Five Canadian Novels by Aboriginal Writers

 

Canada has a rich tradition of Indigenous writing, with a strong record of support for both writers and publishers of such literature by the Canada Council for the Arts. That movement has blossomed in recent years, as more Aboriginal voices have found space in Canada’s literary and social consciousness.

Aboriginal writing has attracted many awards and prizes in Canada over the years. A few of these include the Governor General’s Award, awarded to Katherena Vermetter for her 2013 collection of poetry, “North End Love Songs.” Another award winner is Lee Maracle’s novel “Ravensong,” which won the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 1993.

 

Here then, are five highly-recommended novels by Canadian Aboriginal writers:

 

“Shi-Shi-Etko” and its sequel “Shi-Shi-Canoe” by Nicola I. Campbell. The first novel details the story of a young girl when she discovers that she is to be taken to a residential school in four days. The second novel details Shi-Shi-Etko’s experiences at the school and her joyful reunion with her family. The second novel won the prestigious TD Canadian Children’s Literature Grand Prize.

 

Richard Wagamese’s “Indian Horse” details the life of Saul Indian Horse, his experiences in the Residential School system, his career as an ice hockey player, and the eventual reconciliation with his past. It won the 2013 Burt Award for First Nations, Metis and Inuit Literature.

 

“Legacy” by Waubgeshig Rice. The novel describes the violence against an Indigenous woman and the effect it has on her and her family. Another one of his novels, “Moon of the Crusted Snow,” offers a dystopian vision of surviving postmodern civilization. The New York Times described him as an Indigenous writer “reshaping North American science fiction, horror and fantasy.”

 

 

Eden Robinson’s “Son of a Trickster” humorously details the life of Jared, a sixteen year old Aboriginal boy who constantly gets into trouble, his suspicious grandmother and his balancing Indigenous beliefs with dysfunctional family dynamics.

 

“Fly Away Snow Goose” by John Wisdomkeeper and Juliet Waldron. The book follows the trials and travels of two young Aboriginals from Nunavut and the Northwest Territories as they are taken forcefully to a residential school, but yet begin a journey to return to their homes.

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanauthor.com) is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)

Kamloops & Fly Away Snow Goose

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Two hundred and fifteen small bodies were "discovered" in May at Kamloops. I use brackets because everyone in the 1st Nations already knew what would be found in that field near the site of the old residential school.  

When children fell sick at these residential schools, they often died. There were many reasons for this mortality, which can be summed up in two way: inadequate diet and poor living conditions.  (Another surely must be the cruelly severed connection between them and the family that loved them.) Some died in accidents like fires, as it was customary practice to lock the children inside their dormitories at night. 

Some children were even subjected to experiments. 

In one cruel instance, supplements necessary to maintain good health--vitamin C and calcium--on the limited residential school diet were given to some, but not all  children. One group received bread made with whole flour, others were given only white.   These children, left in the care of Church and State, were being used as human subjects, guinea pigs to provide data for nutritional scientists.The children didn't understand what was happening to them and certainly their parents were never told. 

In these schools there was, besides a lack of food, a daily ration of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The survivor stories I've read are not for the faint of heart. 

The part that remains most incredible to me is that the parents of these little children were not told what had happened to those they'd never see again. Instead they were lied to by people who made a great show of their religion. Parents were often told only the their children "had run away." It seems unimaginable, that the Church was eagerly assisting the government in their campaign to destroy the history and traditions of an entire People.

There are more, always more of these stories, as haunted survivors come forward. It all sounds like something out of the Middle Ages, not an an evil perpetrated here in North America in the 20th Century. From what I've learned, the residential schools in the US weren't better.

Now, First Nation's People are walking, across Canada, one group marching the 1200 miles from White Horse in the Yukon to Kamloops in B.C., in order to honor the memory of those children who did not survive. One image said it all--a young woman, a daughter of a survivor and her child, holding a heart-shaped sign in memory of her mother's little sister, Denise Boucher, aged seven, who died at the school to which the girls had been taken. 

Shoes and toys at a memorial for the lost children.

In this excerpt from Fly Away Snow Goose. Sascho, the young hero, has hunted all day without much to show for it. He encounters an Esker, a long snaking glacial deposit of gravel. By a grave site for a family who perished here, he remembers once making ceremony in this place with his teacher, his Uncle John. He thinks about the kwet’ı̨ı̨̀, the white people who are so busy changing the land and killing the animals, always taking and taking, and never giving thanks for the bounty of the land.

Sascho had seen the northern mines when he’d gone with his Uncles two winters ago on a journey to Sahtı̀, The Great Bear Lake, which lay at the border of Tłı̨chǫ land. His elders had shown him disturbed and ruined earth from which the spirits had fled. They’d explained how the water too, and the fish in these places, had been poisoned by kwet’ı̨ı̨̀ diggings. The creatures that had once made Sahtı̀ a rich hunting ground had grown few and wary. Even the caribou had changed their ancient paths in order to avoid these places.

Would his people succumb to kwet’ı̨ı̨̀ ways? Some already had. These men disrespected and ignored their elders, abused their wives and neglected their children, drank and stole, and brought shame—and the Ekw'ahtı (RCMP) —into their camps. Others, like his family, had tried to stay as far away from the kwet’ı̨ı̨̀ as possible. They, like the caribou, sought new paths. They learned to avoid the fouled ponds where the poor beaver lost his hair and the fish were filled with horrible ulcers...

~But where could we go, if we are forced to leave?

His Uncles sometimes spoke of this. Now, Sascho tried to push this unhappy future away. To leave the Tłı̨chǫ Dèè was unimaginable.

~We are part of this place, woven into the land like quills ornamenting a pair of moccasins. We are like the moose, the lynx, the beaver, the muskrat, the wolf and the raven, and all our brothers and sisters who live here.

Linked to the earth through the soles of his feet, Sascho’s spirit rose up and poured out in prayer to the blue immensity of heaven...

When John Wisdomkeeper and I wrote Fly Away Snow Goose, it was to honor John's personal journey. He was spared the horrors of the orphanage or the residential school, but only because he was part of the "sixties scoop" a decade when First Nation's children were removed from their homes and given to European adoptive parents.  He has searched in vain for his birth mother, who may have been forced to relinquish him. He has spent a lifetime finding his way home to the traditions of his People.

~~Juliet Waldron

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Two recent sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/26/world/canada/indigenous-residential-schools-grave.html

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/whitehorse-kamloops-residential-school-walk-1.6081975

First Nations Pipe Ceremony over Okanagan Lake

Union of the Sacred Pipes

Little Shell Chippewa Turtle Mountain Band
Prepare for a Pipe Ceremony 

In the hills around Okanagan Lake Valley is a place called Bear Creek.  As I hiked through these rocks, the echo of fast rushing water vibrated like thousands of flutes playing to the rushing waterfalls that all flowed into one giant lake.  

One day I mediated on a large rock in the middle of the Creek - the only access being to jump a log jutting into the water.  Opening my eyes to father sky, I watched crows chase a golden eagle.  The eagle flowed upward in ever expanding circles, and the crows followed, but the eagle flew higher and higher.  A fine mist rose from the rocks and powerful medicine herbs waved in the gentle breezes.  The sweet smell of Lavender and the pungent tang of pine filled the air. When I stopped and listened closely I heard the footsteps of the ancestors passing through the canyon - stepping from stone to stone - as they followed the game trails.

One day a white brother came to visit from Texas - a police officer - who loved the culture as I do, and wanted to share the pipe with some of the Native brothers.  We climbed a trail through a ravine of rocks to an old sacred clearing.  At the entrance to the clearing--a circle of rocks covered by moss and surrounded by juniper and Saskatoon bushes--we stopped and I offered tobacco, asking the ancestors to welcome our visitor.  The winds stopped, and a peace settled over the clearing, inviting our entrance.  We sat together, on the ground, waiting for some brothers who were pipe carriers to join us.

One by one each brother showed up from his journey.  One brother traveled from a rain dance ceremony; another brother came from the sweet grass fields in Montana; a third brother came late, joking that as he had traveled the shortest distance he came on Indian time.  My friend from Texas offered a medicine bundle from his home region and asked for prayers for his family.  He explained that he had spent a lot of time studying and learning the culture of the Cheyenne, the Apache, the Arapaho and the Hopi nations, and to him it was a great honor to come to this sacred ground where lay the bones of ancestors who had traveled here before, and join with this group of pipe carriers for other Native nations.

Together we sat down in a circle and opened our medicine bundles.  Father sky peered over our circle like a bright blue blanket streaked with orange and fringed with white clouds. Wisps of white floated around us as the spirits of many ancestors, gathered around our group as we prepared to share the sacred pipes.

We began by filling our smudge bowls with sage and sweet grass, which we lit and fanned with eagle feathers until the smoke drifted towards Father Sky.  Each of us reached into the smoke and brushed our arms and legs and heads with smoke to cleanse the hardships of our travels and prepare ourselves for the ceremony.  The pipe carrier facing the North started the traditional song of offering to the ancestors, and one by one we joined into the song, lifting our voices to invite the ancestors to travel across the spiritual realm and join us in our ceremony.  As one, we bowed our heads in the circle, sharing prayers for our loved ones and the great nations, asking for blessings for all mother earth’s living and spiritual beings.  We offered prayers for the animal kingdom, the plant world and the mineral world.  The pipe carriers lifted their pipes, pointing the stems to each of the four sacred directions requesting blessing for the circle, and then the pipes were lit. As we passed the pipes, we shared the stories and teachings of our ancestors, and laughed together at the antics of trickster and the pranks he had played on our friends and elders over the years.

When we fell silent, each of us settled into the peace and harmony that had fallen over the sacred circle.  In the darkness the voices of a thousand crickets hummed in harmony, and beyond our circle the coyotes howled to the night spirits.  Grandmother moon rose into the sky and shone her light over our circle.

When the pipes were out, we packed our medicine bundles.  Standing, we joined hands, offered prayers for a safe journey for the travelers, and returned to each a hug of friendship and a common wish for a future reunion of the pipes.

John Wisdomkeeper

Sus' naqua ootsin'

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