EXPLORING APPROPRIATION
Writer assembles poem culled from western novels
While the western continues to fascinate modern-day storytellers and audiences, Jordan Abel is troubled by the trend.
“It’s something that I can’t ever be a part of because of how deeply problematic it is for indigenous peoples,” said the Nisga’a writer, who hails from Vancouver and resides in Castlegar, B.C.
“I think the difficulty for me with that was realizing this, but also seeing how other people are willing to look past that.
“They’re willing to fully embrace this genre that’s super problematic, that’s super racially charged and colonially charged.
“They have these positions where they never really think about why it might be difficult for indigenous peoples.”
Abel used an unconventional collaborative effort to explore the western in Injun. The long poem about racism and the representation of indigenous peoples has been nominated for the $65,000 Griffin Prize being awarded in Toronto on Thursday.
The painstaking creative process involved Abel constructing the text from 91 western novels in the public domain from writers spanning the 17th to 20th centuries.
After assembling the novels into one mammoth file, he searched for the word “injun,” finding 509 results.
He separated out the sentences, which he cut up and reassembled in varying ways to craft his poetic work.
“The main conceptual framework that ties it all together is appropriation,” said Abel, who is completing his PhD at Simon Fraser University with research focused on digital humanities and indigenous literary studies.
“The texts that I’m drawing from are appropriated.
“The book has my name on the cover, but it’s actually a multi-authored book that’s written by me and 20 other authors and contains those 91 novels.
“I think that the elements of appropriation in my book are meant to comment on how appropriation functions as a mechanism of colonialism, and I think it also responds to cultural appropriation. There’s a lot of layers there.”
The layers aren’t just metaphorical.
Abel uses a linguistic concept known as a concordance line where sentences are arranged with the target word aligning in the middle.
He makes use of this technique to highlight derogatory terms used to describe indigenous peoples.
“It’s very difficult to avoid the reaction because there’s so much hate behind all of that racism. It is difficult to read,” said Abel. “I think that’s why I did the project in the first place. It is really affective and impactful.
“Even though a bunch of those books were published a while ago, that kind of racism and that discourse hasn’t gone anywhere.
“The western is still just as present now — perhaps even more so — because people feel a real kind of nostalgia for that genre.
“I hope that it starts a conversation or a dialogue about, one, how racism is structured and deeply entrenched in our sense of identity and belonging to this land, and two ... about how indigenous peoples have been represented, both in historical and contemporary moments.”
Joining Abel among the Canadian contenders for the Griffin Poetry Prize are Saskatchewan raised, Ottawa-based poet Sandra Ridley for Silvija (BookThug) and Violet Energy Ingots by Torontobased Hoa Nguyen (Wave Books).
The main conceptual framework that ties it all together is appropriation.