"Talking to" and Creating Coresistances with Diasporas in Lee Maracle’s Talking to the Diaspora

Abstract

This article by Christine Campana engages three poems from Stó:lō writer Lee Maracle’s collection Talking to the Diaspora (2015) to query the term diaspora and to consider what different diasporas may gain from listening to Maracle’s “talk.” Analyzing Maracle’s representations of diasporas, in relation to Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s concept of “constellations of coresistance,” discussed in As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (2017), reveals that Maracle not only speaks back to white settlers; she also encourages creative conversations with communities of colour. The poems “Talking to the Diaspora,” “On the 25th Anniversary of Martin Luther King’s Death,” and “Remembering Mahmoud 1976” demonstrate how Maracle invites Black and Palestinian peoples rendered diasporic by settler colonialism to join her in reimagining belonging on Turtle Island in a way that prioritizes care for Indigenous lands. Without negating differences between peoples, Maracle’s poems reorient potential coresistors across time and space, reminding them of moments of coresistance and the futurities they can create together.