Stories in a New Skin

In an age where southern power-holders look north and see only vacant polar landscapes, isolated communities, and exploitable resources, it is important to point out that the Inuit homeland is, in fact, united by extensive philosophical, political, and literary traditions. Stories in a New Skinis a seminal text that confirms the "national" scope of Inuit literature and introduces a model for Inuit literary criticism. Author Keavy Martin analyses writing and storytelling from a range of genres and historical periods the classic stories and songs of the oral tradition, life writing, oral histories, and contemporary fiction, poetry and film and discusses the ways in which these texts constitute a national literary tradition. She highlights characteristics of Inuit intellectual discourse, demonstrates potential approaches to the material, and introduces ways of drawing methodologies from the texts themselves. Moving beyond simple advocacy for greater inclusiveness, she also interrogates the ways in which the call for greater recognition of Inuit texts in the academy and the processes whereby they have been excluded both demonstrate the ongoing pseudo-colonial biases and expectations of literary studies in Canada.