Maggie, Ann Bowers is a Senior Lecturer in World Literatures in English, with a focus upon the literature of the Americas. Her recent work has focussed most particularly on indigenous writing. She is the author of New Critical Idiom: Magical Realism and is the co-editor of Wasafiri’s Native North American Literature and Literary Activism and Routledge’s Imaginary Europes: Literary and Filmic Representations of Europe from Afar.
The Controversy of Identity in First Nations Writing
Starting from the fiction/theory work of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, this presentation considers the complexities of the concepts of self/cultural/tribal identity in First Nations writing. Simpson’s work plays with the capitalisation of ‘i’ in order to implicitly question the notion of individual self-identity. The motivations for this are defensive (to place oneself out of view) and also proactive (to disassociate with western individualism). In this way, Simpson’s work presents self-identity as both a struggle to represent the self and something to negotiate in order to avoid becoming a dominating subject. Moreover, her work explores both familial and tribal belonging, reflecting the connection to biology and, in the case of the indigenous peoples of North America, to the controversial measure of biological indigenous identity; blood quantum. This will be set against the continuing need to explore, construct and reinforce First Nations (and specific tribal) cultural identities and the role they play in First Nations resistance and self-determination. In addition to Simpson, this paper will draw on the work of Native Studies theorists such as Jace Weaver and Gerald Vizenor to elucidate the complexity of this term.
Keywords: Self-identity; tribal identity; the subject; cultural survivance; blood quantum; self-determination
