TITLE:

HEALING THE COLONIAL WOUNDS: AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MIGRATION IN THE WORK OF LEE MARACLE

Author:

Carmen Arzua Azurmendi

Institution:

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

E-mail:

carmenarzua@eresmas.com    

The aim of this paper is to trace an evolutionary line in American Indian autobiography and to explore how Canadian women of mixed blood (Metis) ancestry achieve voice through writing their stories in autobiographies and autobiographical novels. Crucial to finding a voice is the reconciliation of multiple identities inherent in persons who belong to more than one culture.  Because they are excluded from both Euro-Canadian and Canadian Native cultures, they negotiate an identity that draws on the strength of each one.  To support my thesis I will focus on the role that language plays in the formation of self and tribal identity for Metis women, discussing two books by First Nation Canadian writer Lee Maracle: Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel written in 1970 though published in 1990 and Daughters Are Forever published in 2002

In “Critical Mirrors: Theories of Autobiography,” Charles Berryman suggests that scholarly interest (and disinterest) in autobiography has tended to reflect academic trends. He points out that autobiography was not considered a suitable object of study for historians and literary critics until extreme skepticism came to dominate the academy (74). Ironically, it was the skeptical destabilization of selfhood that made the self’s story of itself worthy of scholarly  attention.  This flowering of interest in the genre as a whole may in part explain the current fascination with Native autobiography; however, autobiography has long been standard fare among critics of indigenous literatures. Non-native study of Native autobiography has a lengthy history, beginning with the attempts of anthropologists (most notably, followers of Franz Boas) to record traces of a perceived/vanishing people by preserving and recording their self/stories.

I will start by examining some dominant trends and voices in the criticism of Aboriginal autobiographies in the continuing process of working toward an indigenous/centered critical approach, and finish with a demonstration of such a criticism by conducting a brief analysis of Lee Maracle’s autobiography Bobbi Lee Indian Rebel (1990), written in the 1970s, and the novel Daughters Are Forever (2002) by the same writer which reflects an evolution of style and theme in Aboriginal women’s life stories.