Jasmine Rice

To be presented at the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA) Gathering in 2025.

Abstract

With most Indigenous languages in Canada being critically endangered, the dominant focus of stakeholders in revitalization and education work is the urgent generation of new, fluent speakers. Often absent from these efforts, however, is concern for the well-being of the communities from which these languages derive. Frameworks of language reclamation (Chew, 2019; Leonard, 2017; Shulist & Pedri-Spade, 2022) emphasize this distinction and instead, promote the focus of Indigenous language work as a site of spiritual, cultural, identity, and community healing. In practice, language reclamation looks like shifting away from aiming for a mastery of a language’s grammar and vocabulary, to enhancing one’s understanding of the culture embedded and reclaiming one’s identity.

Drawing from Chew’s (2019) framework on language reclamation through a finger weaving metaphor, this presentation presents Alicia Elliott’s (2023) And Then She Fell as an example of the power of Indigenous literatures to represent the power and complexities of language and identity reclamation. The novel follows a Mohawk woman who has recently become a mother and moved away from her community, Six Nations of a Grand River, to Toronto. The protagonist’s struggle to be grounded in her identity is deeply impacted by her relationship to her language, which is often fraught with shame and feelings of inadequacy. Such is the experience of so many Indigenous language learners – highlighting the need for these narratives to serve as imaginings for Indigenous liberation and resurgence (Hanson, 2017).

Rose James and Dr. Jennifer Brant

To be published in the March 2025 edition of English Studies Canada 

Abstract: 

In this paper, we conceptualize Indigenous literatures as integral tools for supporting teachers on their journeys toward truth and reconciliation. We intentionally offer this as a pedagogical guide for introducing Indigenous YA literatures in secondary level English courses. We posit Indigenous literatures as educational tools for imagining and restoring a healthier, reciprocal social order outside of our current colonial realities—both within our communities and across differences. To illustrate these possibilities, we engage in a critical textual analysis of Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. We conclude by considering the varied pedagogical opportunities that such literary engagement creates for teachers and students to envision worlds otherwise from what now exists and to contemplate how their individual actions might help make these otherwise worlds a reality for their communities and for generations to come. 

Dr. Jennifer Brant

Abstract:

This article maps out a pedagogical juncture of bell hooks's feminist theory of homeplace (hooks 2007) and Indigenous maternal pedagogies as liberatory praxis through a journey with Indigenous women's literatures. I position this work as a response to the call to transform feminist theorizing through Indigenous philosophies as articulated in a recent Hypatia special issue (Bardwell-Jones and McLaren 2020, 2). The article documents hooks's theory of homeplace as a space of resistance and renewal and shares insights into Indigenous experiences of homeplace within historical and contemporary contexts of genocide, and the ongoing racialized and sexualized violence on Turtle Island. I discuss finding homeplace in Indigenous literatures by sharing a genealogy of Indigenous women's literatures as theorizing tools for engaging social change within academic spaces. To bring this work full circle, I offer Indigenous perspectives of homeplace, and the lessons gleaned from Indigenous women's literatures, as intentional work toward imagining Indigenous futurities. Indeed, connecting this work with liberatory pedagogical praxis imagines a site to establish homeplace in academic settings and empower students to engage in the kind of work that fosters and calls for safer homes, schools, and communities

Dr. Jennifer Brant

Abstract:

This article documents my journey into the world of Indigenous women’s literatures, to offer visions of matriarchal worlding as kinship. Selected writings offer Indigenous feminist analyses within the context of the white heteronormative violence that shapes our contemporary world. Indigenous women’s literatures are resonant and offer a felt sense of home and community. As a segue into matriarchal worlding as kinship, I prompt readers to consider the implications of applying feminist analysis to Canadian literature before offering a textual analysis of Lee Maracle’s Ravensong. Specifically, I urge readers to consider the critical lessons that Ravensong offers us about the state of our world today and imagine the altered possibilities of matriarchal worlding. The texts inspire readers to humbly journey with time, interrogate the past that has so powerfully shaped our current realities, and recall the story medicines offered by Maracle as a way to envision just and empowered futures

Elisha Gauthier

To be presented at the Southwest Popular American Culture Association conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Abstract:

This paper aims to explore the potentiality of children's literature and young adult novels as critical tools for fostering environmental stewardship and advancing decolonial pedagogy within curriculum development. Emphasizing the urgent need for curriculum reform, this work aims to challenge the prevailing Eurocentric frameworks that dominate educational spaces and conversations surrounding literature selections in classrooms. This paper highlights the necessity of intentional literature selection as a means to empower teachers in cultivating more inclusive, decolonized learning environments while problematizing the inclusion of Indigenous frameworks and literature in colonial systems and institutions. An in depth literary analysis delves into the pages of picturebooks, exploring the relationship between text and image highlighting narratives which promote environmental education and Indigeneity from a strength based lens.

Dr. Fikile Nxumalo and Dr. Jennifer Brant

In the edited volume Teaching as Radical Logic: Dialectic, Analectic, and Education

Abstract:

Teaching as Radical Logic: Dialectic, Analectic, and Education features original contributions from leading scholars in the fields of decolonial theory, Marxist theory, and critical education. This volume revitalizes the cross-fertilizing dialogue between traditions that historically propelled global anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist political movements, while restoring to pedagogy its central role as an organizing principle for liberation. At the same time, this volume explores the necessary ground of teaching in fundamental logics of radical thought and action. Starting from an engagement with the philosophical traditions of dialectics and analectics, and challenging familiar partitions between academic orientations and disciplines, the chapters in this volume extend currents in critical theory to offer original analyses of the fundamental organization of capitalism and coloniality in schooling and beyond. Contributors propose new approaches to radical and decolonizing praxis which take teaching seriously as a site for theoretical commitment and creativity. Refusing the notion of method as procedure, these interventions propose modes of critical pedagogical engagement that are at once rigorous and imaginative, and that operate across the diverse contexts and registers of contemporary classrooms, community spaces, and political life.