Cheryl Suzack

Cheryl Suzack's (Batchewana First Nations) research focuses on Indigenous law and literature with a particular emphasis on writing by Indigenous women. In her book, Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law, she explores how Indigenous women's writing from Canada and the United States addresses case law concerning tribal membership, intergenerational residential school experiences, and land claims. Her current project analyzes Justice Thurgood Marshall's papers in the context of Indian civil rights claims from the 1960s. She is a co-editor (with Greig Henderson and Simon Stern) of “The Critical Work of Law and Literature,” University of Toronto Quarterly (Fall 2013) and a co-editor and contributor (with Shari Huhndorf, Jeanne Perreault, and Jean Barman) to the award-winning collection, Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture (UBC 2010). Suzack is cross-appointed to the Indigenous Studies Program and teaches courses for English and Indigenous Studies on comparative Indigenous literatures, comparative Indigenous studies, and Indigenous decolonization with a focus on gender issues and Indigenous women.

Publications

“Equality for Indigenous Women—McIvor v. Canada.”  Frontiers of Gender Equality—Transnational Legal Perspectives. Ed. Rebecca Cook. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (2022): 770-817.

“The Legal Construction of Indigenous Identity: Legal Paradox and Legal Parody.” Rev. of The Indigenous Paradox: Rights, Sovereignty, and Culture in the Americas by Jonas Bens. The New Rambler: An Online Review of Books 26 May 2022. 

“Celebrating the Diachronic Storytelling Traditions within Anishinaabe Life and Letters.” Rev. of Enduring Critical Poses: The Legacy and Life of Anishinaabe Literature and Letters, ed. by Gordon Henry Jr., Margaret Noodin, and David Stirrup. Journal of World Philosophies 7.1 (2022): 178-181.

“Reckoning with Indigenous Sovereignty.” American Literary History 33.1 (Spring 2021): 133-148.

“The ‘Legitimacy Gap’ between Law and Culture.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée – Special Issue on Truth and Reconciliation in a Comparative Perspective: Canada and South Africa 45.4 (2018): 545-549. Co-authored with Neil ten Kortenaar.

Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.

"Comparative Racialization and American Indian Identity in Nineteenth-Century America." The Routledge Research Companion to Law and Humanities in Nineteenth-Century America. Ed. Nan Goodman and Simon Stern. New York: Routledge, 2017. 73-95.

"Transitional Justice, Termination Policies, and the Politics of Literary Affect in Chrystos' Not Vanishing." Canadian Review of American Studies 47.1 (2017): 1-25.

"Human Rights and Indigenous Feminisms." Handbook of Indigenous Peoples' Rights. Ed. Corinne Lennox and Damien Short. Abingdon and NewYork: Routledge, 2016. 146-163.

"Indigenous Feminisms in Canada." NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 23.1 (2015): 261-274.

"The Becoming of Justice: Indigenous Women's Writing in the Pre-Truth and Reconciliation Period." Transitional Justice Review 1.2 (2013):97-125. Co-Author with Élise Couture-Grondin

"The Transposition of Law and Literature in Delgamuukw and Monkey Beach." South Atlantic Quarterly 110.2 (Spring 2011): 447-463.

Indigenous Women and Feminism: Politics, Activism, Culture. Cheryl Suzack, Shari Huhndorf, Jeanne Perreault, and Jean Barman, co-editors and contributors (UBC Press, 2010).

"Land Claims, Identity Claims: Mapping Indigenous Feminism in Literary Criticism and in Winona LaDuke's Last Standing Woman." Reasoning Together. Ed. Craig Womack. U of Oklahoma P, 2008. 169-92.

"Law Stories as Life Stories: Jeannette Lavell, Yvonne Bedard, and Half-breed." Auto/Biography: Trace, Text, Telling. Ed. Marlene Kadar, Susanna Egan, Jeanne Perreault, and Linda Warley. Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2005. 117-41.

Editor, In Search of April Raintree: Critical Edition, by Beatrice Culleton Mosionier, Portage and Main Press, 1999.

Current Research

My current book project explores how tribal communities use stories, cultural arguments, and oral traditions to establish a tribal voice in Justice Thurgood Marshall’s Indian law cases. The project focuses on Justice Marshall’s Indian law decisions to show how they enact the political, aspirational, and cultural paths toward self-determination that the Supreme Court envisioned for tribal communities prior to and during the self-determination era. A book chapter, entitled “Visualizing Violence Against Indigenous Women,” is forthcoming in the edited collection Raven Talks: Indigenous Feminist Studies. It explores how Indigenous women’s justice practices represented by documentary film constitute an important part of the transitional justice landscape in settler-colonial countries. It shows how Indigenous women’s artistic practice contributes to an evolving debate that recognizes documentary film’s capacity to play a role in the protection of human rights.