This is a co-publication with Canadian Literature - Canada's foremost literary journal - of a special double issue which focuses on literature by and about Canada's Indigenous Peoples and contains original articles and poems by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers. These not only reflect the growing prominence of contemporary Indigenous writing but also direct the reader to the traditional literature from which it springs and which has been largely misunderstood by the non-Indigenous community - rituals, and songs having been interpreted more often as artistic "curiosities" rather than the masterworks of a different culture. Essays examining the conventional portrayals of Indigenous people in literature touch on works which range from the eighteenth-century journals of explorer Alexander Mackenzie, to the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, and to early writers in Canada such as historian-humourist Thomas Chandler Haliburton.

"Canadian literature, special issue."