Marie Annharte Baker

Marie Annharte Baker during a panel presentation at the Aboriginal Gathering 26 March 2009[1]

Marie Annharte Baker (born 1942) is an Anishnabe poet and author, a cultural critic and activist, and a performance artist/contemporary storyteller.[2] Former surnames are Baker and Funmaker.

Through books, poetry, essays, interviews and performance Annharte articulates and critiques life from western Canada, with a special focus on women, urban, indigenous, disabilities, academic, and poverty-centric (or "street") awareness and issues/foibles.

Life

Baker is from Little Saskatchewan First Nations and she was born in 1942 and grew up in Winnipeg. Her father was Irish and her mother was Anishinabe. She would spend her holidays with her Anishinabe grandparents on a reservation in Manitoba. She received what she considered an unsuccessful education at Brandon College, the University of British Columbia and the Simon Fraser University during the 1960s. She considers herself self taught but she did return to education in the 1970s and this included a degree in English for the University of Winnipeg.[3]

She has been associated with (studied or taught at) the University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, Brandon University, and University of Minnesota. She has collaborated with or co-founded numerous groups of community-based writer activists, including Regina Aboriginal Writers Group and the Aboriginal Writers Collective of Manitoba. She was a founding member of the Canadian Indian Youth Council. Presently, she is organizing Nokomis Storyteller Theatre which features comic/clown and puppet performances.

Her poetry is intimately connected to her performance and visual art practises. "Recycling and reworking bits and pieces which are found or ‘to hand’ into new forms, bricoleur-style, is a process which she foregrounds in poems such as “Raced Out to Write This Up” and “Coyote Columbus Cafe.” As one of her personas or identities, Annharte has taken on the “scavenger or scrounge artist,” especially in a re-invention of herself as Rakuna Kahuna, a “wise raccoon” street name (“Marie Annharte” 63). — Lally Grauer" "A Weasel Pops In & Out of Old Tunes"

Books

Poetry and performances

Interviews and articles

Work in other media

Critical responses

See also

References

  1. ↑ I'POYI Panel 1 Marie AnnHarte Baker on YouTube, Calgary AB, 2009
  2. ↑ Marie Annharte Baker, World Poetry Movement, Retrieved 14 April 2016
  3. ↑ Pauline Butling; Susan Rudy (2005). Poets Talk: Conversations with Robert Kroetsch, Daphne Marlatt, Erin Mouré, Dionne Brand, Marie Annharte Baker, Jeff Derksen and Fred Wah. University of Alberta. pp. 89–91. ISBN 978-0-88864-431-2.


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