Critical injuries: Collaborative Indigenous life writing and the ethics of criticism

The publication of collaborative Indigenous life writing places both the text and its production under public scrutiny. The same is true for the criticism of life writing. For each, publication has consequences. Taking as its starting point the recent critical concern for harm occasioned in life writing, this article argues that in the reading of collaborative Indigenous life writing, injury may eventuate from the commentary itself .... With particular regard to the collaborative texts Ingelba and the Five Black Matriarchs and [the Canadian work] Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman, this article argues that literary criticism can benefit from the practice of consultation with the Indigenous subjects whose representations it comments upon.