"Travelling Knowledges": Practising Indigenous Literatures in the Indian University

Abstract

Indigenous2 literatures are testimonies of which pass on treasures of to future generations. With globalization, former expropriation of rights of Indigenous peoples as an outcome of development has become expropriation of rights as a precondition for development. In response, struggles for rights of Indigenous peoples have moved towards struggles for power and a redefinition of contours of State, governance, and progress. For Indigenous peoples, one of their most powerful means of expression of protest and means of struggle has been through literature. Indigenous literature is poised to acquire a national and an international presence as well as to pose a major challenge to established notions of what constitutes literature and how we read it. Bypassing Western definitions of genre, relocating historical context, giving expression to peripheral voices and silences - these constitute tasks taken up by Indigenous Canadian writers as well. In process, Indigenous writers from Canada raise critical questions related to cosmopolitanism. First Nations writers from Canada debate notion of a borderless cosmopolitanism in relation to history of genocide and persistent negation of their existence. The authors' ideological location with respect to phenomenon of colonization is crucial. This is because it directly influences their historical representation of relationship between human individual and society. Such a study posits as a site of conflict from period of orature before 'literature' or, via colonial period, to present. One can also formulate and analyse alternative themes such as celebration, city, civilization, courage, decisions, death, families, legendary figures, Native pride, nature, old ways and new, protest, quest, schools, visions, values, women's experience, work, etc. However, Canadian literatures are not always written as a response to colonialism with a focus on loss, disempowerment, and victimization. In contemporary writings, writers also seek to show their readers a world-view based in a particular Indigenous community without comparing it to white world.Indigenous studies as a movement becomes more complex than a mere arbitrary negation of everything 'white' or a simple retelling of how it was for them. The Māori writer Linda Tuhiwai Smith examines howit involves a revitalization and reformulation of and tradition, an increased participation in and articulate rejection of Western institutions, a focus on strategic relations and alliances with non-Indigenous groups.3 (emphasis added).I have added emphasis because I believe this is point of entry for a non-Indigenous reader of Indigenous literatures. Renate Eigenbrod, a noted literary critic of literatures, says:As non-Indigenous scholars of Indigenous literatures we may well be outsiders in our reading, teaching and critiquing of Indigenous texts, but we cannot stay outside of cultural interlocution.4While Eigenbrod's perspective comes from her location as a white literary critic, I take her inclusive view that Aboriginal literature is more than 'just' another literature in English.5 It is here that I mark my point of departure as a reader of literatures, as one who is female and non-white and belongs to an erstwhile colonized country, India. My perspective in relation to Indigenous literatures is informed by my culture, which is also a culture of survival and is, as Homi Bhabha argues, an effective experience of social marginality - as it emerges in non-canonical cultural forms and which therefore transforms our critical strategies.6 Reflected in acceptance of all varieties of texts as legitimate semiotic areas7 at any given point of time, there exists the possibility of interpenetration of these areas or of a variety of semiotic behavior8 on part of reader. …