Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowina by Deanna Reder (review)

Reviewed by: Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowina by Deanna Reder Rachel Stubbs (bio) Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowina Deanna Reder Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2022, ix + 179 pp. ISBN 9781771125543, $34.99, paperback. In Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowina, Cree and Métis author Deanna Reder explores the extent to which autobiography constitutes a component of Indigenous literature. Reder currently works as an associate professor of Indigenous Studies and English at Simon Fraser University, which informs her research and writing. In Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition, Reder argues that autobiography inherently lends itself to traditional Indigenous storytelling, contrary to decades of scholarship disregarding this form as a co-opted and inferior version of European genres. Indeed, Reder combats the interminable valuing of some forms of literature over others in academia and beyond. In asserting Indigenous autobiography as a critical literary tradition, Reder also partially addresses lingering questions in the academy regarding what, if anything, comprises the Turtle Island Indigenous literary canon. It is significant that Reder challenges the word "traditional," and asserts that "we come from oral and literary cultures" (133). Thus, Reder dismantles the widespread understanding in both the academic and public consciousness that Indigenous literary traditions are exclusively oral. Within the Indigenous autobiographical genre, Reder points towards an important and undervalued form in literary circles, âcimisowina, or Indigenous personal life stories. Within the six chapters of the book, Reder examines autobiographical writings from Anishinaabe writer George Copway, Cree writer James Settee, Métis writer Maria Campbell, Cree Anglican clergyman and writer Edward Ahenakew, Métis political activist and writer James Brady, and Cree lawyer and writer Harold Cardinal. In examining these autobiographical writings, Reder uncovers a rich Indigenous literary history that demonstrates a preference for autobiography as a form that allows for "an act of autonomy … that expresses the values of one's own story while at the same time an act of generosity, of sharing, that contributes to the history of the community" (18). Furthermore, in encountering pervasive academic disregard for these forms of autobiography, Reder identifies a gap in scholarship that uses a researcher's own âcimisowina "as a method of reorienting academic inquiry" (8). Reder employs this methodology throughout her text, demonstrating the theoretical efficacy of her own âcimisowina. Indeed, the book's strength lies in its ability to act as its own example of her theoretical framework. Each chapter opens with Reder's own âcimisowina, narratives that emphasize subjectivity, a position of listening. Reder suggests that perhaps one of the most important aspects of applying âcimisowina to research practices is developing the ability to listen: "While not overly didactic … from family storytelling I learned about the need to listen" (7). In each chapter, Reder details her [End Page 437] personal experience of a story—that is, Reder offers her readers stories about stories. In Chapter One, Reder describes listening to her mother's stories growing up, and in Chapter Two, Reder recalls hearing conflicting stories from her relatives about Indigenous identity politics. In these accounts, Reder puts her thesis into practice: seemingly innocuous Indigenous life stories matter, and they serve as "examples of vibrant, innovative Indigenous intellectual production" (29). Reder's own âcimisowina demonstrates this innovation, as she uses these stories to trace and complicate her own literary criticism. By applying personal understandings of stories to the research process, Reder offers a new, intensely personal method of examining Indigenous literatures, which emphasizes the experience of a text as a significant aspect of criticism and rejects Western appeals to objectivity. An example of Reder's practical theoretical application of âcimisowina occurs when she repeats stories. In the introduction, Reder details her mother's approach: "she rarely told the story in exactly the same way, but each time emphasized and re-emphasized different points" (7). Reder herself also clearly practices this form of storytelling. In Chapter One, Reder recounts a story of her kôhkom (grandmother) as a healer who cured a man from blindness, and in Chapter Three, Reder repeats the story, this time considering how her relatives understand the same story. Like her mother, Reder emphasizes different points in...

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.