Emma LaRocque | |
---|---|
Born | Big Bay, Alberta, Canada | 2 January 1949
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Thesis | Native Writers Resisting Colonizing Practices in Canadian Historiography and Literature[1] (1999) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Native studies |
Institutions | University of Manitoba |
Notable works | When the Other Is Me (2010) |
Emma LaRocque (born 1949) is a Canadian academic of Cree and Métis descent. She is currently a professor of Native American studies at the University of Manitoba.[2]
She is also a published poet, writing brief, imagist poems about her ancestral land and culture.[3] LaRocque's works have critically engaged topics such as Indigenous identities, contemporary Indigenous literature, postcolonial literary criticism, decolonization and resistance, and Indigenous representation in Canadian history, literature, and popular culture.[4]
LaRocque has published works in numerous fields, making her work relevant to a diverse array of scholars. LaRocque's work offers a nuanced conception of Indigenous literatures as resistance, and brings misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in Canada to light. Such contributions have had reverberations in Native Studies, sociology,[5] education, and poetry alike. LaRocque is also known for her deconstruction of the "civilized/savage" dichotomy, which she problematizes in relation to her own Métis identity.[6]
LaRocque was born in the remote community of Big Bay, Alberta, near the town of Lac La Biche. She came from a family of fur trappers, and was one of the first in her family to receive a formal education.[3] Despite her parents' uneasiness toward their daughter's enthusiasm for education, the author-to-be "howled [her] way into school".[7] Though English was not LaRocque's first language, this did not impede her from excelling in her early education.[7] After she completed high school, LoRocque worked as a counsellor for juvenile criminal offenders.[4] LaRocque also worked as a teacher at the Janvier 194 reserve until 1971, when she moved to the United States to attend Goshen College, Indiana.[8]
In 1973, LaRocque graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and English from Goshen College, and later attended the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in peace studies in 1976.[9] Before entering academia herself, she briefly worked as a reporter and editor for Native People, a newspaper published by the Alberta Native Communications Society.[8]
LaRocque joined the University of Manitoba faculty in 1976, and received a second Master of Arts degree in 1980, in Canadian history. She completed a doctorate in 1999 from the University of Manitoba, on the subject of "Aboriginal resistance literature".[9]