Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Advanced seminar on selected works by Indigenous writers. May be organized by author, genre, or critical approach. This course may be repeated for credit if a different topic is taught. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Lost Islands of the Salish Sea

In several stories, both written and oral, contemporary and historical, set at the complex meeting-points of river, sea, and land at this delta we now call Vancouver, there is a striking invocation of “lost islands.” “The Lost Island” is the title of one of Mohawk writer E Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)’s stories published in the 1911 collection, Legends of Vancouver, based on a series of stories told to her by Squamish storytellers Chief Joe Capilano (Sahpluk) and Mary Agnes Capilano (Lixwelut). One hundred years later, Black Canadian writer Wayde Compton wrote a story with the same title. Stó:lō writer Lee Maracle in “Goodbye, Snauq,” recounts the loss of a sandbar, Snauq, rich with marine and plant life, and the subsequent manufacturing of Granville Island for commerce, industry, and later tourism. Still more “lost islands” of the Fraser River delta are remembered by Elder Larry Grant of the Musqueam Nation in the documentary film, c’əsnaʔəm: the city before the city (2017), directed by Kainai filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers in collaboration with the Musqueam First Nation.

This course will examine a variety of texts and films by Black and Indigenous authors, set at the complex meeting-points of river, sea, and land, and ask how to retrieve these stories of “lost islands” while remaining critical about the fact that these islands are not lost, but reflecting settler-colonial stealings of land, cultural authority, languages, bodies, and authorship. What does it mean to live and work on unceded, ancestral Coast Salish Territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), Kwikwitlem (Coquitlam), and Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) peoples, and how can we meaningfully acknowledge these responsibilities through our practices of research, writing, and reading? How to bring into dialogue the work of Indigenous and Black authors and build comparative methods that grapple with intersectional histories of resistance and solidarity? Acknowledging the land we stand on as the basis of how we build understanding, as well as an acknowledgement of one’s positionality, are key practices we will explore in this class.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

·       to read, interpret, and creatively engage with texts by Indigenous authors
·       to understand significant developments and movements in Indigenous literary studies
·       to analyze texts and films across a range of genres and media
·       to synthesize and evaluate a range of critical approaches to literature, particularly Indigenous literary nationalism, decolonization, self-positioning, and resurgence.
·       to recognize complex relationships between texts and contexts (historical, social, cultural, literary)
·       to acknowledge the diversity and complexity of Indigenous literary and cultural production in a variety of forms and formats.

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

Please note that an electronic copy of Wayde Compton's The Outer Harbour is available in the SFU Library. I encourage you to buy your books from the Indigenous owned and operated bookstores, Iron Dog Books (https://irondogbooks.com/) or Massy Books (https://www.massybooks.com/). Iron Dog carries second hand books too. Please allow 2-3 weeks for making special orders.

We will also read essays and/or short stories or poems by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Warren Cariou, E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), J.S. Matthews with August Jack Khahtsahlano, Deanna Reder, Greg Younging, Lee Maracle, Tiffany Lethabo-King, Wayde Compton, Joanne Leow, Jean Barman, Alix Shield, and others. I will provide PDFs of these on Canvas.

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: