The Delicate Dance of Reasoning and Togetherness

Abstract

Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective, a new collection of essays by Native literary critics, is one of the most important theoretical works to emerge out of the study of Aboriginal litera ture. I do not know whether the collection's title deliberately recalls a dialogue between David Brumble and Karl Kroeber, also entitled ReasoningTogether, which first appeared in The Canadian Review of American Studies in 1981 and later in Smoothing the Ground: Essays on Native American Oral Literature, but comparing the two works shows us just how far this field has come. In 1981 Kroeber and Brumble, both non-Native, wrote authoritatively about how Indians feel about having their stories and belongings collected and displayed by white scholars. The of the title did not include Aboriginal people as part of the reasoning process, since Native people from the communities under discussion were nei ther quoted nor, apparently, consulted. Since then, Aboriginal peo ple have slowly begun to enter the academy and, more specifically, the ranks of literary critics. Particularly in the United States, there has developed an intellectual community of Aboriginal literary critics. Here in Canada, this community is significantly smaller, and so I read Reasoning Together with pride, pride at seeing so many Aboriginal people in my field working and writing together with such sophistication and dedication. In recent years there has been an emerging rhetoric within universities on the need to bring indigenous knowledge into the academy. However, too often the attempts to do this have been tokenistic, primarily symbolic, or