A LONG STORY OF OPPRESSION OF INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

Canada’s colonial past may be arguably described as the process of forcibly disconnecting Indigenous peoples from their land, disintegrating their traditional ways of life, and destroying their system of values over an extensive period of time, before confining these communities to reserves. The detrimental consequences of physical segregation enforced through the Residential School System and life on the reserves are seen to this day through the fact that most Indigenous peoples were left disconnected from their traditional culture and economically impoverished in modern-day society. One of the ways to get an accurate insight into this methodical disempowerment process would be to experience it from the Indigenous point of view by reading their literature. Thus, this paper aims at analyzing the works of Beth Brant (“A Long Story”), Emma Lee Warrior (“Compatriots”), and Emily Pauline Johnson (“A Red Girl’s Reasoning”) in the postcolonial framework in order to expose instances of both spiritual and physical discrimination as well as economic marginalization imposed on Indigenous characters in these stories.