Canadian Indigenous novels emerged as a specific genre within the last thirty years, rooted in a deep, thousands-year-old ‘performance art and poetic tradition’ of oratory, oral story, poetry, and drama. In addition to these oral and performance traditions are the ‘unique and varying methods of written communication’ that flourished long before contact with Europeans. The chapter considers Canadian novels by Indigenous writers. It shows that Indigenous fiction is deeply intertwined with history, politics, and a belief in the power of story to name, resist, and heal; that novel-length Aboriginal fiction in Canada built on a growing body of other forms of Indigenous literature; and that many Indigenous novels foreground their relationship with place and identity as key features of the resistance against systemic and institutional racism. It also examines coming-of-age novels of the 1980s and 1990s that are grounded in realism.
Leaders on ladders: the power of story in John’s Gospel
