First nations autobiography

A story of Inuvialuk (Western Arctic Inuk) Elder Rose Kirby's early life, beginning from her vibrant traditional life on the land, to being taken away on a.
Indigenous autobiography is the focus of SFU prof Deanna Reder's award-winning book, Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition.
In this absorbing collection of papers Aboriginal, Maori, Dalit and western scholars discuss and analyse the difficulties they have faced in writing Indigenous.

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A longtime academic, Deanna Reder wanted to cast a wider readership when she set out to write her book: Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowina.

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Through the autobiographies/âcimisowina of Cree and Métis writers James Settee, Maria Campbell, Edward Ahenakew, James Brady and Harold Cardinal, and even her own family stories, Reder, who is Cree/Métis, draws attention to a rich history of “Indigenous practice of life-writing.”

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“When you write in Indigenous Studies, you don’t want to just be writing for other professors,” said Reder, who is a Simon Fraser University professor of Ind

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Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition

Cree and Métis âcimisowina

Table of Contents
Glossary: Cree terms
Introduction: She Told Us Stories Constantly: Autobiography as Theoretical Practice
1. âcimisowina: Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition
2. kiskêyihtamowin: Seekers of Knowledge, Cree Intergenerational Inquiry
3. Interrelatedness and Obligation: wâhkowtowin in Maria Campbell’s âcimisowin
4. Edward Ahenakew’s Intertwined Unpublished Life-Inspired Stories: aniskwâcimopicikêwin in Black Hawk and Old Keyam
5. Contradiction and kisteanemétowin in Edward Ahenakew’s “Old Keyam”
6. Traces of âcimisowina left behind: James Brady and Absolom Halkett
Epilogue
Bibliography

Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition critiques ways of approaching Indigenous texts that are informed by the Western academic tradition and offers instead a new way of theorizing Indigenous literature based on the Indigenous practice of life writing.

Since the 1970s non-Indigenous scholars have perpetrated the notion that Indigenous people were disinclined