Sovereign Histories, Gathering Bones, Embodying Land: Scholarship from the Indigenous Literary Studies Association

This special double issue was written and guest-edited by members of ASAIL's sister organization in Canada, the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA). Since its inaugural gathering at Six Nations of the Grand River in 2015, ILSA has proved to be a vibrant gathering place for scholars, writers, artists, knowledge-keepers, and community members to share and produce work that reinforces Indigenous sovereignty, memory, and futures.

A closer collaboration between ASAIL and ILSA has been a dream of ours for several years. Shortly after June Scudeler came on as coeditor of this journal, she expressed her desire to "bring more linkage to Indigenous literatures in Canada to SAIL" (Winter 2017, ix). Since then, we have welcomed more and more essays on important Indigenous writers, including Beatrice Mosionier and Louise B. Halfe, contributed by some of the most prominent scholars working in Canada, including Sophie McCall and Pauline Wakeham.

The special double issue at hand was compiled and edited by Michelle Coupal, ILSA Past President; Aubrey Jean Hanson, former treasurer of ILSA; and Sarah Henzi, ILSA's current secretary and also a current member of SAIL's editorial board. They are well-situated to survey the field of scholarship in Canada, and the essays they have selected highlight issues that will be quite familiar to readers of SAIL (e.g., sovereignty, kinship, memory, and life writing) while also introducing you to issues that look somewhat different in Canadian contexts (e.g., contemporary settler rhetorics around reconciliation). The essay authors, in turn, bring attention to writers and filmmakers that SAIL readers may not yet have had the opportunity to read or teach, including Cherie Dimaline, An Antane Kapesh and Mini Aodla Freeman, Shirley Sterling, and Amanda Strong.

After reading these compelling essays and their editors' thoughtful framing, we think that all of our readers and ASAIL members will want to join us in joining ILSA. We look forward to many more years of meaningful and mutually supportive collaboration.

June Scudeler and Siobhan Senier