When the Other is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990 (review)

Emma Larocque's When the Other is Me: Native Resistance Discourse, 1850-1990 examines the tactics that Indigenous writers in Canada have deployed in their struggles for decolonization. The goal of When the Other is Me is to highlight how, historically, many Indigenous writers have sought to challenge the "textual techniques" of misrepresentation found in colonial texts that dehumanize and marginalize Indigenous peoples and justify the creation of a colonial society in Canada. (11) Indeed, LaRocque surveys Canada's "troubled discourse," (3) or "war of words" (4) between Euro-Canadian colonizers and colonized Indigenous peoples, and looks specifically at how Indigenous authors, as a response, have established a tradition of resistance writing or "talking back." (158) In seeking to disrupt colonial representations, Indigenous writers are, according to LaRocque, at once "deconstructing and reconstructing" the world to create spaces of dignity, community, and humanity. When the Other is Me will be of interest to those studying the ways in which Indigenous peoples are represented in colonial cultures as well as to people involved in forging strategies for decolonization in Canada.

LaRocque outlines what she calls the "Civilization/Savage" master narrative in Canadian colonial writing. Drawing on the anti-colonial ideas of Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon, LaRocque argues that it is important to pay attention to how colonizers invent certain discourses to rationalize their rule and justify the subordination of Indigenous peoples. In this way, the "Civ/Sav" framework is, according to LaRocque, "an ideological container for the systemic construction of self-confirming 'evidence' that Natives were savages who 'inevitably' had to yield to the supreme powers of civilization as carried forward by Euro-Canadian civilizers." (38) Moreover, Indigenous writings critiquing such representations have often been muffled, contained, or ignored as part of maintaining settler hegemony. LaRocque states that misrepresentations and discourse practices that justify colonialism in Canada constitute "textual warfare." (38) Indeed, she argues that the degrading, infantilizing, and dehumanizing representations found in colonizer texts have "raged on long enough [...and have] burned into the hearts and minds of Aboriginal peoples." (15) As a result, Indigenous writers have had to continually fight to have their voices of resistance heard.

The strength of When the Other is Me is LaRocque's examination of the emergence of an Indigenous writing tradition of resistance. Impressively, she puts the voices of such writers and thinkers as George Copway, Catherine Songeegoh Sutton, Chief Dan George, Ruby Slipperjack, Tompson Highway, Thomas King, and Eden Robinson - among others - into conversation with one another as producers of resistance discourse. While at times the idea of a "resistance tradition" seems forced, LaRocque does showcase the similar ways in which Indigenous writers have recorded "historical and personal incursions, social upheavals, a range of emotions, and unique individual and cultural backgrounds, and struggle for hope and determination" in their works. (18) LaRocque proclaims that Indigenous intellectuals also suffer: "Our vocations do not protect us either from dispossession, social inequality, poverty, or the daily indecencies of racism in stores and streets or in our places of play and work." (95) In short, LaRocque looks at how Indigenous writers are challenging colonial constructs and pushing alternative paradigms in their works by talking back to discourses that marginalize their voices. LaRocque proclaims that Indigenous resistance writing is simultaneously a part of the reconstruction of many Indigenous communities and ways of life. (120)

When the Other is Me is an important, though limited, work. The title of the book is misleading, claiming to examine resistance discourse from 1850 to 1990; however the text largely focuses on writing from 1970 to 1990, which significantly restricts the scope of the book. Also, while making attempts to be "interdisciplinary," LaRocque overwhelmingly focuses on literary works at the expense of a more detailed examination of the importance of other political writings by Chief Dan George and, especially, Harold Cardinal. More concerning, though, is LaRocque's lack of attention to the dialectic relationship between textual and material worlds and discursive and political strategies of resistance...