Emma LaRocque facts for kids

Emma LaRocque (born 1949) is a Canadian academic of Cree and Métis descent. She is currently a professor of Native American studies at the University of Manitoba.

She is also a published poet, writing brief, imagist poems about her ancestral land and culture. LaRocque's works have critically engaged topics such as Indigenous identities, contemporary Indigenous literature, postcolonial literary criticism, decolonization and resistance, and Indigenous representation in Canadian history, literature, and popular culture.

LaRocque has published works in numerous fields, making her work relevant to a diverse array of scholars. LaRocque's work offers a nuanced conception of Indigenous literatures as resistance, and brings misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in Canada to light. Such contributions have had reverberations in Native Studies, sociology, education, and poetry alike. LaRocque is also known for her deconstruction of the "civilized/savage" dichotomy, which she problematizes in relation to her own Métis identity.

Early life

LaRocque was born in the remote community of Big Bay, Alberta, near the town of Lac La Biche. She came from a family of fur trappers, and was one of the first in her family to receive a formal education. Despite her parents' uneasiness toward their daughter's enthusiasm for education, the author-to-be "howled [her] way into school". Though English was not LaRocque's first language, this did not impede her from excelling in her early education. After she completed high school, LoRocque worked as a counsellor for juvenile criminal offenders. LaRocque also worked as a teacher at the Janvier 194 reserve until 1971, when she moved to the United States to attend Goshen College, Indiana.

Education

In 1973, LaRocque graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications and English from Goshen College, and later attended the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, graduating with a Master of Arts degree in peace studies in 1976. Before entering academia herself, she briefly worked as a reporter and editor for Native People, a newspaper published by the Alberta Native Communications Society.

LaRocque joined the University of Manitoba faculty in 1976, and received a second Master of Arts degree in 1980, in Canadian history. She completed a doctorate in 1999 from the University of Manitoba, on the subject of "Aboriginal resistance literature".