Turtles All the Way: Simulacra and Resistance to Simulacra in Indigenous Teachers’ Discussion of Indigenous Children’s Literature

We are made up of stories: the stories we hear, the stories we tell. Intertextual connections form through repeatedly hearing stories, many of which stem back to childhood. This paper foregrounds a teachers-as-readers literature circle in which a group of Indigenous teachers in Canada discussed, among other titles, Rafe´ Martin’s The Rough Face Girl and Gerald McDermott’s Raven. Children’s stories are contested spaces because of the persistent presence in them of ‘‘simulacra’’ or imaginary representations of Indigenous peoples. The paper describes how the teachers drew on their storied formations as Indigenous readers to gloss the stories, as well as revised their interpretations through critical discussion with one another.