Lorraine Weir
Education
McGill University|University College Dublin|BA|MA, PhD
About
A fifth-generation descendant of Irish Famine survivors, Lorraine Weir grew up in Montréal and holds a B.A. (Hons. English) from McGill University, and an M.A. (Irish Studies) and Ph.D. (Irish literature) from Ollscoil na hÉireann (National University of Ireland).
Weir taught in the English Department at UBC for many years and was awarded a Killam Teaching Prize in 2006. She chaired the Program in Comparative Literature, was among the second generation of founding members of the Women’s Studies Program, was a Faculty Associate in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, taught and supervised in the Centre for Curriculum and Instructional Studies in the Faculty of Education, was a member of the Law and Society Program, Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law (1989-90), supervised interdisciplinary dissertations in a variety of contexts and units, and took pride in advising, mentoring and getting to know her students. In 1987-88 she organized the monthlong semiotics summer school known as ISISSS88 (International Summer Institute of Semiotic and Structuralist Studies) at UBC.
Weir began as a specialist in James Joyce, studying Canadian literature when she returned after grad school in Ireland, and taught courses in modernism, contemporary Canadian literature, and in theory and history of theory (semiotics, hermeneutics, sociolegal studies), turning to the study of Indigenous literature in the last two decades of her career. She also worked as an expert witness in touchstone Canadian censorship court cases and published on censorship. As a theorist and oral historian, Weir is interested in contact zones between regulatory discourses, often with an Indigenous and/or minority community focus. Her publications include Writing Joyce A Semiotics of the Joyce System (Indiana University Press, 1989), Margaret Atwood Language, Text and System (co-edited with Sherrill Grace. UBC Press, 1983), and Jay Macpherson (ECW Press, 1989), In 2012 she was invited to work with Chief Roger William on an oral history of the Tŝilhqot’in title and rights case, which became Lha Yudit’ih We Always Find a Way – Bringing the Tŝilhqot’in Title Case Home (Talonbooks, 2023). See https://www.lorraineweir.net.
Publications
Lorraine Weir & Roger William, Lha yudit’ih We always find a way – Bringing the Tŝilhqot’in Title Case Home (Winter 2022)
Lha yudit’ih is a community oral history of T̂silhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, the first case in Canada to result in a declaration of Aboriginal rights and title to a specific piece of land. Told from the perspective of the Plaintiff, Roger William, joined by fifty Xeni Gwet’ins, Tŝilhqot’ins and allies, this book encompasses ancient stories of creation, modern stories of genocide through smallpox and Residential school, and stories of resistance including the Tŝilhqot’in War, direct actions against logging and mining, and the twenty-five year battle in Canadian courts to win recognition of what Tŝilhqot’ins never gave up and have always known. “We are the land,” as Chief Roger says. After the violence of colonialism, he understands the court case as “bringing our sight back.” This book witnesses the power of that vision, its continuity with the Tŝilhqot’in world before the arrival of colonizers two centuries ago, and its potential for a future of freedom and self-determination for Tŝilhqot’in People.