| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis, utilizing the works of contemporary post-colonial critics and
authors, I argue that poetry is a medium through which Aboriginal women can reclaim
control over the construction of Aboriginal female identities. I also argue that language
has played an important role in the history of colonization. Firstly as a venue in which the
colonizers could construct a perception of the world in which an ideological subjugation
of Indigenous peoples is not only appropriate, but necessary. Second, as a venue in which
Indigenous writers can address the disconnectedness of the colonially constructed reality,
and, lastly, as a space in which Native writers can reconstruct history, the world, and
Aboriginal identity according to their own multi-cultural and individual perspectives.
Through close readings of poetry by three Aboriginal women in Canada, I argue that each
poet’s active engagement with the socially constructed relationship between signifiers
and signifieds allows them to re-codify the English language in ways that accommodate
their own multi-cultural and individual perspectives. | |
