BY KATERI AKIWENZIE-DAMM
THIS YEAR HAS been a challenging and inspiring one for Indigenous writers. When I look back on 2017, I see incredible accomplishments, opportunities, and movements to create, recreate, and reclaim. There are signs we’ve finally punched through to the light – after generations of writers working to hold space and create opportunities for Indigenous literatures; after decades of standing against those who spoke over us, about us, misrepresented us, and stole our stories as their own; after always resisting those who told us that our stories were simplistic, that readers were not interested, that our artistic and literary traditions needed to be abandoned, or edited and rewritten to conform to western canons, and that our stories and our cultures were only legitimized through the lens provided by non- Indigenous writers and editors.
Right now we’re working to bring the Indigenous literary community together through gatherings to establish networking and advocacy circles for the literary arts. This will further strengthen our voices and, now that some doors have been opened, help us to push them fully open. We’ve never had this before. Instead, we’ve networked informally, found allies and champions, and some of us have created events to bring us together. To know that we’ll have our own circle of literary arts is uplifting. It’s been a long time coming and, as recent controversies have shown, much needed.