From the Iron House

Deena Rymhs

Description

In From the Iron House: Imprisonment in First Nations Writing, Deena Rymhs identifies continuities between the residential school and the prison, offering ways of reading “the carceral”—that is, the different ways that incarceration is constituted and articulated in contemporary Aboriginal literature. Addressing the work of writers like Tomson Highway and Basil Johnston along with that of lesser-known authors writing in prison serials and underground publications, this book emphasizes the literary and political strategies these authors use to resist the containment of their institutions.

The first part of the book considers a diverse sample of writing from prison serials, prisoners’ anthologies, and individual autobiographies, including Stolen Life by Rudy Wiebe and Yvonne Johnson, to show how these works serve as second hearings for their authors—an opportunity to respond to the law’s authority over their personal and public identities while making a plea to a wider audience. The second part looks at residential school narratives and shows how the authors construct identities for themselves in ways that defy the institution’s control. The interactions between these two bodies of writing—residential school accounts and prison narratives—invite recognition of the ways that guilt is colonially constructed and how these authors use their writing to distance themselves from that guilt.

Offering new ways of reading Native writing, From the Iron House is a pioneering study of prison literature in Canada and situates its readings within international criticism of prison writing. Contributing to genre studies and theoretical understandings of life writing, and covering a variety of social topics, this work will be relevant to readers interested in indigenous studies, Canadian cultural studies, postcolonial studies, auto/biography studies, law, and public policy.

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 07 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781771120579
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

FROM THE Iron House
Aboriginal Studies Series
Aboriginal Studies is still a neglected area in Canada; we need to know more about events like Oka and other Aboriginal resistance movements, and about Aboriginal people and their relationships with others. This series is designed to create a meeting ground of knowledge for Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals alike, and to highlight Aboriginal voices so that we may learn more about one another and speak with one another with a richer understanding.
We are seeking manuscripts that are interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary in approach, with an emphasis on oral traditions and oral narratives, literature, history, law, film, and politics.
Please send inquiries to the Series co-editors:
Dr. Ute Lischk
Dr. David T. McNab
Department of Languages and Literature
School of Arts and Letters
Wilfrid Laurier University
Atkinson Faculty of Liberal and Professional Studies
75 University Avenue West
York University
Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5
608 Atkinson College
Phone: [phone] ext. 3607
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Fax: [phone]
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FROM THE Iron House
Imprisonment in First Nations Writing
Deena Rymhs
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Rymhs, Deena, 1975-
From the iron house : imprisonment in First Nations writing / Deena Rymhs.
(Aboriginal studies series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55458-021-7
1. Prisoners writings, Canadian (English)-History and criticism. 2. Canadian literature (English)-Indian authors-History and criticism. 3. Imprisonment in literature. 4. Indians of North America-Canada-Residential schools. 5. Indians in literature. 6. Canadian literature (English)-20th century-History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series: Aboriginal studies series (Waterloo, Ont.)
PS8089.5.I5R95 2008 C810.9 355308997 C2007-906849-9
Cover design by David Drummond. Text design by Catharine Bonas-Taylor.
2008 Deena Rymhs

This book is printed on Ancient Forest Friendly paper (100% post-consumer recycled).
Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
www.wlupress.wlu.ca
for Betty Rymhs
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Genre in the Institutional Setting of the Prison
1. Barred Subject: Leonard Peltier s Prison Writings
2. James Tyman s Inside Out: An Autobiography by a Native Canadian
3. Auto/biographical Jurisdictions: Collaboration, Self-Representation, and the Law in Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman
4. Prison Collections and Periodicals
Part II. Genre in the Institutional Setting of the Residential School
5. A Residential School Memoir: Basil Johnston s Indian School Days
6. It is the law : Disturbing the Authoritative Word in Tomson Highway s Kiss of the Fur Queen
7. Hated Structures and Lost Talk: Making Poetry Bear the Burden
8. Autobiography as Containment: Jane Willis s Geniesh: An Indian Girlhood
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgements
This book is, in part, the culmination of the energy and dedication of individuals other than myself. My sincere thanks go to Glenn Willmott for nurturing this project in its various stages. Laura Murray s sharpness brought an intellectual deftness to this study. The two anonymous readers reviewing the manuscript contributed to the breadth and readability of this book; I am grateful to have had their critical engagement at the prepublication stage. Lisa Quinn and, indeed, all the people at Wilfrid Laurier University Press have been superlative at what they do. I cannot imagine a more positive relationship between author and press. I also wish to thank the Department of English at St. Francis Xavier University for taking a gamble on me that played no small part in the completion of this book.
Sections of this book originally appeared in English Studies in Canada, Auto/biography in Canada: Critical Directions (ed. Julie Rak), Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture , Canadian Literature , and Essays on Canadian Writing , and are reprinted here with permission.
My family and friends deserve my whole gratitude for their constant commitment and affection. Roger, Betty, and Trisha offered endless support. Sandra Neill and Robert Luke have been inspirations. Ya l Schlick s generosity in my latter years of graduate work is something for which I have always been grateful. Finally, I would be remiss to leave out Christopher, whose gentle encouragement and confidence in me will take me from this book and beyond.
Introduction
What Is Carceral Writing?
In a small, juvenile female cage with green cement floor, faded yellow cement walls and ceiling, Yvonne Johnson surveys her prison cell from a thin plastic mattress (Wiebe and Johnson 368). She is awaiting a jury s verdict in a North Battleford prison after providing testimony against her brother for rape. As she observes her surroundings, she notes the names of its past occupants inscribed around her. The markings rise out from their illicit spaces and begin to speak a history: Their names are everywhere, scratched, cut deep into the bunks, the yellow walls. Relatives I recognize from storytelling, or a chance meeting, family friends whom I may have met once on Red Pheasant. If I worked at it, my name here would be recognized as a Johnson of the John Bear family (368). As she pieces together a history from these scrawlings, she laments, Sad to search prison walls for news of one s own people; to become like an archaeologist trying to read the stones of tombs about the lives of your own ancient dead (368). The names left behind are a record, a proxy history of intersecting lives and lost kinships. That Johnson, who spent most of her life in Butte, Montana, recognizes the names scratched into a North Battleford prison wall underscores the prevalent role that penal and regulatory institutions have played in the recent histories of Aboriginal people. Gesturing toward a powerful oral history, Johnson s recognition also indicates a collective awareness and memory that exist independently of the written form. As would seem fitting, the prison walls have become a medium for this history, a narrative that emerges from the undersides of bunks. The markings signify a counter-discourse, a quiet and intractable conversation carried out among this structure s occupants.
As this passage from Yvonne Johnson and Rudy Wiebe s Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman suggests, the prison is not just an apparatus of detention and punishment, but a structure signifying the colonization, criminalization, and suppression of a people. The personal histories of indigenous people in Canada are so heavily entangled in carceral institutions that it is difficult to discuss the former without the latter. This relationship is starkly reflected in the staggering numbers of Aboriginal inmates. In Canada, Aboriginal people constitute the largest incarcerated minority in federal, provincial, and territorial correctional facilities. While they make up roughly 3 percent of the general population, they account for 18 percent of the federal prison population (Canada, Office of the Correctional Investigator 11). This disproportion is far greater in the Prairie provinces and Ontario, where Aboriginal prison populations are seven to ten times greater than the provincial average (Statistics Canada 16). The prologue to this overrepresentation is the political and economic disempowerment of Aboriginal groups. The disproportionate rate of incarceration is thus emblematic of the historically fraught relationship between First Nations people and the state.
With its parallel, insidious presence in the recent histories of Aboriginal people, the residential school has also been likened to a prison. These institutions played a regulatory and punitive function that instilled a similar sense of cultural guilt. While their intrusion into the lives of their occupants was not the result of individual violations of the Criminal Code, their operations resembled those of prisons. Children entering residential schools were typically stripped of their personal effects, clothed in uniforms, and renamed or assigned numbers. These practices instilled institutional order and docility in the occupants and at the same time effaced their prior identity. Both the residential school and the prison used surveillance as a means of control. In his memoir Indian School Days , Anishnabe author Basil Johnston describes bein