A Language to Tell their Story
This article reflects on the linguistic borders imposed by colonial languages on the teaching of indigenous literatures in the context of French-speaking CEGEPs. If a disparity emerges from these borders, this is because indigenous literatures have been studied for more than forty years in English-speaking universities across Turtle Island — now called North America. However, they have been studied in the French-speaking world, in so-called Quebec, for only around fifteen years. The rather recent arrival of this new field of literary study in the CEGEP environment leads us to examine the theoretical, methodological, and institutional obstacles that professors wishing to teach, in French, indigenous literatures may encounter. It will be proposed, here, to reflect on the issues linked to the knowledge of indigenous literatures that teachers acquired during their academic education. Then, the paper will address the question of access to fundamental works on indigenous literatures written in English. Finally, based on a real-world scenario, will be discussed possible ways of integrating these literatures in institutions that remain deeply Eurocentric.