Kwe: Standing With Our Sisters
Page 7
Great music in this internet cafe.
G’night, Alice.
Yann
from: Alice Kuipers
to: Yann Martel
subject: To my Spanish speaking emailist
date: Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 2:21 AM
Dear Yann,
If you love emails then I’ll send them to you: nice to think of you happy. I’ve just woken up and am wrapped in my dressing gown yawning. Today is freelance day (my favourite day) and I’m researching (more) the gay community and doing an article.
So, you’re enjoying Barcelona. I love it, although I nearly passed out in fear climbing the SF. It annoys me but I’m scared of heights—I dreamt the other night that I was standing at the top of a crevasse and I was terrified. Are you scared of anything?
I’ve got lots I want to ask you and discover but, as a conscientious freelancer, work is calling. Gibraltar 23/24 June.
A
x
Oh, my phone number is …
~ Rawi Hage ~
TREATY SEVEN
~ Thomas King ~
Nothing passes for favour here
All talk is razor-toothed
Take nothing from the hand that offers friendship
In this place
All promises are bruises
In good suits.
WOUNDED KNEE
~ Thomas King ~
Dr. Charles Eastman,
rides From the Deep Woods to Civilization,
just in time to greet
the first wagon back from
Big Foot’s camp.
My Lai Pizarro Rosewood Thebes
Jallianwala Bagh Dresden Bush Dili
Skeptical,
he leaves the fort
to dispel for himself
the rumours of ghosts
dancing on the land.
Acteal Rio Negro Stepinac Myall Creek
Lépine Hiroshima Treblinka Qana
While all around,
Custer’s Seventh,
mad for Weapons of Mad Destruction
and genocidal glory
gallop the world in
hot pursuit of peace.
Museveni Sand Creek Carthage Stalin
Srebenica Rwanda Pol Pot Tiananmen Square
But there,
there on the frozen plains of
South Dakota,
December 1890,
while searching for survivors
Eastman finds nothing
save the future.
AFLAME
~ Margaret Atwood ~
The world’s burning up. It always did.
Lightning would strike, the resin
in the conifers explode, the black peat smoulder,
greying bones glow slowly, and the fallen leaves
turn brown and writhe, like paper
held to candle. It’s the scent of autumn,
oxidation: you can smell it on your skin,
that sunburn perfume.
Only now
it’s burning faster. All those yarns
of red apocalypse concocted
back when we played with matches—
the ardent histories, the Troyish towers
viewed through toppling smoke, the fine
mirage volcanoes that we mimed
with such delight when setting
marshmallows on fire on purpose,
All those slow-fused epics
packed in anthracite, then buried
under granite mountains, or else thrown
into the deepest sea like djinns
in stoneware bottles—
All, all are coming true
because we opened the lead seals,
ignored the warning runes,
and let the stories out.
We had to know.
We had to know
how such tales really end:
and why.
They end in flames
Because that’s what we want.
We want them to.
PASSPORTS
~ Margaret Atwood ~
We save them, as we save those curls
culled from our kids’ first haircuts, or from lovers
felled too early. Here are
all of mine, safe in a file, their corners
clipped, each page engraved
with trips I barely remember.
Why was I wandering from there to there
to there? God only knows.
And the procession of wraith’s photos
claiming to prove that I was me:
the faces grayish disks, the fisheyes
trapped in the noonhour flashflare
with the sullen jacklit stare
of a woman who’s just been arrested.
Sequenced, these pics are like a chart
of moon phases fading to blackout; or
like a mermaid doomed to appear onshore
every five years, and each time altered
to something a little more dead:
skin withering in the parching air,
marooned hair thinning as it dries,
cursed if she smiles or cries.
THE DEAR ONES
~ Margaret Atwood ~
But where are they? They can’t be nowhere.
It used to be that gypsies took them.
Or else the Little People,
Who were not little, though enticing.
They were lured into a dark hill,
Those dear ones. There was gold, and dancing.
They should have come home by nine.
You phoned. The clocks chimed
Like ice, like metal, heartless.
A week, two weeks: nothing.
Seven years passed. No, a score.
No, a hundred. No, make it more.
When they finally reappeared,
Not a day older,
Wandering down the road in tatters
In bare feet, their hair all ragged,
Those who had waited for them so long
Were long dead.
These were the kinds of stories
We used to tell. They were comforting, in a way,
Because they said
Everyone has to be somewhere.
But the dear ones, where are they?
Where? Where? After a while
You sound like a bird.
You stop, but the sorrow goes on calling.
It leaves you and flies out
Over the cold night fields,
Searching and searching,
Over the rivers,
Over the emptied air.
SOMETHING PROFOUND IS WRONG
~ John Ralston Saul ~
When there is a pattern to abuse, violence, and murder we know that we are being told something about our society. All of these lives damaged, ruined, and lost. A flood of suffering.
Yet each of these women is or was an individual; not a social indicator, but one woman at a time somehow dragged into this horror. A life. A singular tragedy. A name to be said high and loud, because the names of the lost must be given the honour and dignity of incantation. Their story must be heard; each one the story of one woman.
If so many citizens call today for an inquiry, it is first an assertion of that individuality. But we are also faced by denial from many of those who hold places of power. A denial of what? Of a profound Canadian sickness of which these murders are, somehow, a sign. These calls for an inquiry are also an appeal for healing, which can only come if there is first an understanding of what is happening and an admission that if this is happening then something—I repeat the word—profound is wrong. That something includes the murders and the violence, but somehow goes further into the unresolved wounds of our society.
I can think of few things less admirable than men with power unable to face up to the failings of the society in which they have sought and gained responsibilities. Such a denial is the face of cowardliness, an emotionally frozen denial of reality.
&
nbsp; No doubt such men would prefer a simplistic patriotic narrative of good people in a good place doing good things. We have all of these things. But this can only be an artificial, false story if those who insist on it cannot first embrace our failures and violence. Only then can they use their positions of responsibility to understand what is wrong and to help us make the fundamental changes to our society which would render these individual aggressions and this flood of suffering impossible.
CONTRIBUTORS
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, a PEN/Hemingway Citation for Best First Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, Sherman Alexie is a poet, short story writer, novelist, and performer. His books include What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned, Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Smoke Signals, the movie he wrote and co-produced, won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.
Taiaiake Alfred is a Kahnawà:ke Mohawk and professor of Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria. His awards include a Canada Research Chair, a Native American Journalists Association award for column writing, and a National Aboriginal Achievement Award. He is the author of three books: Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors; Peace, Power, Righteousness; and Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom.
Reneltta Arluk is Inuvialuit and Dene from the Northwest Territories. She is a graduate of the BFA acting program from the University of Alberta and founder of Akpik Theatre, a professional Indigenous theatre company in the Northwest Territories. She is the author of Thoughts and Other Human Tendencies.
Joanne Arnott is a Métis/mixed-blood writer, editor, and arts activist originally from Manitoba, but at home on the west coast. She has nine published books, including Halfling Spring, A Night for the Lady, and, as text editor, Salish Seas: An Anthology of Text + Image.
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Her latest work is a book of short stories called Stone Mattress: Nine Tales (2014). Her newest novel, MaddAddam (2013) is the third in a trilogy; the second was The Year of the Flood (2009) and the first was the Giller and Booker Prize–nominated Oryx and Crake (2003). She lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
Born in Montreal, Melissa Auf der Maur is a photographer and musician, formerly of Grammy-awarded bands Hole and The Smashing Pumpkins. In 2004, Auf der Maur, her first solo album, was released by Capitol Records/EMI worldwide. 2010 marked the release of Out of Our Minds, which includes an album, the OOOM fantasy film, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and a comic book. She is currently focusing her efforts as creative director of the Basilica Hudson, an arts and performance space in Hudson, New York.
Marilyn Bowering is a novelist, librettist, and poet who lives in British Columbia. Her most recent works are What It Takes to Be Human (novel), Soul Mouth (poetry), and the opera Marilyn Forever with Gavin Bryars. She has won and/or been shortlisted for many national and international awards.
Joseph Boyden is the author of one collection of stories and three novels. His second novel, Through Black Spruce, was awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year; it also earned him the CBA’s Author of the Year Award. His most recent novel, The Orenda, won Canada Reads.
Dionne Brand is a poet and novelist. Her 2014 novel is Love Enough. Her most recent book of poetry, Ossuaries, won the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her literary honours include the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Toronto Book Award. She was Toronto’s Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2012. She lives in Toronto.
Warren Cariou is a Métis writer, filmmaker, and professor from Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. He writes fiction, poetry, and non-fiction about Indigenous communities in western Canada, and he is also active as a scholar of Indigenous literature. He directs the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba.
David Chariandy is a fiction writer and critic. He lives in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories.
Lorna Crozier’s poetry will be published in two books in 2015: The Wrong Cat and The Wild in You, a collaboration with photographer Ian McAllister. She’s an Officer of the Order of Canada, the recipient of the Governor General’s Award, and has received three honorary doctorates for her contributions to Canadian literature.
Michael Crummey has published poetry, stories, and novels. Galore won the Canadian Authors Association Fiction Award and the Commonwealth Prize (Canada & Caribbean Region) and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Award and the Governor General’s Award. Sweetland, his most recent novel, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. He lives in St. John’s.
Andrew Davidson is the author of The Gargoyle, an international bestseller translated into thirty languages. He lives in Winnipeg.
Diana Davidson’s novel Pilgrimage is a story of love and loss on the Lac Ste. Anne Métis settlement in the 1890s. It was a finalist for the Alberta Readers’ Choice Awards. She lives in Edmonton.
Sarah de Leeuw, two-time recipient of a CBC Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and winner of the Dorothy Livesay Award for poetry, is a creative writer and research academic in UNBC/UBC’s Faculty of Medicine. Growing up on Haida Gwaii and in Terrace, she studies colonial power and lives in Prince George.
Gord Downie is a singer.
Stan Dragland was the founder of Brick magazine and Brick Books, and is still active with the latter. His most recent books are The Drowned Lands (novel), Deep Too, a prose oddity testing the waters of masculinity, and The Bricoleur and His Sentences, a long essay about scrounging as a source of sub- or pre- or pseudo or even real art. He lives in St. John’s.
Julie Flett is a Cree-Métis artist, illustrator, and children’s book author. She lives and works in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories.
Charles Foran is the author of 11 books. He lives in Toronto.
Patrick Friesen has published more than a dozen books of poetry, a book of essays, several translations of Danish poets, and has produced two improv CDs of text and music with Marilyn Lerner. He has also written stage and radio plays. He lives in Victoria.
Bill Gaston’s work has been nominated for the Giller Prize and Governor General’s Award, and includes the novels Sointula, The Good Body, and The World, and the collections Mount Appetite, Gargoyles, and Juliet Was a Surprise. He lives on Vancouver Island.
Born and raised in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, in Canada’s high arctic, Tanya Tagaq Gillis grew up surrounded by Inuit and western culture. She has released four critically-acclaimed albums, the most recent of which, Animisim, won the 2014 Polaris Prize.
Garry Gottfriedson is a self-employed rancher from the Secwepemc Nation. He is currently the Principal at the Sk’elep School of Excellence in Kamloops. He holds a Master’s Degree in Education. In 1987, the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado awarded him a Creative Writing scholarship. There, he studied under Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithful, and others. He is the author of eight books.
Rawi Hage was born in Beirut. He is a writer and visual artist. He lives in Montreal.
Steven Heighton is a novelist, short story writer, and poet. His 2006 novel, Afterlands, has appeared in six countries and was included on best of year lists in ten publications in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. He has received four gold National Magazine Awards for his stories and poems, and his work has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, Best English Stories, Best American Poetry, Zoetrope, Tin House, and Best Canadian Stories.
Wanda John-Kehewin has studied criminology, sociology, Aboriginal studies, and creative writing with Simon Fraser University’s TWS Writing Program. She uses writing as a therapeutic medium to understanding and responding to the near decimation of First Nations culture, language, and tradition. Her first book of poetry, In the Dog House, was published in 2013.
Eve Joseph’s two books of poetry, The Startled Heart and The Secret Signature of Things, were both nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Award. Her non-fiction book, In the Slender Margin, was published by HarperCollins in 2014 and named one of the top 100 books of the year by The Globe and Mail.
Thomas King is of Cherokee, Greek, and German descent and is currently chair of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. His short stories have been widely published throughout the United States and Canada, and a film based on his much acclaimed first novel, Medicine River, has been made for television.
Alice Kuipers moved to Saskatoon from the U.K. in 2003. She has published four bestselling, award-winning YA novels internationally; the most recent is The Death of Us. Her first picture book is called Violet and Victor Write the Best-Ever Bookworm Book.
Patrick Lane has published twenty-eight books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He teaches Master Classes in the art of writing in private retreats on Vancouver Island. His most recent book is Washita, a collection of poems. An Officer of the Order of Canada, he resides near Victoria with his wife, the poet Lorna Crozier.
Kyo Maclear is a novelist, essayist, and picture book author. She is a (2013–2015) Writer-in-Residence with the Toronto District School Board. She lives in Toronto with singer-composer David Wall and their two sons.
Lee Maracle was born in North Vancouver and is a member of the Sto:loh nation. The mother of four and grandmother of seven, Maracle is currently an instructor at the University of Toronto. She is the author of a number of critically-acclaimed literary works including Sojourner’s and Sundogs, Ravensong, Bobbi Lee, Daughters Are Forever, Will’s Garden, Bent Box, and I Am Woman, and is the co-editor of a number of anthologies including the award-winning publication My Home As I Remember.
Yann Martel is the author of a book of short stories, three novels, and a collection of letters to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He was awarded the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Life of Pi, which was also adapted for the screen by Ang Lee. He lives in Saskatoon.
Colin McAdam is the author of Some Great Thing, Fall and A Beautiful Truth.
Lisa Moore is the author of three novels: Alligator, February and Caught, and two short story collections: Degrees of Nakedness and Open. She teaches Creative Writing at Memorial University of Newfoundland.