...and call it "The Book of Metis"
Welcome to this first post. I am in the early stages of making some important decisions about the next decade of my life. And much like Louis Riel, in that final and desperate year he would choose to stand for his people and the land, against the Canadian Government, I feel like some things are coming to an end. Just not as tragic.
“My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.” - Louis Riel, died November 16, 1885.
Louis Riel was executed for being a traitor to the Government of Canada. As the story has been told since his trial and death by hanging, it was the history of his insurrection and battle against the government that was taught in schools and universities, and until the present time, there were only quieted voices that tried to tell a different story.
Up For Negotiation
We have nothing to lose by waking up. As artists, giving back to the spirit of those who were silenced by giving back their spirit is a great honor. Through the voices and vision of Indigenous artists, creators, and healers, the Indigenous communities will be transformed. It was a prophesy that must come to pass. We see as it began, with the early work of Alanis Obomsawin, Buffy Saint Marie, and Margo Kane from the sixties forward that, the groundwork was being laid. By the mid '90s, there was momentum and interest by scholars to understand more about the literary contributions that People of Color were making to the field of Literary Arts. It would take another twenty five years to see the strides in the Academic community to research and gather together the fabric of works by Indigenous authors for the last two hundred years, into a unified library and database.
I was so blessed to have a role as a Research Assistant in the project led by Metis Professor Deanna Reder of Simon Fraser University, "The People and the Text". One of the projects I worked on in the summer of 2017 was digitizing cassette tapes, that came from a collection by Professor Harmut Lutz, a German scholar with the University of Griefswald. One of the interviews he had, in a 1990s visit to Canada to do research, was with Lawrence Hill, a Canadian novelist.
Mr. Hill authored "The Book of Negros". It was made into a series with CBC.
I am going to write "The Book of Metis". It will be made into a series, but CBC may or may not have a hand in the production. That is UP for negotiation.
Comments