First Nations author debuts first novel with connections to Ottawa
Posted Sep 22, 2019 05:14:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
On Tuesday, Karen McBride, released her first novel, “Crow Winter”. The author told 1310 NEWS that she hopes the novel will help break Indigenous stereotypes and change the narrative of Indigenous literature.
McBride describes Crow Winter as the story of a young Algonquin girl who comes home to her reserve following the death of her father, the events and magic that unfold upon her return. According to the author and illustrator, the idea came to her shortly after her father's own passing.
“I knew I wanted to get my grief down on pages, I just wasn't sure how to do it, so I let the idea sit for a couple of years and then I applied for an MA program [Master's in Creative Arts] at the University of Toronto so I had sort of no choice but to sit down and write Crow Winter.”
McBride says that she also felt inspired to blend her story of grief with her Anishinaabe heritage and Nanabush stories.
“I knew I really wanted to bring in that element of magical realism, to a story about someone dealing with their own grief, their own trauma while also confronting a huge issue of land claim and all that fun stuff,” she says laughingly.
She also says that it was important for her to use this novel to touch on important issues like land disputes, reservation life and breaking Indigenous stereotypes.
“I think a lot of the times some of our Indigenous narratives in the whole scheme of Canadian literature gets lost in the idea that we are only the one trauma. This one horrible thing that Canada knows about us being residential schools and all of the trauma from that,” McBride says, “especially to see an Indigenous hero who doesn't suffer from alcohol or drug abuse and who has a good family-because we are out there. I want to break that stereotype of what people think Indigenous people are. Especially life on the reserve too. It's not all the bad stuff that we see on the news.”
McBride, who grew up on a reserve in the Timiskaming First Nation but spends a lot of time in Ottawa where her sister resides, also reveals that several Ottawan elements are reflected in the book.
“Hazel the main character is actually just coming home from living in Ottawa with her brother. Her brother Gus still lives in Ottawa, so there is that connection to the city as well,” says McBride, adding, “I think Ottawa does play a big role even though you don't ever physically go there in the book. Hazel doesn't go there, but she is still very connected to the city.”
All in all, McBride hopes the book will help shift the narrative of Indigenous literature, allow people to see more than what's seen of aboriginal people on the news and change people's minds about what they think reconciliation is.
“Getting to learn the stories, I think it's really important for all Canadians and I hope that Crow Winter can do something like that,” says McBride, “Or get people interested in more than just the traumatic things that mar our history.”
