If we consider the very title of Jeannette Armstrong's essay The Disempowerment of First North American Native Peoples and Empowerment Through Their Writing (Armstrong, 1992, p. 207), Emma LaRoche's Here Are Our Voices Who Will Hear? (LaRoche, 1993, p. xv), or even Jordan Wheeler's Voice, (Wheeler, 1992, p. 37), we come to some understanding of the position in which many Native writers see themselves in relation to their work, their people and Canadian society at large. Indeed, would not be hyperbole to say that the kind of writing to which these writers refer faces with an unblinking eye the realities of what means to be people under siege. For Native people, this is the history of the Americas and the legacy of colonialism. We only have to think back to the 1990 Oka Crisis or the confrontation at Ipperwash and the death of Dudley George (who was shot by an Ontario Provincial Police Officer) to consider the appalling social conditions in which most Native people are forced to live. Indeed, the situation at the end of the 20th century for Native people is critical. For many is matter of life and death. In 1994 interim report, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples documented that the suicide rate among young Native people is five to six times higher than is among their non-Native peers and rising. In country that boasts one of the highest standards of living, obviously something has gone terribly wrong. This intolerable situation, as Wheeler sees it, is only exacerbated by having the Native voice stymied by the dominent society, where a novel written by non-aboriginal writer [about Native people] sell[s] millions of copies when is riddled with stereotypes, racial attitudes, shallow, one diamensional characters and cultural inaccuracies. Tell people that they are poor and hopeless enough times and they will begin to believe it (Wheeler, 1992, p. 40). Clearly, the only alternative to this kind of colonizing imposition is for Native people to claim their own voice and thereby give insight into their own values, traditions, concerns and needs. It is reality that for the most part is still unheard and unheeded in country where its First inhabitants are but mere afterthought, an anachronism to be dealt with, at best material for constructing sense of Canadian national identity in multicultural state. Any wonder that Elleke Boehmer, in her recent text Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, observes that