Indigenous authors prominent at Word on the Street
- Andréa Ledding | September 24, 2016
Saskatoon’s Word On the Street included Indigenous writers Drew Hayden Taylor, Lisa Bird-Wilson, Joan Crate, and Carol Daniels, and many of them spoke about survivors, whether of residential schools or the 60's scoop.
“When I went to the Truth and Reconciliation events, I found some more documents that were quite a bit different from the documents I’d been seeing from my family, and that sparked me to want to see more archival materials,” said Bird-Wilson during her panel on research-inspired poetry, the story behind her first poetry collection The Red Files.
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Crate, a Métis poet reading from her new novel Black Apple, said the most difficult thing was writing about the setting, a residential school.
“The residential schools never worked, they never worked from the beginning, and there were lots of whistle blowers,” noted Crate.
Daniels, who was shortlisted for three Saskatchewan Book Awards for her first book, Bearskin Diaries, wrote a novel about a survivor of the foster care system, set in Saskatoon.
“My main character is Sandy Pelly...eventually she’s rooted in our culture, all the beauty that there is within our culture,” noted Daniels. “I also really wanted to create a female Indigenous character who was strong, and smart, and resilient, and proud, and able to do everything that we as Indigenous women do in real life, because quite honestly I am sick and tired of movie depictions of the Indigenous women as only being downtrodden. We’re always victims of something: we’re beaten up, we’re rape victims, and I thought enough of this with the stereotype film and television and other media. So I wanted to create an Indigenous woman who was more true to character of the real-life First Nations and Métis women that I know in my life.”
Scooped in the ’60’s as a newborn, Daniels added how her own life would have been ruined if someone had taken her own three kids away because of a government policy that said Indigenous women were not good parents: the rationale was to assimilate when the Residential Schools didn’t work fast enough. She noted it’s still happening.
Taylor shared some thoughts about writing Indigenous science fiction, reading from his most recent collection, Take Me To Your Chief, his 29th book.
“In January my 30th comes out, so I go for quantity, not quality,” he joked, before noting that a lot of Indigenous writing is about victim narrative or “PCSD” - Post Contact Stress Disorder. “If you listen to a lot of traditional stories, there are some elements of potential sci-fi nature in them.”
His first novel was an Indigenous vampire novel which would later become a graphic novel was called Night Wanderer, taking a European legend and Indigenizing it. Taylor is also known for his plays, many of which have debuted at Sask Native Theatre Company, now Gordon Tootoosis Nikaniwin Theatre. He began to dabble in comedy because a Blackfoot Elder told him humour is the WD-40 of healing in Indigenous communities.
“These are very exciting times, we’re stacking up a whole series of genres,” noted Taylor.
David Suzuki was also a major draw at the Saskatoon event, and helped open the day with a round dance in front of City Hall, organized by the Office of the Treaty Commissioner.