From Marginalized Subject to Sovereign Self: Autobiography as a Means of Talking Back in James Tyman's Inside Out

Abstract

A recent report by the Government of Canada‘s Office of the Correctional Investigator states officially what many have known for a long time to be true: the prison population of Canada is grossly over-represented by indigenous people: “Today, 21% of the federal inmate population claims Aboriginal ancestry” the report states, despite the fact that indigenous peoples comprise only 4.3% of the larger population, according to the 2011 National Household Survey (see Spirit Matters: Aboriginal People and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, 22 Oct. 2012). This terrifying disparity in numbers only reveals part of a much larger problem in Canada‘s relation to indigenous peoples, however: the targeting of and systemic discrimination against indigenous people by the so-called justice system in this country is part of a multifaceted set of interlocking racist and colonialist structures. There are, of course, individuals and communities behind these statistical and institutional analyses, and any attempt to attack the biases inherent in those structures must begin with their voices and stories. Jesse Abell‘s thoughtful engagement with James Tyman‘s Inside Out provides a wonderful example of a careful listening to one such story, as she responds to Tyman‘s own careful articulation of the wide-ranging emotional, social, and political effects of those racist and colonial structures and their expression in the prison system.

Dr. Jason Haslam