Beth Cuthand's "Post-Oka Kinda Woman"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Beth Cuthand's "Post-Oka Kinda Woman"
appears to be about the rather insignificant-looking action of a Native woman walking down the street; however, the subject is really the issue of the Oka crisis, which began on March 11, 1990 and lasted until September 26, 1990. The author points out that, through its prosody, tone, characterization and diction, this poem challenges preconceived notions about Native people. The paper concludes that Cuthand's poem disputes the idea that the Oka crisis is not really over and suggests that the Mohawk nation will continue to fight for their rights over the land.

From the Paper:

"Prosody in "Post-Oka Kinda Woman" mixes feet within the poem. By not employing 'perfect' metre with every line doing da-dum or dum-da, the metre Cuthand chose reflects the meaning, mood and emotional colour of the words and images. Line one begins with tetrameter, line while two switches to pentameter and line three has hexameter. The changing metre slows down the reader by line three, emphasizing the importance of the words, "victimization, reparation". Although lines four to six ease in the metre by changing to pentameter, line three slows the reader down."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Cuthand, Beth. "Post-Oka Kinda Woman." An Anthology of Canadian Native Literature in English. Ed. Daniel David Moses & Terry Goldie. Oxford: University Press, 2005. 255-256.
• Oka Crisis. 17 March 2007. Wikipedia. 16 March 2007. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_crisis>

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