EN7922 North American Indigenous Literatures Essay Questions 2025 | UOL

EN7922 Essay Questions

1. How does Indigenous literature engage with the present?
2. In his famous 2006 essay, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Patrick Wolfe describes settler colonization as “a structure, not an event” (388). How is this borne out in the Indigenous literature you have read?
3. In Native Liberty: Natural Reason and Cultural Survivance (2009), Gerald Vizenor (Minnesota Chippewa) defines his term “survivance”, as “a sense of narrative resistance to absence, literary tragedy, nihility, and victimry. Native survivance is an active sense of presence over historical absence” (1). Discuss survivance in relation to Indigenous literature you have read.
4. In Why Indigenous Literatures Matter (2018), Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee) asks four questions: “How do we learn to be human?”, “How do we behave as good relatives?”, “How do we become good ancestors?”, and “How do we learn to live together?” (28). How does Indigenous literature you have read answer any or all of these questions?
5. You may devise your own essay question (this must take place in consultation with me).