About

Cree-Métis scholar Dr. Deanna Reder did not study Indigenous literatures as an undergraduate.  At the time such courses did not exist at her university.  Propelled by this lack, she began to read outside of the conventional canon, with a keen eye on texts written by Cree or Métis authors.  By the time she began her doctoral work in 2001, the field began to shift and a generation of 21^st Century Indigenous writers began to be published.  However, she continued to be drawn to texts by Indigenous authors that were written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, that were seemingly forgotten.  

Hired in 2007 at Simon Fraser University she began by developing courses and curriculum for the Department of English and what is now the Department of Indigenous Studies, increasingly aware of the infrastructure that needed to be developed to establish Indigenous literary studies as separate from Postcolonial Studies and Canadian Literature.  As a strategy to grow the field she served as Series Editor for the Indigenous Studies Series at Wilfrid Laurier University Press from 2010 to 2021.  In 2014 she organized, with Dr. Linda Morra, a SSHRC-funded conference called “How Shall We Teach These?” that helped workshop two much-needed textbooks for the field:  Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures (edited by Reder and Morra and released by WLUP, 2016); and Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island (edited by Sophie McCall, Reder, David Gaertner, and Gabrielle Hill and released by WLUP, 2017). 

Reder has also been part of the generation of scholars working to support the field of Indigenous literary studies.  She is one of the founding members of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA)  (see indigenousliterarystudies.org) as well as one of the founding members the Indigenous Editors Association (IEA) (see www.indigenouseditorsassociation.com). 

In 2015, as part of a project called "The People and the Text" or TPatT, Reder worked with a team of Indigenous and settler scholars to give scholarly attention to the neglected Indigenous archive.  See www.thepeopleandthetext.ca/about . While there are many projects that have developed out of TPatT, one of the most famous is the discovery by then PhD student (and TPatT RA) Alix Shield, of a missing passage that had been edited out of the original release of Maria Campbell’s famously influential autobiography, Halfbreed.  News of this find was broken in 2018 by academic journal Canadian Literature, then under the leadership of UBC’s Laura Moss, who published Shield and Reder’s article titled “‘I write this for all of you’: Recovering the Unpublished RCMP ‘Incident’ in Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (1973).” 

Also as a result of TPatT research is Reder’s monograph, Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowina, published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in 2022. Reder relies upon nêhiyâwiwin (Cree language) concepts and personal experiences to consider Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed, alongside unpublished writing by authors such as James Settee, Edward Ahenakew, James Brady, and Harold Cardinal.

Other notable publications include the release of an anthology of mostly previously unpublished writing by the late Secwep’emc-Ktunaxa dramatherapist and author, Vera Manuel. Working with Michelle Coupal, Emalene Manuel, and Joanne Arnott this team released Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poems with the University of Manitoba Press in 2019.

Also in Summer 2022 she and Michelle Coupal were guest-editors for a special issue of Studies in American Indian Literature 34: volume 1&2 titled How We Teach Indigenous Literatures. Focusing on the need for supports for teachers in this emerging field, the issue includes a wide array of syllabi from article authors that others can consult as they build their own courses

While academic writing is a core aspect of Reder’s activities, she has also been part of publications that are focused on community concerns. For example, at the behest of her uncle, Reder worked with her cousin Eric Bell and with researcher Michael Nest to search for the truth about the disappearance without a trace of Métis leader James Brady and Cree band councillor Absolum Halkett in June 1967; to Uncle Frank Tomkins and many Indigenous people in Northern Saskatchewan, the conclusion by the authorities that Brady and Halkett had gotten lost in the bush was unfathomable. Bell, Nest and Reder’s search resulted in the publication of Cold Case North, published by University of Regina Press in 2020, and instigated the re-opening of the investigation by the RCMP that is still on-going.

Likewise, since 2017 Reder has worked with Sophie McCall, Sam McKegney, Sarah Henzi, and recently Marie-Eve Bradette, Jordan Abel, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Carleigh Baker to administer the Indigenous Voices Awards (IVAs) (see indigenousvoicesawards.org). To celebrate over $180,000.00 distributed, Penguin Random House Canada released Carving Space: the Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology in 2023, featuring a selection of finalists honoured in the first six years of the prize. (As of June 2024 the IVAs will have awarded more than $204,000.00 to emerging Indigenous authors.)

Honours

In Fall 2018 Reder was inducted into the College of New Scholars, Artist, & Scientists in the Royal Society of Canada and in 2021 she received the Dr. Ambedkar Chetna Arts and Literature Award from the Chetna Association. 

In May 2023 her monograph, Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowina was awarded the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian literary criticism (English section) by the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL). 

Contact

T: 778.782.8192
E: dhr@sfu.ca
Room: RCB 8205

Department of Indigenous Studies
8888 University Drive
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada