HyperCultura (Apr 2023)
Restor(y)ing Indigenous Sovereignty in Cherie Dimaline’s Empire of Wild
Abstract
A fascinating, multi-layered narrative, Empire of Wild was Indigo’s Best Book of 2019. Love story intersects with the reclamation of Indigenous sovereignty as a Métis woman in search of her lost husband gets in the way of neocolonialist interests. The article looks at how the novel uses the rogarou, a canine-human monster found in French-Canadian and Métis oral traditions, its meanings constructed in different discourses, to restore and ‘re-story’ the Métis in their homeland through the agency of Indigenous womanhood. In discussing the conflict between the main character, Joan, and the man who holds her husband in his power, I endeavor to demonstrate how the novel turns the colonialist discourse of Indigenous savagery on its head, exposes the dynamics of “settler memory” (Kevin Bruyneel), and engages in “re-solution” (Layli Long Soldier) as an act of meaning making from a Métis subject position. Joan’s dual otherness as a Métis (and a) woman reclaims Métis sovereignty through performing it, her (becoming) story—a process of Métis resistance and reemergence.
