Scattered throughout Kenzie Allen’s debut poetry collection are familiar names: Indiana Jones, Pocahontas, Yoko Ono. “The pop culture figures are not just fun, weird foils for me, which they are, but they’re also a shared reference point,” she said. For a long time, she said, she felt like she had to include those reference points in her work – to name the stereotypes about Indigenous women so she could challenge them. “I felt like I couldn’t speak to lived experience — true lived experience — without speaking to those stereotypes first.” The Toronto-based Haudenosaunee poet said her poems are a way for her to reclaim her Indigeneity from those who labelled her too much or not enough — people in the publishing industry who encouraged her to move the more…
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