ABSTRACT
After distinguishing between critical and artistic approaches, this chapter suggests that Indigenous biographers offer something “transformative to the larger field of biographical studies”. First, by “asking the individuals, communities, or previous biographers” invested in a life: “What kind of biography do you want?” Second, by thinking of biography “as a collective venture”, involving “rigorous conversations between many researchers, relatives, friends and enemies, living and dead”. Third, by problematising “the concept of biography . . . across multiple oral literary genres and contexts”. To “unpack, repack, and throw out terms” in these ways might reveal “life in this old term ‘biography’ yet”.
