Coyote and Raven Go Canoeing

This book incorporates the Aboriginal oral tradition by combining poetic and dramatic voices with storytelling. The narrative takes the form of a conversation between two tricksters, Coyote and Raven, and the colonized and the colonizing peoples, on a canoe journey. Drawing on traditional Aboriginal knowledge, the poetry moves away from the containment of western poetic genres. Written in free verse, the book is intended to be read aloud. It makes the oral tradition the foundation of its scholarship. Moving beyond Eurocentric academic views of colonialism, it takes the listener to Aboriginal spaces recreated by Aboriginal peoples. Cole is a member of the Stl’atl’imx community of Xa’xtsa (Douglas First Nation).