Lenore Keeshig-Tobias

Lenore Keeshig-Tobias is an author and a major advocate for Indigenous writers in Canada. She is a member of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation. She was one of the central figures in the debates over cultural appropriation in Canadian literature in the 1990s.[1] Along with Daniel David Moses and Tomson Highway, she was a founding member of the Indigenous writers' collective, Committee to Reestablish the Trickster.[2]

Biography

Keeshig-Tobias was born Lenore Keeshig in Wiarton, Ontario in 1950, the eldest of ten children of Keitha (Johnston) and Donald Keeshig. She went to school on the Cape Croker Reserve and then at Loretto Academy in Niagara Falls and the Wiarton District High School.

She later attended York University in Toronto and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1983.[3]

Advocacy

In 1990, she published an essay in Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper, entitled "Stop Stealing Native Stories," in which she critiqued non-Native writers' use of Native stories and experiences as a "theft of voice," pointing to the examples of Darlene Barry Quaife's Bone Bird, W.P. Kinsella's Hobbema, and the film Where the Spirit Lives.[4] She argued that the prominence of these works by settler writers came at the expense of even the most celebrated works by Native writers, such as Basil Johnston's Indian School Days and Maria Campbell's Half Breed, which did not generate a comparable critical reception or institutional support.

In the same year, Keeshig-Tobias became the founding chair of the Racial Minority Writers' Committee at the Writers' Union of Canada after raising concerns about access to institutional and professional support for Indigenous and racialized writers.[5]

In 1992, the Racial Minority Writers' Committee organized The Appropriate Voice, a gathering of 70 Indigenous and racialized writers in Orillia, Ontario meant to identify their shared concerns and barriers to publishing in Canada.[6] This session produced a motion against cultural appropriation that was forwarded to the Writers' Union of Canada and passed by its general membership on June 6, 1992.[7]

These efforts led to the 1994 Writing Thru Race conference, a gathering of Indigenous and racialized writers in Vancouver, hosted by the Writers' Union of Canada. Keeshig-Tobias addressed the gathering on the opening night of the event. Writing Thru Race is now considered to be a major milestone in race politics and literature in Canada.[8][9]

Published Works

Keeshig-Tobias has published two bilingual children's books in English and Ojibway: Bird Talk (Sister Vision Press, 1991) and Emma and the Trees (Sister Vision Press, 1996). Both were illustrated by her daughter, Polly Keeshig-Tobias.[10][11]

She is the editor of the collection, Into the Moon: Heart, Mind, Body, Soul (Sister Vision Press, 1996), an anthology of poetry, fiction, myth, and personal essays by Native women.[12]

References
  1. Lai, Larissa (2014-07-31). Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. ISBN 9781771120425.
  2. "Lenore Keeshig [Tobias], "Stop Stealing Native Stories"". Broadview Press. 2016-06-30. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
  3. The concise Oxford companion to Canadian literature. Toye, William. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press. 2001. ISBN 9780195435641. OCLC 891717673.CS1 maint: others (link)
  4. "Stop stealing native stories". Retrieved 2019-03-16.
  5. The concise Oxford companion to Canadian literature. Toye, William. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press. 2001. ISBN 9780195435641. OCLC 891717673.CS1 maint: others (link)
  6. Lai, Larissa (2014-07-31). Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. ISBN 9781771120425.
  7. Khanna, Sanjay (1993). "The Writers' Union of Canada and Cultural Appropriation" (PDF). Rungh Magazine. 1.4: 33–34.
  8. Butling, Pauline; Rudy, Susan (2009-10-22). Writing in Our Time: Canada’s Radical Poetries in English (1957-2003). Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. ISBN 9780889205277.
  9. "Smaro Kamboureli » Twenty Years of Writing thru "Race": Then and Now". Retrieved 2019-03-17.
  10. "CM Archive". www.umanitoba.ca. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
  11. Keeshig-Tobias, Lenore; Keeshig-Tobias, Polly; Nadjiwon, Rose (1996). Emma and the trees =: Emma minwaah mtigooh. Toronto, Ont: Sister Vision: Black Women and Women of Colour Press. ISBN 9780920813119.
  12. Keeshig-Tobias, Lenore (1996). Into the Moon: Heart, Mind, Body, Soul. Sister Vision. ISBN 9781896705040.
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