An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English

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

This anthology fills a real need and fills it well. Native literature
has had a tremendous growth in Canada in the last few years, and we need
access to the new materials and to the traditions on which they draw.
Poet Daniel David Moses, a Delaware, and Terry Goldie, a scholar in the
field, have assembled a fine collection of Native writing. One of the
interesting features is an introduction in the form of a dialogue
between the editors. It gives us some sense of the political
issues—like the “appropriation controversy”—involved in the
field of Native writing.

The anthology begins with selections from traditional songs and
traditional oratory—very useful background. Early writers like Pauline
Johnson follow, but the bulk of the anthology is devoted to recent
writers like Lee Maracle, Jeannette C. Armstrong, Wayne Keon, and
writers as young as Jordan Wheeler (b. 1964). The editors have very
sensibly included work in a number of genres, including short plays,
polemical essays, and autobiographies. Much of the ferment in Native
writing includes nonfiction works, and these are well represented. One
interesting discovery is Armand Garnet Ruffo, whose brilliant poems
about the hoaxster Grey Owl (Archibald Belaney) have not yet appeared as
a book but should. An important feature of this anthology is the
inclusion of unusually long biographical notes on the authors. It is
essential to provide context for these writers, and information will not
easily be found elsewhere. This is an important book and it belongs in
the hands of general readers as well as on the shelves of libraries.