Critical Collaborations: Indigeneity, Diaspora, and Ecology in Canadian Literary Studies ed. by Smaro Kamboureli and Christl Verduyn (review)

Critical Collaborations: Indigeneity, Diaspora, and Ecology in Canadian Literary Studies is the third edited collection from the TransCanada Institute's conference series that began in 2005. The three collections accumulatively attempt to think across the field of Canadian literature as it is complicit in or challenges the formation of nation and the field as institution, methodology, and, ultimately, collaborative and transformative politics. Consistent with all of these collections is their authoritative weight. The contributors are long-established experts in their respective fields, the majority in literary criticism. Critical Collaborations, comprised of twelve essays, plus an introduction by co-editor Smaro Kamboureli, shifts slightly from the two earlier collections. Although the first two collections include indigenous scholarship, environmental scholarship is absent. In its inclusion of ecological thinking, Critical Collaborations can be seen as either a corrective or as a deliberate windup to the conference series. Either way, it is edifying to see a new collection merging Canadian studies with ecological epistemologies, and in inspiring multidisciplinary ways.

Although the essays do not necessarily speak to one another directly, there is a connective thread through repeated concepts, "trans-", of course, being the underlying one. Yet more subtle and provocative is the persistent emphasis on generative thinking, which occurs when the scholars cross over into the possibility of other complementary or intersecting methods of enquiry and seek interconnection. While some use the term "generative" explicitly, such as Roy Miki in his call for an arts-based or creative-critical reading approach, a field that has been gaining popularity in the humanities and social sciences over the past few years, others, such as Laurie Ricou in his "Habitat" studies, establish the concept as inherent to their methodological practice. The articles in Critical Collaboration offer intellectual rigour and insight, and, although a couple are a bit theoretically opaque at times, the majority make for invigorating reading. That said, there are many stand-outs in this collection. Space allows me to touch upon only a few highlights.

After Kamboureli's introduction and Miki's essay, the collection seems ordered into three parts: indigenous scholarship, environmental criticism, and diasporic studies. The first part of the collection focuses on indigenous scholarship and offers methods for de-colonization of Western epistemologies. The essays, respectively by Sa'ke'j Henderson (law), Julia Emberley (literary criticism), Marie Battiste (education), and Larissa Lai (literary criticism) move from more general theoretical engagement to literary analysis. All are outstanding. In "Ambidextrous Epistemologies: Indigenous Knowledge within the Indigenous Renaissance," through an investigation of the conflicts between Eurocentric pedagogy and indigenous knowledge (ik, Marie Battiste illustrates the ties between ecological thinking, language, decolonization, and educational reform. She demonstrates that an educational model inclusive of ik promotes "a participatory consciousness" (91), which cultivates empowerment, agency, and ultimately fulfills the terms set out in the 2008 un Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the subsequent unesco conventions. Larissa Lai presents a practice model for building creative alliances between non-indigenous and indigenous peoples, which further enriches Battiste's and Sa'ke'j Henderson's call for institutional and political reform. In "Epistemologies of Respect," she calls for a practice of ethics that allows room for ongoing learning and transformation—an "ethics-under-construction" (99). The practice, Lai contends, both acknowledges complicity in the production of colonial-settler power structures and participates, through creative practices, in "remaking of contemporary culture and an imagining of the nation" (99) to construct a different future. As successful collaborative and cross-cultural illustrations, Lai provides persuasive readings of Lee Maracle's "Yin Chin," The Movement Project's How We Forgot Here, and Marie Clement's Burning Vision, three works that explore engagement between indigenous peoples and non-white settler cultures in Canada.

The second part of the collection shifts to environmental criticism, and decolonization becomes associated with the challenges in transforming human relationships to the biophysical environment. The three articles, in their respective...