that storytelling carries with it social and moral responsibilties. "Don't say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You've heard it now."
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The Ojibway Indians were first encountered by the French early in the seventeenth century along the northern shores of Lakes Huron and Superior. By the time Henry Wadsworth Longfellow immortalized them in The Song of Hiawatha, they had dispersed over large areas of Canada and the United States, becoming known as the Chippewas in the latter. A rare and fascinating glimpse of Ojibway culture before its disruption by the Europeans is provided in Ojibway Ceremonies by Basil Johnston, himself an Ojibway who was born on the Parry Island Indian Reserve.Johnston focuses on a young member of the tribe and his development through participation in the many rituals so important to the Ojibway way of life, from the Naming Ceremony and the Vision Quest to the War Path, and from the Marriage Ceremony to the Ritual of the Dead. In the style of a tribal storyteller, Johnston preserves the attitudes and beliefs of forest dwellers and hunters whose lives were vitalized by a sense of the supernatural and of mystery.
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The offspring of an Ojibway mother and a white father whom he has never known, Drew Hayden Taylor has long addressed vexed issues of identity and the complicated relationship between Native people and whites with sharp insight and a frequently unsettling sense of humor. Carefully examining these writings, this collection analyzes Taylor's writing from both aboriginal and non-aboriginal perspectives. Contributors include Birgit Däwes, Jonathan R. Dewar, Kristina Fagan, Rob Appleford, Ric Knowles, and Monique Mojica.
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As regards their development when they first became known to modern Europeans, the Eskimo may be classed with the prehistoric races of the age of the ground stone tools with the exceptional use of metals. It has been usual to designate all nations of this kind as "savages;" some authors have even described them as being totally destitute of those mental qualities through which any kind of culture is manifested, such as social order, laws, sciences, arts, and even religion. That those opinions find utterance can scarcely be wondered at when we observe the carelessness with which such important questions are discussed, and see travellers who merely go on shore from a ship and spend a couple of hours with the inhabitants proceed to make inquiries as to their ideas of God and the origin of the world; and also how European settlers among natives whose language they are quite unconversant with pretend to have found them altogether without religion.249 pages.
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Fans of Jean Auel will love this series that began with Picture Maker, a book called "an absorbing adventure tale...brought to life through the eyes of [Spinka's] courageous heroine", Library Journal crowned it "absolutely fascinating."
Publishers Weekly called Picture Maker "an absorbing adventure tale...brought to life through the eyes of [Spinka's] courageous heroine." Library Journal crowned it "absolutely fascinating." Now Penina Keen Spinka once again sweeps readers back nearly a thousand years...to a time when the Vikings crossed the vast oceans in search of a new homeland, and a place--the majestic wilds of North America--bitterly divided by blood and war.
In the four years since Picture Maker and her loved ones were driven north, many changes have come to a people and a land. The long, arduous journey that took Picture Maker from a young Indian separated from her tribe to a bride of Halvard has come to an end. It falls to Halvard and their daughter, Ingrid, an emerging woman, to return to Greenland and reclaim their home. Here, their Norse traditions are rejected by the newly Christian community, where an infestation of beautiful rare butterflies has resulted in plunder and bloodshed. Forced to wander once more, the family takes refuge with the Inuits, who have proven to be allies in the past. But Ingrid, answering the powerful call of her mother's blood, soon embarks on another journey-one that takes her to a far-off land, where her true destiny awaits.
Breathtaking in scope and historical detail, this is a sprawling adventure in the grand tradition of Jean M. Auel and Jane Smiley by a gifted author who writes "unique and remarkable stories" (Anna Lee Waldo, author of Circle of Stones and Sacajawea).
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The Ojibway Indians' sense of humor sparkles through these stories set on the fictional Moose Meat Point Indian Reserve, connected by a dirt road to the town of Blunder Bay. If some of them seem "farfetched and even implausible," Basil L. Johnston writes, "it is simply because human beings very often act and conduct their affairs and those of others in an absurd manner."These twenty-two stories were originally collected under the title Moose Meat and Wild Rice. Among the most memorable of the stories is "They Don't Want No Indians," in which all attempts are made to circumvent bureaucratic red tape and transport a dead Indian to his home for burial. One of the funniest is "Indian Smart: Moose Smart," which pits a moose in a lake against six Moose Meaters in two canoes. "If You Want to Play" and "Secular Revenge" are the result of misunderstanding or imperfect communication. Still other stories, like "What Is Sin?" and "The Kiss and the Moonshine," reveal the clash of different cultural approaches. All show the warm-heartedness and good will of the Ojibway Indians. If they are gently satirized, so are the whites who would change them, and with good reason. Government ineptitude and rigid piety are foisted on the Moose Meaters, who have only thirty thousand acres to move around in.
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Born into a powerful clan of women, Picture Maker is gifted with the ability to etch drawings that foreshadow the future. Her prophecy of war saves her beloved Ganeogaono people, but leads to her own brutal capture by the savage Algonquins. Through her courage and resilient spirit, and aided by a remarkable storyteller, she escapes her captors and finds refuge with the Naskapi, a peace-loving tribe. But her journey does not end there. Picture Maker's travels take her across North America and into the distant corners of the Western Hemisphere. Certain that her future lies to the east, she crosses an icy ocean and joins the resourceful Inuit tribe. It is here that she meets Halvard, a Norse hunter who holds the key to the riddle of her birth. Together, they sail to Greenland, where Halvard's way of life comes under attack and Picture Maker is shunned as an outcast for her special gifts. Her destiny comes full circle as she struggles to save her young daughter from being taken from her, as she was long ago torn from her own clan.A towering saga of adventure and survival, love and loss, Picture Maker brings the fourteenth century to vibrant, unforgettable life . . . from the savage Iroquois Wars that marked a land forever, to the Norse invasions, and through the bloody rise of Christianity. It is a stunning achievement from an award-winning historical writer.
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An activist and poet, Marie Annharte Baker celebrates and critiques the lives of today's urban Native people. These powerful and articulate poems are humorous and fierce-a testament to survival.
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E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) was a Native advocate of part-Mohawk ancestry, an independent woman during the period of first-wave feminism, a Canadian nationalist who also advocated strengthening the link to imperial England, a popular and versatile prose writer, and one of modern Canada's best-selling poets. Johnson longed to see the publication of a complete collection of her verse, but that wish remained unfulfilled during her life. Nine decades after her death, the first complete collection of all of Pauline Johnson's known poems, many painstakingly culled from newspapers, magazines, and archives, is now available.
In response to the current recognition of Johnson's historical position as an immensely popular and influential figure of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this volume also presents a representative selection of her prose, including fiction about native-settler relations, journalism about women and recreation, and discussions of gender roles and racial stereotypes.
Edited by Carole Gerson and Veronica Strong-Boag, authors of the enthusiastically received Paddling Her Own Canoe: Times and Texts of E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), this collection exhibits the same impeccable scholarship and is essential to a full understanding of Johnson as a major Canadian writer and cultural figure.
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This digital document is an article from Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, published by Canadian Ethnic Studies Association on June 22, 1998. The length of the article is 805 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Insanity of Alcohol: Social Problems in Canadian First Nation Communities. (Book Reviews / Recensions). (book review)
Author: Don Clairmont
Publication: Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 1998
Publisher: Canadian Ethnic Studies Association
Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Page: 162(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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The five complete and unabridged works collected here are parts of a long and passionate testimony about American Indian culture as related by Indians themselves. Deep emotions and life-shaking crises converge in these pages concerning identity, family, community, caste, gender, nature, the future, the past, solitude, duty, trust, betrayal, leadership, war, and apocalypse. Each work is also regarded as a classic of Native literature and has much to teach.The Life of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (1847) by George Copway, a Canadian Ojibwe writer and lecturer, describes his unique and difficult cultural journey from the tiny village of his youth to the legislatures of the world, speaking for the rights and sovereignty of Indians.The Soul of the Indian (1911) by Charles Eastman, a physician and mixed-blood Sioux, depicts “the religious life of the typical American Indian as it was before he knew the white man.”American Indian Stories (1921) by Zitkala-Ša, one of the most famous Sioux writers and activists of the modern era, includes legends and tales from oral tradition, childhood stories, and allegorical fiction.Coyote Stories (1933) by Mourning Dove, an Okanagan writer, retells the popular trickster tales of Coyote, the most resilient character in all of American literature.Black Elk Speaks (1932) as told through John G. Neihardt, is the spacious religious vision and candid life story of a Lakota holy man. Neihardt and Black Elk collaborated to produce a unique and inspirational work.
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