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Paper short abstract

Investigating the indigenously authored novels There There (2018) by Tommy Orange and Indian Horse (2012) by Richard Wagamese, this paper depicts the inherited dislocation of identity through the symbolic use of ghosts as mechanisms to access ancestral memory and portray cultural haunting.

Paper long abstract

Across cultures, ghosts have extensively figured as literary symbols, captivating readers with their often-romanticised suggestion of existence beyond death in the form of apparitions. Once traditional in native lore, the reappearance of ghosts in contemporary Indigenous literature is an effective and symbolic technique, supporting the ideology of imaginative recuperation. In postcolonial literary practice, ghosts became effective devices to explore and portray class, colour, and gender inequalities, bridging the past with the present, encouraging haunting to become a conduit through which to investigate changes in perspectives. Drawing on philosopher Derrida’s concept of ‘Hauntology’, revealing how postcolonial cultures reflect the genesis of oral storytelling to depict inherited dislocation of identity, this paper investigates indigenously authored novels There There (2018) by Tommy Orange, and Indian Horse (2012) by Richard Wagamese.

In these texts, content is torn from real-life experiences. As ghosts become mechanisms to access ancestral memory and depict cultural temporalities, both authors employ haunting as a means to revisit, reveal and recuperate from colonial atrocities. When viewed through the lens of ancestral trauma, Emily Dickinson’s notion that the ‘external ghost’ was less disturbing than any internal haunting becomes particularly applicable. Symbolic of a silent history, the manifestation of ghosts external and internal, serves to separate time, reality and history while representing a continuing loss of identity and cultural futurity.