Forgetting How to Think: On the Effects of Settler Colonialism in Crow Winter

Abstract

This presentation examines the influence of settler colonialism on the Anishinaabe community depicted in the novel Crow Winter by Karen McBride, looking at interactions between the Anishinaabeg characters, including the protagonist Hazel Ellis and her spirit guide Nanabush, and how settler colonialism is affecting the community. In my studies of other Indigenous texts, it has become clear that drifting away from traditional culture, teachings, and ways of living are seen to be the primary effects of ongoing settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples. The focus of this presentation is specifically on the effects of settler colonialism that brush aside traditional Indigenous ways of thinking and living, treating them as irrelevant to the modern Western settler world of Canada and at times replacing them with “more appropriate” or “more reasonable” Western ways of thinking and living. The loss of knowledge in this way is shown by Hazel’s reactions to traditional teachings, either not realizing their importance or attempting rationalize them in a Western mindset, as well as by the musings of Nanabush on the state of the Spirit Bear Point Anishinaabeg and the conversations between Hazel’s father Abraham and the Quebecois land developer Thomas Gagnon about the necessity of the silver mine for the community.