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| Contents |
| | Acknowledgements | |
| |
| 1. | Introduction: Alter-Native Spaces | 9 |
| 1.1 | Literary Criticism and Native Literary Spaces: An Overview | 13 |
| 1.2 | The Urgency of Space I: Thomas King's "Borders" | 17 |
| 1.3 | The Urgency of Space II: An Outline of this Study | 21 |
| |
| 2. | Interdisciplinary Encounters: Theorizing Concepts of 'Space' in Native Literature | 26 |
2.1
| Literary and Cultural Theories: Conceptualizations of Space
| 27 | |
| 2.1.1 | Stasis, Surfaces and the Blindness of the Reader | 27 |
| 2.1.2 | Going 'Beyond': Third Spaces and Heterotopias | 32 |
| 2.1.3 | Indigenous Concepts of Space | 36 |
| 2.2 | Place, Text, Culture: Constructions of Textual Space | 40 |
| 2.2.1 | Place and Space | 40 |
| 2.2.2 | Space and the Literary Text | 43 |
| 2.3 | Language and Spatial Practice | 47 |
| 2.3.1 | "Writing in the Oral Tradition" | 50 |
| 2.3.2 | The Experience of Space: Textual Bodies | 57 |
| |
| 3. | Spatial Histories: Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead | 65 |
| 3.1 | Mapping I: The Five Hundred Year Map | 67 |
| 3.2 | City of Thieves: Tucson, Arizona | 74 |
| 3.2.1 | (De-)Constructing the Body and the City | 78 |
| 3.2.2 | Making D Tactics of Survival and Spatial Transformation | 83 |
| 3.3 | Border Paradoxes: Textual Constructions and Disappearances | 87 |
| 3.3.1 | The U.S.-Mexican Border: Borderlands and Borderlines | 87 |
| 3.3.2 | Coyote Country: Border Crossings | 91 |
| 3.3.3 | Border Place and Transnational Spaces | 99 |
| 3.4 | Mapping II: The Almanac | 110 |
| 3.4.1 | Traveling North: The Journey of the Almanac | 114 |
| 3.4.2 | Material Prophesies: Charting Time and Space | 117 |
| 3.5 | Alter-Native Spatial Histories? | 121 |
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| 4. | Body Spaces: Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen | 127 |
| 4.1 | Stories and Structure: Productions of Textual Spaces | 128 |
| 4.1.1 | Music and Dance | 128 |
| 4.1.2 | The Fur Queen and the Weetigo | 130 |
| 4.2 | Weetigo Territory: Birch Lake Indian Residential School | 134 |
| 4.2.1 | Sexual Violence | 138 |
| 4.2.2 | Language Policies and Silences between Languages | 143 |
| 4.3 | Urban Spaces | 147 |
| 4.3.1 | Different Urban Texts: Winnipeg and Toronto | 148 |
| 4.3.2 | Story Spaces: The Monster and the Mall | 154 |
| 4.3.3 | Marginal Places: Gender, Power, and Sexuality | 160 |
| 4.4 | Staging Stories: Performance Spaces | 169 |
| 4.4.1 | Space, Performance, Narration | 170 |
| 4.4.2 | Textual Productions of Performance Spaces | 173 |
| 4.5 | Bodies, Space, and Cultural Politics | 183 |
| |
| 5. | Bears in the Cities: Gerald Vizenor's Dead Voices | 186 |
| 5.1 | Spatial Transformations: The Wanaki Game | 195 |
| 5.1.1 | "Stones": Story as Place of Beginnings and Intersections | 196 |
| 5.1.2 | Familiar Trails and Trickster Cards: Spatial Ensembles of the Wanaki Game | 202 |
5.2
| Deconstructing Urban Spaces: Animal Shadows in the City | 208 |
| 5.2.1 | The Narrated Body: Experiences of Space | 211 |
| 5.2.2 | Eucalyptus Grove and Flea Bench: Story Places | 221 |
| 5.2.3 | Save Them From Their Dead Voices: Tricking Institutions of Dominance | 225 |
5.3
| Mirrors and Windows: Thresholds of Spatial Transformation | 233 |
| 5.3.1 | Windows, Fences, and Cages: Arbitrary Boundaries | 234 |
| 5.3.2 | Bears in the Mirror: Material Metaphors | 240 |
| 5.3.3 | Transformations of the Body: Narrative Thresholds | 244 |
| 5.4 | Dead Voices, Living Story: Language, Experience, and Space | 247 |
| 5.4.1 | The Immediacy of Spatial Experience: Haiku Language | 247 |
| 5.4.2 | "Red Pinwheels in the Window": Haiku, Space, and Experience | 250 |
| 5.5 | Trickster Spatiality | 256 |
| |
| 6. | Alter-Native Spaces? Concluding Remarks | 259 |
| 6.1 | A Multitude of Cities: Urban Spaces and Cultural Agendas | 259 |
| 6.2 | The "Literary Mode of Knowing" and the Return of the Reader | 262 |
| 6.3 | Alter-Native Spaces: Storytelling and Cultural Intervention | 266 |
| 6.4 | Works Cited and Consulted | 269 |