Why Indigenous Literatures Matter

“This, to me, is the heart of decolonization. Love isn’t saccharine sentiment. It’s not easy answers, or getting along all the time. It’s difficult, and fierce, and fabulous. It’s fragile, and it’s strong. It sometimes lasts a lifetime, and sometimes it ends, but it is always—always—ours. It’s our birthright, our legacy, our responsibility. We are worthy of it” (111).

Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by Daniel Heath Justice

This is literary theory as it should be. This is literary theory as criticism and medicine, as family story, history, and spiritual meditation, as righteous polemic and call to action. In warm and accessible language, Justice introduces the field of (and his experience with) Indigenous literatures before discussing the work these literatures undertake. He does so by considering four questions: How do we learn to be human? How do we behave as good relatives? How do we become good ancestors? and How do we learn to live together? Having identified these questions as especially central to Indigenous literatures, he examines how these inquiries are explored in specific works by Native authors and what this means for the question of why Indigenous literatures matter. Wonderfully, he does not limit his writing strictly to “formal” literary criticism but also offers insights drawn from his experiences as a queer Indigenous person, scholar of Indigenous literature, and someone striving to be a good relative, a good ancestor, and human living well with human and other-than-human beings alike. With concluding chapters on the importance (in reading literatures by a people so systematically and violently oppressed) of attending to both the presences and the “ruptures” (183) in and around these works and of “keeping [the] fire” (205) of Indigenous literature, this is the literary theory I dream of—a literary theory which helps me dream and work towards a better community, present, and future. Subjects this book includes that some readers may be sensitive to (but which others may be thrilled to find sensitively discussed in their literature): racism, settler colonialism, genocide, residential school experience.

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