Studies in American Indian Literatures

To date, while professors in the field have developed the requisite skills to effectively teach Indigenous literatures, they have done so primarily on their own and without a guide.¹ The problems peculiar to the teaching of Indigenous literatures are exacerbated by the absence of shared information about teaching strategies in the field. This special issue seeks to respond to this lacuna by bringing together reflective analyses on the development and teaching of Indigenous literatures courses. We asked contributors to discuss their courses—their creation, the class itself, pedagogical approaches, texts they used, what worked and what didn't. We also asked for course syllabi, redacted versions of which are appended to this issue.

While the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures (ASAIL) was founded in 1971, and the Native American Literature Symposium (NALS) was founded in 2001, an organization based in lands claimed by Canada did not appear until 2013, when the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA) was established to advocate for ethical approaches grounded in Indigenous knowledges and methodologies.² Not just focused on the academy, ILSA also supports scholars/teachers to find ways to be accountable to Indigenous writers and communities whose literary arts fuel their practices. However, there exists little in the way of practical guidance to help teachers respond to these foundational principles of ILSA and to navigate the challenges and rewards that come with the teaching of Indigenous-authored texts.

One of the many achievements of ILSA is the spotlight it shone on Indigenous literatures and Indigenous creative writers. Prior to the formation of ILSA, the bulk of Indigenous literatures in Canada was taught [End Page ix] under the umbrella of Canadian Literature. While better something than nothing, one of the problems was that most professors of Canadian literature were untrained in Indigenous literatures.³ And untrained in Indigenous history.

Much of this has changed as specialists in Indigenous literatures have been trained and entered the university. Even so, it is still common that when students are given the opportunity to take an Indigenous literature course, the vast majority come with little knowledge of the violent history of settler-colonialism in Canada. The lack of knowledge of the complex histories of Indigenous peoples in Canada by non-Indigenous students (the majority by far) in English programs poses a whole host of problems for those of us who teach Indigenous literatures. Aside from the extra time we need to spend on basic colonial history in Canada and the unpacking of a plethora of myths and biases against Indigenous peoples, we need to contend with varying levels of student awareness of their relative privileges, stereotypes, and misinformation—all of this while attempting to engage students ethically and responsibly in literatures with which they have little familiarity. For the few Indigenous students enrolled in English programs, their experience in the classroom can be difficult. They are too often called upon as experts and they must listen to non-Indigenous students talk about their communities in ways that can be discomfiting.

In an oft-quoted article originally published in 2002, the late Métis scholar Jo-Ann Episkenew explains how teaching Indigenous literatures is different from teaching canonical works in the discipline of English literature. She states that

… any class on Shakespeare would not be complete without a comprehensive examination of the political and religious situation in Elizabethan England. … These scholars need not worry that there just might be an Elizabethan enrolled in his or her class and that Elizabethan student just might dispute the information given in the lecture.⁴

(323)

Episkenew notes that, unique to the study of contemporary Indigenous literatures, there always exists the chance that we have Indigenous students in our classes who can draw on their own experiences to question our expertise. On top of that, she points out that while faculty members who teach Shakespeare can rely upon books in the university library for [End Page x] the composition of their lectures, those in our field have to deal with the fact that most resources on Indigenous history and culture have historically been "[a]t best … incomplete...