From SFU News...

Deanna Reder, associate professor in First Nations Studies and English is among five SFU faculty members recently named to the Royal Society of Canada.

Reder and Hugh Cardoso (Archaeology) were elected as members to the College of New Scholars while while Fiona Brinkman (Molecular Biology and Biochemistry), Richard Lockhart (Statistics and Actuarial Science), and Jin-me Yoon (Contemporary Arts), were named Fellows.

Reder exemplifies outstanding leadership and scholarship in her many contributions to the growing field of Indigenous literary studies. Her research focuses on previously unpublished work by Indigenous writers—Edward Ahenakew, Vera Manuel, James Brady, Maria Campbell, Alootook Ipellie—in order to bring attention to the longstanding and critically neglected Indigenous archive.

Her work challenges the assumption of a binary division between the oral and the literary, and champions autobiography as Indigenous intellectual tradition and theoretical practice. She has focused on collaborative work to produce some of the first anthologies on Indigenous fiction and literary criticism in Canada, as well as a major database project on Indigenous writing in northern North America, up until 1992. She is a founding member of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA), established in 2013, and was its second president. She is also the co-chair of the Indigenous Voices Awards, designed to support emerging voices.

“Canadians have been deprived of impressive, provocative, challenging and visionary writing by Indigenous authors, some who have written before Canada began,” says Reder. “My work is to bring these authors back into scholarly conversations and public access while at the same time celebrating a new generation of upcoming writers.”

Reder will be recognized with other award recipients at the inductee ceremony in November 2018.

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