Writing Madness in Indigenous Literature: A Hesitation

Abstract

Written in a series of connected vignettes—or “hesitations”—this essay considers madness in relation to Indigenous literature, specifically Celia’s Song, by Sto:lō writer Lee Maracle, yet it also troubles its own conceptual framework, interrupting and reframing the analysis through the work of other Indigenous authors, scholars, and artists, including Cree scholar and psychologist Jeffrey Ansloos; Tuscarora essayist and story writer Alicia Elliott; Michif and Nishnaabe writer and language advocate Kai Minosh Pyle; Michi Saagiig Nishnaabe writer and singer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson; and Unangax writer and scholar Eve Tuck. Issues addressed include possibilities and limitations of settler literary criticism of Indigenous work; racist ideology in anthropology and psychoanalysis; and Indigenous vocabularies for mental health struggles. What results is not just a reflection of visionary states in Maracle—their relationship to colonial trauma and to ancestral insight—but also a critique of the madness of colonialism itself.