Aboriginal Can Speak A Subaltern Study of the Play the Ecstasy of Rita Joe by George Ryga

Name of Author : Gaurav Kumar

Abstract:  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her brilliant essay, Can Subaltern Speak? defines subaltern as the oppressed subjects or those of “inferior rank”. She also raised an important question whether the subaltern can speak for themselves and if not is it appropriate for some others to represent their voices. As we know that Canada was only the land of the natives, and after that, it became the land of immigrants which made the native people a minority group in their own soil. Regarding Canadian society, Aboriginal, means the original inhabitants, the people who were here first. The colonizers oppressed these aboriginals and exploited their native land, therefore we can term these aboriginals as the subaltern. In this paper, we will try to study the play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe by Canadian playwright George Ryga. We will analyze the play from a Postcolonial point of view with special focus on how the aboriginals could give voice to their protest in the play. It will also bring out how the native people were marginalized and made as a subaltern in their own land and various levels of discrimination experienced by the Aboriginal people in Canada.

Keywords : Subaltern Studies, Postcolonialism, Aboriginals, Marginalization Canada

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