Marie Annharte Baker


Marie Annharte Baker is an Anishnabe poet and author, a cultural critic and activist, and a performance artist/contemporary storyteller. Former surnames are Baker and Funmaker.
Through books, poetry, essays, interviews and performance Annharte articulates and critiques life from western Canada, with a special focus on women, urban, indigenous, disabilities, academic, and poverty-centric awareness and issues/foibles.

Life

Baker is from Little Saskatchewan First Nations and she was born in 1942 and grew up in Winnipeg. Her father was Irish and her mother was Anishinabe. She would spend her holidays with her Anishinabe grandparents on a reservation in Manitoba. She received what she considered an unsuccessful education at Brandon College, the University of British Columbia and the Simon Fraser University during the 1960s. She considers herself self-taught but she did return to education in the 1970s and this included a degree in English for the University of Winnipeg.
She has been associated with the University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, Brandon University, and University of Minnesota. She has collaborated with or co-founded numerous groups of community-based writer activists, including Regina Aboriginal Writers Group and the Aboriginal Writers Collective of Manitoba. She was a founding member of the Canadian Indian Youth Council. Presently, she is organizing Nokomis Storyteller Theatre which features comic/clown and puppet performances.

Books