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Deanna Helen Reder is a Cree-Métis associate professor of English and the Chair of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University. Reder was elected a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018. As a faculty member at Simon Fraser University, she was a founding member of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA) and served on the council from 2015 to 2018. In 2019 she helped establish the Indigenous Editors Association (IEA) and served as its "Past-President" from 2020 to 2021.

Early life and education

While Reder has family all over the Canadian prairies, her Cree speaking Cree and Métis family come from La Ronge, and historically from Île-à-la-Crosse and surrounding communities, including Lac Doré, Green Lake, and Sled Lake Saskatchewan. Her father was a corporal in the Canadian Armed Forces and the family lived on army bases until Reder was ten years old. Her parents did not graduate high school.

Reder says she began to understand the significance of autobiography when her mother read "Halfbreed" by Maria Campbell, and was excited to read a book that accurately represented her life. Growing up, Reder says that little Indigenous literature was taught in the school system, so that the only Indigenous author that she was assigned to read throughout her entire K-12 education was Pauline Johnson's poem "The Song my Paddle Sings."

While attending York University for her Masters of Arts, Reder wanted to focus on Indigenous literatures but found it difficult to find enough courses on the topic. She instead focused on nineteenth-century Canadian literature, noting that the focus was on settlers rather than Indigenous authors. After earning her MA, Reder took a break from her studies, returning in 2001 to begin her PhD.

Career

In 2007, Reder was hired as an assistant professor in the Department of English and the First Nations Studies Program at Simon Fraser University.

In 2010, Reder published "Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations" with Linda M. Morra through Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Troubling Tricksters was an anthology of essays revolving around the trickster discourse in Indigenous literature.

In 2012, the First Nations Program at SFU was established as the Department of First Nations Studies at SFU. (In 2019 the department changed its name to The Department of Indigenous Studies.)The new department, which became effective in April 2012, included certificates in First Nations studies research and major, minor, and joint major with archaeology and linguistics. The following year, Reder was part of a council of Indigenous and settler scholars that founded the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA). As president of ILSA, she coordinated with Sam McKegney at Queen's, and with Sophie McCall at SFU and various other ILSA members, to organize the Indigenous Voices Awards in order to recognize emerging Indigenous authors in Canada.

In 2015, she became a Co-Investigator with Daniel Heath Justice and Margery Fee on a SSHRC-funded project called The People And The Text. The project aimed to collect literature by Indigenous authors that either never were published or had fallen out of print. Two years later, Reder edited Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island with Sophie McCall, David Gaertner, and Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill.

In 2018, Reder and Alix Shield published documents that had been omitted from "Halfbreed" in 1973, against the wishes of author Maria Campbell, by the book's editors, at the last moment before publication. The documents were Campbell's account of being raped by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers as a youth. She was also elected a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada.

She sits on the Board of Directors of the non-profit Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. In June 2019, Reder was part of the SFU Art Cluster that elected to remove a piece of art that misrepresented Aboriginal people as passive and accepting of the colonization of British Columbia.

Publications

• Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations (2010), edited with Linda M. Morra
• Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures (2016), edited with Linda M. Morra
• Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island (2017), Edited with Lead Editor Sophie McCall, as well as David Gaertner and Gabrielle L'hirondelle Hill
• Honouring the Strength of Indian women: Plays, Stories, Poetry (2019), Edited with Michelle Coupal, Joanne Arnott, and Emalene A. Manuel

References

1. "2014 SWG Fall Conference in partnership with Ânskohk Aboriginal Literature Festival: B-Sides and Other Stories". skwriter.com. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
2. Deanna Helen Reder (2007). Acimisowin as theoretical practice : autobiography as indigenous intellectual tradition in Canada. open.library.ubc.ca (Thesis). p. 1. doi:10.14288/1.0100677. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
3. Sophie McCall; Deanna Reder; David Gaertner; Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill (June 30, 2017). Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN 9781771123020. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
4. Alix Shield; Deanna Reder. ""I write this for all of you": Recovering the Unpublished RCMP "Incident" in Maria Campbell's Halfbreed (1973)". canlit.ca. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
5. ^ Jo-Ann Episkenew; Deanna Reder. "Tâwaw cî?: Aboriginal Faculty, Students, and Content in the University English Department". academicmatters.ca. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
6. Giuseppina, Botta (July 1, 2011). "Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations". British Journal of Canadian Studies. 24. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
7. Graham Cook (May 7, 2012). "First Nations studies granted departmental status". the-peak.ca. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
8. Samson, Natalie (July 11, 2018). "How a scholarly association is helping Indigenous writers to thrive". universityaffairs.ca. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
9. "Cree-Métis prof earns top academic honour". sfu.ca. May 13, 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
10. "The Promise of Paradise: Reading, Researching, and Using the Private Library — Jun 17-18, 2016". spokenweb.ca. Archived from the original on May 1, 2019. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
11. "About the Project". thepeopleandthetext.ca. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
12. Meredith K. James (Fall 2018). "Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island by ed. by Sophie McCall et al. (review)". The American Indian Quarterly. 42 (4). v: 548–550. doi:10.5250/amerindiquar.42.4.0548. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
13. Deibert, Dave (June 1, 2018). "Publisher exploring new edition of 'Halfbreed' after excised rape passage discovered". The Star Phoenix. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
14. "Deanna Reder elected to the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars". sfu.ca. September 11, 2018. Archived from the original on November 4, 2018. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
15. "Board of Directors". ideas-idees.ca. Archived from the original on July 10, 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
16. "Controversial Charles Comfort mural will no longer be displayed at SFU". the-peak.ca. June 24, 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2019.

• Living people
• York University alumni
• Concordia University alumni
• University of British Columbia alumni
• Academic staff of Simon Fraser University
• 21st-century Canadian non-fiction writers
• Canadian women non-fiction writers
• 21st-century Canadian women writers
• Canadian women academics
• First Nations women writers
• Canadian Métis women
• Indigenous Canadian women academics
• First Nations academics