Oldal 55 [55]
OCR
POEMS-AS-LANGUAGE-LESSONS: TRANSLINGUALISM IN NAOMI MCILWRAITH’S kiyam! ——o— MALOU BROUWER Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island, North America, know an immense linguistic diversity: first, in terms of the more than 150 Indigenous languages being spoken across the continent,” and second, with regards to the imposition of colonial languages such as French, Spanish, and English, which are now spoken by many Indigenous people. Although this chapter and my dissertation research more broadly focus mainly on Indigenous women’s poetry in Canada, I am always aware of the broader context of linguistic diversity across Turtle Island (and beyond) and the relations between these contexts, languages, and peoples.* To many, Canada is known for its official English-French bilingualism. However, this situation and image is part of a continued attempt at the erasure of Indigenous languages, peoples, and cultures in the settler colonial context of what is now called Canada. Through the often multilingual work of Indigenous authors (in the sense of multiple languages being present in these texts’), Indigenous literatures reflect this linguistic context, challenge the settler colonial effects of the imposition of colonial languages, and celebrate the revitalization of Indigenous languages in the face of but also despite colonial 1 This chapter is adapted from my conference presentation, “Poems-as-language-lessons: Translingualism in Naomi Mcllwraith’s kiydm,” presented at LangueFlow’s “Code-Switching in Arts” conference on September 29, 2022. ? The maps from Native-Land.ca depict many of these languages and where they are/were spoken. This useful tool continues to be updated in collaboration with Indigenous peoples and communities to reflect Indigenous territories and languages across the world. 3 This broader awareness includes my own position as settler scholar on these lands now called Canada and as multilingual speaker of three colonial languages—Dutch, French, and English. 4 While often this multilingualism manifests itself in the poems through words, phrases, verses in various languages—colonial and/or Indigenous-other times the multilingualism is less obvious. According to Acoose, Kovach, and Ouriou, no matter what (European) language the poetry is written in, there is always a relation to the Indigenous language and/or the epistemologies that lie behind it; even if there is no explicit use of an Indigenous language, it is still present. These authors make the language and culture felt in other ways than explicit use of Indigenous language. See Janice Acoose-Miswonigeesikokwe: Neither Indian Princesses nor Easy Squaws, Toronto, Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2016; Margaret Kovach: Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2009; Susan Ouriou: Preface, in S. Ouriou (ed.): Languages of Our Land: Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec / Langues de notre terre: Poémes et récits autochtones du Québec, trans. Christelle Morelli, Banff, Banff Centre Press, 2014. « 53 +
