Contemporary Challenges: Conversations with Canadian Native Authors

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
author of Calling Texas.

Lutz has interviewed 18 Native writers—some well known (like Lee
Maracle, Jeannette Armstrong, Tomson Highway, Thomas King, Maria
Campbell, and Daniel David Moses), some new or as yet little-read. This
work provides an excellent introduction to the range of Native writing
in Canada and to the issues that engage many of these writers, such as
appropriation, ecology, spirituality, and the oral tradition. The
interviewer was sensitive and perceptive, and the replies were lively
and revealing. These are interviews of substance: the reader will learn
a great deal about Native literature and about the authors as persons.
Each interview has a biographical headnote; the very helpful 10-page
bibliography is divided into a literature section and a
secondary-sources section. Native literature is only now coming into the
prominence it deserves, so the bibliography is a welcome guide. Lutz has
contributed a good if rather concise introduction that sketches the
Native tradition in Canada, discussing the issue of the
“appropriation” of Native materials, and setting out the ways in
which the interviews were conducted. This book belongs in all libraries.