Poetic Tracks and Treading on Indigenous Lands: Examining Marlatt and Warland’s and Akiwenzie-Damm’s Literary Travels to Australia and Aotearoa

Authors

Christine C. Campana, University of Northern British ColumbiaFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-15-2023

Abstract

This paper considers the work of poets who travel from the area of the Indigenous land of Turtle Island now known as Canada to the Indigenous territories of Australia and Aotearoa. The poets engage in different forms of movement on the land that reveal varying degrees of awareness of and respect for Indigenous sovereignty. In particular, I put “17:00 / coming into Port Pirie” and “30/5 8:50 / past Menindee” from Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland’s 1988 Double Negative, an understudied collection of poetry in which the lesbian poets traverse Australia by train while reflecting on travelling through “(ab) original country” (19), into conversation with Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm’s (Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation/Anishnaabe) “from turtle island to aotearoa,” the final poem in Akiwenzie-Damm’s 1993 collection My Heart is a Stray Bullet, in which she enacts a nation-to-nation relationship with the Māori people through “slow cautious steps” (50) upon their lands. Using Eve Tuck (Unangax̂) and K. Wayne Yang’s influential piece “Decolonization is not a Metaphor,” I discuss how the poets variously use language of movement to elide complicity in settler colonialism and settler mobility or, as is the case with Akiwenzie-Damm, honour Indigenous forms of movement and relationships to their lands.

Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée

Campana, Christine C.. "Poetic Tracks and Treading on Indigenous Lands: Examining Marlatt and Warland’s and Akiwenzie-Damm’s Literary Travels to Australia and Aotearoa." The Goose, vol. 20 , no. 1 , article 29, 2023,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol20/iss1/29.