Preeminent Métis poet Marilyn Dumont has spent a lifetime unlearning the racist discourses that permeated her formal education. She grew up in a colonial schooling system more interested in erasing her identity – what Dumont calls a legacy of gaslighting – than providing students with an accurate portrayal of Canadian history. Even though she began writing at a very young age, Dumont tells host David Wylynko that for a while she gave up writing all together, before finding her interest rekindled during her university years.
Since then, Dumont has been writing to correct our interpretations of Canadian history and how the Métis are perceived. Much has changed in that time. Today, Dumont teaches Indigenous literature and creative writing at the University of Alberta. She focuses strongly on Indigegogy, which brings to the classroom Indigenous knowledge, literature, and scholarship and is focused on land-based education. But Dumont is still correcting Canadian history through poetry. Her latest collection, South Side of a Kinless River, is described as poetry that wrestles with concepts of Métis identity in a nation and territory that would rather erase it. Dumont explains why she is still a long way from putting down the pen.
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