Dr. Gage Karahkwi:io Diabo

About Me

Gage Karahkwí:io Diabo is a Mohawk scholar from Kahnawake, recently hired at Concordia as an Assistant Professor with across-appointment in English and First Peoples Studies. Their research concerns the entanglement of land, oral tradition, and political philosophy in Indigenous literature, especially that of the Mohawk nation and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Their essays on Beth Brant, Waubgeshig Rice, Tom Porter, Lee Maracle, and Robert Alexie have been published in Canadian Literature, Studies in American Indian Literature, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and The Capilano Review. They graduated with a PhD in English Literature from the University of British Columbia in 2023 and recently held the Horizon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Concordia. 

Gage’s current projects include a monograph on the politics of intercultural dialogue in Indigenous literature, as well as a study of the tradition of Indigenous horror, from its roots in oral histories to its rise as a popular media genre. In the latter vein, Gage is also writing a horror novel that imagines an alternate post-apocalyptic present in which two Mohawk women from different generations must take a road trip across TurtleIsland in order to save the world.

Alongside their academic pursuits, Gage has also worked in media arts. They worked as an assistant director (and occasional background actor) on APTN’s comedy series, Mohawk Girls, and as a panelist and coordinator for the 2016 and 2017 editions of CBC Montreal’s Turtle Island Reads event series. They are also involved in Kahnawake’s local theatre and no-budget filmmaking communities as an amateur performer, musician,choreographer, and director. Gage is also a classically-trained pianist and arguably the best guitarist in Kahnawake (or at least in the top five… maybe ten).

Courses Taught

Peer-Reviewed Articles

“I Didn’t Hear the Bird Singing: Beth Brant’s Echoes of Condolence.” Canadian Literature, vol. 250, 2022, pp. 12-31.

"Kaienerenkó:wa: A Lesson in Being Ready to Listen.” SAIL (Studies in American Indian Literature), vol. 32, no. 3-4, 2020, pp. 41-62.

“Refusing to Listen and Listening to Refusal: Dialogue, Healing, and Rupture in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, vol. 8, 2020, Counterclockwise, special issue edited by Larissa Lai, Neil Surkan, and Joshua Whitehead, pp.75-85.

“Bad Feelings, Feeling Bad: The Affects of Asian-Indigenous Coalition.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 2019, pp. 257-270.

Other Peer-Reviewed Writing

“Horrors of Northern Development: (Anti-)Capitalist Infrastructure and Anishinaabe: Knowledge in Moon of the Crusted Snow.” ReVisions: Speculating in Literature and Film in Canada, edited by Wendy Roy, in publication, Dec 2025.

“The Future(s) of Indigenous Horror: Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Crusted Snow.” CanLit Guides, 2022.