Sometimes people are willing to listen only to those voices that confirm the conventions they already know. The unfamiliar makes them fear. Or makes them condescend. Neither fear nor condescension encourages listening. And no one who does not listen learns to hear. - W.H. New, "Learning to Listen." Native Writers and Canadian Writing is a co-publication with Canadian Literature - Canada's foremost literary journal - of a special double issue which focuses on literature by and about Canada's Native peoples and contains original articles and poems by both Native and non-Native writers. These not only reflect the growing prominence of contemporary Native writing but also direct the reader to the traditional literature from which it springs and which has been largely misunderstood by the non-Native community - myths, rituals, and songs having been interpreted more often as artistic "curiosities" rather than the masterworks of a different culture. Essays examining the conventional portrayals of Native people in literature touch on works which range from the eighteenth-century journals of explorer Alexander Mackenzie, to the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, and to early writers in Canada such as historian-humourist Thomas Chandler Haliburton. Studies of Native literature focus on the oral literary traditions of the Haida and Inuit and their transcribers and on modern works by playwright Tomson Highway and authors Lee Maracle and Thomas King, among others. These commentaries illuminate the way in which Native writers view themselves and their disparate worlds, their gifts for pathos, humour, and self-parody, and their search for their own voices and distinct forms of communication. Viewing Canada's Native peoples in historical, anthropological, and political contexts, the book exposes prejudices and misconceptions entrenched since colonial days regarding Native societies and their moral, spiritual, and political values - values embodied in th