Translating Earth: Indigenous Poetry, Critical Translation Practice and Social Justice
Abstract
Building on the relation between translation, bilingualism, language learning, and the actual practices of translators, this article examines the nexus between Indigenous poetry and translation, and its potential to expose readers to urgent aspects of social justice. It makes the case for the unleashing of bilingual readers’ full critical, analytical, and creative potential through a more student-centered and aesthetic approach to literary criticism that is guided by translation praxis. In addition to engaging in a theoretical dialogue with various decolonial, translation, and Indigenous and Native American theories and methods, it presents the blueprint for a collective translation exercise, supplemented by extension an analysis of valuable testimonies from some of the students who participated in the exercise and found in translation a place for reflection on what it means to translate other ways of being and to inhabit other cognitive spaces. At its core, this article represents an attempt to transform the classroom into a more open space for critical engagement where students embody the figure of the translator and, in doing so, experience the role of cultural translation in social justice actions.