Our group has taken our blog title from Walt Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself” (1855). The full line reads:

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Here is a bit of literature that we feel aptly expresses the spirit behind our conference and Gingell’s article. Whitman’s refusal to be tamed or translated reflects an emerging resistance in Indigenous communities across Canada that similarly refuse to fall silent and lose their voice. The sounding of their “barbaric yawp” takes on two meanings then: it celebrates the heritage of their distinct languages and identities while also reminding us of the systematic oppression of their orality in Canada that deemed it was necessary to silence them so they could fit into civilization. Like Whitman, we hope to give these yawps the respect they deserve as we encounter the various expressions and forms of Indigenous sound identities in our annotated bibliography.

YAWP. Credit: Young Artists and Writers Project. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.