The Uniform of the Dispossessed
By Emma LaRocque, b.1949, Métis/Canada. Sometimes I forgetso I buy soft thingssurround my hard-won worldwith syntheticspastelscushionsand Zamfir. Sometimes I forgetso I go to theatresurround my …
Emma LaRocque
“As Tomson Highway would say, I was born on a trapline. Actually, I was born in a one-room log cabin near a trapline,” says Emma LaRocque, a Plains Cree Métis. She grew up in a small Métis community in northeastern Alberta. Her father workedon the railroad in the summers and trapped in the winters. Language and eloquence were respected and enjoyed. Both her mother and her grandmother were “riveting” storytellers. For LaRocque, “the ethos of Cree culture – a love of excellence, a lover for words among other things” is part of her poetry.
Emma LaRocque (born 1949) is a Canadian academic of Cree and Métis descent. She is currently a professor of Native American studies at the University of Manitoba.
She is also a published poet, writing brief, imagist poems about her ancestral land and culture. LaRocque’s works have critically engaged topics such as Indigenous identities, contemporary Indigenous literature, postcolonial literary criticism, decolonization and resistance, and Indigenous representation in Canadian history, literature, and popular culture. The professor has published works in numerous fields, making her work relevant to a diverse array of scholars. For instance, LaRocque’s work offers a nuanced conception of Indigenous literatures as resistance, and brings misrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples in Canada to light. Such contributions have had reverberations in Native Studies, sociology, education, and poetry alike. LaRocque is also known for her deconstruction of the “civilized/savage” dichotomy, which she problematizes in relation to her own Métis identity.
More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_LaRocque