In the updated and restored 2019 edition of Halfbreed, Métis writer Maria Campbell introduces the Cree word, kwaskastahsowin, to describe what it means to seek conciliation or to “put things to right.” By focusing on what it means to “put things to right” in the context of twentieth-century publishing in Canada, this talk explores Campbell’s definition of kwaskastahsowin in relation to two key twentieth-century works of Indigenous women’s writing in Canada: E. Pauline Johnson’s Legends of Vancouver (1911) and Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973). Specifically, Dr. Alix Shields examines how materials found in McMaster University’s Archives and Research Collections present opportunities to shift away from colonial publishing narratives and instead “put things to right” for both of these Indigenous-authored texts.

Speaker: Dr. Alix Shields, Lecturer, Department of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University
Alix Shield is a settler scholar and lecturer in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC, Canada). Alix completed her PhD in English at SFU in 2020, and was awarded an Emerging Open Scholarship Award by the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute in 2021. She recently published an updated edition of E. Pauline Johnson's Legends of Vancouver – retitled Legends of the Capilano – with the University of Manitoba Press and members of the Skwxwú7mesh Nation.

Moderator: Dr. Rick Monture, Associate Professor, Departments of Indigenous Studies and English & Cultural Studies at McMaster University
Rick Monture is a member of the Mohawk nation, Turtle clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. His areas of academic interest include Haudenosaunee history and oral narrative, American and Indigenous literatures, popular music, and the epistemology of Indigenous language and culture. Dr. Monture’s book, entitled Teionkwakhashion Tsi Niionkwariho:ten (“We Share Our Matters”): Two Centuries of Writing and Resistance at Six Nations of the Grand River (UMP 2014), explores how the Grand River Haudenosaunee have consistently drawn upon their intellectual and cultural traditions in letters, oratory, poetry, fiction, and film as a means to assert and maintain their sovereignty and land rights as promised by The Haldimand Deed of 1784.
Rick has served as the Director of the Indigenous Studies Program from 2014-2017, and as Acting Director of the McMaster Indigenous Research Institute from 2017-2018. He has been involved with several joint research initiatives between McMaster and Six Nations and currently holds a SSHRC award for a community-based project entitled “The Six Nations Struggle for Sovereignty: 1924 and Beyond,” which examines the events leading up to the federal government’s dismantling of the centuries old traditional government that presided at Grand River until October 1924.

Register for the online event here!