Strategies of Indigenous Healing in Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth (2018)
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | This paper examines the understanding of wellness and healing in Inuit communities in Nunavut and the use of traditional Inuit healing strategies in Split Tooth (2018) by Tanya Tagaq (Inuk). For the purposes of the literary analysis, four categories are established on the basis of the Medicine Wheel, a conceptualization of health and wellness among many Indigenous communities. These categories consist of healing strategies related to spirit, body, mind, and context, with the last category containing social relations and relations to the land and other-than-human beings. While divided into four categories, these categories are interconnected and always cooperate to maintain the balance of individuals and communities. The analysis of the selected work by Tagaq highlights the significance and relevance of Indigenous healing for contemporary Inuit people and the ever-lasting presence of the negative impacts of colonialism which stand at the core of the initial need for the healing of individuals and whole communities. Tagaq’s novel represents specific examples of the Inuit healing strategies, which have been identified by research but have not yet been examined within Inuit literary works, and provides a deeper understanding of the context in which they are used and how they are adapted for the issues the Inuit have faced in the 20th and 21st centuries. |
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