Speaking of which, Canada's literary magazine The Walrus is also running a series of short-form fiction, of non-fiction essays and of artwork by First Nations authors and artists: Terra Cognita.
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| Cover, Sugar Falls Artwork by Scott B. Henderson Highwater Press, 2012 |
Aside from David A. Robertson's graphic novel Stone, described in this blog post, I also read Sugar Falls yesterday. (A few of Robertson's books are on the book subscription website Scribd, so I will be reading still more.)
Sugar Falls is a look at a real-life story of a Cree child's life in a 20th-century residential school in central Canada, after she was taken from her parents to be educated according to government guidelines. It is not for the faint of heart and it describes the abuse she went through.
I'd say that the book stands for itself. A large part of its power is that it tries to hew closely to the life story at its core, which was shared with the author by an elder, Betty Ross. This restraint is almost an ideological statement, when it is so easy to adapt someone's testimony to suit one's own artistic interests and opinions. To be frank, I prefer Sugar Falls a bit to Stone, although it's even harder reading. So I want to imitate the author's example, by not over-paraphrasing the story, and not running the risk of misinterpreting reality.
Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story [Highwater Press]
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To digress, reading online sources about the Residential School that's mentioned in the book was enlightening. It underlined that an undeserved self-complacency — although that's easy for me to say, since I'm of a younger generation that doesn't directly carry this moral burden — still exists in the communities that founded and ran these schools. A website run by the United Church of Canada (which operated the residential school after 1925) writes rather harmlessly of Norway House:
In other words, the Church's summary denies that children were held apart from their parents, or that children were punished for speaking Cree (at least 'outside the classroom'). Also, it does not recognize the sexual abuse that is alleged to have occurred,* nor does it mention the drowning death of a girl — described in Sugar Falls — who tried to escape the school. [Edited to add: That said, the graphic novel speaks of a Roman Catholic school, whereas Norway House was Methodist/United Church. Perhaps this was the only detail that was changed from real life, or perhaps other details have also been changed to reflect First Nations children's experiences in other schools as well.]The church rebuilt in 1952, with room for 120 students in two dorms housed in separate buildings in order to minimize the risk of fire. The half-day system was abandoned.By 1964, there were 138 children in residence at Norway House IRS and 242 day students who lived in their own homes in the community. Margaret Ann Reid recalled her experiences as a young teacher of the grade 2/3 class: "Progress was slow for many of the children—this was partly due to the language barrier —schoolwork was in English—the students were accustomed to talking and thinking in Cree. There were no restrictions on speaking Cree outside the classroom." Reid also noted that attendance continued to be very fluid in the school, as children frequently stayed home to care for siblings or to accompany their families on trapping and fishing excursions.
In the meantime, a report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated residential schools, describes the view of another teacher, Dorothy McKay, who taught there in the 1960s:
Implicitly contradicting Ms. Reid's representation, Ms. McKay concludes that the children's tears do not reflect mere love for the school. Rather, they reflect the traumatic experience of many months' separations from their families:I think about the first week, you’d hear the children crying themselves to sleep, but the other side of that is I can remember we would go to the plane with them when it was time at the end of June for them to go home [they were] crying [...]
Sugar Falls [Goodreads][T]hey no longer knew about their homes, they’d been away for ten months [...]
Norway House Indian Residential School [United Church of Canada Archives]
Canada's Residential Schools: The History, Part 2, 1939 to 2000: The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Vol. I [Google Books]
* e.g. To cite another case: In her memoir Back to the Red Road, a woman recounts that she taught at Norway House in the 1950s when she was 19 years old, and found out years later that one of her pupils had been abused during his time there. A summary of the book can be found in:
"The New Victims" by Jula Hughes. In Power Through Testimony: Reframing Residential Schools in the Age of Reconciliation. Brieg Capitaine and Karine Vanthuyne, ed. (Vancouver: UBC Press) p. 191 [Google Books]
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| Cover, Him Standing Orca Book Publishers, 2013 |
In terms of other First Nations authors, I next want to begin reading books by Richard Wagamese (1955-2017). He grew up in eastern Canada, to an Ojibwe family. Besides working as a journalist for the Calgary Herald newspaper, he was famously a novelist and memoirist. Also, judging by Shelagh Rogers's Twitter feed, he was a treasured friend.
The first of Richard Wagamese's works I want to read is Him Standing. The Faustian-sounding plot, as described by the publisher's website:
When Lucas Smoke learns the Ojibway art of carving from his grandfather, he proves to be a natural. He can literally make people come to life in wood. Then Lucas's growing reputation attracts a mysterious stranger, who offers him a large advance to carve a spirit mask.
Richard Wagamese [Wikipedia]
Shelagh Rogers [Twitter] (Pronunciation Note: 'Shelagh' is pronounced 'SHEE-la,' as far as I recall from listening to CBC Radio)
Him Standing [Orca Book Publishers]
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