- November 12, 2014
Please join Lakehead University’s Indigenous Knowledge Lecture Series for the launch of the new critical edition of George Kenny’s Indians Don’t Cry: Gaawiin Mawisiiwag Anishinaabeg.
When: Wednesday, November 12, 7:00 pm
Where: Lakehead University (University Centre – 2011)
Cost: FREE
Event sponsored by Aboriginal Initiatives, Athletics, and the Depatment of History.
About the Book
George Kenny is an Anishinaabe poet and playwright who learned traditional ways from his parents before being sent to residential school in 1958. When Kenny published his first book, 1977’s Indians Don’t Cry, he joined the ranks of Indigenous writers such as Maria Campbell, Basil Johnston, and Rita Joe whose work melded art and political action. Hailed as a landmark in the history of Indigenous literature in Canada, this new edition is expected to inspire a new generation of Anishinaabe writers with poems and stories that depict the challenges of Indigenous people confronting and finding ways to live within urban settler society.
Indians Don’t Cry: Gaawin Mawisiiwag Anishinaabeg is the second book in the First Voices, First Texts series, which publishes lost or underappreciated texts by Indigenous artists. This new bilingual edition includes a translation of Kenny’s poems and stories into Anishinaabemowin by Patricia M. Ningewance and an afterword by literary scholar Renate Eigenbrod.
About the Authors
George Kenny is from Lac Seul First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He is currently completing a masters degree in Environmental Studies so that he can continue to write about the culture of Anishinaabe people of Lac Seul and the English River, the source of his creativity.
Renate Eigenbrod (1944-2014) taught Native Studies at the University of Manitoba and was the author of Travelling Knowledges: Positioning the Im/Migrant Reader of Aboriginal Literatures in Canada.
Patricia M. Ningewance is an Anishinaabe translator from Lac Seul First Nation. She has more than thirty years’ experience in language teaching, translation and media work.
*About First Voices, First Texts *
First Voices, First Texts aims to re-connect contemporary readers with some of the most important Aboriginal literature of the past, much of which has been unavailable for decades. This series reveals the richness of these works by providing newly re-edited texts that are presented with particular sensitivity toward Indigenous ethics, traditions, and contemporary realities. The editors strive to indigenize the editing process by involving communities, by respecting traditional protocols, and by providing critical introductions that give readers new insights into the cultural contexts of these unjustly neglected classics.
