Survivance Stories: Indigenous Resistance and Cultural Labour in Canada

How do Indigenous cultural workers, practicing in Canada, think about their labour? Cultural work includes a broad array of activities: making art, writing, teaching, organizing programs, and other community projects. In this thesis, literature by Indigenous authors foregrounds ways of thinking about the meaning and function of cultural contributions, with support from complementary non-Indigenous scholarship. Interviews with three cultural workers and thematic analyses of transcripts and pre-existing texts show how cultural workers create living archives; by giving to their communities through multifaceted practices, they imagine and will Indigenously-determined paths into the future. Findings are organized into three themes, representing three practices of cultural work: contribute, gather, and proclaim.