ENGL 309 B1: Aboriginal/Indigenous Literature: Literary Movements

J. Abel

The Poetry and Poetics of the Indigenous Renaissance

In 2018, when Jeremy Dutcher won the Polaris Music Prize for his album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, he concluded his acceptance speech by saying, "Canada, you are in the midst of an Indigenous renaissance." Shortly afterward, Alicia Elliott wrote an article for the CBC in which she named numerous Indigenous writers and artists-including Tanya Tagaq, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Duane Linklater, Liz Howard, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Terese Marie Mailhot, Darrel McLeod, Joshua Whitehead, and Eden Robinson-arguing that they were all part of the Indigenous renaissance Dutcher was referring to. In this course, we will examine the exceptional Indigenous literary production by poets both inside and outside of the national boundaries of Canada, and respond to those works through academic essays, creative projects, and research creations.