New ebooks From Canadian Indies
Description
What does it mean to be an Indigenous man today? Between October 2010 and May 2013, Sam McKegney conducted interviews with leading Indigenous artists, critics, activists, and elders on the subject of Indigenous manhood. In offices, kitchens, and coffee shops, and once in a car driving down the 401, McKegney and his participants tackled crucial questions about masculine self-worth and how to foster balanced and empowered gender relations.
Masculindians captures twenty of these conversations in a volume that is intensely personal, yet speaks across generations, geography, and gender boundaries. As varied as their speakers, the discussions range from culture, history, and world view to gender theory, artistic representations, and activist interventions. They speak of possibility and strength, of beauty and vulnerability. They speak of sensuality, eroticism, and warriorhood, and of the corrosive influence of shame, racism, and violence. Firmly grounding Indigenous continuance in sacred landscapes, interpersonal reciprocity, and relations with other-than-human kin, these conversations honour and embolden the generative potential of healthy Indigenous masculinities.
About the Authors
Sam McKegney is a settler scholar of Indigenous literatures and is Professor and Head of the Department of English at Queen’s University in the territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe Peoples. He has published two books—Masculindians: Conversations about Indigenous Manhood and Magic Weapons: Aboriginal Writers Remaking Community after Residential School—and articles on such topics as masculinity, environmental kinship, prison writing, and mythologies of hockey.
Alison Calder has published widely on Canadian prairie literature and culture, including critical editions of Settlers of the Marsh and Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove, and Desire Never Leaves: The Poetry of Tim Lilburn. Her poetry collections are Wolf Tree and In the Tiger Park, and with Jeanette Lynes she is the co-author of Ghost Works: Improvisations in Letters and Poems. She teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.
Alison Calder has published widely on Canadian prairie literature and culture, including critical editions of Settlers of the Marsh and Over Prairie Trails by Frederick Philip Grove, and Desire Never Leaves: The Poetry of Tim Lilburn. Her poetry collections are Wolf Tree and In the Tiger Park, and with Jeanette Lynes she is the co-author of Ghost Works: Improvisations in Letters and Poems. She teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.
Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair (Anishinaabe) is Assistant Professor in the departments of English and Native Studies at the University of Manitoba.
Dana Claxton is an acclaimed artist and filmmaker. Her practice investigates indigenous beauty, the socio-political and spiritual. She mentors indigenous youth, emerging artists and filmmakers. She is Head and Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory with the University of British Columbia.
Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe is nêhiyaw poet raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. She has travelled extensively nationally and internationally both as a poet and keynote speaker. She served as poet Laureate in Saskatchewan for two years and was given an honorary Ph.D. from Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2017 Halfe was awarded the Latner's Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for an exceptional body of work in the field of poetry.
Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe is nêhiyaw poet raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. She has travelled extensively nationally and internationally both as a poet and keynote speaker. She served as poet Laureate in Saskatchewan for two years and was given an honorary Ph.D. from Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2017 Halfe was awarded the Latner's Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for an exceptional body of work in the field of poetry.
Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe is nêhiyaw poet raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. She has travelled extensively nationally and internationally both as a poet and keynote speaker. She served as poet Laureate in Saskatchewan for two years and was given an honorary Ph.D. from Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2017 Halfe was awarded the Latner's Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for an exceptional body of work in the field of poetry.
Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe is nêhiyaw poet raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. She has travelled extensively nationally and internationally both as a poet and keynote speaker. She served as poet Laureate in Saskatchewan for two years and was given an honorary Ph.D. from Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2017 Halfe was awarded the Latner's Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for an exceptional body of work in the field of poetry.
Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe is nêhiyaw poet raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. She has travelled extensively nationally and internationally both as a poet and keynote speaker. She served as poet Laureate in Saskatchewan for two years and was given an honorary Ph.D. from Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2017 Halfe was awarded the Latner's Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for an exceptional body of work in the field of poetry.
Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe is nêhiyaw poet raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta. She has travelled extensively nationally and internationally both as a poet and keynote speaker. She served as poet Laureate in Saskatchewan for two years and was given an honorary Ph.D. from Wilfrid Laurier University. In 2017 Halfe was awarded the Latner's Writers' Trust Poetry Prize for an exceptional body of work in the field of poetry.
Warren Cariou was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan into a family of Métis and European heritage. He has published works of fiction, criticism, and memoir about Indigenous cultures and environmental issues in Canada. He directs the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba.
Warren Cariou was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan into a family of Métis and European heritage. He has published works of fiction, criticism, and memoir about Indigenous cultures and environmental issues in Canada. He directs the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba.
Warren Cariou was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan into a family of Métis and European heritage. He has published works of fiction, criticism, and memoir about Indigenous cultures and environmental issues in Canada. He directs the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba.
Warren Cariou was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan into a family of Métis and European heritage. He has published works of fiction, criticism, and memoir about Indigenous cultures and environmental issues in Canada. He directs the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba.
Warren Cariou was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan into a family of Métis and European heritage. He has published works of fiction, criticism, and memoir about Indigenous cultures and environmental issues in Canada. He directs the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba.
Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is a member of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation, on the Saugeen Peninsula in Ontario. Kateri is an Assistant Professor, teaching Creative Writing, Indigenous Literatures and Oral Traditions in the English Department at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. She has taught creative writing and Indigenous literatures at the University of Manitoba, the Banff Centre’s Aboriginal Arts Program, and the En’owkin International School of Writing in partnership with the University of Victoria. Her publications encompass poetry, fiction, non-fiction, radio plays, television and film, libretti, graphic novels, and spoken word. Her teaching and creative work is firmly decolonial, a practice of cultural resurgence, affirmation and survivance. She is a recipient of a REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award for writing, her 2015 book of short stories, The Stone Collection, was a finalist for the Sarton Literary Book Awards, and her collaborative recording A Constellation of Bones was a nominee for a 2008 Canadian Aboriginal Music Award. Kateri was the 2011-2012 Poet Laureate for Owen Sound and North Grey. She founded and coordinated the first Honouring Words: International Indigenous Authors Celebration Tour in 2003 and initiated and was a co-organizer for the first Indigenous Comics Symposium in 2021. She is the founder, publisher, and art director for Kegedonce Press. (Re)Generation: The Poetry of Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, selected and edited by Dallas Hunt, was released in August 2021. She is currently completing work on a new collection of poetry and a collection of humourous short stories.
Richard Van Camp is an internationally renowned storyteller and bestselling author. He was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and is a proud member of the Dogrib (Tłı̨chǫ) Dene Nation. He is the author of The Lesser Blessed (Douglas & McIntyre, 1996), a Canadian classic that has been adapted into a feature film with First Generation Films. He lives in Edmonton, AB, with his family.
Joanne Arnott
Neal McLeod grew up Cree on the James Smith Reserve in Saskatchewan and studied at the Swedish Art Academy at Umeå. His 2005 exhibition au fil de mes jours (in my lifetime), at Le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, was remounted at the Museum of Civilization in 2007. He has two books of poetry—Songs to Kill a Wîhtikow (2005) and Gabriel’s Beach (2008). Cree Narrative Memory (2007) was nominated for book of the year at the Anskohk McNally Aboriginal Literature Awards. He teaches Indigenous studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.
Neal McLeod grew up Cree on the James Smith Reserve in Saskatchewan and studied at the Swedish Art Academy at Umeå. His 2005 exhibition au fil de mes jours (in my lifetime), at Le Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, was remounted at the Museum of Civilization in 2007. He has two books of poetry—Songs to Kill a Wîhtikow (2005) and Gabriel’s Beach (2008). Cree Narrative Memory (2007) was nominated for book of the year at the Anskohk McNally Aboriginal Literature Awards. He teaches Indigenous studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.
Daniel David Moses is "a coroner of the theatre who slices open the human heart to reveal the fear, hatred and love that have eaten away at it. His dark play… can leave its audience shaking with emotion." (Kate Taylor, The Globe and Mail, about The Indian Medicine Shows). Moses, a Delaware from the Six Nations lands on the Grand River, lives in Toronto, where he writes, and in Kingston, where he teaches in the Department of Drama at Queen's University.
Daniel David Moses is "a coroner of the theatre who slices open the human heart to reveal the fear, hatred and love that have eaten away at it. His dark play… can leave its audience shaking with emotion." (Kate Taylor, The Globe and Mail, about The Indian Medicine Shows). Moses, a Delaware from the Six Nations lands on the Grand River, lives in Toronto, where he writes, and in Kingston, where he teaches in the Department of Drama at Queen's University.
Daniel David Moses is "a coroner of the theatre who slices open the human heart to reveal the fear, hatred and love that have eaten away at it. His dark play… can leave its audience shaking with emotion." (Kate Taylor, The Globe and Mail, about The Indian Medicine Shows). Moses, a Delaware from the Six Nations lands on the Grand River, lives in Toronto, where he writes, and in Kingston, where he teaches in the Department of Drama at Queen's University.
Gregory Scofield is Red River Metis of Cree, Scottish and European descent whose ancestry can be traced to the fur trade and to the Metis community of Kinesota, Manitoba. He has taught First Nations and Metis Literature and Creative Writing at Brandon University, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and the Alberta College of Art + Design. He currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in English at Laurentian University where he teaches Creative Writing, and previously served as writer-in-residence at the University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg and Memorial University.
Scofield won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 1994 for his debut collection, The Gathering: Stones for the Medicine Wheel. In addition to several volumes of poetry, Scofield is the author of the memoir, Thunder Through My Veins (1999), and his latest collection of poetry is Witness, I Am (2016). In 2016, The Writers' Trust of Canada awarded Scofield with the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize.
Editorial Reviews
"Masculindians is a collection of twenty-three conversations with Indigenous women and men from throughout North America and Oceania, Two-Spirit and straight people, as well as artists and scholars who talked about, among other things, Indigenous masculinity. The chapters are more than conversations. They are artifacts from which we can later draw meaning in order to reimagine Indigenous masculinity's pluralisms, possibilities, and potentials."
— Native American and Indigenous Studies
“A strong beginning to the work of critical studies of Indigenous masculinities.”
— Transmotion
“Distills the acumen of the scholars, journalists, playwrights, authors, poets, mothers, fathers, and sons who sat with him and identified, and commiserated on, the paradigms of maleness and manliness.”
— BC Studies
"McKegney interviews male and female educators, artists (including writers such Joseph Boyden, Lee Maracle and Tomson Highway), scholars, social workers, elders, and others who attest to the myriad conceptions of indigenous manhood that range from the affirmingly spiritual to the purposefully vulnerable. [...] Many a fascinating discussion about modern indigenous identities."
“Masculindians is not a book about tragic masculinities. Rather, the contributors share compelling stories of beautiful and healthy masculinities disrupted by colonization. Their stories speak of resilience and resistance and resurgence.”
— The Goose
"A valuable contribution to Indigenous masculinity studies. Very few texts focus on Indigenous manhood and masculinities, and this book provides an opportunity to expand this area of study and to engage in conversations on Indigenous community and Native nation building."
— Wicazo Sa Review
