Double Dimensionality: Unveiling Dominique Rankin’s Journey of Diagnosing and Healing in His Autobiography "They Called Us Savages" (2020)

Abstract

Dominique Rankin, the Anicinape author and one of the last hereditary chiefs, published his autobiography They Called Us Savages in 2020 and this article examines its two dimensions: On the one hand, how he (re)constructs his individual identity through diagnosing and writing about his traumatic experiences at the Saint-Marc-de-Figuery Residential School. On the other hand, how he expands this individual healing to a collective one by transforming his retrospective endeavor into a medium of social communication. Therefore, it is intended to foster intra, inter and non-Indigenous coping with the assimilationist ideologies of the Canadian government and the Catholic Church. To foster this aspect in greater depth, he contrasts European knowledge systems with Indigenous cosmology while reflecting on the collaborative
nexus between state and faith. Consequently, he negotiates and mediates
his individual, as well as a collective self-conscious, healed and proud
Indigenous Canadian identity.