Description: Challenges the conventional idea of the "wild" in North America showing how assumptions of colonial mastery and Indigenous erasure are present in outdoor adventure narratives. With the intention of decolonizing the Western separation of human and "nature," Phillips places these settler stories into dialogue with narratives by Indigenous writers.
Review Quotes: This book is a nuanced and deeply generous act of attention, focusing on our relationships to land and the ways they are mediated and perpetuated through story. With critical reinterpretations of settler-authored texts as well as brilliant appreciations of work by Anishinaabe and other Indigenous writers, Gyllian Phillips shows us a new way to do decolonial criticism. The way these stories speak to each other here, through the author's grounded and hospitable approach, is both fascinating and extremely important for the future of these territories.
--Warren Cariou, University of Manitoba