![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radiantfractureOkay, here’s my imperfect offering. I was posting these to my personal Instagram and then it occurred to me that someone over here might like to see them too.
* * * * * *
It’s Indigenous History Month, and I thought I might do a little series on some of the Indigenous authors I teach about in my classes and the role of these folks in cultural resurgence.
Mine is a pretty limited and flawed settler perspective, but I hope the awesomeness of these folks will shine through anyway.
First off is an obvious one:
Basil H. Johnston (1929 - 2015) -- Anishinaabe language revitalizer, author, scholar, storyteller, and teacher
Johnston is one of the breakthrough authors who, in the 1960s and 1970s, began to create space for Indigenous voices in Canadian publishing. Using his position at the Royal Ontario Museum, Johnston did incredible work in Anishinaabe language revitalization, gathering and saving traditional stories and creating language curricula.
Johnston’s two essential essays from Canadian Literature issues 124 (1990) and 128 (1991), “One Generation from Extinction” and “Is That All There Is?” are available for free online. In these essays, Johnston identifies and critiques the way settler scholarship fetishized physical objects while ignoring and/or belittling the profound knowledge and philosophy of the peoples who created them.
His clarity about the power and philosophy embedded in his language has been transformative for me as a reader and student of Indigenous literatures. Anishinaabe scholars and writers like Leanne Simpson and Louise Erdrich develop on his discussions of language and philosophy, and he was an influence on myriad Indigenous authors in the generation following him (Thomas King, Drew Hayden Taylor, etc.).
* * * * * *
When I posted this to Instagram, I found out that a friend of mine knew Johnston during the 1980s and had family connections to him (he used to babysit her brother). I wouldn't have known that unless I posted this little profile, so that was a fantastic outcome in itself.
{rf}
* * * * * *
It’s Indigenous History Month, and I thought I might do a little series on some of the Indigenous authors I teach about in my classes and the role of these folks in cultural resurgence.
Mine is a pretty limited and flawed settler perspective, but I hope the awesomeness of these folks will shine through anyway.
First off is an obvious one:
Basil H. Johnston (1929 - 2015) -- Anishinaabe language revitalizer, author, scholar, storyteller, and teacher
Johnston is one of the breakthrough authors who, in the 1960s and 1970s, began to create space for Indigenous voices in Canadian publishing. Using his position at the Royal Ontario Museum, Johnston did incredible work in Anishinaabe language revitalization, gathering and saving traditional stories and creating language curricula.
Johnston’s two essential essays from Canadian Literature issues 124 (1990) and 128 (1991), “One Generation from Extinction” and “Is That All There Is?” are available for free online. In these essays, Johnston identifies and critiques the way settler scholarship fetishized physical objects while ignoring and/or belittling the profound knowledge and philosophy of the peoples who created them.
His clarity about the power and philosophy embedded in his language has been transformative for me as a reader and student of Indigenous literatures. Anishinaabe scholars and writers like Leanne Simpson and Louise Erdrich develop on his discussions of language and philosophy, and he was an influence on myriad Indigenous authors in the generation following him (Thomas King, Drew Hayden Taylor, etc.).
* * * * * *
When I posted this to Instagram, I found out that a friend of mine knew Johnston during the 1980s and had family connections to him (he used to babysit her brother). I wouldn't have known that unless I posted this little profile, so that was a fantastic outcome in itself.
{rf}
