Political communities are defined, and often contested, through stories. Scholars have long recognized that two foundational sets of stories – narratives of contact and narratives of arrival – helped to define settler societies. We are only beginning to understand how ongoing issues of migration and settlement are linked to issues of indigenous-settler contact.
Storied Communities disrupts the assumption in many works that indigenous and immigrant identities fall into two separate streams of analysis. The authors do not attempt to build a new master narrative – they instead juxtapose narratives of contact and arrival as they explore key themes: narrative and narrative form, the nature and hazards of storytelling in the political realm, and the institutional and theoretical implications of foundation narratives and storytelling. By bringing to light the links between narratives of contact and narratives of arrival, this volume opens up new ways to imagine, sustain, and transform political communities.