STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION against Aboriginal writers in Canada is not easily undone, insidiously entrenched as it is in a network of social systems whose scope exceeds the amending policies of any one publisher. With the appearance of Writing the Circle: Native Women of Western Canada (NeWest, 294 pages, $13-95 paper), the editors Jeanne Perreault and Sylvia Vance have enabled bold and, to their credit, sometimes baldly unaffected Native voices to appear in print. "Writing is the art of bringing to birth the human condition in thought form," pens Emma LaRoque, a contributor of both the preface and poetry to this rich polyphony of Native women`s expression. Next to the works of those practised in the art are efforts amateur with regard to literary canons, but overwhelmingly veteran in the stringent lessons of life. These voices in the rough make Writing the Circle a truly human bridge of intercultural communication, invigorating in its verbal range: the proud, fervent poems of a 16-year-old; poignant, precise incisions of more skilled pens, such as that of the poet Alice Lee; simply presented facts and compelling inner words of autobiography; and the outer words of literary, historical, and social essay. Nor are these categories discrete; they merge in these portrayals of individual lives as wholes. Biographies precede each entry, contributing to an accumulating sense of these works as spoken. The resulting circle of voices is a figure of spirit, not just of speech. Through mutual revelation each spokeswoman charges the medicine wheel with healing power as she discharges her story into the circle`s supportive frame. The book is community, direct and rendingly honest in its unfolding of a credible literature of Native emergence.