The raced female body and the discourse of peuplement in Rudy Wiebe's The 'Temptations of Big Bear' and The 'Scorched-Wood People'

Situating Rudy Wiebe's The Temptations of Big Bear and The Scorched-Wood Pe ople in relation to a Foucauldian politics of peuplement and policies of se ttlement in the Canadian west clarifies Wiebe's use of conventional ninetee nth-century depictions of women in his project. Unlike his laudable, antira cist reconstructions of Riel and Big Bear, his treatment of raced female bo dies is unfortunately often either lacking or problematic in its perpetuati on of stereotypes of Native female drudgery, silence, and promiscuity.