More than Where the Heart Is: Meeting Places in Wabanaki Poetry by Cheryl Savageau and Mihku Paul

Abstract

New kinds of meeting places in contemporary Indigenous writing from the East emerge in creative writing by Cheryl Savageau (Abenaki) and Mihku Paul (Maliseet). The reimagined personal, family, and community stories in their poems include Indigenous perspectives on Canadian-American migrations, interracial relations, and the displacement of Indigenous languages by French and English. The attention they pay to the effects of colonial and neo-colonial realities is counterbalanced by instances of resistance and resurgence in their writing. Both poets are mixed-blood women born in the 1950s, living in the United States, possessing ties to Canada, and engaged in dialogue with other Wabanaki writers and community members. The author’s approach to their work is indebted to received traditions as revisited by three Indigenous academics—Abenaki writer and scholar Joseph Bruchac on survival strategies, Abenaki literary historian Lisa Brooks on the gathering place, and Cherokee literary historian Daniel Heath Justice on concepts of kinship. Collectively, these poets and essayists illustrate what settler scholar Siobhan Senier refers to as the continued presence of Indigenous Nations in Atlantic Canada and New England.