Pauline Johnson's “As It Was in the Beginning” and Drew Hayden Taylor'sThe Night Wanderer:The Gothic Tradition in Canadian Indigenous Literature

Abstract

In this article, I comment on what the connection between Pauline Johnson's short story “As It Was in the Beginning” and Drew Hayden Taylor's novel The Night Wanderer indicates about the existence of the Gothic in Indigenous Canadian literature. Both texts, I argue, are anti-colonial projects that specifically figure female Indigenous rage as a direct result of colonialism. This decolonization is accomplished in both texts in terms of two specific plots: the gendering of Indigenous women's anger and a focus on olfaction that signals the character's unceasing attachment to a homeland.