Analysis Of Spineless By Marilyn Dumont

Marilyn Dumont, born in northeastern Alberta in 1955, is a métis writer and educator whose poems have for many years been an inspiration in Canadian literature, giving insight into the struggles of the aboriginal peoples in Canada. Marilyn, in many of her poems, explores the deep feelings of hatred that native peoples feel towards ‘the whites’, otherwise known as the settlers that arrived in the 1600s, or later the Canadian government. These emotions are deep-running, tracing back many years, under which the native peoples have been oppressed physically, culturally, and psychologically to the point where many have given up hope. With her poems, Dumont breaks ties with conventional generalizations through her loud and flamboyant style, ultimately

Harsh, sharp, and unforgiving language is specifically chosen like “big, loud, and bitching” (4), and “too damn wise and smiling” (13), to show the speaker’s anger and elicit emotion in the reader. This again reinforces the idea of the oppressive nature of the whites against the natives. This poem, however, does not elicit these emotions merely through irony, but rather by taking a more direct approach. Overall, the poem deals with the stereotyping that many natives face. “The welcome image of you is gone; the unwelcome image of me is still here...” this quote references the ways that natives are stereotyped in Canada, an ‘unwelcome’ image that remains to this day. These images are: ‘the myths, the ones that I threaten your small frame of mind with” (5-6). According to the speaker, these myths are ones that were spread by the white social class, to keep the natives in check. By breaking these myths, she is serving to rob the whites of their power over the aboriginals. This is further supported by line 10 of the poem: “all you’ve heard are lies”, showing that the speaker is trying to break away from the harsh generalizations imposed on her people and show the reader the untruths that permeate through our society. The writing conventions that Dumont uses in these cases reflects the overall theme of the

That said, Dumont is fighting an uphill battle. The racism and hate started by the white settlers hundreds of years in the past has remained for ages, building into a veritable fortress upon which the ideals of white entitlement and power rest. To fight back against this, Dumont makes herself as loud as she can get in her compositions, acting as a proverbial cymbal to the ears of those above. Her poems are designed to be this way; they aggressively break the mold and rip apart traditional ideas of looking at natives. In turn, she gives her fellow aboriginals freedom to express themselves by allowing them to realize that they no longer have to conform to these generalizations. Simply put, by changing the status quo in how natives are generally viewed, she weakens the power that white society’s “small frame of mind” has and puts that power back in the hands of the