Abstract
A.M. Klein’s 1945 poem Indian Reservation: Caughnawaga stands as one of the most poignant elegies in twentieth-century Canadian literature, offering a devastating critique of the cultural erosion experienced by Indigenous peoples under the expanding footprint of modern Western civilization. Set in the Mohawk reserve of Caughnawaga near Montreal, the poem captures a stark historical transition: the retreat of an ancient, organic, and ecologically harmonized tradition before the encroaching, mechanical, and capitalist structures of modernity. Klein, a prominent Jewish-Canadian writer who brought a deep personal sensitivity to themes of cultural displacement and historical marginalization, constructs a multi-layered narrative that contrasts romanticized childhood imaginations of Indigenous grandeur with the grim contemporary reality of reservation life.
Over Tradition
References
1. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994. 2. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, 1971. 3. Klein, A.M. “Indian Reservation: Caughnawaga.” The Collected Poems of A.M. Klein, compiled by Miriam Waddington, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974, pp. 245-246. 4. Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage Books, 1993.
Author information
A. Praveen Samuel
2421316021003 Research Scholar, Department of English, Scott Christian College, Nagercoil, TamilNadu, India.