Workshop Abstracts

Friday 9am Workshops:

Debbie Reese: With Blogs and Children's Books: "We Talk, You Listen"

Joseph Bruchac, Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Louise Erdrich, Richard Van Camp, and Sherman Alexie have written books for children and young adults that affirm and reflect the experiences of Native readers while simultaneously informing non-Native readers that we are still here. Their writing will be featured in this session. Their writing will be featured and compared to racist stereotypical imagery found in classic works such as Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie.

Brenda Child: Locating a Middle Ground in Academic Writing: Engaging Tribal Audiences

This conversation will address some of the complex issues involved in engaging tribal audiences in our academic writing, especially as practices of the academy or misinterpretations hinder the establishment of relationships, even in an era when scholars often seek to engage in thoughtful community-based research and methodologies.  I will draw on my own career as a historian and tribal member to suggest that collaborations often open new lines of inquiry.

Charlene Bearskin: The Storyteller: The Union of the Spoken and Written Word of an American Indian

This workshop will explore the relationships between storytelling and story writing using some of the works of Master Storytellers Donald Davis, Elizabeth Ellis, Rafe Martin, Michael Parent, and Tim Tingle. We will be using story prompts to develop a workable model for writing.

Friday 11am Workshops:

Bill Penn: Fidgey: Saying what you have to tell

This is a workshop on the writing of the creative non-fiction essay, its structure and purpose. It will include discussion of how the Native American essay may differ from most other essays in tone and sentence struture. I will also discuss injecting humor and making sure the audience gets it will be primary focal points.

Ellen Cushman: Digital Storytelling: Composing our Lives with Pictures, Words and Sound

This workshop will introduce digital stories and show how they're made. We'll work together or individually to storyboard your ideas. Participants who would like to learn how to translate their storyboards into a full-fledged digital story can sign up for a full day workshop sponsored by the American Indian Studies Program and the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers, to be offered in an MSU computer lab in early May.

Jim Northrup: The Writer's Life (How I saved Minnesota)/Ingii Ozhibii'ige ezhiwaybak ishkoniganing

I shall use writing exercises from my time in the Writers In The Schools program, including ‘How I build a character’, ‘How writers alter time’, ‘The Most Important Rule About Writing’, and “Writers are Observers’.

Friday 2pm workshops

Helen Roy: The Culture Embodied in Our Words

Not enough people know what our Anishnaabe words truly mean. This presentation will constitute explanations of words, the cultural contents, and what words really mean in comparison with the dominant lanaguage - English.

LaVonne Ruoff: My Life, My Nation, My Culture: American Indian Life Histories and Autobiographies

As editor of the University of Nebraska Press’ Series ‘American Indian Lives’, I have worked with several Native Americans writing their autobiographies. The topics to be discussed include a brief history of Native life histories, types of narrated and written life histories, suggestions about transcribing and editing narrated autobiographies, and tips on writing one's own life history.

Eric Gansworth: The Reading as Rock Concert or Designing an Inviting Set List

This session focuses on an area of a writer's career often overlooked in many craft talks:  the reading.  We will examine strategies for making the prose/poetry reading an integral and satisfying part of audience-building for a writer, discussing reasons for this need, including potential pitfalls and more importantly, ways of implementing effective decisions for honing the art of public presentation. 

Friday 4pm workshops

LeAnne Howe: Ghostwriting, or Writing with Ghosts

In both my novels, the first characters I wrote about were ghosts. In 1987, an ancient looking old Indian walked out of the wall of my office in Arlington Texas and began telling his story as a bone picker.  I took notes, as his voice seemed to enter my mind.  After I got to know him better, his name became Koi Chitto, [Big Cat] the husband of Shakbatina in Shell Shaker.  In 1999, or thereabouts, I dreamed about a Choctaw baseball player.  His hands had been cut off at the wrists yet I saw him reaching up towards the sky, trying to catch a baseball.  His name became Hope Little Leader, the pitcher for the Miko Kings, my latest novel. 

Pun Plamondon: Our Stories are Healing Stories

Stories can heal individuals, families, communities and nations. Telling stories heals the teller as well as the listener.

Richard Van Camp: The Portrayal of Aboriginal People in Comic Books and Graphic Novels

In this workshop, Dogrib (Tlicho) author, Richard Van Camp will discuss how comic books are made, talk about his work as an editor with the Healthy Aboriginal Network in Vancouver, BC, (publisher of /Standing Together/ and /Darkness Calls/ as well as six new forthcoming titles) and give a brief history of how Aboriginal people have been portrayed and continue to be portrayed in illustrated literature.

Saturday 9am workshops

Daryl Baldwin: myaamiaataweenki: aapoosi iilaataweenki / The Miami Language: Spoken Again

The Myaamia (Miami) language was once widely spoken throughout the lower great Lakes region up until the 19th century. By the 1960s the last remaining speakers had passed, causing the language to fall into disuse. Utilizing 250 years of language documentation, members of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma have picked up the loose threads of their linguistic and cultural fabric and have begun to weave a new future. This language and cultural revitalization movement is shaping the future by empowering a new generation of youth to aid the rebuilding process of their nation.

Pun Plamondon: Self Publishing - How I Did It

Real democracy in the publishing world. One man's story.

Daniel Heath Justice: Imagining Otherwise: Expanding the Boundaries of Indigenous Speculative Fiction

While many Indigenous writers and both Native and non-Native critics engage questions (and debates) of "realism" in contemporary Indigenous literature, a number of Native writers have looked to the explicitly fantastic to explore political, cultural, and aesthetic issues of concern to Native communities.  While some readers and critics have championed these texts as expanding the imaginative potential of Native literature, others have expressed concern about the dangers that explicitly fantastical texts pose to the real material struggles of communities that have been grossly and often brutally misrepresented through the European imaginary for centuries.  This workshop will explore both the pitfalls and possibilities of such works, both within the larger body of Native literature itself and in its relationship to a wide and varied readership.

Saturday 11am Workshops

David Treuer:The Cultural Pose -- How Literature 'Fakes It' Every Time

This presentation explores how culture is created on the page and how the question of "writing culture" is really the question of "righting culture." By exploring literature from the 19th and 20th centuries (as well as including a discussion of my own) I will show how Native American literature is an expression of a pose, not a truth, and will highlight some of the dangers of literary nationalism along the way.

Scott Lyons: Beyond the Moccasin Telegraph: Commentary, the Essay, and the Public Intellectual

This session will examine the role of the "public intellectual" in history, theory, and practice.  Of particular concern will be questions regarding the cultural and political functions of Native American public intellectuals in particular.  What do they do, and what shouldn't they do?  Who and what do they represent?  What responsibilities do they carry, and what effects can they produce?  Finally, what is the proper relationship between the Native American public intellectual and his or her tribal nation? 

Janet Marie Rogers: Down There: Using Writing Prompts to Stimulate the Pen

Words have many lives. They lay flat, submissive if you will, on the page waiting... They dance into our ears, they are visual art and they command actors to speak. Given the prompt - Down There - writers will see just how far the written word is willing to be stretched.

Saturday 2pm workshops

Dylan Miner: Aboriginality, Art, and Anti-Colonialism: Writing About Contemporary Native Art

This workshop will discuss the role that art and theory perform within Indigenous anti-colonial movements.  Participants will inquire about the constitutive role the arts play in Indigenous national liberation and/or community self-determination.  While anthropologists commonly analyze ‘traditional’ artistic practices, this workshop investigates those artists working within ‘contemporary’ visual idioms and places importance on the dialectic between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity.’  In opposition to the maxim that Western visual culture is purely ‘art for art’s sake,’ we will discuss why contemporary art is fundamental to vibrant and sustainable Indigenous nations.  Moreover, what may an Indigenous theory of art look like and how do we write about contemporary Native art?

Anton Treuer: Traditional Ojibwe Literature: Definition, Meaning and Use

Dr. Anton Treuer, Associate Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University will discuss what Ojibwe oral literature is, and myriad of uses for it as literature, history, culture and tribal language resource material. He will also discuss the benefits and barriers to accessing and using the oral tradition in scholarly pursuits.

Asani: Song Creating

Join Asani in exploring some of the elements of song creation Asani style! This is an interactive workshop based on the oral transmission of knowledge and sound, where workshop participants are encouraged to experiment along with us. After a brief vocal/body warm-up, we will use our voices and our bodies to create percussion and vocal phrases as the inspiration for song creation (this is a group project; no one will be singled out!). Throughout the process Asani will share some of our own song creation techniques. Come prepared to share your creativity, your voice and your sense of humour as we explore, together, a path to song creation.

Saturday 4pm Workshops

Angela Haas: Inscribing the World: Memory and Meaning in Traditional Rock Art

Indigenous people have drawn, painted, and etched on rock for millenia, to communicate ideas about their worlds. This workshop will explore rock art as part of the recorded memories of Native communities.

Malea Powell: Academic Publishing, NDN-style

Ever feel like academic prose makes you sound more boring than you are, or that it hems you in when you're trying to be theoretically expansive? But when you try to incorporate other genres (memoir, creative nonfiction or poetry, for example), your efforts fall flat? This workshop focuses specifically on how to think about alternatives to traditional academic prose writing. To get the most out of this workshop, participants should bring a specific sample of/plan for a scholarly piece of writing that you have "alternative" ideas for but that you need help with enacting.

Qwo-Li Driskill: Idigalvladi ale Nanadvnehv/ Stories and Performance

Performance provides a vehicle to bring our stories, histories, and imagined futures to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Using interactive theater techniques and storytelling, this interactive workshop will provide participants with a foundation to transfer personal stories into public performance contexts. Accessibility: Please refrain from wearing perfume, cologne, aftershave, or other scented products to this workshop.