Special Section
Carrying the Fire: Celebrating Indigenous Voices of Canada A Literary Anthology
Introduction
I am older now, my path is clear; my job is to walk writers forward, to endorse them, to educate the publishing world, to carve out a space for ourselves, and to commend those brave Indigenous publishers who have stepped up to publish Indigenous writers.
– Lee Maracle, “Today is Different, Because Yesterday We Fought”
All our stories deserve to be told. Indigenous stories deserve to be told. The stories of this land deserve to be told. The stories of Canada and its apparent need to appropriate and dictate Indigenous culture, language, and lives need to be told. Can we all tell these stories? Can we all listen?
– Alicia Elliott, “Our Stories Deserve to be Told”
SOPHIE MCCALL: On May 27 2018, on a stage in Oskana kâ-asastêki
– “the place where the bones are gathered,” or Regina, Saskatchewan – the finalists of the inaugural 2018 Indigenous Voices Awards collectively generated a whirlwind of creative power, affirming the necessary work of words in stories of survival, healing, resilience, and resistance. In these pages you will find stories that deserve to be told, that must be listened to, that will change the world. The following is a Q&A with members of the Indigenous Voices Awards committee, including Cree-Métis scholar Deanna Reder (co-chair) and settler scholars1 Sam McKegney (co-chair), Sarah Henzi and Sophie McCall, along with one of the jurors for the 2019 IVAs Awards, Warren Cariou (Métis). All have served on the executive committee of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA). This interlogue serves as an Introduction to the vibrant pages of writing that follow
1. In Indigenous studies in Canada, it has become common for non-Indigenous scholars to describe themselves as “settler scholars” in order to acknowledge their unearned privileg- es in settler colonial society. It should be noted that a tremendous diversity of people and communities could be described as “non-Indigenous,” including those who historically are inhibited or discouraged from becoming settlers due to exclusions or prejudice based on race, ethnicity, religion, and/or national origin. Thus the term “settler scholar” often silently signals a white European descended heritage.
IVAs Awards, Warren Cariou (Métis). All have served on the executive committee of the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA). This interlogue serves as an Introduction to the vibrant pages of writing that follow.
1.
In recent years there have been some debate and controversy among writers and critics about the state of Canadian Literature. How would you characterize the overall current health and vitality of Canadian Literature?
DEANNA REDER: In 2017 Tuscarora writer Alicia Elliott wrote a col- umn titled: “CanLit is a Raging Dumpster Fire” on the verge of “a fiery death” and she pretty much nails it. She details the storm of controversy that erupted when Steven Galloway, the since-deposed Head of UBC’s Creative Writing Department, faced sexual harassment and assault com- plaints that split the literary community. Many high-profile authors includ- ing Margaret Atwood publicly supported him, despite the accusations of egregious and illegal behaviour, and some did not. In the Spring of the same year, the then-editor of Write magazine, Hal Niedzviecki, who had worked closely with Indigenous writers in putting together a special issue dedicated to Indigenous writing, challenged writers to “write what they don’t know” and tastelessly joked about creating an “Appropriation Prize.” Prominent media executives, journalists, and other public figures began pledging money to the so‑called “prize.” Elliott, whose work was included in the issue, was one of the first to critique the magazine’s “inap- propriate framing of my work” and to link appropriation to the larger his- torical realities of taking “[o]ur land, language, culture, children and lives . . . without our consent.” She points out that while many have want- ed to think of CanLit as“left-leaning” or “diverse and progressive,” the subsequent ruckus sparked the reflections by many that the status and enti- tlement of authors was often based on sexism and racism.
2.
How does the writing of Indigenous literary artists fit into that assessment? To what extent does the work of Indigenous literary artists challenge the Canadian literary establishment?
DEANNA REDER: Most of us in Indigenous lit were happy to stand at a distance, especially since most of us do not categorize our field as part of CanLit and its unarticulated bolstering of colonial identity and power. And there has been much to celebrate.
At this point in time we await with anticipation the third book in Haisla/Heiltsuk writer Eden Robinson’s Trickster trilogy; we celebrate the success of Métis author Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves and the release of her second novel, Empire of Wild; we read with excitement the new voices of poets like Billy-Ray Belcourt (Cree), Smokii Sumac (Ktunaxa), Joshua Whitehead (Oji-Cree), and Tenille Campbell (Dene Métis), knowing that their generation is just getting started. And while we appreciate the great work by Richard Van Camp (Tlicho), Dawn Dumont (Cree), Katherena Vermette (Métis), and Aviaq Johnston (Inuit), we still have the sense that their best is yet to come.
This is impressive given that the field is so young. After all, it was on- ly in 1992 that Oxford University Press released its first edition of An An- thology of Native Literature in English, a watershed moment in the inclu- sion of Indigenous writings in universities in Canada. Professors, who likely had never studied or read Indigenous literatures widely themselves, could change the curriculum simply by assigning this textbook to their students. By the turn of the millennium conferences began to reserve space for this new field, and an increasing number of Indigenous and settler scholars began asking how we position ourselves on the land we live upon and how we could integrate Indigenous perspectives into our academic discussions. This led us to questions not typical in the academy: do we have responsibilities to the texts, the authors, and their communities that we write about? Do we have special responsibilities to each other?
Inspired by these conversations, Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Jus- tice and settler scholar Sam McKegney invited a group of people together in Fall 2013 to create a founding document for the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA). By the end of our gathering we articulated a guiding vision “to honour the history and promote the ongoing production of Indigenous literatures in all forms; to advance the ethical and vigorous study and teaching of those literatures; to reaffirm the value of Indigenous knowledges and methodologies within literary expression and study. . . .” (see indigenousliterarystudies.org). In our conversations about this vision, we considered carefully typical academic terms like rigour, which is meant to emphasize quality but so often emphasizes a mastery of conven- tional approaches rather than inquiry inspired by Indigenous theory. In conversations we agreed with the need for high quality work but preferred the term vigour, the conscientious study of writings that are seldom dis- cussed.
But it would be disingenuous to only make reference to successes, as though controversies don’t affect Indigenous Literatures in Canada. Even those of us who were never enthralled by Joseph Boyden winced when his identity became the subject of national debate, because many of us know how kinship ties were shredded by colonial policies which has made it difficult for some of us to prove community connections. And ILSA organized a conference on Black and Indigenous writing in 2018 because we recognized how often Black people have been generous allies making space for us, so that it was high time we gave back. And we still struggle to know how to respond when we discover one of us is convicted of spousal abuse. Some of us remain angry and hurt, mocking the idea that he can ever return, more concerned that another one of us, his partner, be supported and cared for. Others among us yearn for reconciliation if only because we pray for healing as we think about the damage our own fami- lies have experienced. In this field we don’t have the ivory tower – the original white space – to isolate ourselves away from these concerns. We recognize the richness in Indigenous epistemes that can provide guidance for our interpretive practice even as we acknowledge the ethical dimensions to our intellectual labour. Even as we understand how we are ac- countable to one another.
3.
How and why were the IVAs established? Why do they matter at this moment?
SAM MCKEGNEY: As Deanna outlines, the spring of 2017 was a hard time for many Indigenous artists in Canada. Canadian media outlets were scoffing at the harmful legacies of cultural appropriation, shouting over the realities of Indigenous dispossession with cries of “free speech” and “creative freedom.” Hard-fought battles by an earlier generation of Indig- enous artists were forgotten and rekindled. It was an easy time to become disheartened. But it was also a time of active, thoughtful, and uncompro- mising response – a time during which Indigenous and allied individuals reached out with generosity, courage, and care. When a joke by CanLit insiders maintained that Canada needed “an appropriation prize,” the sub- sequent backlash registered the urgency of supporting Indigenous writing, thereby leading to the establishment of the Indigenous Voices Awards.
It was this reprehensible “appropriation prize” that provoked two women provinces apart – Toronto lawyer Robin Parker and Vancouver author Sylvia Moreno-Garcia – to begin crowdfunding what they hoped would become awards for emerging Indigenous writers. It was a small gesture, a gesture fueled by hope. The cause struck a chord with Canadi- ans, and the initiative far surpassed its initial goal, raising $116,565 in four months from over 1,500 donors. With the help of Cherokee writer Daniel Heath Justice, they enlisted the Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA) to imagine a structure for and to administer what came to be known as the Indigenous Voices Awards (IVAs). At this point patrons like writer Pamela Dillon and Penguin Random House Canada came forward with substantial donations. Not only is the dollar amount important, but so are the impressive numbers of people who have donated and continue to donate to the IVAs.
The IVAs aspire to support Indigenous literary art in its diversity and complexity, rejecting cultural appropriation by requiring declarations of Indigenous identity from applicants. Seeking to transcend the individual- ism of prize culture and to foster community among emerging Indigenous writers, the IVAs expanded to include multiple genres as well as literature in English, French, and Indigenous languages. Literary art by Indigenous artists does not always sit neatly within European genres and the catego- ries of the awards reflect this range. For example, the winner in the cate- gory of “Work in an Alternative Format,” Mich Cota, a two-spirit Algon- quin‑mixed woman, astounded the audience at the 2018 Gala in Oskana kâ-asastêki with a performance weaving writing together with rhythm, music, and dance. Unfortunately, due to the challenges of formatting and the limitations of the printed page, there are several works that we were not able to include in this special edition. These include Mich Cota’s per- formance piece; AnishinaabeKwe Joanne Robertson’s graphic novel, The Water Walkers (Second Story Press); Cree actor Cliff Cardinal’s plays, Huff and Stitch (Playwrights Canada); and Métis playwright Keith Bark- er’s This is How We Got Here (Playwrights Canada).
No series of awards alone will change the world. But the IVAs add breath to the sparks of inspiration felt by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit literary artists from coast to coast to coast, kindling creative fires to warm the People for generations to come.
4.
One of the award categories is for Works in an Indigenous Language. What’s the importance of this category? What are some of the strategies that emerging Indigenous writers are using to recover Indigenous languages?
DEANNA REDER: This prize for works in an Indigenous language is the one I hope most will grow. We need to do everything we can to support and restore our languages. I am reminded of the words of the Skwxwú7mesh leader Dustin Rivers/Khelsilem at a 2016 fundraiser for language classes for his community: “I kept hearing that the Squamish language was dying; and I kept meeting young people who wanted to learn their language.” I know that in recent Cree writing there is a reliance on the Cree imaginary: Rolling Head, Wesageechak, the Son of Ayas, Weeti- go. I also know that our emerging writers sometimes can’t or don’t choose to draw from old stories; it might be something they haven’t grown up around or it might be something they don’t think communicates what they want to say. But if there is one common attribute I’ve seen – whether writing in one’s language or in English or French – it is the reliance on writing about themselves, their own life-stories as an affirmation of their identity and community. I think the germ of that is the increasing prevalence of people introducing themselves in their language, even if they are not flu- ent. It’s a powerful beginning.
4.
The IVAs is the only literary award in the world for Indigenous Works in French. Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui, a Wendat poet and historian, has argued that for a very long time, Indigenous literatures in Québec have been ignored by the French-language literary circle and by the Anglophone Indigenous literary studies milieu. What are the long-term effects of these silences and exclusions? What are the challenges in overcoming these divisions and how can the IVAs help bring into dialogue these different literary communities?
SARAH HENZI: There are in fact many similarities in the development of Indigenous literatures in Québec as in the Anglophone provinces. But, notably, authors who were published in the 1970s, such as An Antane Kapesh (Je suis une maudite sauvagesse (1976), Qu’as-tu fait de mon pays? (1979) or Jane Willis Pachano (Geniesh: An Indian Girlhood (1973)), fell through the cracks of institutional recognition due to either the language barrier, lack of publishing opportunities, or quickly going out of print. These works, however, should be read alongside others like Halfbreed by Maria Campbell (Métis), Bobbi Lee, Indian Rebel by Lee Maracle (Stó:lō), or Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman (Inuit) – the thematic similarities are striking, carried by the voices of In- digenous women storytellers, and resonate with many communities. Moreover, in Québec, we had to wait until 2004 for the first anthology of Indigenous writing in French to be published,2 by Italian scholar Maurizio Gatti (Littérature amérindienne du Québec : écrits de langue française). His original research included over 50 authors and 150 excerpts; and, since, many new voices have added themselves to this rapidly growing corpus. This speaks to, in my opinion, the first challenge that had to be overcome: publication opportunities, of which there were not many until
2. In 1993, Québécois scholar Diane Boudreau published an anthology entitled Histoire de la littérature amérindienne au Québec : oralité et écriture. While critics were initially enthusiastic about it, the corpus was still deemed “too small” for it to garner proper recognition within academia, busy rather with the study of its own burgeoning national field of Québécois literature and, to an extent, that of Anglo-Québécois literature.
relatively recently. Montreal-based Mémoire d’encrier, since 2009,3 and Wendake-based Éditions Hannenorak, since 2010, have been tirelessly publishing the works of Indigenous writers, and this ready availability and larger distribution has made a significant difference. In parallel, promotion efforts and community gatherings – such as the Salon du livre des Premi- ères Nations, the first and only Indigenous Book Fair and Literary Event, held annually since 2011 – festivals, public readings and awards, have all contributed to raising the profile of these many authors, as well as further institutionalizing the field. The second obstacle that had to be surmounted has to do with language, and this is being solved by an increasing number of works available in translation – both from French to English, and Eng- lish to French. Now, the writing by Innu authors such as Joséphine Bacon, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, and Naomi Fontaine is available in English. Likewise, Anishinaabe artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Yellow- knives Dene scholar Glen Coulthard and many others have been translated into French. The circulation of texts beyond linguistic and provincial bor- ders is thus enabling long-overdue dialogue, correspondences, invitations, and collaborations between Anglophone and Francophone writers, artists and scholars.
To bring these literary communities together, then, has not been an easy process, and it is still ongoing. The IVAs were created in response to a need for recognition – little did we know then that that included the first and only award dedicated specifically to Indigenous writing in French! In a nutshell, this is what the IVAs can do: they enable writers and artists from different parts of the country, from different linguistic backgrounds, to come together and celebrate; they help foster artistic communities by holding up emerging voices, as well as more established voices that have not been given sufficient recognition; and, most importantly, they facili- tate the promotion and dissemination of a wide range of works, across and beyond provincial, institutional and linguistic divides.
3. Mémoire d’encrier was founded in 2003, but many see 2009 as a turning point, since this is when they published Joséphine Bacon’s first collection of poetry, Bâtons à message / Tshissinuashitakana.
5.
Mentorship between emerging and established Indigenous writers is an important aspect of the Indigenous Voices Awards. Why is mentorship important for the IVAs to prioritize? How do the IVAs facilitate that mentorship? What still needs to be done to foster new generations of Indigenous writers?
SOPHIE MCCALL: Success for writers in today’s mainstream literary marketplace is driven to a large extent by the literary prize industry. Pub- lishers, editors, writers, and agents know only too well how important those nominations and awards are for the visibility and staying power of titles in a book market that moves at a vicious pace. Without those recog- nitions it is difficult for even the most game-changing works of literary art to survive and thrive.
Often the same writers get recognized for multiple prizes, creating a star system that ironically undermines a sustainable, diverse, and rich lit- erary culture. Another question to ask is, who gets to decide literary value? This can be especially deleterious in smaller literary fields like Indigenous literatures. The idea that “there can only be one” tends to curtail the pro- cess of bringing forward new generations of writers and keeping the field open to new ideas, directions, and voices.
The IVAs, therefore, are providing an important, targeted literary prize that helps create that recognition for Indigenous writers. Most importantly, the IVAs is committed to fostering mentorship. Each year the organizing committee for the IVAs builds in layers of mentorship initiatives in order to cultivate relationships among emerging and established Indigenous writers and to provide practical tools for professionalization, navigating the publishing industry, and developing voice within the ecosystem of Indigenous creative production. With the help of the annual ILSA gather- ing, the IVAs has created opportunities for nominated writers to learn from some of the most influential figures in Indigenous literature and pub- lishing in workshop settings, one‑on‑one mentorship environments, panel presentations, and roundtables. In 2019, the programming was designed specifically in response to a survey of the IVAs finalists, who identified the need for more information and clarity about the professional challeng- es of becoming a writer. We owe a big shout-out to Pamela Dillon and to Penguin Random House Canada, who have supported us tremendously in making these mentorship resources possible.
Another important feature of this mentoring process is publishing the works of writers. As members of the IVAs organizing committee we are thrilled to play a role in introducing these writers to readers of the Alaska Quarterly Review across Turtle Island and beyond.
6.
What were the criteria for determining the shortlists for the IVAs? How would you characterize work of the IVA winners and finalists in terms of both style and the underlying concerns reflected in the content of those works? Do you see important trends that suggest potential future directions?
WARREN CARIOU: While evaluation criteria were determined by each particular jury, I believe that a broad conception of literary excellence was brought to all of these decisions, a conception that includes the valuing of oral sensibilities and references, communitarian aesthetics, and particular understandings of the ethical importance of literature for asserting Indige- nous values. It is difficult to encapsulate the broad range of work on these shortlists, and this difficulty is itself a sign of the vitality of Indigenous literatures today. We see experimental writing that pushes the boundaries of form and subverts colonial categories of genre and authorship, we see writing that is deeply based in the traditions and languages of particular Indigenous nations, and we see writing that engages in powerful critiques of colonial ideologies and practices. In all of this remarkable work, I am particularly struck by the artists’ refusal to accept the standard western literary categories, a willingness to remake the rules of literary writing in order to tell our stories in the ways they need to be told. Many of these works also approach gender and sexuality in a similarly innovative way, drawing upon Indigenous teachings to critique colonial definitions and to show us the way toward more flexible, grounded and ethically engaged – and specifically Indigenous – understandings of identity and desire. Many of them also explore powerful, embodied modes of land-relations and en- vironmental sensibilities, based upon the vast lived experience of our na- tions and our kin (human and beyond). To me, the work on these shortlists represent the continued flourishing of Indigenous presence in our territo- ries, and I come away from the reading experience with a sense of deep gratitude for the gifts that these artists have shared with us. I know that these gifts will be well received by the next generations of Indigenous writers, some of whom are no doubt beginning to form their stories now.
WORKS CITED
Justice, Daniel Heath. “Carrying the Fire.” Voices Rising 14 March 2014. nationsris- ing.org/carrying-the-fire/
Maracle, Lee. “Today is Different, Because Yesterday We Fought.” Write. Fall 2017. 10–11. Elliott, Alicia. “The cultural appropriation debate isn’t about free speech – it’s about con-
text.” CBC Arts. 16 May 2017. www.cbc.ca/arts/
– “Our Stories Deserve to be Told.” Write. Fall 2017. 30–32.
ABOUT THE CO-EDITORS
Sophie McCall is a settler scholar and Associate Professor in the English Department at Simon Fraser University. She is the author of First Person Plural: Aboriginal Storytelling and the Ethics of Col- laborative Authorship (UBC Press, 2011), a finalist for the Gabrielle Roy Prize for English Canadian literary criticism, and the Canada Prize from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is co‑editor, with Deanna Reder (Cree-Métis), David Gaertner, and Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis), of Read, Listen, Tell: Indig- enous Stories from Turtle Island (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2017); with L’Hirondelle Hill of The Land We Are: Artists and Writ- ers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation (ARP Books 2015); and editor of Anahareo’s Devil in Deerskins (University of Manitoba Press, 2014), the first book-length life narrative published by an In- digenous woman author in Canada.
Deanna Reder is a Cree-Métis scholar and Associate Professor in the Departments of First Nations Studies and English at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on the understudied archive of In- digenous literary work in Canada up to 1992 (see thepeo- pleandthetext.ca). She is a founding member of the Indigenous Liter- ary Studies Association (see Indigenousliterarystudies.org) and a co‑chair of the Indigenous Voices Awards (see Indigenousvoic- esawards.org). She is the co‑editor of Troubling Tricksters: Revision- ing Critical Conversations (2010); Learn, Teach, Challenge: Ap- proaching Indigenous Literatures (2016); Read, Listen, Tell: Indige- nous Stories from Turtle Island (2017); and Honouring the Strength of Indian Women, by Ktunaxa-Secwepemc writer and dramatherapist Vera Manuel (2019).
Sarah Henzi is a settler scholar and Assistant Professor of Indigenous literatures at Université de Montréal. Her research focuses on graphic novels, science fiction, speculative fiction, erotica, and new media, in English and in French. She is the English translator of Innu writer An Antane Kapesh’s two books, Je suis une maudite sauvagesse (1976) and Qu’as-tu fait de mon pays? (1979), forthcoming in 2020 with the title, I am a Damn Savage; What Have You Done to My Country? (Wilfrid Laurier University Press). This English translation of these works, each page presented facing the revised Innu text, makes them available for the first time to a broader readership.
Sam McKegney is a settler scholar of Indigenous literatures and an Associate Professor at Queen’s University in the territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe Peoples. He has published a collec- tion of interviews entitled Masculindians: Conversations about Indigenous Manhood (University of Manitoba Press, 2014), a mono- graph entitled Magic Weapons: Aboriginal Writers Remaking Com- munity after Residential School (University of Manitoba Press, 2007), and articles on such topics as environmental kinship, masculinity the- ory, prison writing, Indigenous governance, and Canadian hockey mythologies. He is the recipient of the Queen’s University Prize for Excellence in Research, the Queen’s University Human Rights Award, and the Award for Best Essay in Canadian Literature.
Warren Cariou was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan into a fami- ly of Métis and European heritage. His books The Exalted Company of Roadside Martyrs and Lake of the Prairies: A Story of Belonging have won and been nominated for numerous awards, including the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction and the Drainie-Taylor Prize for biography. He has also co‑directed and co‑produced two films about Aboriginal people in western Canada’s oil sands region: Overburden and Land of Oil and Water. He teaches in the Depart- ment of English, Film and Theatre at the University of Manitoba, where he created and directed the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture. He was a member of the jury for the Indigenous Voices Awards in 2019.
LETTER TO AN EMERGING WRITER by Daniel Heath Justice
Dear Indigenous Visionary:
Writing in all its forms is a scary act; it makes us vulnerable and exposes our softest parts to a world not known for its gentleness. But there’s magnificent power in that vulnerability, and it’s deserving of acknowledgment. And I’m filled with such deep joy each time another powerful voice joins the Indigenous literary world. I hope you’ll think of these words as an honouring and a hope for the important work you’re about to undertake.
Too often we’ve been told that our words don’t matter. Too often we’ve been told that Indigenous people are unworthy of consideration as writers. We quite literally have centuries of colonizers telling us, our families, and our ancestors these things. Do not believe them. Your work is the inscribed embodiment of the survival and struggle of generations, the realization of possibility that’s so different from what so many of our ancestors had to face. It’s understandable that you might sometimes be afraid, or feel insecure, or feel clumsy or uncertain or any number of other emotions that turn the blank page into an enemy, an accusation, an unfillable emptiness. We all do, believe me! But don’t let it stop you, please. We need your work so much.
Some of that fear comes from good places of humility and the early, fitful stages of learning this craft, but too much of it comes from colonial society and its bigotries. They’re wrong in their silencing judgments, as they’ve always been. You have every bit as much right to have your stories and poems and plays and memoirs and songs and other works alive in the world as anyone. If you have the gift, you’re called upon to use it for the People, your own and the rest. Gifts grow in the sharing; they diminish the more we hide them. It doesn’t matter why we hold back – fear, selfishness, shyness, modesty. If you’re given a gift, if you’re called to do this, you can take comfort in knowing that you’re not called to take on a task that’s beyond your ability. And your words are needed.
Two important and often underappreciated aspects of a writer’s success are self-advocacy and mentorship. You’ve got to get out there, get your work seen, show up at readings, do the work that gets your words into other peoples’ lives – it’s rare that a writer succeeds just by writing. Many of the most talented writers struggle for recognition; less agile writers may thrive out of sheer determination. Luck is a big part of it; drive is another. But they’re only part of the equation. It makes a huge difference to advocate for your work, and to have more established writers advocate on your behalf, provide mentorship, guidance, cautionary notes, and advice. It won’t be long before other writers start to look to you for support, so be the mentor you had or – if your mentors are in short supply – be the mentor you wish you had.
* * *
This is another point: we’re part of a community, but too many people – including some of our own and some of those who claim affiliation with our nations – forget this simple truth. It’s not just about what we receive but what we give to one another that makes the real difference. The Indigenous-lit world is a small place, and for all the strength of our work the conditions for success are challenging – we need to take care of each other. In both Canada and the US the mainstream literary scene tends to hold up one or two Indigenous writers at a time, while leaving the rest to fend for themselves. It’s important to help one another, to uphold one another’s work, to celebrate successes and grieve losses, to engage in this beautiful struggle together.
You’re part of a lineage, a tradition, a rich, vexed, complicated, troubled, and beautiful history of literary achievement. That can be a deep wellspring from which to draw strength. Please don’t accept the idea, even from our own, that Indigenous writing is a contradiction in terms, that our writing is only a colonial construct. Our peoples have been communicating knowledge in various media and forms since time immemorial, and although our oral traditions and histories are vitally important – especially in our imperilled mothertongues – they’re not the only way we’ve expressed our dreams, hopes, fears, and possibilities. It needn’t be one or the other – we can be part of all these things. And, to my mind, we should be, as there’s no place in this world where Indigenous voices don’t belong. But remember, too, that this tradition of which we’re a part is made possible only because those other traditions and languages have been held, nurtured, and protected – let your writing strengthen that necessary work rather than erase it. Writing isn’t an inevitable good; it can harm as readily as help. Not all things are meant for the page – return to the teachings that give guidance on how to do this work responsibly.
In Canada, the last few years have seen the loss of some powerful, beautiful writers and scholars in the field: Beth Brant, Richard Wagamese, Connie Fife, Sharron Proulx-Turner, Jo-Ann Episkenew, Renate Eigenbrod, among others. In my experience one thing that connected all these people was their generosity to other writers and enthusiasm for Indigenous voice finding its rightful place of honour in the world. Without them, that world would be immeasurably poorer, and many lives would be diminished. Each of them, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, made an important contribution through their work, and we honour them still.
Generosity isn’t a weakness – it’s a profound, generative strength. Be strong, even when you don’t think you can be; be bold, even when you’re scared; be humble, even when you feel unworthy and are desperate for other peoples’ praise to make you feel less insecure or uncertain about yourself and your work. We all have gifts to share, stories to tell, ideas to contribute, but we never do these things alone, and there are many eyes watching as you go, looking to you as a role model even if you don’t want to be. Indigenous writers still aren’t so commonplace that we can take any one of us for granted – we need all the good minds we can get. But we also have so many amazing models of excellence to look to.
* * *
There are people who want to hear your words, desperately. There are others who don’t. Keep your focus on the former, because the latter won’t want to listen no matter how good you are, no matter how much you play by their rules. Don’t waste your time feeding the sated; nourish the hungry instead.
Sometimes being kind means being critical. Criticism at its best is an act of profound generosity; it’s about making our work better, smarter, more nuanced, more engaging. Just because someone says something critical about your work doesn’t mean they don’t like it, or that they don’t like you, or that your thoughts and art are unworthy of consideration. Sometimes it’s just that they see flaws that you’re too close to the work to see, and they want to help you do better; often it’s specifically because they like your work that they’re offering helpful criticism. When done well, criticism is labour‑intensive, time-consuming, and deeply committed work; it can be a true gift to the writer as well as to readers. And remember that constructive criticism isn’t the same as belittling negativity – there’s a really important difference, and it’s necessary to learn the distinction. The former is about polishing until the light gleams brighter; the second is about shattering the glass.
Some readers won’t like your work. It’s inevitable. And you’ll be fine. It doesn’t mean your work isn’t worthy of an audience – it just means the work you do doesn’t connect with them. Not everyone’s work interests you, either. That’s why we need to encourage as many voices as possible, so that every reader can find the writers who speak to them, challenge them, and inspire them in ways no one else can. And you may be the writer they need right now. Find your voice, find your audience, find your writerly purpose, and keep with it.
As peoples all over the world have known since making meaningful marks on stone, bark, and flesh, writing is power. Like all power, it can be used to good, neutral, or cruel purpose. Not everything you write has to hold your people up or even be about Indigenous matters, but at the very least it shouldn’t make things harder for your kin or add to the degradation, dehumanization, and diminishment of Indigenous peoples. The colonizers have ample stories doing that work without our own joining in.
* * *
Read widely and without genre snobbery – there are lots of ways to write, and many forms that can help us realize our vision. Besides, most Indigenous writers straddle two or more forms and multiple genres, so whatever your interests, read beyond them. Be a fiercely partisan reader of the work of Indigenous writers, Black writers, women writers, queer writers, other marginalized writers, and all the intersections in between. Read the mainstream, too – the world is filled with beautiful voices. But first and foremost, advocate for Indigenous writers. Share the work. Tweet it. Blog about it. Check out their work from the library – in Canada this, too, benefits writers. Set up a reading group. Go online and review it. Teach it. Share your dog-eared copy with a friend, and encourage them to get one of their own. Be a cheerleader for our writers, storytellers, and visionaries. Some of my personal models for this commitment in Canada are Kateri Akiwenzie Damm, Richard Van Camp, Cherie Dimaline, Joanne Arnott, Warren Cariou, Deanna Reder, Lee Maracle, and Leanne Simpson, some of the very best Indigenous advocates for Indigenous writers I’ve ever met. They love their people, they love their writers, and they love the words and work that writers are called to do in the world. And they’ve been incredible mentors to so many of us, and continue doing so. Be the advocate for others that you would want for your own work.
There’s no shame in being called an “Indigenous writer,” just as there’s no such thing as being “just a writer” divorced from context. The latter is a mythical and pernicious category used to normalize colonial categories of value and to pathologize the work that’s unashamedly grounded outside of white straight maleness. To be an Indigenous writer is to be part of a long legacy of struggle and survivance, of determination to speak truth into a world that too often insists on Indigenous silence. Hold up that title with pride. If others try to cram you into their little colonial box, stretch beyond their boundaries. There’s no one way of being an Indigenous writer, but the specificity of your experience – and of the communities to which you belong – matters a lot, and it deserves to be named.
Reach out to the writers who inspire you. One of the sad truths about our field is that far too many of the elders who cleared the path have been pushed to the side by the generations that followed. This is especially the case with poets, particularly Indigenous women, who so often have to work two or three jobs just to get by; they’re brought in occasionally for poorly compensated classroom lectures or conference talks (and are often expected to take time away from paid employment for it), but their old work is neglected and their new work isn’t encouraged. We’ve got to do better about honouring those who made possible the vibrant field we have today. They fought battles we can hardly imagine, and continue to do so – let’s show them some love and help make more space for their work. And don’t imagine that all emerging writers are young people – some of the most important emerging voices are older folks, including elders, who also want to share their words in the world.
If you’re a young writer, please show honour to those who came before, but don’t give blind obedience; offer respect, not submission. Sometimes the tracks set down are too well worn; sometimes you’ll be called to cut new trail, to lead us to better vistas.
Sometimes those who came before can see only what they’ve done, not what you’re called to do. Honour them, be kind, but be brave, too. We need what you offer now. And don’t suppose that older, more established writers aren’t also experimental contemporaries who are doing trail-cutting of their own – let the work show the possibility, not the age or the reputation. A lot of the best work being done now is by those who have honed their craft and nurtured their gift for decades; a lot is also by newer writers, too.
My hope for you is that you always remain curious, compassionate, and courageous. The world is a hard enough place, with too many people wedded to deadly certainty and so insistent on their own narrow rightness that they’d burn down the rest of the world to ensure that their singular vision reigns supreme. That’s a colonial condition, and it can only bring harm. Indigenous writers can offer something different. You offer something different. You and your work are a continuation of the possibility and realization of your ancestors’ hopeful struggle. The wounded world still needs you, now as much as ever. We need you, as do future generations.
Thank you for all you’re doing. Now, it’s time for you to get back to your own writing – your readers are waiting.
All my very best,
Daniel
Daniel Heath Justice is a Colorado-born Canadian citizen of the Cherokee Nation/ ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture at University of British Columbia on unceded Musqueam territory. His most recent book is Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, a literary manifesto about the way Indigenous writing works in the world. He is the author of Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History and numerous essays and reviews in the field of Indigenous literary studies. He is also co‑editor of a number of critical and creative anthologies and journals, including the award-winning The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature (with James H. Cox) and Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (with Qwo-Li Driskill, Deborah Miranda, and Lisa Tatonetti).
Indigenous Voices Awards
Selected Winners and Finalists
From nipê wânîn: my way back
têpiya pîkiskwêwina by Mika Lafond
macîhtwâwin
nicîpotônêyin
tâpiskohc sîwinikan mîna wîsakosâwas ispakwan
kîmohc pîkiskwê
namôya kipêhtawâw ê-itwêt
ayisiniskêyiw
nititwahok
namôya mîwacisiw
pasci mamitonêyita kîkway takî îki mêkwahc
namôya kwayaskopayiw
kamiyito
tâpiskohc kimôwanâyâw
pîkiskwêwin kâpahkitêk
nitônihk
pâpahkawin
yîkwaskwan pîhkwêyitamômakan
namôya awiyak mîwêyitam kimôwan
niya piko
namôya kwamwahc ayâmakan
tâpiskohc niya
âspîs niwâpamikawin âspîs nipêhtakawin
âspîs ninisitohtâkawin
kâkêkâhc nipômân
mâka nisôkêyitên
mâmitonêyita
kocista
pîkiskwê
masinahikê
têpiya pîkiskwêwina
just words
cantankerous
I purse my lips
the taste both sugar and lemon
whisper
inaudible slurs
met with gestures
pointing at me
bitter
overthought moments
of indiscretion
shared
precipitation
the word that pops
on my lips
the drip-drip serenade
grey clouds are depressing
nobody likes rain
except me
teetering
like me
rarely seen, heard, understood
nearly toppling
but holding ground
think
taste
speak
write
just words
Mika Lafond (Winner, Work in an Indigenous Language) is a member of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation. She is the author of the poetry collection nipê wânîn: my way back (Thistledown, 2017). Her poems and short stories have appeared in a number of Canadian anthologies and her play, otâcimow, was produced by the Saskatoon Public School Division’s Indigenous Ensemble. She teaches at ITEP at University of Saskatchewan. This 2-page poem was written in Cree and the translation by the author is on the facing pages.
From THIS WOUND IS A WORLD
Notes from a Public Washroom by Billy-Ray Belcourt
i never dream about myself anymore.
i chose a favorite memory
and named it after every boy
i have broken up with.
grief is easier that way.
i need to cut a hole in the sky
to world inside.
is the earth round,
or is it in the shape of a broken heart?
i drove through a town called freedom
and it looked like an accident
pretending to be a better accident.
there is a city in colorado
called loveland
and it is where alone meets lonely.
i have been there exactly two times.
i saw a lot of indians
and cried for three days afterwards.
i bought a pin that says LOVE
and i wear it on my jean jacket as a cry for help.
i asked all 908 of my facebook friends
to tell me they loved me
and they did
and i believed them.
my cousin’s boyfriend punched
a hole in the wall
so i hid inside it
and for a few seconds i thought
maybe this is what heaven looks like.
i ran off the edge of the world
into another world
and there everyone
was at least a little gay.
From THIS WOUND IS A WORLD
Colonialism: A Love Story by Billy-Ray Belcourt
1. colonialism broke us, and we’re still figuring out how to love and be broken at the same time.
2. the first time he told me i was beautiful, i thought he was lying. i thought beauty was a plot in a story i had been written out of a long time ago.
3. what happens when “i love you, too” becomes a substitute for “i can’t,” when his hand finds your body and it feels like he’s taking pieces of it? perhaps this is what they meant by “love requires sacrifice.”
4. sometimes bodies don’t always feel like bodies but like wounds.
5. he told me he’d take a needle and stitch our bodies together with the thickest thread.
6. colonialism. definition: turning bodies into cages that no one has the keys for.
7. when i invite him into the abandoned house of me, he tiptoes inside. he notices the way the walls ache to be touched again even though they know time won’t let them survive it.
8.we need not pretend that love was to be found in wastelands like these.
Billy-Ray Belcourt (Winner, Published Poetry in English) is from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is a PhD student in the Department of English & Film Studies at the University of Alberta. His debut collection of poems, This Wound is a World (Frontenac House), won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2018 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. It was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, the 2018 Raymond Souster Award, and the 2018 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. His sophomore book, NDN Coping Mechanism: Notes from the Field, was published in the fall of 2019 with House of Anansi Press.
QUEEN BEE by Elaine McArthur
My mother carried the strength and resilience of a mountain despite her diminutive size and gentle ways. She had eleven children that she and Dad raised together and stressed family and education above all else. I believe that she gave a little bit of her strength to each and every one of us. She was Dad’s best friend, his greatest supporter, and they shared a common history. They both attended an Indian residential school and suffered abuses at the hands of the staff and other students.
Unlike Dad, Mom talked about her experiences there. She was a great storyteller and knew how to make us laugh, gasp and shiver in fear.
Shortly after Dad passed away, Mom went into a nursing home because of her advanced Parkinson’s. She spent three years there and I visited her weekly, making the two-and-a-half-hour trip on weekends to bring her favorite snacks and other special orders. She had a small fridge that I bought for her room, and we kept it full of her favorite snacks: fruit, cheese, lunch meat, buns, and small cans of fruit juices. One of us always checked the fridge to make sure the food in it wasn’t going bad and that everything was always fresh. Mom was not able to do this herself, so we did it for her.
One Thursday evening the phone rang.
“Hello, is this Elaine?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, this is your mom’s nursing home calling. Your mom is not feeling well and she wants to go to the hospital, shall we call the ambulance?”
“Yes, yes, of course,” I answered immediately. “May I speak to her?”
“Yes, here she is.”
“Hello?” Mom’s quiet voice came on the phone.
“Hi, Mom. How you feeling?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m tired, but this is different. It’s more a heavy feeling in my chest.”
“Okay, Mom, you get an ambulance then and I’ll be there on Saturday to come visit.”
“Okay, love you.”
“Love you too, Mom,” I replied before we hung up.
That Saturday, I drove the two-and-a-half hours to see her in the hospital. She wasn’t lucid and was lying in bed mumbling, telling snippets of stories and talking to someone who wasn’t there.
The doctor called me aside. When we were in a different room, I dialed my brother to listen in as the doctor spoke.
“We need to start thinking about what to do in case something happens to your mom.”
The doctor started to discuss quality of life and what measures, if any, we would like for her if anything should happen.
“We’re going to fight, we’re not going to be making any decisions like that right now.” My brother cut her off. It was decided that all measures would be taken to ensure Mom’s continuing care.
Later, as I was leaving Mom’s room, I turned to look at her one last time. She was watching me, fully awake. I stopped and went back to her bedside.
“I was just going to head home, Mom. How are you feeling? I’m glad you’re awake now.”
“I’m tired.” Her voice was tired and quiet.
“Aw, well get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll come back and I’ll bring you something to eat. Right now you need sleep.” I touched her hand and she held my hand. She nodded and closed her eyes. I waited a few moments longer and then when I heard her softly snoring, I left.
Two days later, after a frantic ride for the air ambulance to transfer to the city hospital, we made the difficult decision to unplug the machines that breathed for her. That morning, I drove home and fell asleep almost immediately on the couch. Later however, I was half woken by the sound of her voice in my dream, ringing in my ears.
“I was tired, but I’m with Dad now.” Her voice echoed and reverberated off the walls. I reached out my arms imagining her right in front of me and felt a great emptiness inside. I swallowed back a sob, too tired to cry again.
I closed my eyes and thought about the last time she told me a story in her room. It was late summer and she was sitting in her wheelchair with the golden afternoon streaming in. We sat quietly for a while, enjoying our afternoon tea and snacks I had brought and the sound of the crickets and the steady hum of the bees that gathered around the blooming apple tree just outside her window. After a few moments in the comfortable silence, she began to speak, her voice soft and comforting as she began another story about her time at a Residential School.
“There were these big girls in school,” she began softly. “We had to call the biggest one the Queen or they’d beat us up. We were all afraid of her, me and my friends. We had to hand wash their socks and underwear at night before bed.” Mom took another slow sip of tea. “The nuns knew but they didn’t say anything. This one time the Queen was after us to pick berries for her and her friends. We had no choice but to go.”
She fell silent then. Her hand shook and spilled her tea as she took another sip. I lay on her bed on my side hugging her pillow, settling in for a good story.
“Well, one day I finally got fed up with the Queen and her gang always picking on us and pushing us around. They even picked on the little ones. The Queen and her gang made them clean off their shoes and tidy up their lockers.”
“Which school was this?” I asked.
“Crooked Lake.” She swallowed hard and looked out her window at the majestic crab apple tree blooming outside in plain view. Every winter she worried about her tree when the rabbits came to eat the bark. In the summer, she worried about the bees that gathered and buzzed at her screen when she would leave her window open for summer air. Her first autumn at the home, she had the staff out there picking the apples so she could do some cooking. I arrived for my usual visit when a nurse inside told me she was out back with some of the staff. I walked around the corner to see three homecare nurses standing near Mom reaching for crab apples. Mom was in her wheelchair pointing at apples.
“Anyways, I was out there picking berries,” Mom brought me back to the present, “and I put them in my apron because we had no pail or anything to carry them back in. Me and the other girls were picking and talking about how much we hated the big girls and trying to figure out what we could do to make them leave us alone.”
She took another sip of tea, and in her soft voice, barely above a whisper, said: “There were lots of bees last year, they kept me awake in the afternoons. And once there was a spider. He was big and ugly. I threw a shoe at him over there.” She pointed to the floor just below her now open window. “I guess he must have got in ’cause I left the window open overnight. The nurses don’t like us doing that. Now I know why.” She was silent for a moment staring at the tree. “I threw a shoe at him and yelled. He stopped moving and stared at me.”
“Ew, he stared at you?” I asked incredulously.
She gave a little laugh and fell silent again, getting lost in her thoughts.
“So you went picking berries?” I asked.
“I found a beehive and had an idea. I dumped my berries and took off my apron. I wrapped it around the hive and carried it back like a bag. I don’t remember if I got stung, probably did, but I hated the Queen so much I didn’t care.” She stopped here and gave a little chuckle. Her fingers, crooked and stiff from Parkinson’s, grabbed a handful of her favorite snack, soft cheese chips.
“When we got back, no one was in the locker room, so I dumped the hive in the Queen’s locker. I shut the door fast so none got out. My friends and I were scared, but I wanted to get back at the phony Queen so bad. Their humming was loud and echoed in the tin locker. I was afraid that the noise would alert someone to the trap, but was relieved after a while when the humming settled down and was so low one could barely hear it.
“When the Queen came down after she told me, ‘There better be berries for me, Hazel, or you’re going to get it.’ I watched her open her locker with a yank, while she continued glaring, but suddenly all the bees came pouring out.”
Mom stopped and smiled remembering that glorious moment.
“Bahhhhh!” She screamed. “Bees were everywhere, flying straight at us, bouncing off the windows and our clothes, buzzing and humming. Then everyone started screaming. We ran outside, even the nuns were running and screaming while swatting at bees. I didn’t think of what I was going to do after the bees came out, I only thought of seeing the Queen with all her bees.” Mom giggled.
“Her arms were flailing like this.” She waved her skinny arms like she was swatting at bees. I imagined everyone running for cover.
“The Queen was shaking her head trying to chase them off her. Wherever she ran, her bees followed. We were running away from her and her bees. Even her gang ran away from her.
“Of course I got a good beating after from the nuns, but I didn’t care. I kept thinking of the bees in the Queen’s mean face. We didn’t have to pick berries for the big girls after that.”
The smile still on her face, Mom went quiet again after a moment, and then her smile faded to something like sadness. A nurse came in to check on her and left the door ajar when she left. Outside noises in the hallway – the sounds of a TV and the voices of the nurses – invaded our space, not unkindly but rather reassuringly.
I knew Mom was getting tired because she began moving her hands as if she was eating something with a spoon then chewing on food, her eyes clenched tight. She took another spoonful of her dream chewing. I sat up.
“Let’s change places. You nap. I’ll sit.”
“No, I’m okay.” She shook her head and took another spoonful of her dream.
“Yes, you nap. I’ll watch TV until you wake up. I won’t go anywhere, I promise,” I said firmly.
“Okay.” She gave up and lay down and slept. I sat and watched TV until one of the nurses came in to wake her for dinner.
I stood up, stretched and walked over to her. “I’ll come see you next weekend, and meanwhile I’ll call you. Next time I’ll bring us a small pizza to share.” I kissed her on the cheek. “I love you. Eat lots and get some rest.”
“Okay, my girl.”
As her door closed behind me, I heard her pipe up, “Pepperoni!”
Now we were all gathered around her bed in the hospital, with tubes and machines keeping her alive. Earlier in the evening the doctor had come to give us the devastating news. Mom was rushed to the city hospital by air ambulance and during the flight her heart had stopped. The paramedics had worked hard to keep it going, but, as they explained to us later, even if she survived the infection in her lungs, there was so much damage done to her ribs and chest that she could not survive.
Two hours later in the hospital room, all her children gathered around her like bees. Not knowing what to do with ourselves, we waited for the rest of the family to arrive. We talked softly to one another, our voices buzzing like the gentle buzz that comes from a beehive when it is settling in for the night. After watching everyone move around, come and go, asking needless questions like, “Hear from so and so?” or “Anyone know how far away so and so is?” I had enough and went to the waiting room emotionally and physically exhausted.
My sister Gaylene gently shook my shoulder to wake me up: “Come say goodbye now.”
The rest of the family had arrived and we all filed into Mom’s room. We stood there not moving for a few moments, before everyone lined up to say goodbye one by one. As my turn came, I leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I love you so much, and I will always remain your little bee. Thank you for sharing your stories with me. You will live on in them forever. Now go be with Dad, I know how much you missed him.” I rested my cheek on hers and heard the machine suck in air and push it out with a click and a hum like so many bees.
When her breathing tube was removed, I watched her little curled fingers relax. I knew she was with Dad now and I was happy for her.
“She was tired and she missed Dad,” I said softly. “Goodbye Mom, your bees will miss you.”
Three days later, my sister Gaylene and I went to the nursing home to clean out Mom’s room and gather her things. When we were done, we both stood at the door and for a moment, stared at the giant window that framed the crab apple tree. It was bare and the hoar frost weighed down the branches, so they drooped sadly, like they too mourned the little girl that used bees to fight her battle in residential school.
Elaine McArthur (Winner, Unpublished Prose in English) hails from the Ocean Man First Nation and currently resides in Regina, Saskatchewan. In addition to winning in the Prose category in 2018, she also won in 2019 in the category of Unpublished Poetry. She is currently self-publishing a children’s book series. She has a degree in Indigenous Education.
HAIR RAIZING by Treena Chambers
I dreamt of spider webs last night.
Breathe.
Panic is starting. My legs won’t move. Maybe I am still dreaming.
Nope. I can hear the carts moving. Rounds are underway.
The time is right. Three weeks ago chemo started. I can’t pretend it isn’t happening.
I started to believe I might be the one. The urban chemo legend, the girl who didn’t lose her hair.
Nurses, doctors, interns, other patients, everyone has been part of the great hair debate. “Not everyone loses their hair” has echoed through the hallways. I have been acting blasé, but I tug on my ponytail when no one is looking. It has been holding firm.
Until today.
I can hear the hospital coming to life outside my room. “Morning, Treena.” Dr. D is on rounds the morning I start to look sick. Shit. He’s so cute; dark hair, green eyes, and doctoring hasn’t stamped arrogance over his features yet.
“Ahh. Don’t come in. Is Linda on shift this morning? Can you ask her to come see me?” I refuse to be a spectacle. “You can see me after I talk to her. She can chart me.” Damn it where did these tears come from? I quickly banish them. Thank God Mom isn’t here yet.
“Hey Treena. You called? Oh, so, it’s started.” Linda looks at me as she rounds the corner into my room.
Cancer. I have seen the diagnosis through the faces of people around me.
First. Hope. Maybe a cyst.
Next. The wish. Make it the good kind.
Then prayers. The hope that each of us is the kid on the right side of the odds: the look that hopes when we’re twenty-five we come back and visit, bringing our new life and maybe even a healthy new baby.
Just to say hi.
All of these just flickered across Linda’s face.
“So, no hope for a comb-over eh, I guess I don’t need a mirror.” I’m on the prayer level now.
“Sorry.” Linda focuses.
“You hesitated, when you looked at me.” I pause. I’ve become hyper-aware. I’m learning to read people. Parents, doctors, nurses. I can read faces and gestures. They have become more important than words. I don’t believe everything will be okay anymore. People’s concerns walk a step ahead of them. I read them so I can be wearing the proper armour when they try to get close. “I need clippers?” If the hair goes it’s going on my terms. In a stronger voice I say it again. “I need some clippers.”
“Clippers?” Mom rounds the corner to my bedroom and catches sight of me.
She knew this day would come but is not prepared. Her baby is sick and now I look it. She sat by my bed feeding me ice chips while chemo turned me inside out. When I was too sick to move, my lips dried out, and sores started to form around my lips, Mom eased crushed ice into my mouth. She read magazines and newspapers out loud to distract me. She tried to read some letters from home. That ended when in a letter someone asked if I could talk to God for her if I got to heaven. She’d been praying about a boy problem and hadn’t received an answer. Since I might be there . . . I closed my eyes while she was reading. We both pretended I was asleep.
Mom stands paralyzed in my doorway. She looks at Linda and me and tries to concentrate on what we are saying.
I look up at Mom. The dynamic of our relationship shifts abruptly, like soldiers in wartime, sometimes the privates end up in charge.
“Mom, today we are shaving my head. It . . .” I pause. I can’t say hair. “It will be gone in a few days anyway. I want it gone now. There’s nothing in this whole mess I have control over. I pee in a bowl and give it to someone to measure. The shape, size and colour of my BM is a conversation I have daily. For pete’s sake, I don’t even use the word poo anymore. I need to do this, Mom.” I look at her, the words tumbling from me. God. Everything is changing. I can’t even enjoy food anymore. Everything tastes different. I made the mistake of eating sour cream and onion chips during chemo. They came back up combined with stomach acid to punctuate their flavour. Just looking at a bag now makes my stomach roll, from a favorite snack to a mortal enemy in three heaves. “This is important to me.”
“I’ll check for clippers.” Linda makes her way out of the room. She wants to give Mom a chance to be alone with me. Poor Mom had no idea what she was walking into this morning.
“You really want to shave your head?” Mom asks. “There’s no going back once you do.”
“There’s nowhere to go anyway, is there, Mom?” The tears I banished earlier stream down my face.
Mom can hardly look in my direction. Our hearts are breaking. Sometimes, it is as if the two of us have run off from the family for our own adventure. The hospital has seemed a bit like a motel. We’ve shopped, been to IMAX shows, aquariums, and eaten at restaurants. Moments like this bring us back to reality. We’re here because some insidious disease is eating away at Mom’s first born. And now she’s letting doctors try to beat it by killing part of me in the hope of killing the cancer.
Mom edges onto my bed and wraps her arms around me. Rocking, we cling to each other. She is grieving for the baby she can no longer protect. Her role changed when the word cancer was used. She can’t band-aid these troubles.
We are each caught up in our grief when Linda comes in. “No one on the ward has clippers.”
“I saw a barber shop down the street?” Thinking out loud has become a habit. “We walked by when we were out. They’ll shave it for me.” I look at Linda. “I need a day pass to get out of this joint. Let’s do my vitals now. Then Dr. D can come and see me.” Thinking about the reality of this is too much. This action plan will keep me busy until tonight. I can wallow alone during the night if I need to. I’ve cried too much lately anyway. If I think too much breathing becomes impossible. “I need a baseball cap, Mom. Dr D is coming and between my hair and the puffy eyes I look horrible.”
Mom digs through my belongings looking for a hat of some sort. She finds one in the presents people have been sending me. She hands it over to me, her newly energized daughter. There is nothing that brings me to life like breaking rules.
I adjust the baseball cap on my head trying to cover up the newly showing scalp. “Has Linda told you my plan?” I ask as Dr. D enters my room. I go with the direct approach. He’ll see it my way if he believes I’m serious.
“Your counts aren’t very high, Treena. Going out isn’t a good idea. You need to stay germ free for a while longer. Give your body a few more days,” Dr. D says. He can see the chances of keeping me from doing this are slim. This is his first year on the wards. He loves his job. But, I’ve seen him try to rationalize what he has to do to my body in the hope of giving me a future.
“I’m going. Are you going to call the guards to keep me from leaving?” Defensive. Shit. That’s too much. I should be charming him. Instead I’m sitting here in my pajamas with a stupid baseball cap on making demands. I know better.
During our first lumbar puncture and bone marrow aspiration he managed to give me three needle sticks and not draw any fluid. He panicked and wanted to quit and try another day. I had a date with a box of popcorn and a matinee the next day so I half charmed and half bullied him into one last attempt. That’s how I discovered his secret. If I can make him laugh he will let me do almost anything. “Wrestling with them will be entertaining for the folks at the nurses’ station, but you know, with my blood counts it’s not such a good idea,” I say cheekily. “Please. I need to do this.”
“Okay. But, you need to wear a mask. Let’s limit the germs as much as possible.” Dr. D says. When Treena wouldn’t let him in the room this morning all sorts of scenarios were parading through his mind. This is a complication he can help her with. He can give her back a bit of dignity.
I know I’ve won. The demand for the mask is a farce; he knows that as soon as I leave the building it will be in my pocket. We both know our roles. He sets boundaries. I test them.
“Right. Everyone out. I need to get dressed.” I stand up. Whoa. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. Dizziness threatens to bring the floor up to meet me. My knees find their strength. This is a good thing. I can’t remember the last time I was outside. Judging by the way my legs are acting they can’t remember the last time they were used either. I miss the breeze on my face. “I’ll put some clothes on and meet you at the nurses’ station, Mom.”
Walking out of the elevator on the lobby floor is scary. The walls and elevator keep the Normals out. Now, right now, I pass between the worlds. I walk down the street and eyes slide off me. My exile doesn’t show. Not yet.
Glances will linger a moment too long to be comfortable when the hair is gone. Then the guessing games will begin. “What does she have? How sick is she?” These questions will be in their eyes as they turn away praying I don’t notice. We all compare ourselves to others. “I’m fatter than her. Skinnier than her. I’m not totally happy. At least I’m not sick like that girl I saw on the street.” I used to play that game. Now, things are too complicated for that game. I reach in my pocket and rub the mask Dr. D wanted me to wear.
“Good morning, ladies,” the barber says as we enter the shop. “What can I do for you?”
“I need to shave my head.”
“You don’t want to do that. Mom, tell her. You have beautiful hair.”
I take my cap off. His eyes widen.
“Oh.” How inadequate, he thinks. Kids from the hospital walk past his shop. They have been an abstraction. They walk by his shop. He makes up stories to entertain himself on slow days. What they have. Where they came from. Then this one comes in and tears the game apart.
“Well, um, first we need to trim it with scissors. Um. Do you want to keep some? Um, as a souvenir maybe?” He can’t believe he used those words. Shit. A souvenir. He doesn’t know what to say. “I mean as a reminder.” Small talk here is about hockey, politics, or people’s aches and pains. None of that seems appropriate with this young girl. Today, he thinks, I will remember how lucky I am. A lesson in gratitude.
“Okay, start trimming then,” I say, “and no keepsakes.” Poor guy doesn’t know what to say, and I am too tired to smooth things over. The sicker I get the more people around me expect me to help them feel comfortable. People look at me. They see sickness, bad luck, and bad karma. They see what they want to see. I watch as the barber reaches down to run his fingers through my hair. It feels like a reflex. Something he does at the start of every cut. When he draws his hand back, long blond strands are woven through his fingers and cover his palms. He brushes the strands from his hands and I can feel tendons clench his stomach. It is as if he pulled on a thread that was knotted inside him. He starts to trim the hair and watches my reflection in the mirror. I started bravely, but the front is crumbling. With each snip of the scissors a layer of my protective shell is cut away. Tears start down my face, slowly, then unchecked as more hair disappears. By the time he has trimmed enough to use the clippers he can’t stop his tears. He tries to smile, wavers, and looks away. He feels as if he is the one making me sick. He reaches for his clippers and flicks them on. They hum so loud the sound dominates the shop. He flinches. The clippers vibrate so strongly he can’t hold on. They slip from his hand.
I can see Mom watching the barber. He can’t finish the job. This is what she was trying to protect me from. She doesn’t want me to feel responsible for the fear I see in people’s eyes. She didn’t want me to see the moment when awareness changes to pity. People act omnipotent. I force them to confront mortality. With this new war for my life, those emotions are not ones Mom wants me exposed to.
Mom catches the falling clippers and steps between the barber and me. She raises the clippers and buzzes the remaining hair on my head. When she’s done she puts the clippers back on the barber’s counter and runs her hands over my scalp. Smooth as a baby’s. She had started to treat me as her equal. I’m not.
Treena Chambers is a Métis person who was born in what is currently called Rossland, in British Columbia on the traditional territories of the Sinixt peoples. After time spent living abroad, Chambers returned to Canada and to Coast Salish territories to study at Simon Fraser University.
From FULL-METAL INDIGIQUEER
“D” PAIRS WELL WITH VOWELS by Joshua Whitehead
:: :: :::: :: :: :::initiation:: :: :: :: ::: : ::: :virtualrealityrequest:: :: :: ::: ::: :: :: :: :: sequence: :: :: ::1: :: ::: :0: ::: :: :: :1: :: :: :: : : : :: : : :: :: :[de]colonialtimetravel: :: :: :: :: ::: ::: ::: :: : :: :: :::initiatingjumpersequence: ::VR: :::request:::: :10101:: ::::queertime: ::ndntime :: :: ::
when my orthodontist
asks my age
i want to tell him:
eighteen, maybe, nineteen
i round it up to twenty
& add a year
make my s e l f[fit]
“im twenty-five”
(or was it twenty-six[questionmark])
i believe
as much as he does
when he nods & says,
“mmhmm”
i say, “hmm”
share my life through
onomatopoeic static –
memory is such a fickle thing:
i am a man of ash
(& isnt that just funny[questionmark])
when my friends ask why
i lie about my age
i tell them, “its a queer thing”
i dont tell them that i think their cult –
ure(s) stole twenty years from me:
twenty to come out
one to (un)learn
one to (re)learn
& four to wander around lost&neverfound
i guess its an ndn thing too
(hereiam on a milk carton priced at $19.99)
in supermarkets, alleyways
on (res)ervations, (res)identical streets
this is my (res)identity: xxix
babygay, babyboy, ndninthecloset
im still a child through&through
– instead i just tell them i
fancy wilde men, wild things
spend too much time in mirrors
staring at jekyll, assessing my hyde
i hate my body because i structured queerness
around the plot line of regina george
& instead of sears
i shop for clothes at hbc
i give my body up
its ruined anyways –
from transfigurations
written on my skin
i am not the author of my being –
give myself like a winter donation
to siloam missions down princess avenues
this is jan, mb
(but isnt that what they want[questionmark])
a coat of flesh to line the hoods
of a canadian-goose exped(ition) parka
id rather you tailor it with a military stitch
& call it what it really is: neo-redcoat
cant i just be a body that loves[questionmark]
why do i have to be a thing[questionmark]
i exist in the bone
& nothing really matters
plath once said that like a cat
she has nine-times to die
me too! this is number four
the kill-site is spread wide;
ill spend a few lives more
in the matter of this minute
like plath i too enjoy a hot bath
but it is no cure-all
far too often i observe my skin
& when it loosens in the heat
i am happy that it changes:
it takes a dash of white to pinken red –
but my nipples are still darker than my chest
& my hairs are a telling cue
when i have hair it is dark & curly
a hot bath never did too much
im still just a “dirty indian”:
the miracle of skin was in its elasticity
not only for the birth of children
but for wrapping around the old pain
without burst or fear of cyst
i have to make peace
with my|self
every evening
wrapped in my duvet
shifting through reruns of rpdr
in this too-too big house
explore by hand
my abdo/men
feel for the bone
& think: “this is okay
this will do”
a second makes for a torturing device
& patience is a killing tool
while i wait, w a i t, w a i t
for everything to click
& am forced to reanimate
re/member hashed memories –
i turn myself to ash;
my minds a barren wasteland deco/ed with triggers
ashmen in the bare
waiting for a soft wind
(chinook as they say) to blow
me all away
it really is that fucking simple
pull this trigger
see what happens
its three a.m.
i suppose “technically”
its another day
& im still the same
i guess ill just have to wait another
day
a [n o t (h e r)]
d
a
y
a
n
o
t
h
e
r
d
a
y
d
a
y
d
a
y
Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree, two-spirit storyteller and academic from Peguis First Nation on Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba. He is currently working toward a PhD in Indigenous literatures and cultures at the University of Calgawws mry on Treaty 7 territory. He is the author of the novel Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018), winner of the 2019 Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. His book of poetry, Full-Metal Indigiqueer, was shortlisted for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. He has been published widely in Canadian literary magazines.
THE HAND TREMBLER by Nazbah Tom
I saw my grandma waving at me from her front door as I rode my bike toward her house, this blue Lego block amongst red soil and muted-green sage brush.
“You have a fast horse there,” she said smiling, her crow’s feet and laugh lines as weathered as the doorframe she leaned on. One of her many dogs was lying in the shade, its neck deep in the water trough in the pen near the house, its coat slick and shiny underneath the warming sun.
“I am making some blood sausage. Can you help?”
“Yeah! What do you need me to do?”
I leaned my “horse” against the front porch and walked inside after her, the screen door creaking shut behind me. She sauntered in slowly, her feet shuffling along the linoleum, as she used the furniture in the living room for support, like a sloth slowly making her way from branch to branch. She was slow enough that I could measure my progress in height. I was almost as tall as Grandma, partly because of my growing and partly because of her hunched back. I confirmed I was up to her shoulder now, the same shoulder I used to bunch my little toddler hands around, clasping a similar velvet shirt, Grandpa’s cotton shirt in my other hand, standing between them in their grey pick‑up truck, on our drives to the trading post. A “rez seatbelt.”
On the round kitchen table was a bowl of coagulated blood, some potatoes, a small bag of ground blue corn, salt, pepper, a stick and a small bowl of caul fat.
“Cut these up for me, will you?” She gestured with her hand toward the potatoes. I did as I was told.
Grandma turned the radio on. It was always tuned to KTNN 660, “The Voice of the Navajo Nation.” It crackled with static. George Strait singing about oceanfront property in Arizona, then the radio announcer gave us a rundown of the weather.
“Rain is in the forecast for our area today, folks.”
From where I was cutting potatoes, I could see out of Grandma’s kitchen window north towards Navajo Mountain, a cloud beginning to form at its top, like a cotton ball on its tip. I knew it would be awhile before that little cotton ball would become a flock of sheep moving slowly across the sky. I wished to myself that the clouds would darken and push out rain in long strands, like Grandma’s long hair along the valley floor.
That day, like many days, Grandma had her hair in her usual bun and sat in her usual chair near the window, tearing the caul fat into pieces with her fingers. The bowl of caul fat sat against her faded blue cotton skirt and worn velvet shirt with a small turquoise pin. If I was allowed to make prolonged eye contact with my grandparents, I would have let my eyes follow the tributaries of Grandma’s wrinkles all over her soft face. I would have gotten lost in the canyons of their laugh lines like my cousins and I did in the arroyo behind Grandma’s house. Instead, I kept cutting the potatoes and observed them discreetly from afar.
Together we created the sausage filling. Together we mashed up the blood. Together we added the blue corn. The caul fat. The potatoes. Together we stuffed the sheep stomach with the blood filling. Cinched the sausage with a Blue Bird Flour bag. Boiled the sausage.
My stomach growled in anticipation and Grandma smiled.
“I’ll make us a cheese sandwich once we get this done, okay?”
Once the sausages began boiling, she prepared us a snack, two pieces of tortilla she had made that morning for Grandpa’s breakfast before he went out on horseback looking for cattle along the mesa. Half a block of commodity cheese from this month’s allotment given out at the Chapter House.
I sat down at the table on Grandpa’s chair to devour my snack. It wasn’t a chair so much as it was a metal crate with a thin cushion on top. It was Grandpa’s chair where he sat every meal, with his thin straight back and legs crossed, and Grandma in her softer and wider chair where she sat with a slightly hunched back. I liked to think of them as an exclamation and question mark sitting next to each other. Now I proudly sat there, a comma between the phrases of generations.
“Do you want some coffee?” Grandma asked mischievously, knowing my mom never let me drink it. I nodded eagerly. We sat eating our sandwiches listening to George Jones on KTNN radio singing about who’s gonna fill their shoes. I glanced at Grandma occasionally, wondering who will fill her shoes. As I sat contemplating this, Grandma helped me with the crossword puzzle, showing me where words were on the sheet.
FORESEE. I circled the word with a stubby pencil.
MYSTERY. I liked that word. “Miss-teh-ry.” I said softly, mouthing the words. That’s when I noticed Grandma distractedly wiping a crumb off her chest, while looking far off into the distance.
“We’re going to have visitors today,” she said. I looked at her inquisitively and confused. “I just know.”
A few hours passed watching clouds form over the mountain and watching Grandma sitting in her chair and spinning wool on her spindle dancing on the linoleum floor. The barking dogs alerted me to a car driving towards the house.
“Grandma, someone is coming.”
“Oh, it’s our visitors,” she said as she wrapped up her spindle and wool. She carefully placed them to the side and brushed lint off her clothing. “Go see what they want, will you?”
I walked out of the house and headed to the driver side window to greet them.
“Ya’ah’teh.” I could feel the heat from the engine as he turned off his truck. The man’s skin was the shade of hard work in a corn field.
“Ao, ya’ah’teh,” said the driver, smiling in my direction. His hair was in a neat bun and around his wrist was a turquoise bracelet. His wife sat next to him, a thin nylon head scarf tied around under her chin. I looked down and rolled a pebble underneath my shoe waiting for him to say more. After a few moments, the man asked if my grandma was home.
“We’re from down the way. Your grandma knows my parents. She’s my naali by clan.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I said as I continued to play with the pebble underneath my shoe, not looking at him.
“We’re wondering if your grandma can see us today?” he said hopefully. When he smiled, I caught a glimpse of his front teeth outlined in silver.
I walked back inside to find the radio had been shut off. Quiet. Grandma was putting on a pot of coffee. She had already changed into a clean red cotton skirt and a light grey flower-printed polyester shirt, her hair in a neat bun.
“I can see them today. Go let them know and bring them in here. You know what to do with the dogs outside. Make sure they are not around the house, shi yazhi. When you come back into the house, stay on the couch until I call you back in.”
I returned to the waiting couple to let them know the good news and they entered Grandma’s house. I closed the door behind me and did as I was told.
The dogs jumped up from where they were lying and ran away from my voice and waving hands towards the sheep corral for shade. I checked around Grandma’s house to make sure other animals weren’t lingering. The horse was penned up eating hay and oats. I quietly opened and closed the side door and made my way to the couch. I sat down and closed my eyes trying to listen in on what Grandma was doing with this couple. I could hear them talking in Grandma’s bedroom, their voices muffled. Then silence.
Suddenly, the air shifted. I looked around the living room slowly. Outside, the horse stopped chewing for a moment and cocked its ears. It swatted its tail at nothing, the sound of coarse horse hair falling across its rounded rump. The dog with its head on its paws looked up suddenly and whimpered quietly. I caressed the poised hair on my arms slowly with my thumbs to the rhythm of my heart thudding. I sat and listened to my grandma’s muffled voice singing in the next room, remembering stories I had heard about her and her magic hands. Grandma’s trembling hands. Grandma’s conduit work between this world and the next. There was a landscape only she knew, between the couple’s reports of their dreams, body aches, and animals that have crossed their paths. After several minutes passed, my grandma cleared her throat and I could hear her talking again. I heard the man’s voice acknowledging what my grandma had learned. I heard them shuffle around before opening the door to the room.
I escorted the couple out to their truck. The woman said to me, “Ahe’he’he,” with a warm look. I caught her eyes for a brief moment and nodded. The man climbed into his side of the truck and offered me his thanks before driving off. I knew our family would help with the ceremony they’d plan after their meeting with Grandma.
I headed back into the house to find Grandma tired, as if she had traveled on a long journey.
“I need to rest a bit. Can you bring me some water?” she said while undoing her bun with one hand and taking the pins out of her hair with the other. I did as I was told.
“Ahe’he, shi yazhi. Okay, I’m going to nap for a bit. We can eat the blood sausage when I wake up, okay?”
“Okay, Grandma.”
I closed her door and returned to finding words in her crossword puzzle book. I settled into Grandpa’s chair, legs swinging, an empty coffee cup nearby.
RELIEF. I circled the word.
DREAMS. I circled the word.
I looked out on the rain clouds and I could smell rain many miles away to the west. The dogs were slowly making their way back from the corral, sniffing the trees. The horse had moved out from under the tree, its tail swooshing around its rump as it dipped its lips into the cool water. I turned the radio back on. KTNN Radio. The Voice of the Navajo Nation.
Nazbah Tom, Diné poet and somatic practitioner, has pubished work in Turtle Island to Abya Yala: A Love Anthology of Art and Poetry by Native American and Latina Women, and in Rabbit and Rose, an online archive of poetry and writings.
PEJIPUG (WINTER ARRIVES) by Amanda Peters
The pale ones have returned, their skin the dull pink of the early sun on snow. There are more this time, many more. Their clothes are too heavy for the season, thick and rough. Only their faces and hands see the sun. They’ve been here before and they have departed before. We have watched them, nervous of the cold, not willing to risk the quiet of winter.
Yesterday, after the fish had been set to dry in the sun and when no one would notice my absence, I ran along the river’s edge, ducking in and out of the trees so that I could watch them. They don’t know we are here but we know about them. They have been coming here for two seasons now. They arrive in large strange canoes but they always leave, some of them die. They cover their dead with earth and wail, scaring some of our smaller children who hear the voices through the trees.
There are more women this time, and children, some younger than myself. The children run around like animals, shouting at each other. Their harsh language is uncomfortable in my ears. Their playful shrieks are louder than the birds that try to steal our fish. Their mothers shout at them, their mouths in constant frowns, their hands raised to wipe the sweat from their brows. The women drag water from the river, the bottom of their dresses wet with mud. The buckets look heavy, bending their backs. They smile very little, these pale ones. I wonder if it is the heavy clothes and stiff shoes that make them bad tempered.
The men sweat in the sun as they move large stones from the shore and cut the trees from the earth, one by one. The earth on their side of the river is bare now, the stumps from the trees jagged and ugly. Dirt fills the air as they walk; their feet pound the ground in their stiff shoes. With the stones and the trees, they build strange dwellings. There is little sense in their work as it will be difficult to move them to the summer grounds when the seasons change. They have brought a funny thing, not made of trees or stone. It looks like a wilting flower. It sat on the ground for days, the morning dew sliding off the top, running down the side and wetting the ground in a beautiful circle of dark earth. But now it sits high on the top of a special dwelling, hanging in an open space above the entrance. No one lives there but everyone visits, all of them looking very grim, their heads bent, their eyes on their shoes. When the red-faced man in the black robe pulls the rope, it sings! The sound is steady and beautiful like a drum, only sadder. How can they be so sad with such magic in the air, echoing off the trees, the river, the sky itself?
Father is not worried about the pale faced. He tells us they will leave.
“They have come before and they will leave again. When they see their breath on the morning air, they will leave,” he explained around the fire last night. I shook my head as I watched the sparks from the fire climb to take their rightful place in the sky.
“But they brought children, they made homes and brought a magic flower that sings like the drum. Maybe they will stay this time?”
“They will not. Each year, they come little one. They come and they leave. They will leave their homes and their wilting flower.” Father is sure but I’m not. I think they may stay.
Amanda Peters is a Mi’kmaq author. She was born and raised in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia where she currently resides. In 2017 she won the Nova Writes Short Fiction Award and was chosen to participate in the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program. Her work has been published in the Antigonish Review (2018) and Grain Magazine’s Indigenous Writers and Storytellers Issue (2019).
UASHTEU (IL Y A DE LA LUMIÈRE) by Marie-Andrée Gill
Je suis hanté par tout l’espace que je vais vivre sans toi
– Richard Brautigan, « Boo Forever »
« Prends courage Chichiné! Aie l’âme dure, résiste à la peine et au travail! Garde toi de la tristesse, autrement tu seras malade. Regarde : nous ne lassons pas de rire, quoi que nous mangions peu »
– Un Innu s’adressant au missionnaire Paul Lejeune
L’amour ça commence en fa mineur.
Ça se réchauffe dans les roulotes de patinoires,
les peaux de chiens, les murmures.
Ça sent le sexe des bombes.
Ça éclate en mille morceaux de lumière sur l’eau.
Ça passe parce que c’est une saison.
Ça reste comme les loups dans les rêves.
Ça s’évapore en pelletées de neige.
Ça continue en doigts croisés et en prières molles.
Ça finit par finir.
(Et ça reste imprimé sur les troncs d’arbres)
*
Dans les chiennes de vivre, l’obsolescence programmée et les vapoteuses,
j’essaie de comprendre comment dansent les tempêtes.
Je cherche dans le bois les remèdes aux morsures de ta douceur,
celle qui m’a fait toucher à autre chose qu’à la gadoue du siècle.
J’étale mes irresponsables paroles d’ouvertures; elles me reviennent par l’écho.
J’espère que peu importe les incarcérations,
il reste tout le temps un petit jour
un rai de lumière
entre les lignes
de l’histoire.
En ce moment, j’aimerais troquer mon coeur pour la simplicité d’un bol
de macaroni aux saucisses.
*
J’aimerais dire le bois sale, les rivières, les oiseaux de proie, l’apparition des
renards quand on en avait besoin, les érablières dans les coulées, l’ombre des
crans sur les montagnes, le soleil levant qui précise la ligne de conifères et le
vent du nord qui fait claquer les maisons; dire les assiettes de nourriture, les
remontées, comment s’inventait le temps en voiture, comment s’inventait le
temps partout comme une donnée qui n’avait plus de sens que dans l’altitude de
nos organes.
J’aimerais dire tout ça
et arrêter de manger
la peau de mes lèvres.
*
Le coeur à broil, j’arrange les oies comme je voudrais le faire pour toi
à l’envers : je voudrais te greffer des plumes et des cris plein la gorge,
que tu puisses suivre les autoroutes du ciel et chacun des pôles jusqu’à
ma vérité.
Je sentirai la chaleur de ton pouls dans chacune des pluies d’hiver
et la forêt m’indiquera toujours la couleur de tes yeux.
C’est au moins ça.
*
La peur, je la garde pour les yeux d’animaux inventés brillants dans la nuit,
je la garde pour les scénarios d’enfants qui meurent, la glace noire, les araignées.
La peur, c’est de te croiser au dépanneuret qu’on ne sache pas quoi faire de nos corps.
*
Ici, je déplace les meubles, fais entrer et sortir le chat,
et j’ai le mal de mer du continent souillé.
Chaque respiration est un désordre,
chaque sourire comme un restant de vie qui s’écrase avec les outardes
dans les réacteurs d’avions.
Je redéplace les meubles et guette la montagne
en train de prendre sa marche sur les millénaires.
Je regarde une émission de télé sur la création de l’univers,
le nombre de soleils, les trous noirs qui fécondent des galaxies
et je me trouve drôle d’être autant triste.
*
On a marché dans la savane de nos peurs pour trouver la racine comestible du
monde, pour flatter doucement la vérité de nos engelures.
On a su quoi faire de nos caresses entre chaque trouée d’orage.
C’est dans un lit de sapinage qu’on touche la beauté sourde-muette de
l’éphémère.
*
Des fois, je ferme les yeux et je fais comme si j’étais encore là :
Tu tires sur la crinque et ça fait une grosse boucane.
Il a tombé pas mal de neige faudrait pas rester en rack, j’ai même pas de soute.
Tu contournes les arbres dans la nuit, tu vires sur un dix cent, les branches dans
la face, les flocons dans les yeux: c’est pas avec toi que je vais rester pris.
Je me suis dit que ça ferait un beau titre de quelque chose :
Il danse avec les ski-doo.
*
Si tu te demandes où je suis maintenant
sache que j’écris des poèmes
avec le mouillé de la zamboni
à l’aréna de mon coeur coulé.
Si tu te demandes où je suis maintenant
regarde comme il faut: c’est moi, juste là,
avec le sourire forcé d’une patineuse artistique
qui vient de finir son triple axel sur le cul.
*
Des fois, je ferme les yeux et je fais comme si j’étais encore là :
Tu sors la truite.
Mon doigt dans sa branchie
L’os craque
J’ouvre son ventre : on déjeune.
*
Comme si de rien n’était les océans continuent de miauler en vomissant les
restes de la vitesse des machines, le vertige de la fabrication du baloney et l’eau
Perrier des lendemains.
*
Ce qui force à exister c’est que la clarté revient toujours, les miracles se
montrent quand on en réapprend les paroles.
Le feu c’est la même chose; on le chante, on le prend dans nos mains, on le
taponne, on le minouche et il revient toujours, jamais pareil, avec les mêmes
applaudissements, les mêmes claquements de doigts, la même musique.
En passant j’aimerais ça que tu me redonnes mon lighter.
*
Je n’avais rien demandé et tu m’as appris le nom des oiseaux. Maintenant je les
regarde et chacun de leurs noms me ramène à toi, à ta bouche qui les prononce,
à moi qui regarde ta bouche, à la mienne qui prononce ton nom.
Ueshketshan : c’est le nom de l’oiseau qui est venu manger un botch
de cigarette dans ta main.
On a rit en masse
et le jour d’après
tu me laissais.
C’est comme ça.
Si tu te demandes où je suis maintenant
je suis quelque part dans le Nitassinan.
Mes portes et mes fenêtres sont ouvertes :
je chauffe le dehors.
Marie-Andrée Gill (Winner, Unpublished work in French) est doctorante en lettres à l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. Son écriture se promène entre kitsch et existentiel, proposant une nouvelle vision du territoire et alliant ses identités québécoises et ilnues. Elle a publié trois recueils de poésie, Béante, Frayer et Chauffer le dehors chez La peuplade.
From #haikuaday and other poems
a love poem to your great great grandmother by Smokii Sumac
ka titinaǂa
the one that started it all
though i have a feeling you’d say
there was another before you
but this poem is for you
whose prayers were so strong
done in just the right way
hidden away in a drawer
for so many years waiting
for the right moment
the right granddaughter
the right ceremony
right is the wrong word for this
maybe i believe in
ordination
if only when i think of you
when i think of him
here with us
breathing
typing out his own love poems
honouring
this family that saved his life
husukiǂq̓ukni
thank you
for bringing all that you have
ick sukapi
thank you
for saving my life
nya:wen
thank you
for sharing your family
your teachings
your presence
gineehayan
thank you
for praying us here
From #haikuaday and other poems
what you don’t understand by Smokii Sumac
is that for the Indigenous person in your life
Colten is family.
Colten is me.
Colten is my brother.
Barbara
is my mom’s name.
Barbara is my auntie.
Barbara is our grandma.
Tina is our niece
our little sister
our baby girl.
What you don’t understand is
when you survive genocide
everyone left
is family.
Smokii Sumac (Winner, Unpublished Poetry in English) is a member of the Ktunaxa nation, a poet, and a PhD Candidate in Indigenous Studies at Trent University. Sumac’s debut poetry collection, you are enough: love poems for the end of the world (Kegedonce Press, 2018), was awarded the Indigenous Voices Award for published poetry in 2019, and he has performed work across Canada including at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and the Queer Arts Festival. Most recently, Sumac returned home toʔamaʔkis ktunaxa, to teach First Nations Studies at the College of the Rockies.
From #IndianLovePoems
#807 by Tenille K. Campbell
the snow fell
light white flakes
melting on contact
fading away
like old stories
after dawn
the country twang
of heartache and loss
white noise
background
as I listened
to your heartbeat
echoing my own
my hand in yours
we swayed back and forth
under street light
moonlight
memories
I need a woman like you, you said
I’ll eat you alive, I said
From #IndianLovePoems
#29 by Tenille K. Campbell
you burned my fry bread
distracted me with sweet kisses
that lead to us making love on the couch
while oil sizzled under fleshy dough
browned to a crisp
hardening too fast
no longer
delicious and moist
we sprang apart
hearts racing
hands covering
our mouths
we shrieked with laughter
fire alarm blazing
eyes stung
by grease smoke
now
when I make fry bread
I grin
and think of you
as the pale flesh swells
and browns
moist and hot
once again
From #IndianLovePoems
#47 by Tenille K. Campbell
he was my first
discovery
my
blond-haired
blue-eyed
lover
I felt like Christopher Columbus
blazing new trails down his body
discovering his peaks and valleys
with my lips and tongue and taste
claiming it as
mine
mine
mine
signing treaty with
a hickey seared onto skin
but my interpretation
of his ceding up
would be
forever
remembered
as con-
sensual
Tenille K. Campbell is a Dene/Métis author from English River First Nation in Northern Saskatchewan. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and is enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Saskatchewan. Her inaugural poetry book, #IndianLovePoems (Signature Editions, 2017), is an award-winning collection that focuses on Indigenous Erotica – using humour and storytelling to reclaim and explore ideas of Indigenous sexuality.
From Poetry of a Northern Rez Girl
SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL by Francine Merasty
I’ve heard these words
Spoken repeatedly
As a child
The story of my
Indigenous history shared
With audience after audience
Burnt into my memory
We’ve been here since time immemorial
It means – a time, so long
Ago, that people have no memory
Or knowledge of it
Filling out my law school application
How long has your family lived in Saskatchewan?
I pause for a moment
Then write
Since time immemorial I write
What would have been other options?
Since Saskatchewan became a province
Before Saskatchewan was, we were
I was stumped but,
I got in anyway and nobody questioned my answer.
From Poetry of a Northern Rez Girl
DRUGS by Francine Merasty
What’s the solution
To this pollution
Of young minds, we need a revolution
So they don’t end up in destitution
We are all part of creation
What’s your justification?
For the ruination
Of these young minds, damnation
You ain’t getting no standing ovation
You wonder why I’m judging
That I should stick to smudging
Don’t you begrudging
Hopefully be giving you a nudging
To do right, for these young minds
Don’t make them blind
I’m just here to remind
And hoping you find
The clarity to do right
You have the power to rewrite
And to contribute to bright
Futures for our young nation, ahh right
Francine Merasty is a Nehithaw Iskwew, Opawikoschikanek ochi, a reserve in Northern Saskatchewan. She is a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation and a fluent Cree speaker. She began writing poetry in the Winter of 2017 while working for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls as both a Statement Taker and Legal Counsel. She currently works for the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations in Saskatchewan.
From DE VENGEANCE
RÉAL et Carolanne by J.D. Kurtness
Ma liste de noms réfère à quelques anecdotes. C’est tout ce que j’ai trouvé à racler de ces années-là.
RÉAL et Carolanne
Je n’ai jamais su qui était RÉAL, outre que son nom fut gravé à l’Exacto à l’intérieur de l’avant-bras de la fille assise à ma droite en classe. Je la vis faire. Elle s’appelait Carolanne, je m’en souviens parce que ça me faisait penser au film Poltergeist. “Ne t’approche pas de la lumière, Carolanne!” Outre son nom, elle n’avait rien en commun avec cette petite fille blonde si mignonne. Notre Caro avait des traits ronds, le nez couvert de comédons et une épaisse chevelure noire. Elle dégageait cette odeur que j’ai toujours associée à la pauvreté, un mélange de cigarette et d’assouplisseur à linge. Elle faisait partie d’un groupe auquel je ne parlais jamais, assez mystérieux, dont la plupart des membres avaient doublé une année. Ceux-ci passaient leur récréation dans un coin de la cour qu’on appelait le fumoir, une surface d’environ cent pieds carrés où il était permis de fumer. C’était l’époque où n’importe qui pouvait s’acheter des cigarettes, même les enfants. Ça ne fait pas si longtemps.
Le règlement stipulait que quiconque désirait fumer pouvait le faire dans cette zone-là, mais évidemment seuls certains élèves pouvaient espérer le faire, puisque ce territoire était chèrement disputé. Les autres fumeurs devaient attendre d’être à l’extérieur des terrains de l’école, sinon ils s’exposaient à des représailles.
Quand Carolanne passait à côté de vous dans l’allée de la classe, c’est comme si on avait secoué un cendrier et une feuille de Bounce simultanément. Elle était asthmatique. Son doux râle m’accompagna durant tout mon secondaire 1. Congestionnée en permanence, elle garda la bouche ouverte durant tout son processus de gravure. Je pouvais juger de l’intensité de la douleur qu’elle s’infligeait selon la cadence de son râlement. Il s’accélérait lorsqu’elle grattait sa peau plus profondément avec la lame.
Avec un prénom pareil, RÉAL provoquait la risée générale. Il était l’objet de toutes les spéculations. Toute la classe était consciente du petit manège de Carolanne, même la prof. Pourquoi ne réagissait-elle pas? Une pudeur, le malaise de regarder les gens laids, le refus de les fixer assez longtemps pour que le regard focalise? Carolanne était tellement repoussante, avec sa peau grasse, son nez luisant, sa bouche ouverte, son odeur, son râle. Le dégoût qu’elle provoquait déviait l’attention. Elle avait son propre champ magnétique qui courbait tous vos sens. Elle aurait pu construire une bombe sur son petit bureau d’écolière, on l’aurait laissé faire.
Cette fille est devenue pharmacienne. Je le sais parce qu’elle m’a fait une demande d’amitié Facebook il y a quelques années. Demande acceptée. Elle y publie sans distinction les spéciaux d’Halloween de son Pharmaprix, des images de sa nouvelle maison et des phrases qui conjuguent sa tristesse de faire des fausses couches à répétition.
La petite sœur de Marie-Lilou est devenue un ange aujourd’hui, voilà je l’écris ici pour ne pas avoir à répondre à toutes vos questions en personne pour le moment, merci de respecter notre deuil, blablabla. Il m’a fallu toute ma volonté pour ne pas répondre qu’il fallait voir le bon côté des choses puisque pendant encore cinq jours, on pouvait faire imprimer ses photos pour 0,10 $ chacune à sa pharmacie.
J’aimerais tant lui demander si elle a fait zigouiller ses cicatrices au laser, mais je n’ose pas. Il n’y a pas de Réal dans ses contacts, et elle en a beaucoup. Partir en affaires provoque souvent ce genre de comportements sur les réseaux sociaux: les gens amassent les contacts pour la visibilité, pour faire mousser les ventes. Il y en a qui le font sans raison.
Pablo Strauss’s recent translations of Québécois fiction include Of Vengeance, Benediction, The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, and The Dishwasher. He lives in Québec City.
From OF VENGEANCE (translated by Pablo Strauss)
Roy and Carol Anne by J.D. Kurtness
I never really learned who Roy was, just saw his name carved with an X‑acto blade into the arm of the girl sitting to the right of me in class. Her name was Carol Anne – I remember because it reminded me of Poltergeist. “Do not go into the light, Carol Anne!” Aside from her name, I don’t think Carol Anne had anything in common with the pretty blond kid in the movie. Our Carol Anne had a big round face, a nose covered in blackheads, and thick black hair. She gave off that distinct odour of cigarettes and fabric softener I’ve always associated with poverty.
Carol Anne was part of a mysterious group of kids I never really talked to. Most of them had failed at least one grade. They spent recess in a corner of the schoolyard known as the Smoke Pit, an area around one hundred square feet where smoking was tolerated. This was back when anyone could buy smokes, even children, a bygone era that wasn’t actually so long ago. The school rule was that anyone who wanted to smoke could, but only in the designated area. This, of course, meant that only certain people could actually smoke at school since the Pit was contested territory. Other smokers had to slip off the school grounds or face the consequences. When Carol Anne walked by you between the rows of desks in class, it smelled as if someone had emptied an ashtray while waving a sheet of Bounce in the air. And Carol Anne had asthma. Her gentle wheezing was the soundtrack to grade nine. She was permanently congested, and kept her mouth open throughout the entire process of carving Roy’s name into her arm. I could gauge the intensity of her pain by the cadence of her wheezing, which sped up as she dug the blade deeper into her flesh.
With a name like his, Roy could only ever be an object of mockery, and the subject of all kinds of speculation. The whole class knew what Carol Anne was up to with the knife, including the teacher. Why didn’t she do anything about it? Was it a sense of decorum, or an aversion to looking at ugly people long enough for the focus to take? With her oily hair, shiny nose, and open mouth, Carol Anne was repulsive. She was surrounded by a personal magnetic field that warped your senses. She could have built a bomb right in her school desk, and no one would have stopped her.
Now she’s a pharmacist. I know because she sent me a Facebook friend request a few years ago. I accepted. She posts a random combination of PharmaSave Halloween specials, pictures of her new house, and lamentations over her repeated miscarriages. Marie-Lilou’s little sister has joined the other angels in heaven today. I’m writing this here so I won’t have to answer everyone’s questions. Please give us some time to grieve . . . blah blah blah. It took every ounce of my willpower to refrain from posting that she should look on the bright side: at least we have five days to print photos in‑store for just ten cents a shot.
What I’d really love to ask Carol Anne is whether she used a laser to remove her scars. But I don’t dare. There’s no Roy in her Facebook friends, and she has tons of friends. Some people friend the entire world when they start a business, gathering up all the contacts they’ve ever crossed paths with in the hope of giving their sales a boost. Other people do it for no discernible reason.
J.D. Kurtness (Winner, Published Work in French) was born in Chicoutimi (when the town still went by that name) and baptized in Pointe-Bleue (when the reserve still went by that name). She came to Montreal to study microbes and ended up writing emails for an obscure non-profit organization. She also writes books. // Née à Chicoutimi, J.D. Kurtness est venue à Montréal avec l’intention d’étudier les microbes. Elle a plutôt bifurqué vers la littérature. Après quelques années à rédiger des courriels pour des OBNL, elle bûche maintenant sur son DEC en informatique.
From MANIKANETISH
LE TEXTE by Naomi Fontaine
Le texte. C’était de l’art. Presque le dernier de la pile que je me harassais à corriger un soir, seule, avec même pas un chat pour me ronronner son affection. De petites lettres alignées, qui penchaient parfaitement vers la droite. Aucune erreur de syntaxe. Exactement le genre de texte que j’aurais voulu écrire à 16 ans. Hormis la grammaire sans faute, il y avait une clarté, une manière de nommer sans bifurcation, sans répétition. Le texte m’avalait. Sans contenance. Qui donc lui avait appris à écrire ainsi?
Le texte argumentait contre les coupes à blanc dans le Nord et toujours, une phrase clé guidait la lecture. Je l’ai lu d’un coup, sans même m’attarder au plan de rédaction. Je l’ai lu, je l’avoue, par plaisir, oubliant que je devais noter, que le temps était précieux, que les copies devaient diminuer. Je l’ai relu et parce qu’il faut bien que l’élève cherche à s’améliorer, j’ai dénoté une certaine faiblesse dans le premier paragraphe. Un léger manque de structure dans le second. Sans conviction.
Le lendemain, Mélina était là, ma précieuse rédactrice. Je n’avais encore jamais pris la peine de la regarder, en dehors du groupe, comme unique. Tout le cours, je l’ai observée. Elle avait maquillé ses yeux et mis du rouge à lèvres. Ça ne camouflait qu’à moitié sa fatigue. Pourtant ça n’enlevait rien à sa beauté, parce qu’elle était belle, brune aux cheveux noirs. Mince, peut-être trop. Elle parlait peu et ne répondait jamais aux questions que je lançais à la classe sur la matière ou sur des connaissances générales. Elle levait à peine la tête lorsque j’expliquais le travail à faire. Elle était si loin de nous.
Après le cours, je lui ai demandé de rester parce que je voulais lui parler. Son regard, tout à l’heure si hagard, m’a révélé qu’elle était inquiète.
Mélina, j’ai corrigé ton texte hier. Je lui ai fait un sourire de contentement. C’est excellent. Il fallait que je te le dise.
Elle m’a fait un léger sourire, bouche fermée.
Merci madame.
J’ai rarement lu un texte aussi bien écrit. Il n’existe pas beaucoup de personnes qui écrivent comme tu le fais. À seize ans en plus.
J’ai quinze ans.
C’est un don, tu le sais?
Je sais pas. Peut-être.
C’est beau. À demain.
Naomi Fontaine, née en 1987 à Uashat, communauté innue bordée d’une petite baie près de Sept-Îles, est une enseignante de français diplômée de l’Université Laval. En 2011, elle a publié Kuessipan (Mémoire d’encrier), roman qui a connu un véritable succès. Manikanetish, son deuxième roman, rend hommage à une éducatrice fondatrice de l’école où se déroule le roman.
From THOSE WHO RUN IN THE SKY by Aviaq Johnston
By the time Pitu felt sure that the creatures were not going to follow him, he was exhausted. Though he knew he could still be in danger, he could no longer find the strength to build a proper shelter. His adrenaline from the last fight had worn him thin. He began to build an iglu, but the snow was not hard enough to cut blocks. The boy instead dug a shallow hole the length of his body, with a measly wind shelter on one side to protect him slightly from the elements.
Normally, Pitu had trouble falling asleep in shelters of this kind; they were uncomfortable and dangerous. Though they provided slight cover, the soft snow was no protection from animals. Pitu knew that if the wolfish creatures reached him, he’d have no chance of survival. With no energy to fight, he’d be killed in a moment.
Let them kill me, Pitu thought. I’m never getting out of this place anyway. With that realization, Pitu fell into a dead sleep. Curled into a ball, he dreamt of the fox and the old man.
The landscape was summery, the tundra covered in moss and lichen. A caribou hide tent was propped in the middle of a gravelly area. The fox was skirting around the edge of the campground. Its coat was a spotty, dirty black colour to blend in with the black lichen-covered rocks, its eyes dark and focused in the direction that Pitu was watching from. There was a small fire directly in front of the tent; a rack made of flat rocks was lying on top of it, holding up a stone bowl full of boiling meat. The old man sat on a boulder the size of one of Pitu’s huskies. Thoughts of Miki sprang to Pitu’s mind. His stomach twisted with the thought of his dog.
The old man tended to the bowl of uujuq, cooking meat, in silence. When Pitu began to walk closer, he looked up and sighed. “You again?” he asked. “Why do I always see you? What do you want?”
“Who are you?” Pitu asked.
“I am Taktuq,” the old man answered, spitting out the words. “‘Fog,’ that is what the spirits call me.”
“Why do I keep seeing you?”
“How should I know?” Taktuq said irritably. “Didn’t you hear my name? I sit here confused in the clouds all day.”
“Taktuq . . .” Pitu thought of the shaman that Tagaaq had told him about. The shaman had vanished. No one heard from him or saw him ever again. “Taktuq . . . Are you the shaman that was once revered by all?”
“Revered?” Taktuq growled out a laugh. “Hah! Never. I am the shaman that could never find peace.”
Despite his dismissal, Pitu was sure that this was the old shaman he needed to find. He asked, “Where are you? I need you to help me.”
“You aren’t very smart, are you?” Taktuq replied. “I don’t know where I am. I’m LOST.”
“How can you be lost?” In his frustration, Pitu began yelling at the old man. He’d moved closer to where Taktuq sat, but felt that if he went any closer he’d be sent back to his mind and awoken from the sleep he so desperately needed. In the distance, now that he thought of his real body, he could hear a thunderous thump that sounded only a short distance away. Pitu focused on the old man again. “You’re a shaman. You can’t get lost – the spirits are supposed to help you! You can’t be lost! You have to help me!”
“The spirits cannot help a soul that is broken, young shaman. That is why you are lost, too.”
“Don’t talk to me as if you know what is happening,” Pitu spat. “You were guided here by your spirit, weren’t you? I’ve been thrown into chaos! You have no idea what it’s like in the open land of spirits. You sit here in your comfortable summer.”
“That may be true.” Taktuq shrugged. “It’s been a long time since I left this place. The air feels too hungry when I step onto the snow.” He shivered as the thought of the frozen land made him cold. “I will try to send someone to help you.”
Taktuq looked at the fox and whistled lowly. It turned in the opposite direction and dashed away, disappearing from sight much faster than it should have. Pitu heard another thump not too far away; this time he also felt it. He tried to step closer to the summer landscape that was just beyond his reach. The ground beneath his feet splintered as the world around him began to quake. He stopped, spreading his arms wide in hopes that the world would stop quivering under his feet. There was another loud thump, this time only a short distance away. The old man didn’t seem to notice.
Suddenly, the fox was back in view. The earth under Pitu’s feet quaked again, making him topple onto his back. His eyelids became heavy, and just as he emerged from his dream, he heard the shaman say, “Your guide will find you soon. Don’t move from where you are when you wake!”
However, this was easier said than done.
When Pitu opened his eyes and was back in his body, he was looking right into a humongous face. He jumped at the sight of the giant, holding back a highpitched scream. He calmed himself to hide his fear. He played cool, like a cornered lemming would, until he could think of a plan to get away.
The giant was staring at him in amused curiosity. The eyes were a dark shade of brown, almost black. Greasy shafts of hair hung around the sides of the face; a giant nose was less than an arm’s length away from Pitu’s own. There was a grinning mouth with only a handful of brownish teeth full of dark black spots around their roots.
And the smell! Pitu tried to hold his breath, but the smell was atrocious. He couldn’t remember a worse odour filling his nose. His eyes watered at the stench. Even a thousand caches of igunaq[1] did not smell that awful.
The giant’s mouth moved and a high-pitched voice bellowed, “Kinakuluugavit? Who are you?”
Pitu shrieked, trying to squirm away from the giant. It towered over him, laughing at his fright. His attempt at escape was quickly thwarted as the giant grabbed Pitu around his midriff and called out, “You are so TINY!” The giant’s laughter filled Pitu’s ears, making his eardrums ring. “Who are you, TINY ONE?”
“Who are you?” Pitu shrieked back.
The giant laughed again. “Aaah!” it said. “Ah! You are so cute! Even your voice squeaks like a little lemming!”
Pitu was offended. “I am a great hunter!” he yelled in his deepest voice. “I do NOT sound like a lemming!”
“Oh, little lemming, I will keep you!”
He thrashed against the giant, trying with all his might to squirm free. The struggle was useless. Pitu decided that it would be more frugal of him to save his strength. The giant picked him up and shifted his arms and legs as if checking to see how well they could move. As the giant inspected Pitu, he began to inspect the giant, too.
He couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. Though the voice was high and relatively soft – for a giant – it had prominently male features. It was large enough to make a fully grown beluga appear as a seal, a polar bear as a puppy. The clothing was shabby, the upturned caribou hide fading with age and the residue of a thousand messy meals and unkempt days. Pitu wondered how many caribou it had taken to make the parka in the first place. There were stitches all over it.
The giant smiled widely, its breath fuming out of its mouth in stinking wafts. Pitu almost gagged on the smell. The giant spoke in an ancient dialect of Inuktitut, so Pitu struggled to understand all that was coming out of its mouth. To distract himself, he again asked the giant, “Who are you?”
The giant chuckled with pure mirth. “Ah! When you speak it makes me so happy!” The giant stomped its feet in a giddy fashion, then it began to walk away from the little shelter Pitu had made, leaving Pitu’s knife and harpoon behind. “I am Inukpak!” the giant said. Inukpak, thought Pitu, a giant named Giant.
“Tiny Hunter, that is you, and I will keep you to hunt for little things!”
“Inukpak, my tools!” Pitu shrieked. “I cannot be a little hunter without my tools!”
He felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment as he referred to himself as a “little hunter.”
Inukpak laughed again, bouncing Pitu around in a disorienting jaunt. The giant continued forward, moving with incredible speed. “Silly little hunter!” Inukpak cooed. “I will make new gear. Ones that are not so sharp. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“How can I hunt without a harpoon sharp enough to pierce a seal?” Pitu countered. “Or a polar bear?” Or a giant? he thought to himself.
“It’s okay!” Inukpak still seemed far too cheery for Pitu to truly believe. No one could be that happy. “You’re just going to be playing!”
Pitu tried to think of more ways to convince Inukpak that he needed to get his weapons, but he was still tired from the day before and his mind was slow. He couldn’t come up with a plan that would leave him in one piece. He knew that if he could just get out of Inukpak’s grip, he could run back to his makeshift shelter and retrieve his tools and find a way to outrun the giant.
Pitu looked over his shoulder and was disheartened to see that his shelter was no longer anywhere in sight. They had gone much farther, with much greater speed, than Pitu had ever thought possible. Suddenly, he grew incredibly tired, without any energy to become angry. With careless abandon, he let Inukpak take him deeper into the land of spirits than he could ever truly begin to understand. I am never leaving this place, he thought. I will never go back home to see my family again.
* * *
By the time the giant stopped walking, Pitu had lost feeling in his lower body. He looked up into the sky to try to gauge the time, but it remained an unshifting overcast grey, revealing nothing. However, he knew they had been travelling for a long period of time because his body ached as though he’d been on a day-long qamutiik[2] ride. They were near the distant mountains that Pitu had been trying to reach since he arrived. With the large steps that Inukpak took, it dawned on Pitu just how long it would have taken him to journey that far with just his two feet. The trip had taken Inukpak hours, yet the giant was still jaunty and annoyingly cheerful.
Inukpak climbed through passages in the mountains with ease, following a path that no human could see simply because of the great distances cleared by each step. Pitu thought of the glaciers back home, how they seemed to crush mountains with their weight and the endless stream of melting waters that slid down to the ocean in summer, following a path that was large and wide. Did giants create those paths in the past? Were giants somehow responsible for the glaciers that brought so much life to his world? Pitu shook his head, the thoughts jumbling his mind.
They came to a full stop in a valley surrounded by a bowl of mountains. There was no iglu, but there were plenty of other things that would make living here comfortable. Do giants feel the cold? Pitu thought. This one didn’t seem to.
In the valley, there was a herd of caribou that made Pitu’s mouth water. There were other animals, too. Their arrival woke a polar bear from a doze; wolves (that were, thankfully, normal wolves) wagged their tails in greeting. They all swarmed around Inukpak, little pets greeting their master. The sight perplexed Pitu.
The giant put a hand into the pocket of its parka, bringing out a giant handful of other animals. The giant dropped the lemmings, hares, and foxes into the middle of the wolves, and then took a seal for the polar bear to eat on its own. Pitu’s stomach grumbled as he watched.
“Oh, little hunter,” Inukpak said, “Are you hungry, too?”
“Yes,” Pitu grudgingly replied.
“You can have a caribou!” Inukpak said. “What do you want? The ribs? The leg? The head?”
Pitu perked up at that. The head was the best part of the caribou, with its brains, eyeballs, and most of all, its tongue and jaw. Inukpak laughed again. “The head it is, little hunter!”
1. Fermented walrus meat.
[2]. A sled made from many materials, such as frozen fish, moss, driftwood, and animal bones, which carries supplies and families, usually pulled by dogs. Modern qamutiit are made of wood and typically pulled by a snowmobile.
Aviaq Johnston (Winner, Published Prose in English) is from Igloolik, Nunavut and currently lives in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Her debut novel, Those Who Run in the Sky, was shortlisted for the 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature, was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Award for Young Adult Fiction, and a 2017 Honour Book for the Burt Award for First Nations, Inuit and Métis Young Adult Literature. She is also the author of the bestselling picture book, What’s My Superpower?
ODE TO NANABUSH by Brandi Bird
Mother, Father, bingo caller
Friday nights on Peguis First
Nation. Call out to me. Night
-hawk, the grey rabbit
on the floodplain, the quills
of porcupine left on the side
of the highway north past
Winnipeg. Boozhoo, I ask
for you in the snake pits
of Narcisse, pits ripe
with the memory of when
you created Earth against
their writhing bodies, black
as scorch marks on stone. You
are Neolithic, red ochred, eaten
as I say my name at readings
with just the shadow of artifice
against a white screen. Will I
find you listening? In the bottom
of my can of beer, drinking
you in, a snare. I know the rez
was a prison first and then a home
in name, if not in body, if not
in my hands. Were you a prisoner
too? Or did you slide in moon
-light over fences, over walls, over
city girls awake at 3AM, the ones
like me who aren’t like prophets,
who never remember their dreams?
MARRIAGE ‘À LA FAÇON DU PAYS’ by Brandi Bird
I don’t speak my
husband’s
language
but my father is a road
to baouichtigouin. A word
held in a Jesuit hand, prim,
calloused
on his index finger.
This is a name that is not
my name. The company
calls me Bush Wife, a kwe
who knows the river’s
right to drown a man
who disrespects me. I
watch him as he worships
Sunday mornings. I beat
hides and my husband
doesn’t mind. He paid
a price for me and I am
useful,
weaving nets and fishing pickerel
to hang for winter. Biboon,
no seasons are sacred to him. He traps
and furs, leaves me speaking
anishinaabemowin
to my sisters
in the sun. Soon they will marry
too. French words like glass
beads roll in my mouth
and one day I will travel
with him; a bridge between
this world, carrying it on my back
between streams. L’automne
his hands are cold
in mine. They warm
at the fire I made and we sit silent
as my father’s rifle aimed at the sky.
Brandi Bird is a Saulteaux and Cree poet from Treaty 1 territory currently living and learning on Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh land. Bird is the author of the chapbook I Am Still Too Much (Rahila’s Ghost Press, 2019) and has had work published in Poetry is Dead, Pearls, Prism International, and The Puritan.
ALL THAT WAS LEFT by David Agecoutay
It was a chilly afternoon
crunching through October snow
in the foothills.
Helena carried your ashes
as we walked to your favorite spot.
She pulled out a plastic bag
when we got there
and poured the contents into the stream.
I watched your ashes
turn crystal clear water
into a thick gray cloud.
We stood there quietly for a moment.
After all this, I thought
all that was left
was a bag of ashes.
No 21 gun salute
no flags at half mast
no long line of black cars driving to a cemetery.
Just a gray cloud
dissipating as it floated downstream.
David Agecoutay (Zagime Anishinabek) was born in Grenfell, Saskatchewan and currently lives in Calgary, Alberta. He began writing poems when he was fourteen, then songs and later short stories. He is a musician who is active in theatre, occasionally acting but principally composing music for productions.
From GLASS BEADS
Excerpt from “Two Years Less a Day” by Dawn Dumont
The room was large which Julie liked. Everything else she hated. The blinds on the tiny windows were dirty and hanging off sideways. The desk was littered with paper. Small yellow Post-its, white forms, notebooks, and file folders were scattered everywhere. Everything had a fur of dust covering it. A sticky determined dust that would gather on your fingers if you dared to disturb it. She felt like attacking the room with a mop and a couple gallons of Javex.
Julie heard a plop. It came from the big, fat, wine-coloured jacket hanging on the coat rack that was still wet from the snow and radiating cold. There was a brown puddle around the base. Julie imagined someone slipping in it and breaking their neck. She noticed her thoughts taking these dark turns these days but didn’t have the energy to rein them in.
Across from her was a woman, a short-ass, which was what Julie called anyone who was round and short. The woman had dyed her hair a beige blonde, “the colour of baked bannock,” is how Julie would have described it to Nellie. The ends of her hair were still damp from the snow outside.
When she’d walked in, the woman had been at her desk, turning on her computer with one hand, taking her jacket off with the other – she looked frazzled as shit which didn’t give Julie much confidence.
The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Julie had heard that somewhere, probably from Nellie.
“Julie Papaquash?”
“Yes, I came to talk.”
The woman held up her hand. “First, I need to read your file.”
“But –”
“Please sit down.”
Julie felt like standing but she’d already learned that requests were demands and demands were orders and any disobeying made the guards come running.
Julie was thirsty. The building was dusty wherever she went and no matter how much water she drank, it was never enough. Before she went to bed, she filled a cup from the sink next to the bunk bed and drank from it over and over again while her roommate, Shells, watched, got bored and turned over.
“So where do we start, Julie?’’ The woman looked her over and Julie felt her unwashed, greasy hair sticking to her head, felt that pimple that was beginning inside her nose and red heat climbing from her chest up her neck to her cheeks. In the real world, this conversation would be like trying to ask a friend to lend you money after you’d run over their dog.
“I need to get out of here.” Ten days ago she had walked into this shithole and her heart immediately started beating faster. That feeling was only getting worse. Every morning she woke up feeling like she would start screaming and not stop. She stayed away from windows because she wanted to smash them with her fist and force her way through. She didn’t tell this woman that though, that would be a one-way road to seg.
“I don’t work on that sort of thing. That’s a legal matter.” The words slid out of the woman’s mouth, the way people said, “Fries with that.”
Julie felt the wind knocked out of her like that time she’d slipped on the ice in front of her building. She was in the air long enough to know that when she came back to earth, it was gonna hurt like a bitch. She was right.
The woman went on, “As a caseworker, my job is about making your stay productive. I’m about making use of your time. None of us have very much of it, you know. Goes by in a flash.” She attempted to snap her fingers, but they were soft and pudgy and only made a soft “swoosh” sound.
Time does fly – unless you spent the night before staring at a crack in the ceiling next to a picture of a penis exploding – then the seconds seem to be stretching on like years. Julie swallowed her anger along with the bile she felt rising up her throat.
She took a deep breath and exhaled noisily. Nellie blew up all the time at salespeople, waitresses, Everett, but they were small fires, easily contained. Everett just got mad, punched people and then was done – his anger dumped out like garbage. With Taz, anger was as natural as breathing. You could see it in his posture, corded through his muscles. But Julie never got mad, never raised her voice, never raised a hand to anyone.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re very pretty.”
Julie stared at her. Am I allowed to mind anything?
‘‘I’m sure you hear that a lot.” The woman put her pen in her mouth and slipped it in and out a few times, making it sopping wet with her spit. “What program would you like to take? We have openings in GED.”
“I have my grade twelve.”
‘‘Are you sure?”
“Grainfield High 1992.”
Julie even had a school jacket until one of her aunts stole it.
“Okay, well, we also have a carpentry course. No, wait, that’s full up. Oh here we go, I have an opening in substance abuse in three weeks.”
‘‘I’m not much of a drinker and I don’t do drugs.”
“You sure?” The woman’s voice had a smile in it.
Julie took a deep breath and nodded. This bitch was getting on her last nerve.
“It says here that you were drinking when the fight occurred.”
“That was a lie. I was at home, I was watching TV. I was alone.” On my own for the first time in my life and this shit happens. Why don’t you move in with me, Nellie had asked her and Julie had laughed, “We’re too old to be roommates.” Because she couldn’t say that she wanted to be alone for once, wanted her own little place to decorate how she wanted, her own kitchen table to sit at and think.
“I’m going by the court record.” The woman tapped the document in front of her, like it was a Bible.
“It’s not true.”
“But that’s all I have. You see when you’re convicted – that means the court decided that this is the way it happened. And I know you think the other person lied but the judge believed them and not you. It may not be fair but that’s how it is.”
“I want to appeal – how do I do that?”
“You can talk about that with one of the guards – they have paperwork –”
“But the guard says she ran out – “
“Then you wait.” The woman’s voice was sharp. “In the meantime . . .” The woman poked the edge of Julie’s file with a surprisingly beefy index finger. “You need to get in line for programming.”
Julie looked at the ceiling and caught her tears.
The woman looked back down at Julie’s folder. “You were in foster care for a while.”
“Yeah.”
“Ran away a few times.”
“I had some aunties who lived in the city. Sometimes they’d let me stay with them.”
“Is that when you started turning tricks?”
“What?” Julie sat forward.
“Says here you were ‘flirty with men and known to hang out in pick‑up areas’.”
“Who wrote that?”
“Mrs. Wallace.”
“Who?”
“She was your social worker when you were thirteen.”
“I met that woman like once.”
“I guess you made an impression.”
“When I was thirteen, I was still playing with dolls.” Stolen dolls from Kmart, yeah, but dolls. “Why would you even have that file? I wasn’t charged with anything. I didn’t have a record. And I thought juvey files were sealed anyway?”
“Are you done interrupting me?”
Julie blinked.
“I’m going by what’s in the file. This is what I was sent. This is what I’m working with. Now you can get up and leave right now. But I’ll have to put it in your file that you didn’t want to cooperate.” She smiled. “Or, you can calm down.”
“It’s a fucking lie.”
The woman reached for the phone, “Are you gonna be calm?”
Her hand hovered above the phone.
“I’m calm.”
Julie sat up straight, she smoothed her pants with her hands before raising her eyes. “I’m not a hooker.”
“It doesn’t matter to me. I’m not here to judge, I’m here to help you get better.”
In her mind, Julie was dragging this bitch around the room banging her face into the radiator and the heavy metal desk.
“Julie?’’
Julie stared at the fat wine jacket and watched the water slide down the seams. There was a dark red patch where the water had collected.
“I’m calm.” Julie could barely hear her own voice. Who is that answering for me?
“That’s better.”
“Write it down. Write it in the file.”
’’All right. Inmate states that she is not a prostitute.” She wrote slowly with a smile on her face.
Julie looked at a point between the woman’s eyes. She and Nellie had taken a yoga class together once and she remembered how the instructor kept talking about that third eye. Julie focused on the woman’s as her favourite rhyme bounced through her mind: “I am rubber you are glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” Then her mind leapt to an image of herself sticking a chopstick through that third eye.
“Now which program do you want me to put you down for?”
“Carpentry.”
“It’s full. Do you have a second choice?”
Julie’s stomach rumbled. “Substance abuse.”
“Are you sure? You say you don’t have any addictions. How will this help you?”
Julie knew the kitchen was closing in ten minutes and she knew that it would be well past noon before she’d get anything to eat again. She gritted her teeth. “I think everyone can learn something from substance abuse training. Like how to control your emotions.”
The woman’s puffy cheeks swelled into a grin. “True.”
“Can I go now?”
The woman gestured towards the door.
Julie stood at the door. The woman reached under her desk and a buzzer sounded. Before she stepped through, Julie looked back. “What’s your name anyways?”
“Marguerite.” Her voice had a sing-song quality.
Dawn Dumont is from the Okanese Cree Nation and is of Nehewin and Métis descent. She makes her home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Her novels include Nobody Cries at Bingo, Rose’s Run, and Glass Beads. Glass Beads was chosen as the 2019 One-Read Novel across Canada. Dawn also writes monthly humour columns for the Starphoenix and Eaglefeather News.
From BAD ENDINGS
Moosehide by Carleigh Baker
It’s the middle of the day, who cares when exactly, grey on goddamn grey. According to the GPS, we just passed the Arctic Circle. People get out their iPhones to take pictures of each other – Sean takes mine since we’re paddling together – and when I smile for the camera I feel a little bit happy. Or I tell myself I feel happy. Technically, this is an accomplishment, paddling a million kilometres in the cold, past an arbitrary line on a map that raises eyebrows when you mention it to your fellow urbanites.
Sean and I both have to reach as far as we can across the canoe when he passes me the phone, to give my approval of the photo. The skin on his hands is cracked and scratchy; not the accountant’s hands he had two weeks ago. The gaunt face glowing back at me from the iPhone looks pretty happy. I’ve lost weight. I guess that will make me happy when I get back to Vancouver and put on my skinny jeans. When I only have to wear one layer at a time, and people can see how skinny I’ve really become. For now, in all these layers, I’m a skinny face popping out of the Michelin Man. I take Sean’s picture with the phone. He looks handsome. Of course, there’s no WiFi, so I just save the photos. If you’re in the Arctic, and you can’t Instagram it, does anybody care?
I’m tired.
Early in the trip, the river was all crusty whitewater. I was always paddling a canoe into a bunch of waves that looked like they were beating the shit out of each other. The water roared, and I could hear it all the time. I was excited by the noise at first, but I got used to it. At night, it was a backing track for Sean’s evening banjo serenades. The guides had glanced sideways at each other when he’d added the bulky case to the packing pile, but everyone is happy to listen to him pluck away most evenings.
It’s all couples on the trip: three couples and the guides, Jan and Eric. Also a couple. At night, besides the sound of the river, I can hear people rolling around in their tents, groaning like whales. Sean and I tried to get busy the first night, but my back muscles felt like they’d been run through a food processor. Same thing the second night, and the Thermarest deflated, so I was being pounded onto the rocks. Ugh. Around day six, I pulled Sean into the trees, away from everyone and down into a valley dotted with little white flowers. There was this spot with moss so thick, we had to climb up onto it. The whole thing was so badass; we weren’t supposed to stray out of sight of the group, and we weren’t supposed to go anywhere that might mess up the nature. The tundra is fragile, that’s what the guides told us. We were stomping around, ripping out chunks of moss, and when I pulled him down to me, the sanctity of nature was the last thing from my mind. But the cold rose up from the ground, deep and penetrating. Sean put his jacket underneath me. We kept as many layers on as we could, his hard dick poking out of wool long johns, my own base layer pulled just low enough to let him in. But we couldn’t stop shivering. A handjob under the majestic northern sky just seemed sad, and besides, we’d forgotten to bring wet wipes.
“We’ll get it,” Sean said. Kissed me on the forehead.
“Yeah.”
The other couples are from Toronto, a zillion times more urban than us. I don’t know why they don’t seem to have any trouble getting it. From the sound of it, they’re getting it constantly.
The river has slowed since we left Aberdeen Canyon, it’s big and sluggish and muddy now. For the most part, the only sound comes from the nattering of our fellow travellers, and this only happens when we’re rafting, boats tied together. Sometimes the wings of birds make a whoop whoop whoop sound when we startle them into flight. The couples don’t mingle much anymore, and I’m not sure if that’s because we’re comfortable with each other now, or because we’ve given up.
When we pull off the river, the moosehide is just lying there. God. Big, inflated lungs lying next to it, jiggling like Jello. Intestines, veiny grey tubes.
“Why is everything inflated?” I ask Sean.
“Botulism,” somebody says.
“Don’t poke a hole in them,” somebody says, “or the worst smell will come out.”
How bad, I wonder? The worst.
Brown-winged birds of prey circle over us.
Everybody loves the hide, prodding and poking it with sticks. Stretching it out so they can see the full length of the inside, mucus membrane and pink blood, a skin cape cut ragged around the edges. I can’t look at it. I don’t see a dead moose, I see a live moose in the final moments of suffering before its life ends. That kind of empathy is stupid. I know. The moose is dead, and it’s feeding someone.
Somebody’s going to notice that I’m the only one not looking, and ask me why I’m such a wuss. So I make a big show of looking at other things: tiny plants at the river’s edge with ice globes surrounding the fruit, broken willow branches, rocks. Scarred rocks that look like patients in the sick ward; what makes them look like that? I toss a few in the river. Each lands with a fat plunk.
Sean’s talking to Eric about taking the moosehide with us and I’m pissed at him for this. Surely bears would smell it and come looking for us, or lynx, or – what else is out here waiting to kill us? He wants to make something out of it. Whatever. I remember somebody in my Aboriginal Studies class saying that scraping a hide is much harder than it looks, even with expert hands, and we’re no experts. We have no tools for this. I may be a mixed blood – Sean and I are both Cree-Métis – but we were also both raised white. All we know are white-people things. But I do know that a perfectly good moosehide shouldn’t have been left here. Why did the hunters leave it? Skin it and leave it?
“I think it’s a female,” somebody says, poking around the ass end, playing the expert.
“You’re not supposed to kill females,” somebody says.
“That’s sexist,” somebody says.
“The females make more moose, dumbass.”
“Not without sperm they don’t.”
“Maybe she attacked them?”
God. It’s like reading the online comments section on YouTube.
I’m hungry.
Somebody passes around a snack, just a big block of cheese cut into a million pieces with a dirty Leatherman. It clogs and sticks in my throat. We get “fun-sized” Mars bars too. Chocolate and cheese. I put the Mars bar in my PFD pocket. My fingers can barely get the zipper down. My fingers, dirty for days despite a river of hand sanitizer. Bloated and pus around the nails, one finger swollen so big I can barely move it. Rub Polysporin in the cracks before bedtime, and hope for the best. I can still paddle just fine. I may have lost weight, but my shoulders are strong now. I can feel the muscle through my merino wool bottom layer, though I haven’t seen much of my actual skin for fifteen days.
“Can you help me with my PFD?” Sean asks. He looks like a little boy when he asks, and for some reason I choke up a little. Get it together, lady.
“Sure,” I say. Tug the zipper down hard, even though my fingers might break off.
“Do you want my Mars bar?” he asks.
“Don’t drag that moosehide along with us,” I say.
“I could make a drum from it.”
I turn around so he doesn’t see how hard I’m rolling my eyes. A drum. We’re accountants.
Now it’s pictures around the moose remnants, eight of us lined up like so many soldiers.
Someone’s found an antler, too. Not from the carcass, this one’s older. And probably caribou, Eric tells us. People take turns with it, more photo opportunities.
Sean’s arm around me, the other holding the antler up to my temple. We’ll get back to Vancouver and show this photo to our friends, and they’ll be jealous of us. I can’t even count how many times people used the word jealous, like we were going on an expenses-paid five-star Mediterranean yacht cruise or something. You’d have to be a masochist to want to trade places with us right now. There is nothing easy about being here, and there was nothing easy about getting here. Sean and I trained for months, saved for months. I guess it was good for us to have something to focus on. We barely fought at all. I’m not sure if we picked the right kind of vacay. I’m not sure if it’s just the tour we chose, because I’ve never done anything like this before. But I definitely didn’t expect things to be this hard. I pictured myself drinking wine, looking out at the river. I’d imagined calm, and a clearing out of my mind that might make the future easier for me. Anyway. We’re doing it now. We’re committed.
Time to get back in the boats. It’s much warmer when I’m paddling, tied into the spray skirt with my neoprene gloves on. Sean and I always paddle together now. Early in the trip when there was some pretense at friendship among travellers, people switched up paddle mates and made small talk, but not anymore. I don’t really care. My friends back home told me this kind of trip forges lifelong connections, so maybe there’s something wrong with me.
People take their last pokes at the moose bits. Somebody finally does poke a hole in the lung and it deflates unceremoniously, no smell. One of the guides finally convinces Sean that bringing the pelt along is a stupid idea, but I’m still annoyed so I’m not speaking to him. He points out the same shit we’ve seen for the last week: stunted trees, exfoliated hills, mud. I just paddle.
When it’s finally time to find camp for the night, the atmosphere is thick. The river so still it looks like mercury.
“Taco Bar tomorrow,” Eric says.
“Is that some kind of sick joke?” Sean asks. He gets grumpy when I give him the silent treatment.
Eric laughs. “Taco Bar is a checkpoint,” he says. “If you need anything flown in or flown out, that’s the spot.”
“How ‘bout some tacos,” somebody says. “Hur hur hur.”
“They’d be some pretty expensive tacos,” Eric says. “Airlift costs about three grand.”
“That’s our way out,” I say to Sean. So much for the silent treatment.
He snorts. “Kiss that ring goodbye then.”
I shrug, knowing it’s going to piss him off. He looks at me and laughs. People say travelling together is a true test of a relationship. Those people are correct.
“SMOKE,” a voice bellows from a canoe behind me. “SMOKE.”
I realize I’ve been looking right at the smoke for a few minutes, but it hasn’t registered. “Smoke,” I say to Sean.
“No shit.”
“Smoking Hill,” Eric says. “Lightning hit a coal seam in the mountain, it’s been burning ever since.” This generates a lot of delighted conversation. In the absence of internet, I guess we’re all pretty easily amused. “Let’s stop here tonight,” Eric says.
We begin the transition back to land-dwelling mammals: pull the boats up, loosen the spray skirt laces, pull out the gear. Although everyone is tired, this is when we work together best, since the end goal of sleep is finally in sight. The mud is too thick to slog through with a heavy pack, so a line forms, and we pass everything along. Bag after bag: tents, cooking gear, food. Empty boats carried safely above the water line. Sean and I set up the camp kitchen. I find rocks for a hearth while he collects firewood. Then he builds the fire while I sort through the food barrels for tonight’s meal. When everyone else is done with their tasks, they’ll all come and circle us like vultures.
“We could leave,” Sean says.
“What?”
“We could.” He blows the fire and sparks fly out. “We could split the three grand and get the fuck out of here.”
The water is boiling. I measure out three cups of parboiled rice and dump it in. “Why?”
Sean snorts. “It was your idea.”
“We might be waiting a while, I doubt there’s a shuttle,” I say, watching the rice come to a boil. Fire cooking is not what you’d call precise, but I’m getting better at it.
“I asked Eric,” Sean says. “He could call on the satellite phone.”
“We could.” I think about what our friends would say. It would look like a failure. But they have no idea how hard every day has been. They probably wouldn’t say much at all, but they would think I’d failed.
“I mean, this is our vacation,” Sean says. “It’s not supposed to be work.”
“We could hit up that spa in Whitehorse and get four-handed massages.”
Sean laughs. “How about six-handed.”
“I like the way you think,” I say. We kiss for the first time in a million years.
“Wooo, get a room you two,” somebody calls. The vultures are descending.
“A room,” Sean says. “We could get one. Think about it.”
I do think about it. What heat would feel like. Electric light. Hot water on demand. Mealtime rolls into fire time, people roast marshmallows and laugh among themselves. In the distance, Smoking Hill is glowing a little, and still sending up a thin, white plume into the night sky. It’s a long time before the sky gets dark, and usually by then the northern lights are out. Green streaks across a deep blue twilight. They were so exciting at first, now we just expect them. But tonight, the idea that this could technically be my last night out here has got me looking around again, noticing things.
“Meet you in the tent,” Sean says, kissing my cheek.
“I’ll be there in a bit,” I say.
“Don’t be too long, we’ve got stuff to discuss.” He lopes off toward our coffin‑sized tent. Handsome.
I leave my comrades at the campfire, but instead of going straight to the tent, I end up down at the edge of the river, looking at the burning hill. Big moon. Me in the mud. It’s so shitty out here. But still, technically, this is romance. It’s hard to remember that, since we’re always moving on this stupid river, or too exhausted to think. I stand still for awhile. Try to imagine getting picked up by an airplane tomorrow. Removing all future responsibility from ourselves in one simple but expensive manoeuver. Crawling into the plane and laughing together like Benjamin and Elaine on the bus at the end of The Graduate. Escape! Ha ha ha. Ha ha.
Ha.
Well.
What now?
Carleigh Baker is a nêhiyaw âpihtawikosisân / Icelandic writer who lives as a guest on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwu7mesh, and səl̓ilwəta peoples. Her work has appeared in Best Canadian Essays, The Short Story Advent Calendar, and The Journey Prize Stories. Her debut story collection, Bad Endings (Anvil, 2017), won the City of Vancouver Book Award. She is the 2019-2020 Writer in Residence and a 2020 Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities at Simon Fraser University.
SPECIAL THANKS
Grateful acknowledgement is made to Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the Department of First Nations Studies, and to SFU professors Deanna Reder (Department of First Nations Studies and Department of English) and Sophie McCall (Department of English) whose collaboration with Alaska Quarterly Review Editor Ronald Spatz made this special feature possible. The editor also expresses gratitude for the invaluable counsel from Margery Fee, University of British Columbia professor emerita and fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Annie Ross, SFU First Nations Studies professor. Finally, Editor Ronald Spatz expresses appreciation to the University of Alaska Anchorage Elizabeth Tower Endowment for Canadian Studies for providing a grant to support a portion of his travel to Canada.
We also wish to recognize the Indigenous Voices Awards jurors (2018):
Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is an internationally acclaimed writer, poet, spoken word performer, and activist from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. She is the founder and Managing Editor of Kegedonce Press which was established in 1993 to publish the work of Indigenous creators. Kateri has written two collections of poetry and has released two poetry and music CDs. Recently she contributed to the graphic novel anthology This Place: 150 Years Retold (2019).
Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau, née en Abitibi, au nord-ouest du Québec, est une artiste multidisciplinaire d’origine crie. Elle a publié un premier roman Ourse Bleue, en 2007, chez La Pleine Lune. Son dernier recueil de poésie, Je te veux vivant, a été édité en 2016 aux Éditions du Quartz.
Shelagh Rogers is a broadcast journalist with CBC Radio. Currently, she hosts and co‑produces The Next Chapter, the national program devoted to writing in Canada, which since its inception has had a strong commitment to Indigenous writing.
Rodney Saint-Éloi, poète, écrivain, essayiste, éditeur, né à Cavaillon (Haïti), il est l’auteur d’une quinzaine de livres de poésie, dont Je suis la fille du baobab brûlé (2015) et Jacques Roche, je t’écris cette lettre (2013). Il dirige plusieurs anthologies. Il dirige la maison d’édition Mémoire d’encrier qu’il a fondée en 2003 à Montréal.
Gregory Scofield, a Cree/Métis poet, teacher, social worker, and youth worker, has authored eight collections of poetry. His autobiography, Thunder Through My Veins: Memories of a Métis Childhood, first published in 1999, has been updated and re-released (Anchor 2019).
Jean Sioui (Wendat) publie son premier livre, un recueil poétique de pensées, Le Pas de l’Indien, aux éditions Le Loup de Gouttière en 1997. Il devient rapidement l’un des auteurs autochtones les plus prolifiques du Québec. Il publie une dizaine d’ouvrages chez différents éditeurs, dont Poèmes rouges (Le Loup de Gouttière, 2004), L’avenir voit rouge (Écrits des Forges, 2007), et Mon couteau croche (Mémoire d’encrier 2015).
Richard Van Camp (Tlicho) was raised in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories and has published 15 books, including the novel The Lesser Blessed, which was made into a feature film with First Generation Films. His acclaimed short story collections include Angel Wing Splash Pattern, Godless but Loyal to Heaven, The Moon of Letting Go, and Night Mo
PERMISSIONS
Alaska Quarterly Review acknowledges the publishers for their generous permission to reprint the following works:
Carleigh Baker, “Moosehide.” From Bad Endings. Anvil Press, 2017. Pages 157–165. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
Billy-Ray Belcourt, “Notes from a Public Washroom” and “Colonialism: A Love Story.” From This Wound is a World: Poems. Frontenac House, 2017. Pages 12 and 27. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Tenille Campbell, #807, #47, and #29. From #IndianLovePoems. Signature Editions, 2017. Pages 34, 36, 40. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
Dawn Dumont, Excerpt from the story, “Two Years Less a Day.” From Glass Beads. Thistledown Press. Pages 130–36. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
Naomi Fontaine, “Le texte.” from Manikanetish. Mémoire d’encrier, 2017. Pages 27–28. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Marie-Andrée Gill, “Uashteu (Il y a de la lumiere).” A different version of this poem appears in Chauffer le dehors (La peuplade, 2019) and is reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
Aviaq Johnston, from Those Who Run in the Sky. Inhabit Media, 2017. Pages 101–108. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
J.D. Kurtness, “REAL et Carolanne.” From De vengeance. L’instant même, 2017. Pages 44–46. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
J.D. Kurtness, “Roy and Carol Anne.” From Of Vengeance. Translated by Pablo Strauss. Dundurn Press, 2019. Pages 56–58. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
Mika Lafond, “têpiya pîkiskwêwina” and “just words.” From nipê wânîn: my way back. Thistledown P, 2017. Pages 68–69. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.
Joshua Whitehead, “ ‘d’ Pairs Well with Vowels.” Full-Metal Indigiqueer. Talonbooks 2017. Pages 61–64. Reprinted by permission of the author and publisher.