Published Paper Details:

Rudy Wiebe is a forerunner of restoring the 'Ignored History' and a devoted writer who turned his attention to the indigenous history of Western Canada at the crucial period when the Dominion Government ruled over Canada. Western Canada was in the position of opening the great West to European settlers and contrastingly encompassing the aboriginal people on reserves. Wiebe in his novel -The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) depict the period of social, cultural, political, and racial upheaval. The fiction writing of Wiebe remains a complex act of reading, as it is mainly based on afresh and innovative style. His works almost employ narrative practices, multiple voices, and through shifts in perspective and time. The status of natives and whites re-imposed in Canadian society has been exposed by Wiebe. Mennonite themes are not the only concern of Rudy Wiebe in his fiction. The concern of original inhabitants, the native Indians, and other politically marginalized minorities, like the Metis, form part of commitment to humanity. Wiebe gives voice to the repressed agony lying deep inside history. He carefully unearths these voices and listens patiently. Wiebe's novel The Temptations of Big deal with the past of native Indians and Metis respectively. Early Canadian literature was dominantly white; the natives were portrayed as savage and primitive as opposed to civilized white culture. As Monkman says: "The Natives were treated as the embodiment of ideals and principles defeated or disregarded by the white man..." (102).