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109 The effect of physical as well as literary structures on expression is the primary focus of my examination of Rita Joe’s poetry about her residential schooling. “Hated Structure: Indian Residential School, Shubenacadie, N.S.” and “I Lost My Talk” provide poetic reflections on the residential school that, despite their different rhetorical styles, are continuous with each other. These two works appeared in Joe’s second book of poetry, Song of Eskasoni (1988). Published by the small Charlottetown publishing company, Ragweed Press, and edited by Lee Maracle, Song of Eskasoni was the follow-up to Joe’s debut, Poems of Rita Joe (1978). Rita Joe’s statements about her writing convey an ethos of a poet of the people. “The basic reason for my writing and speaking is to bring honour to my people ,” she writes in her later autobiography, Song of Rita Joe (157). Joe also sees herself as a spokesperson or stand-in for indigenous people everywhere . When she was awarded the Order of Canada in 1990, Joe accepted it “on behalf of all the Native people across the world” (Lutz 241). A songwriter as well as a poet, Joe used the medium of music to reach a wide audience. Her songs show the dual cultural influences on her life and work. “Oka Song” is Joe’s response to the Oka crisis; it both justifies Aboriginal resistance and seeks amends between the conflicting sides. “Micmac Honour Song” is a sacred Mi’kmaq prayer sung in chant. “And SEVEN Hated Structures and Lost Talk Making Poetry Bear the Burden Then We Heard a Baby Cry” is a Christian spiritual about the birth of Jesus. Like many Mi’kmaq people, Joe was a practising Catholic. Yet she also privileged traditional indigenous spirituality and held both in esteem. As these varied influences might suggest, Joe desired to bridge the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous worlds. Urging a cross-cultural understanding, she saw her audience as consisting of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. “Always write positive” was her guiding maxim (Lutz 255). A sense of hope and a desire for reconciliation underlie Joe’s writing. In her reflections on her residential schooling, Joe insists that she and others who experienced this place must focus on the good, on the value and the instruction these institutions provided. Her discussion of the residential school attempts to balance criticism and praise: “I think some of the problems, or a lot of the problems that we see today are really the result of the residential schools. And that must never happen again! […] But let me tell you about the positive part […] The positive part was: the people that came from it, the good ones, learned a lot from there. And so many people have gone on, and they have become chiefs, counsellors, and social workers, and they went on to learn!” (in Lutz 257). In her autobiography, Joe describes telling her husband that they must “forget and forgive” the wrongs that were done (Song of Rita Joe 48). This attitude is complicated, however, by the need to confront the negative aspects of her experience in the residential school to give a representation of this place in its entirety. Joe’s adage to “forget and forgive” is a point with which David Newhouse, reviewing Joe’s autobiography in Quill & Quire, takes issue. “We must forgive, but we must not forget” is Newhouse ’s response (51). He adds that Joe’s writing “will help us not forget” (51). Many of the poems and reflections in Song of Rita Joe, as Newhouse adeptly suggests, betray this singular focus on the good. “Hated Structure” and “I Lost My Talk,” poems from Song of Eskasoni that reappear in her autobiography, disturb such an impression. While Joe seeks to acknowledge the positive elements of her residential schooling, her writing also admits the damaging effects of these institutions. “Hated Structure” uses a topographical poetic form to reflect on this public landmark’s personal significance to the speaker. The speaker surveys the residential school from a position of physical proximity, struggling to maintain a distance between it and herself. Though she achieves a physical and emotional separation from this place, the cadence, voice, and structure of the poem reveal its weight on her expression. This topic is more fully explored in “I Lost My Talk,” a poem that addresses the effect of this institution on the speaker’s language and identity. In this adaptation of the elegy, the speaker laments not a...

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