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Narrative Tactics: Windigo Stories And Indigenous Youth Suicide, Gerald P. Mckinley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines cross-genre and cross-cultural discourse between contemporary Indigenous windigo narratives and medical narratives involving the topic of Indigenous youth suicide. The Indigenous narratives include forms that are Western in their origin, the novel, comic book and film, but contain traditional Indigenous narrative patterns, actors and themes. I draw these narratives from fictions produced by Indigenous public intellectuals. The medical narratives represent a cross-section of fields but focus mainly on Coroners’ reports, social determinants of health research and suicide research based in psychology. The goal of my research is to examine how and where these forms of discourse come …