McLean Family Lecture Series

2017 McLean Family Lectures

Margery Fee, the 2015-17 McLean Family Chair in Canadian Studies

“Decolonizing Conversations: Indigenous Texts in the Pacific Northwest before 1992”

In the McLean Family Lectures in Canadian Studies, Professor Fee outlines the history of Indigenous texts in the Canadian northwest and models ways to read them. Since the 1990s, literary works by Indigenous writers have been brought into the curriculum. However, oral and written works from earlier periods are rarely included. Instructors are concerned about how to teach these works while respecting their difference. To teach oral stories requires knowledge of national cultural protocols, languages, histories, and worldviews. Prominent early Indigenous written genres, such as life stories, political commentary, and ethnography require ways of reading that differ from those typically used to analyze the preferred European genres of poetry, fiction and drama.

Watch Prof. Margery Fee’s inaugural McLean Family Lecture: Stories We Didn’t Hear: Controlling Traditional Oral Stories

Watch Prof. Margery Fee’s second McLean Family Lecture: Writing We Didn’t Read: Manifestos, Declarations and Other Collective Texts

Watch Prof. Margery Fee’s final McLean Family Lecture: Lives We Overlooked: Framing Indigenous Life Stories

2015 McLean Family Lectures