Reading Contemporary Indigenous Literature: Test Review

Everything for the Unit 3 test on one page: the key facts from all 7 lessons, the mistakes that cost the most marks, and a practice test that points you back to the lessons you need.

Key facts

Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature

Form is a choice that shapes meaning: ask why the writer chose this form and what a different form would lose.
Literary texts are read for implied meaning and interpretation; informational texts are read for claims, evidence and perspective.
Memoir separates the narrating self (now) from the experiencing self (then), and the writer controls what is revealed.
Graphic novels make meaning through panels, gutters, images and silence as well as words — the images are part of the text.
Poetry, drama and spoken word are built for the ear and the stage, so read them aloud to hear how they mean.
Fluency means reading with enough ease to focus on meaning, not reading fast.

Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View

Every stylistic claim needs four parts: name the element, give the evidence, explain the effect on the reader, and connect it to a theme.
Irony is a gap: verbal (said vs meant), situational (expected vs what happens), dramatic (what the audience knows vs what a character knows).
Untranslated words from an Indigenous language often signal that the language belongs in the text, and ask readers outside it to do the work.
Non-linear and circular structures let the past act on the present, and make the reader assemble the order of events.
Shifting point of view spreads authority across several narrators, so no single account is the whole truth.

Close Reading Indigenous Poetry

Analyze an image in three layers: what is literally there, what it is compared to, and what the image's qualities suggest.
Enjambment runs a sentence over a line break and pulls the reader forward; an end-stopped line pauses; a caesura breaks a line in the middle.
The speaker of a poem is a constructed voice, not automatically the poet.
Code-switching moves between languages within a text; in Indigenous poetry it can centre a language that governments tried to suppress.
Erasure poetry removes words from a source and keeps the survivors in order; found poetry reframes non-poetic language as a poem.
Louise Bernice Halfe (Cree), Marilyn Dumont (Métis), Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree) and Jordan Abel (Nisga'a) are major contemporary poets to know.

Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama

Subtext is what a character means but does not say; in drama it is carried by action, pause and staging.
Stage directions are part of the text: read them for actions that contradict the words and for meaningful silences.
Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something a character does not; staging can create it by letting the audience see what characters cannot.
In Tomson Highway's The Rez Sisters (1986), seven women set out for the biggest bingo in the world while Nanabush, seen by only some of them, moves among them.
Drew Hayden Taylor, from Curve Lake First Nation, often uses comedy to approach painful history, as in Someday (1991).
Readers' theatre relies on voice: a narrator reads key stage directions, and pace, tone and pause carry the performance.

Reading Non-Fiction and Argument

An argument has a claim, evidence, reasoning, often a counterargument, and usually a call to action.
A fact can be checked; an interpretation explains or judges; reported speech is a fact about what someone said.
Harold Cardinal's The Unjust Society (1969) answered the federal White Paper, turning the 'Just Society' slogan against the government and arguing that the policy was assimilation.
Tanya Talaga's Seven Fallen Feathers (2017) investigates the deaths of seven First Nations students in Thunder Bay between 2000 and 2011, linking them to a longer history.
Loaded words such as 'challenge', 'tragedy' or 'choice' carry frames that assign responsibility differently.
Perspective is not bias: judge an argument by its evidence and reasoning, not by whether the writer has a stake.

Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature

More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children attended residential schools; the last federally run school closed in 1996.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released 94 Calls to Action in 2015.
Survivance, a term used by Anishinaabe scholar Gerald Vizenor, combines survival and resistance: reading for active presence and strength, not only victimhood.
Retrospective narration, delayed revelation, gaps and framing narratives let writers handle trauma without turning it into spectacle.
In Indian Horse (2012), Saul narrates as an adult in recovery, and telling his story becomes part of his healing.

Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction

Indigenous futurism imagines Indigenous people, languages and knowledge in the future; the term is associated with Anishinaabe scholar Grace Dillon.
Speculative fiction uses a 'what if' premise to comment on the real past and present, through echo, reversal, continuity and warning.
The Marrow Thieves (2017) by Métis writer Cherie Dimaline imagines schools that echo residential schools in a future where Indigenous people are hunted for their marrow.
Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) by Anishinaabe writer Waubgeshig Rice follows a northern community facing collapse with knowledge it already carries.
A theme is a full-sentence claim the text supports, not a one-word topic.
Reflecting on reading strategy means naming the difficulty, the strategy used, whether it worked, and what you will change.

Where marks get lost

Summarizing the plot and calling it analysis, without explaining what the form contributes to the meaning. (Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature)
Reading a graphic novel for the speech bubbles only and skimming the images, which throws away half of the text. (Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature)
Treating a memoir like a novel — calling the writer 'the character' and speculating about invented events — instead of respecting it as a real person's account. (Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature)
Reading poetry and spoken word silently and quickly, so the pauses, repetition and rhythm that carry meaning are never heard. (Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature)
Assuming every text by an Indigenous writer follows one shared 'Indigenous style' instead of describing what this writer, from this nation, actually does. (Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature)
Naming a device ('this is irony') and stopping, with no evidence, no effect and no link to a theme. (Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View)
Reading humour as a sign that the subject is not serious, when a joke is often how a writer holds something painful up to the light. (Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View)
Dismissing a dream or an ancestral presence as 'not real' and skipping it, instead of reading it as meaningful within the world the text builds. (Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View)
Treating untranslated words as a mistake or an obstacle rather than as a deliberate choice about whose language the text centres. (Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View)
Accepting one narrator's account as the truth in a multi-voiced text, when the structure is designed to make you weigh versions against each other. (Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View)
Jumping to 'the poem is about…' before paraphrasing the literal meaning line by line. (Close Reading Indigenous Poetry)
Ignoring line breaks and white space and reading a poem as if it were prose. (Close Reading Indigenous Poetry)
Assuming the speaker is the poet, and reporting the speaker's feelings as the poet's biography. (Close Reading Indigenous Poetry)
Treating an untranslated Indigenous word as an obstacle to skip, instead of asking what the switch does. (Close Reading Indigenous Poetry)
Analyzing an erasure poem without looking at its source and what was removed. (Close Reading Indigenous Poetry)
Skipping stage directions as if they were not part of the text, and missing the actions that carry the subtext. (Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama)
Reading dialogue only for its literal meaning, without asking what the character wants but does not say. (Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama)
Discussing a play only as a story, with no attention to how staging, lighting and sound shape what the audience understands. (Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama)
Explaining a trickster figure such as Nanabush with general claims about 'Indigenous beliefs' instead of analyzing what the figure does in this play. (Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama)
Using an accent, costume or makeup to 'play' an Indigenous character in readers' theatre instead of performing the character's intentions through voice. (Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama)
Summarizing what a non-fiction text is about without stating its claim in one sentence. (Reading Non-Fiction and Argument)
Treating every sentence as fact, or every sentence as opinion, instead of separating checkable facts from interpretation. (Reading Non-Fiction and Argument)
Calling a writer 'biased' because of their identity or stake in the issue, rather than showing distorted evidence. (Reading Non-Fiction and Argument)
Listing evidence without explaining the reasoning that connects it to the claim. (Reading Non-Fiction and Argument)
Missing the frame carried by loaded words such as 'challenge', 'tragedy' or 'crisis'. (Reading Non-Fiction and Argument)
Writing that residential schools are simply 'in the past', when the texts themselves show effects carried through families and communities today. (Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature)
Filling in a writer's deliberate silence with invented details, instead of analyzing why the text leaves it unsaid. (Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature)
Describing characters only as victims, ignoring the resilience, humour, language and relationships the writer took care to show. (Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature)
Confusing what an adult narrator understands looking back with what the child character knew at the time. (Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature)
Using a Survivor's real account as raw material for dramatic retelling instead of crediting and centring their own words. (Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature)
Dismissing speculative fiction as 'not realistic' and missing that its imagined future is a comment on real history and the present. (Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction)
Writing a theme as a single word such as 'survival' instead of a full claim about what the text suggests. (Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction)
Retelling the premise as if it were analysis, without explaining what the future echoes, reverses or warns about. (Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction)
Reading past unfamiliar terms and world-building rules without tracking them, so confusion builds chapter by chapter. (Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction)
Writing reading reflections that only say 'it was hard' or 'I liked it', without naming a specific strategy and whether it worked. (Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction)

Practice test

21 questions from across the unit. Each one shows the lesson it comes from.

Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature
1
A writer wants a long silence to be visible to the reader, not just described. Which form gives the most direct tool for that?
Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature
2
Match each form to the reading strategy that suits it best.
Poetry
Drama
Memoir
Graphic novel
Short story
Text Forms in Contemporary Indigenous Literature
3
Name the Ojibwe writer of the 2012 novel Indian Horse.
Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View
4
A character stands in pouring rain after a disastrous day and says, 'Well, this is going great.' What kind of irony is this?
Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View
5
What type of irony occurs when the audience knows something that a character does not?
Stylistic Elements: Humour, Language, Time, Dreams and Point of View
6
What is the term for humour delivered with a straight face, where the flat tone makes the joke?
Close Reading Indigenous Poetry
7
In the erasure example in this lesson, the source sentence has 26 words and the erasure keeps 9. How many words were erased? (Give a whole number.)
Close Reading Indigenous Poetry
8
Match each poet to a description.
Louise Bernice Halfe
Marilyn Dumont
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Jordan Abel
Close Reading Indigenous Poetry
9
Match each feature to its usual effect.
Enjambment
End-stopped line
White space
Stanza break
Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama
10
In the kitchen scene written for this lesson, how many separate speeches does Roy have? (Give a whole number.)
Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama
11
Match each dramatic element to what it does.
Stage direction
Aside
Lighting change
Blocking
Reading and Staging Indigenous Drama
12
A group's readers' theatre script includes a scene with a ceremonial song. What is the most respectful approach?
Reading Non-Fiction and Argument
13
In the Birch Lake editorial, eleven students left and four were home again before December. What percentage returned early? (Round to the nearest whole percent.)
%
Reading Non-Fiction and Argument
14
Put these events in order from earliest to latest.
1. 1Seven Fallen Feathers is published
2. 2The last of the seven student deaths examined in the book
3. 3The first of the seven student deaths examined in Seven Fallen Feathers
4. 4The federal government releases the White Paper
5. 5The Indian Association of Alberta publishes Citizens Plus
Reading Non-Fiction and Argument
15
Match each piece of evidence to its type.
A parent describing her son's last phone call
A treaty text promising schools
Four of eleven students returning early
A coroner's inquest finding
Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature
16
In what year did the last federally run residential school close?
Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature
17
Match each technique to its purpose.
Delayed revelation
Gaps and silences
Framing narrative
Multiple generations
Attention to sources of strength
Residential Schools, Survival and Resilience in Literature
18
How many Calls to Action did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission release in 2015?
Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction
19
Cherie Dimaline, author of The Marrow Thieves, is from which people?
Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction
20
Match each way a speculative story comments on reality to its description.
Echo
Reversal
Continuity
Warning
Indigenous Futurism and Speculative Fiction
21
Why does the idea that many Indigenous communities have 'already survived the end of a world' matter for reading Moon of the Crusted Snow?

Endless drill

Fresh numbers every time, for the calculation questions in this unit.

Endless drillnew numbers every time

Generating a problem…