Mishomis: the writing of Richard Wagamese-ba

Listening to this episode again I'm struck by a few themes, the investigation of belonging, a search for stillness, and the love he had for this land, all of which are tied together. Thinking about this author, how to describe him and his work, the only word that came to mind was Mishomis, grandfather.

Richard Wagamese ba is an iconic Ojibwe writer and journalist whose work spanned fiction and non fiction, isolated places and urban spaces. There are deep relationships and solitary men. And always, the desire to be at home, not just in terms of place but also with oneself. I don't know how to better describe what it is to be Indigenous in a country that doesn't want you to exist. I mean, of course Canada and the US love us. They love us on their stages and their bookshelves, they love us like they love multiculturalism which is to say that they don't love us at all. Not any of us.

Think about multiculturalism for a moment, whether it's that melting pot or the mosaic. Whatever model you like best. Multiculturalism is the way in which diverse newcomers are brought into western life. It's how they become hyphenated: instead of being Ukrainian they become Ukrainian-Canadian, for example. Which is fine, people should remember the lands that knew them and it's better than cutting yourself off from your own history but it doesn't really work for Indigenous peoples because we didn't come into these lands the same way that my maternal grandparents did.

We were already here.

Nick Estes talked about this in the conversation about history, the way that Indigenous peoples (including Black people and those colonized by Spain) entered Canada and the US legally. Citizenship is one of the ways that countries restrict rights and access to the things that make living possible and we weren't always citizens, birthright citizenship didn't apply to us. We became enfranchised in the early to mid 1900s because all men were not, in fact, created equal. Some of us were merciless Indian savages. Others were only 3/5ths of a person.

So we were already here, but not welcome. And multiculturalism doesn't fix that because it's an uncomfortable reminder that these states were built on top of us and we have to be brought into these celebrations of colonial welcome. It's one thing to celebrate the place you were from when that place is overseas, quite another when the place is directly beneath your feet. Beneath the concrete and asphalt your feet rest on anyway. Buried beneath a new political order that welcomes others in order to take up more space made available my our displacement.

Dispossession and rootlessness lays beneath so much of Richard Wagamese ba's writing. It found voice in the way that he immersed his readers in the environment he was creating. He was one of the first, if not the first, to talk about the impacts of residential schools and adoption and his writing examined the generational harms in ways that became explicit with Indian Horse .. but it was always there.

His experience of dispossession drove a constant examination of what it means to belong to place and to people because it wasn't just his personal belonging that he was thinking of but the way that entire peoples have been displaced and relocated. Like him, we have collectively been taken from our homes and brought into the care and authority of a government that is not our own.

Belonging to place can be easy, as Seán Kinsella says in Niinwi, the land does not judge or reject. It accepts us as we are. Belonging to people is more complicated. More than that, belonging requires that we know who we are so that we don't appropriate the experiences of others to give our lives meaning. That doesn't mean that Wagamese's writings are only for Ojibwe people, but it does mean that you need to think carefully about how you read yourself into the story.

There is an Ojibwe teaching that children choose their parents. It can be a hard teaching, particularly for so many of us who, like Richard, experienced disconnection and loss. Why would we choose that? And for those whose children died young, or in miscarriage, how do you understand a child who chose you only to leave? In this conversation, Dalton suggested that perhaps we are choosing our work, not going through the grocery aisle picking the best deal or the prettiest model but making a choice based in things we've long forgotten. A choice about the work to be who we are, a choice that would help us understand who we are .. and perhaps a choice that helps the parent understand themselves a little better too.

Shelagh thought that Richard ba would have found comfort in this teaching. I suspect so, much of Richard ba's writing as about that journey home to self, to who we are as Indigenous people and, in his own generous expansive way, who we all are and how we can be so much more than a multicultural mosaic in service to all consuming state.

We miss him terribly, but as he wrote to Shelagh after the loss of her beloved pup:

He learned and gave enough
and now continues
on his marvelous journey of becoming
more
just as all creatures
even us
do

Episode 8 Bad Indians Book ClubMishoomis, The works of Richard Wagamese-ba

This week's panel included Dalton Walker (Anishinaabe), Shelagh Rogers (Métis), Daniel Delgado (Jewish/Quechua), Jenessa Galenkamp (Métis), and Raven Sinclair (Cree/Assiniboine/Saulteaux). We talked about the life and work of Ojibwe author Richard Wagamese ba.

Patty Krawec: This is Patty Krawec, your host and the author of Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds. This podcast series, which formed the basis of the book, brought together marginalized writers and the people who read them. Mishoomis, grandpa. This conversation brought together TRC honorary witness, broadcast journalist, and founding host of CBC's The Next Chapter, Sheila Rogers who was a close friend of Richard Wagamese-ba, along with readers for a conversation about his life, his writing, and the legacy that he has left us.

—

Patty Krawec: I am really delighted to be talking to all of these people here today because I've been sitting up here in Bruce National Park and I brought with me One Native Life and One Drum, and I just finished One Drum today and I was thinking, what a very perfect place to be reading. But Richard Ba spent so much of his time in city spaces as well, just finding the life everywhere.

So I think anywhere that you read his writing will be the perfect place. As I encountered him, our lives had very similar trajectories. He was 10 years older than I am, but we both hail from Northwestern Ontario. My family, my father's family is from the Sioux Lookout area. He was from north of Panora. We were both raised in white families.

My mom raised us, raised me, with her family down here in Niagara. He was also raised in an adopted family in St. Catharines where he lived in St. Catharines for a number of years with them, which is where I grew up. I grew up in St. Catharines. And then even as these last books that I read where he's talking about moving from anger to possibility, that's been my own trajectory.

So I don't begrudge, I'm still angry, still sarcastic, but I noticed in my own writings that I'm really moving more towards possibility, although, I don't disregard anybody's anger who's still there. So anyway, I just found him really interesting in a really deeply personal way. So I'm going to, have everybody introduce themselves.

So Robin, we'll start with you. 

Robin McBurney: Hi, I'm Robin McBurney, and I'm a teacher and I reside in Niagara Falls. So not too far from where Richard grew up. My book club actually picked up and read Ragged Company a couple of years ago, and that was my first experience. And we all loved that book and I'm hoping that many of them can figure out how to join Twitch and be with us today.

I think, he's such a wonderful storyteller. He was able to explain about trauma and how complex that is. And the characters that he wrote were just really beautiful, and I think it helped us to maybe get a glimpse at what it might be like to have to deal with so much trauma and the idea that, being pulled away from your land and from connections with with those who care about you, how that affects you and how, just heal, I guess it's a healing journey. 

Daniel Delgado: I'm Daniel Delgado. I'm Quechua and Jewish and yeah. Patty contacted me and said what do you know about this author's writing? And I said, nothing. And she said, would you like to read some and be on the panel? And I said, sure. That sounds great. The first one I picked up was Him Standing 'cause I saw it, his fantasy, and I'm a fantasy writer. And I was like, cool. He's, he is got something genre. I'll start there. And really from a genre standpoint, it was a fascinating book and I really enjoyed it because he really twisted a lot of pulp fantasy tropes in a way I found really enjoyable.

But the one that really hit me on a really deep level was For Joshua, which I picked up. I have a 6-year-old daughter. I read this book and I immediately, as soon as I finished, immediately put in my wife's hands and I said you have to read this book. And just from the introduction when he starts out talking about this this empty feeling inside that doesn't go away no matter what you do.

And I was like, oh, wow. I never would've thought to describe myself that way, but you're describing. And so that I'm definitely still thinking a lot about that, but I think that's where a lot of what resonated for me the most and the things I read is his writing about that feeling of there's just something missing and there's something that you need to find. And it's not necessarily what you think it is at first. 

Patty Krawec: That's true that his capacity to describe the things that you're feeling, that was what I find over and over again is I just really felt that connection and it was just really powerful stuff. 

Shelagh Rogers: Hi everybody. I'm joining you today from the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on the west coast of what we call Canada.

And I'm very honored to be with you. I'm already so moved by what I've heard. And Richard was, if you may not know me, it's possible. I don't even know myself. That was something Richard taught me. I really didn't. And that was my life's work is to try to get to know myself. But I've worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC Radio for 40 years. And very recently a publicist added an extra zero. So 400 years at CBC radio. And in those 400 years, I got to speak to Richard a lot. And the first time was in 1994 when Keeper’n Me came out and he came into my studio and I'd never heard his name, Richard Ba’s name said out loud his last name, and I introduced him.

I'm going along talking about the book, and now here's the author, Richard Waga-may-zay, like it was Italian. And luckily he didn't walk outta the studio. He just said It's actually Wag Amazing. And I had a really lovely punny sense of humor, and I just actually listened to that interview a few days ago. And it was so powerful. And I realized Richard was one of the first people talking about what it was like to be an intergenerational survivor, talking about living with PTSD and not being someone who'd just come back from a war, but the trauma that was the halflife of trauma that was given to him through his parents, through his grandparents' experience.

And it's hard for me to actually say what book has left its greatest impression. Daniel, I haven't read the one that that you just spoke about, because I want to know, there's always one more book by Richard and but I think as I read them, I see that there's always a search for home and always a search for belonging and connectedness.

In his last novel, the unfinished Starlight, I think there was a search for stillness as well in especially, it really shows itself in the character of Winnie, who's the little girl. And she and her mother have been fleeing a horribly violent relationship. And what Winnie really wants is just to be quiet and still, and I think Richard Ba wanted that as well.

He wanted home. He really wanted to be back in the arms of his community in Ontario. That's when he felt most himself, most full. 

Patty Krawec: The lovely recollections. And yes, Starlight was just such a beautiful book. It was just so beautiful. And I was, but with him running with the elk? Yeah. That scene where he's running, running with the elk through the mountains, it was just. To be able to immerse himself. And I think that was something, and maybe that was part of his power in connecting with everybody, the, his capacity to connect with us is his capacity, that capacity to immerse. And sometimes I think that's related to that rootlessness, because as you're constantly searching for home, you're immersing yourself in the places you are and trying to find, trying to find yourself in that place.

And then, of course his writing is just so infused with that. 

Jenessa Galenkamp: Hey all, also, yeah, I'm Jenessa and I also lived in Niagara close to Patty and Robin and I actually first long it's not really that long story, but I first encountered Richard Ba when one of my old coworker’s partners, actually let me borrow a couple of books and his book Embers was one of the books that she actually ended up giving me. And this was like right around the time that I like met Patty too. I was like going through this flipping trying to bring like a small group in to learn a little bit more about Indigenous peoples in Canada and ended up meeting Patty on Twitter.

But that's a whole other story, anyways. Yeah, Embers is actually the first book that I read by Richard Ba and I remember I read like the forward of, or I guess it's called the forward, but the first part that he wrote before you get into the book and he was talking about how he had this morning ritual where he set a couple books out on a table and would sit quietly and just like breath in the smell of some medicines and stuff, and then. And it just sounded so peaceful. I'm sure it wasn't always, but it sounded so peaceful. And I actually started incorporating his book Embers into like my morning routine which was pretty solid for about a couple of months. And then it tapered off. But I'm trying to get there again.

And honestly I remember when I was first given this book, I was like, oh, is it gonna be one of those really cheesy like books with all these like quotes and pretty pictures and stuff, but it was so much more than that. He has so much to offer. And then when Patty posted the book list for the year for Ambe and had a whole month dedicated to Richard Ba, I was like, okay, I have to read, I have to read more.

So I picked up Starlight and read that one, finished that one and it was so beautiful. It was one of those books where you read it and it just feels like it resonates so deeply. It even draws out all of these emotions that you didn't really know, that you almost had tucked inside of you. And just the, I don't know what it is, but the way that he writes brings everything to life.

And even the most, like what we might consider the most like mundane, like scene is just it really pulls you in. So I was very sad when that one was over and it was mildly, like a little bit unresolved. Oh, anyway and now I'm reading For Joshua and I'm very excited. After Daniel said it was so good.

I've only read the first bit and then the first chapter, but I'm excited for the rest of it. 

Dalton Walker: Boozhoo everyone. My name is Dalton Walker. I come from you from the traditional homelands of the O'odham and Piipaash and what is known as Phoenix, Arizona. I'm from the Red Lake Nation in Northern Minnesota.

I have lived all across .. from New York City to Omaha to Phoenix. I'm a journalist and a lifelong learner. Currently, I'm the deputy managing editor at Indian Country Today, a digital news platform where experiences include working with tribal news, media and daily newspapers, Miigwech for having me. And I look forward to our discussion. 

Per Patty's question, I'm a big fan of storytelling. Basically what I, the reason what I do today, but especially Ojibwe storytelling like Richard and Louis Erdrich. When Patty reached out to me initially about this discussion, I was hesitant and I didn't think I would probably be the best one because my reading of Richard's work was limited, but, and now my research, just looking at all the kind words and all the great stories about Richard and his life and his storytelling. It just blew my mind. And now I really look forward to reading more of Richard's work and just having a chance to just eat up his books. I've been doing a little bit of reading of Indian Horse. I haven't watched the movie, so I can't compare. But just initially I'm already hooked. 

Patty Krawec: Okay. We're gonna actually gonna stick with you, Dalton, in the recently, we've had the 215 children. The remains were found in Kamloops. I know in the US, Carlisle Indian School also has marked and unmarked graves as well as other boarding schools throughout the US.

And every native person has a story. We all have a story that connects us to these things. Richard Ba wrote his, wrote them down. We've all got them. I've got, my father went to a day school, my uncles went to Pelican Lake Residential School. My mother taught in Umphreville, which is was a little teeny tiny town outside of Sioux Lookout where most of the people were from Lac Seul First Nation.

And she taught there during the last few years of Pelican Lake Residential School. So she was there right around the same time as the residential schools were starting to wind down. And I like to remind people that in Canada, the Fresh Prince left Bel Air before the last residential school closed.

And that's how recent this is. So every native person and everybody who's connected to native people, because, my husband through me has these stories of these connections to residential school. So Dalton in your, so much of Richard Ba's writing is tied directly and indirectly to his own experience. So in your reading, in your journalism. Can you talk a little bit about that, maybe in the US? Because I think number of, most of us are in Canada, except for Daniel. Maybe give a little bit of that connection that you had, that you have, whether it's through journalism or personal story.

Dalton Walker: I believe in the States that you had around 350 boarding schools, residential schools at one time, and that's a lot. And there's a lot of unmarked cemeteries. There's a lot of marked cemeteries. And just recently, the federal government announced that there were going to return the remains of 10 children at Carlisle in Pennsylvania.

And that's just sad to think about because those are 10 young people that we just don't know who've ever had a chance. So that type of thing really affects me and hits me. Even as a journalist, because my ancestors, my grandparents, were all products of boarding schools. So you just, it just pains me to know that some kids didn't come back, never made it home.

So the US announcing recently that they were gonna return the remains of the 10 is a nice start, but how many more are out there?  And through journalism, that's a question we have to find at Indian Country Today., one of the reporters happens to be Ojibwe. She has a wealth of experience covering the topic.

And when we heard about the news coming out of British Columbia, she was quick to try to find some type of perspective or angle, how this is the same, even a little different down here. And she quickly just rehashed information that most people already know, but this is important stuff that doesn't get told in our schools and is forgotten, or is just overlooked.

So as a journalist, we wanna tell these stories. It's really heartbreaking when you see even the numbers 215 right now and I know there's even lot, it's a lot more out there and then it's even, it's just hard to think about how many are just around the states with all the boarding schools scattered, either bulldozed over or just a museum or something.

It's just painful about that part. So as a journalist, that's definitely on my mind. We try to tell these stories, our work with reporters looking to tell these stories. As an Ojibwe man, this is pretty sad. I'm a father of a 13-year-old, and I can't imagine what our ancestors went through, where their children were pulled away from them without consent or just stolen. So that's pretty, pretty sad to think about, but just hearing the news was rough. And now it's my job, it's my reporter's job to make sure we tell those stories. 

Patty Krawec: Shelagh, you were a witness for the TRC were you not? You were a witness. Yes. Could you talk a little bit about that experience? 

Shelagh Rogers: It was an incredible honour. I was asked to be a witness to the work of the TRC and the statements of survivors from 2011 until the TRC, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrapped up in the, at the end of 2015 and, I committed to telling the truth.

I committed to standing for the truth of what I heard from the survivors. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission would not have even come into existence had it not been for the courage and the strength and the dignity of survivors demanding that this happen. And what was revolutionary about this commission was that the survivors gave their statements in public so that people could come and they could also be witness.

If you were in any of those gatherings, you were a witness as well. And I have found occasion to stand up and say, as recently as about a week ago when I really felt I had to say something to the Prime Minister. I didn't get an audience with him or anything like that, but on, on social media.

He was there in the room when the fourth volume of the TRC report, this one, all 266 pages of it, Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, a volume that when the TRC started off, they didn't even think they would be writing. And it talks about the numbers, it talks about how at that point they thought maybe 3,200 upwards to about 6,000.

Murray Sinclair, the chair of the TRC, and also my cousin. But I think as Janessa said, at some point, that's another story. He is he said maybe it, it may be as high as 15 to 25,000 unmarked graves. And he [Justin Trudeau] described it as “news” when he heard it, and it wasn't news. This was talked about that day in December of 2015.

And he made a promise to make sure that the voices of survivors were heard, that, that he and the government of Canada would lift the burden from their shoulders. And that hasn't happened. That has not happened. And I will say this experience of witnessing was something that Richard really held, my Richard Ba really held my hand through.

I, it was hard. It was, but wow. You learned the real story of this country and how it was built on stealing and taking lives, cultures. Languages ways of knowing and being away from the people who were here. And yeah, it changed my life in every way to the point where I wanted to make sure that on our program, I'm a member of the Metis Nation of Greater Victoria, but I wanted to make sure that Indigenous voices were really heard on the national network, that was really going to be important.

And to hear the stories of survivors and intergenerational survivors through novels, through nonfiction. I'm sorry this is becoming a really long answer, but it was just really critical to wake this country up. And it's interesting and tragic, but I'll say the 215 little ones I think have really woken this country up.

I think they really said, Hey, you can't ignore this. You can't ignore us. And yeah we need to make sure we say the names, we find the names, we reconnect them with their families. And as a witness I want to make sure that, if you stand for the truth that you heard, you wanna make sure that this happens. You wanna make sure that the promises are honoured. 

Patty Krawec: I think we're in another moment of possibility. I don't think, this isn't the first and it's not gonna be the last right of these moments of possibility. These, I don't know, things come together at certain points as we,  I'm thinking more and more of in of time, in as cyclical, as opposed to linear.

And as we come past these moments again and again, we have these opportunities. And we learn from the previous ones, we bring something forward into the current ones. And I was just so happy that after, the tragedy and the status of three weeks ago and how it's been unfolding, over the last three weeks that we were going to be talking about Richard Ba’s writing, that I would be immersing myself in his writing here in this national park.

I spent two days reading his books and it was just [Shelagh: healing?] It was just such good medicine, right? And he talks about medicine being that thing that connects us and ceremony reminds us and it was just such a perfect thing for me to be reading right now. So Daniel, you're raising children in diaspora far from home and looking at you, you know what's happened with the residential schools and reading Richard Ba's writings and what are. What are your reflections? As you watch this unfold and think about your own life and your own human history. 

Daniel Delgado: So when I originally got the books together that I was planning to read, I didn't get Indian Horse. And then after the news I got it outta the library. And I opened it up and I couldn't read it.

I read the first chapter. It was beautiful. I was so good. I was like, this book is incredibly written. And then I got to the part where they started talking about the school, and I just I couldn't go on, I'm like, some other time. It is right. I think, for a lot of us who have small children, I have a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, and the youngest one that they found the first night was three.

And just, the thought of that why is a 3-year-old not, with their family. I think that, one of the things that that I, I reflect on with both I, with his writing and also with the residential schools that existed in Canada, right?

I live in Arizona. My people's traditional lands are in Peru. So this is at a distance, and yet there's always these points of commonality. And I think that that experience of having our children stolen and our of, being reeducated into a different culture and being told that, that our cultures were shameful and were bad and personal and collective histories of language loss forced language loss, like all of those things are in, in my family as well.

And I think that it is just, I don't know. I don't know that I have anything to say about it, but I think that it definitely was on my mind a lot when I was reading. And as I said, when he writes in for Joshua about that feeling of just there's something missing and there's something of the inside it started me thinking about like, where does that come from?

Where are the places that we've been disconnected from our people, like within our family histories? And the thing, all the news about the schools just feels very much on that exact topic, right? It's the ways that colonizers, the tools that colonizers have used to forcibly disconnect us from our people and thus from ourselves, you know?

So that what I've been reflecting on as I've been reading his work, or what are the ways that, in my family we've been disconnected and what does it mean as a parent, right? Because I guess that was your original question, right? I have this sense, right? I wanna, when I was growing up, like I was very, I had a very strong connection to our Pueblo in terms of what I was told in the family narrative, but like you, there would never anyone in our family say that we were Indigenous. 'cause that was not a thing that you were gonna be, it's oh yeah, my father grew up speaking Quechua, but not no. Not an Indian. That's right.

And to, to think about what do I tell my kids to make them proud of who they are, but also with this weird feeling of inauthenticity, right? It's like I'm telling you things about yourself that my father would've never said to me about myself. 

Jenessa Galenkamp: I don't know. I was just thinking about that last thing that one of the last things that Daniel was saying, just like ways that we've been disconnected.

And I was thinking about that a little bit, like within my own family. Yeah. And also just thinking about what Sheila was saying about the TRC and just like the everybody, like the Prime Minister being there. Hearing all of these recommendations and calls to action and everything like that, and then not really acting upon any or many of them.

I think only what eight have been fulfilled and thinking about like the 215 children and I work at the the Niagara Regional Native Center, which is like a friendship center here in the Niagara region. And I just remember when the announcement came, we had a fire from dawn and until dusk on the Monday following.

And Patty was actually there with the drum group singing. And it was beautiful. It was sad. There were a lot of emotions that day. And then to show, I guess out of respect a lot of cities also lowered their flags to half mast. And so later on, after 215 hours had passed some of the cities raised the flags again. And here in, in St. Catharines where I live actually city hall and the mayor invited invited people to come out for the flag raising and just some of the people who spoke. Just thinking about that. And it's, it just feels, I really hope this changes things but just based on the legacy, it doesn't really, I don't know if anything is going to change.

Patty Krawec: I was just thinking the mayor had spoken at that event and he was just so hopeful and, and it's, I'll give this one some credit. He does do some of the work. There's always, there, there's always room for better. But that's true of me as well. Then I got up there and he said all of these great things and I had no complaints about anything he said, I think he was fully sincere. And then I got up and I just like, I'm tired, Canada, I'm tired of you being surprised. 

One of the things that I was thinking about as I was reading his book, re reading, his fictions. So in Anishnabe cosmology, children choose their parents and, so before they come to this world, they choose their parents. So my kids chose me. So whatever they wanna complain about this is I, it's on them. But when I first heard this teaching, it was at a camp for kids who were wards of the state. So these were crown wards. So in Canada they're called crown wards. They're taken, kids are taken away from their parents and then there's a timeline within one or two years, depending on how old the child is they get “permanency.” And that permanency is of course, with families who aren't the ones they were born into. So these kids were now permanent wards of the crown, possibly available for adoption. But these were teenagers, they were just gonna grow up in foster homes.

So the, so these kids who for various reasons can't be with their families, had just gotten this teaching that they chose their families. And this wasn't the point of what this elder was teaching. So he didn't unpack it, he just skated right past what is a really difficult teaching to give to kids who aren't with their parents, kids who may have experienced abuse or trauma because you don't become a crown ward because your life has been so great.

So later on I asked a friend to help me reconcile this and she told me that choices were made based on things we knew then, based on the people we knew on the other side before this life happened to our parents. And so much of Richard's writings are about Richard Ba's writings are about that connection.

He talks about his parents, he talks about forgiving his parents. So I just want to go around and talk a little bit about that teaching about what it means, in the context of our own lives and in the context of his writings and the way he wrestles through. Because as we read his books, we've watched him wrestle through in One Drum he talks about having forgiven his parents, but that's late, late in his life that he's, that he came to that in the earlier books.

He's clearly wrestling through that. It's not it's a difficult teaching in a lot of ways. 

Shelagh Rogers: Yeah, that's that's a really hard one for me personally, Patty. Because I, that's okay. I've I have stepchildren. I don't know you guys, but. I'm just, because this is such a taboo, I feel I wanna say it though.

I've had two miscarriages, long ago, and this does come back to Richard now that I think about it. There was no ceremony for these two children. It was just like, oh well too bad so sad and on you go, right? And children choosing their parents, I do have these three lovely step kids and they're great.

But I guess it just hits me hard that what does it mean when you lose a child? But I will carry on because lots of people have. But I think, for Richard, One Drum was written in 2011. It wasn't published, I know, until recently, but he was really struggling with forgiving his parents.

And forgiving his foster parents as well. And he, I think everybody knows this, and Richard was very, Richard Ba was so open about wrestling with substance abuse and to go through the course of Alcoholics Anonymous as he did a number of times, he had to try to forgive.

He and that was a very big mountain for him to climb. More like a mountain range really, because a lot of people who did him wrong and but in the case of his parents, he really came to understand that it wasn't their fault. He didn't blame them, it was. The fact that he, he couldn't live the life that he was destined to live.

His destiny was interrupted by colonization. His life was ended by colonization. I remember very clearly when he died, a lot of people, a lot of journalists called me and said, how did he die? What was it? And I said, that's actually the wrong thing to say, you know what matters is that he's not here anymore.

But then I changed it to, no colonization is what killed him. His parents who had been living a very full and deeply spiritual life on the land. When that changed, everything changed for Richard. Daniel, when you're talking about how you can't read past the first chapter of Indian Horse, I'm, I've just looked at For Joshua again, I don't even know if I can get past the first page because it talks about how, once there was a lonely little boy, he had no idea where he belonged in the world.

And that was Richard's loss because he lost his parents because the children's aide took him away at the age of three. So children choosing their parents, it's such a beautiful teaching Patty. I really wanna think about that some more and not think about it out loud so that I take up too much of the space here.

But it's such a beautiful thought and I think that it is a teaching that would actually have given Richard a lot of peace.

Patty Krawec: Now I'm thinking about those little ones that you didn't have ceremony for. Thank you for sharing that, because now I'm thinking more about that teaching.

It is, it's beautiful, but it's also it's complicated because some relations can't be restored. Some relationships between parents and children, can't be restored until we see them again. And then we understand why we made the choices we did and why they made the choices they did in terms of choosing.

But wrestling through that in our lives and thinking about, thinking about that. I just, in the context I heard it, it just sounded so hard. And then hearing you talk about it, it does sound really beautiful. 

Dalton Walker: That's really powerful. You just sit and think about children choosing parents when you just sit, when you just think about that possibility is just mind blowing. When I think about that as who I am, I kinda wonder. I wonder why I and I also know that it's because who I am, those choices were made. And if you put that in the thinking, that same thinking down the line. I grew up on the reservation in Northern Minnesota without my dad.

My dad was Muskogee, but he traveled a lot, so I didn't even see him. I barely knew him. My mom mentions that I got my facial hair from him. So I do, there is a part of him in me, even though I had basically a zero relationship with him. But I try not to think about what I didn't have and more what I had.

I had two older siblings who guided me through their actions, whether that was positive or maybe in a not so positive way of growing up in their experiences and me not following certain paths. And then all of the credit goes to my mom who raised me on her own. And I grew up to be the only one to receive a college degree out of my family.

My grandpa and my grandma, my mom's parents, they're just my second parents. I have a lot of great memories just being with them, being around them, growing up with them, traveling with them, and I'll have those forever. So it's fun to think about how we select our own parents. At a time when maybe I was selecting for this challenge, maybe it was a challenge knowing that this type of life I had to experience to thrive and become who I am today.

I don't make it back home too often, but home is always a part of me. Thanks to social media, I can visually see a lot of things from my friends and relatives back home of what's happening and you still get the, you still get a piece of that and you can get those memories come flying back. So just being a son, a grandson, a father, that means so much more.

And I feel that in myself.

Daniel Delgado: I'm thinking about the book Medicine Walk which, with this question choosing your parents and I, I read that book as is very much like a question about what does what does fatherhood mean, right? And what does also a sort of question like what does masculinity mean like in post-colonial masculinity.

What is, what are these elements of manhood that are associated with how we're supposed to be and what are the ones that are broken? I think that I think that's, that's, that this big question hangs over that entire book, right? It's what the protagonist of that book is learning about his father's life.

His father has never been there at all. And there's this sort of, implicit question. The book is like, why does this matter? Did this person matter to me when I have this other person who raised me? But it does, because who we are and where we come from matters. It always matters. And I think, again, you know what Sheila mentioned that Richard Ba said about who he was meant to be and how being taken into the foster system and adopted into a settler family disrupted that, because he writes about that in For Joshua too.

They didn't want him to be. He says he says, no matter how much they tried they could never, they thought they would help me by making me like them, but they couldn't because I was meant to be an Ojibwe man. That's just what I was put on this earth to be. And so I'm thinking about that in reflection of this question of children choosing their parents.

And maybe it's not so much that before we're born, we're choosing. I don't know. We're like, it's not like necessarily that we're choosing like the best product off the aisle in a store or something, right? We're like, which is the one that's got the best reviews that's really gonna get me everything I want.

It's more like we're choosing our work in life, like we have, all of us are here and we all have a work that we're here to do. And part of that work is to be who we are and, the families that we come from so much determines what our work and life is gonna be. And so maybe it's not so much that we're trying to get the best deal. Maybe there's something that we know right, about what we're supposed to do that we don't necessarily have access to when we're here in this world. 

Jenessa Galenkamp: I was thinking so I don't have any, I don't have children. But I was thinking a little bit about in, For Joshua, in the beginning few pages, how he's talking about his life with his parents and what he can remember from it, and then how one day that was just over and how he didn't know, he didn't know a reason for a while, and it was like, oh, like that is, that must be I can't imagine, living with that.

And so when Sheila was talking about how for Richard Ba was like, it was a mountain that he had to, climb to, I guess forgive and reconcile his parents. And that was a really long journey for him. 

Patty Krawec: So the question from the chat which I'll put out to the, to you guys is in One Story, One Song he seems to strongly connect the future of Indigenous peoples in Canada with Canadian neighbors which kind of goes along with what he said in one native life. Both this connection and we are all related. So what do the panelists think of his vision of reconciliation and his place in Canada? And if this vision has changed over time?

Shelagh Rogers: The word Canada for Richard was really so much back to its Indigenous roots of kanata, our home. So I think again, what he was looking for in a better, a new relationship with Canada was about home again. Would he wanna cancel Canada Day? I think, who can say really Patty? But I think he would be, forgive me, so pissed off right now. If you read like back into his, I think it was his very first book called The Terrible Summer, which is a collection of his columns as a journalist, when he was writing about Oka and also covering the Royal Commission on Aboriginal people was just about to come up. All of these issues were there back in the early nineties, and not resolved even now.

And I think Richard, even Richard Ba might have run out of patience here. But I also think he really loved this land. He loved this land, and he, the first line of our very bellicose  national anthem, oh, Canada, our home and native land, he always said on native land and yeah can we at least change that?

But as far as canceling Canada, I think, it's like Father's Day, is it like it's a random day where we celebrate. We celebrate (?) what this country, how this country came to be. I think at this point it might not have been the thing he would want to do. I think he would choose this day as a day to honor the children who didn't come home, the children who've been impacted by colonization and, but still love the idea of our home, this land, our home.

I also I'm probably thinking of not One Story, One Song, but the other book of essays, and I can't remember the name right now, but how he said, reconciliation begins when we lean over the fence and talk to our neighbor. [This is from One Native Life] And just by very simply saying, Hey, how are you? It's hard not to respond, but he then modified that a little bit later to say it would be way better if they responded in Ojibwe, like my language.

And I really love that. He found such grounding in his language and in the Ojibwe language and again, I would go back to the meaning he put into Canada as coming from kanata. 

Patty Krawec: Daniel, can you talk a little bit, because we're talking a little bit about land and how Richard Ba found, healing and connection in land and, I can you talk a little bit about that for yourself as well? Because I know that's what we have talked about in the past. 

Daniel Delgado: Yeah, and it was a thing that I was thinking about as I was reading Medicine Walk in particular, right? Because Medicine Walk takes place in BC and the main character’s Ojibwe, so they're not in their native homelands. And yet this idea of connection to the land is so central right now.

So I, think about myself as we do when we read books. I think there's a sense in which like the land is the land, right? There's, it's so important to connect with the land where we live. If we don't, I don't know, what are we what are we even doing? Like we're, we're not fully alive and yet there's this type of connection that, that at least I feel like that we get only with our home our place where we're really from.

And I, I moved around a lot growing up. For me, like there's, I say often that I ended up in Tucson because it’s got elements of all the places that I lived. It's got a lot of spillover from Latin American. It's got these very tropical thunderstorms. It's got this very North American landscape, and it's dry lands on it. My ancestors are from dry lands, but there's nothing like the Andes. There's just, it's, there's, for me, like being in, in the Andes, it's just like nowhere else on earth. It's been like that since my first visit when I was 10 years old because we couldn't go before that. Because war of and genocide. And and yet, I feel very strongly connected here. And, part of the way that I connect is I as I talked about when I was on the podcast is I farm here in our yard and I grow I grow, crops that grow here that are, from native peoples here, but they’re our crops too, right? It's corn and it's squash. And it's the crops that my people still grow in our pueblo. And I know that is when I talk to my kids about connection with the land, like the question comes up, right? It's okay, we're from there, but we live here and like they were born here.

They feel strongly connected here. And so especially my older daughter has this question, right? She's okay, so this is my home. But it's not our land. What does that mean? And so what I say to her, because she's old enough for this, I say this can be our home, but we're guests because this is someone else's land and their history, their entire history is here and this is where they came from.

And our entire history is in our pueblo. Like we go back forever there. And that's where we came from. And we will always have this connection to that place. And if we're gonna be here then we have to recognize that we're here where it is a different people that has that connection. And I think that, in regards to the question from the chat, I think that's what's so often missing from I don't know, a lot of like settler defensiveness in old countries that I see, when Indigenous people say, this is our land.

We have a very contentious election in Peru right now that is involving a lot of mostly like white and light-skinned mixed people in the big cities, being just really terrified of someone from the Andes winning. We’ve got horrible violence in Palestine. And there's these conversations going on and people say you've gotta give the land back.

And then some say where are we gonna go? They don't need to go anywhere. You just need to behave yourselves and like you, you just need to recognize that we are here and that we were here first. And that it's our relationships. That set that the parameters for how this runs.

So that's, my recent thinking in conversations I've been having with people, these topics in a lot of countries, really to love countries is that, of course those relationships with settlers are important because there's just a lot of settlers in settler colonial countries and nobody's actually seriously saying kick everybody out, right? It's, but what do the relationships look like now? The relationships now are incredibly colonial. They're incredibly one sided. They're incredibly violent for Indigenous people, and that's what we're all constantly talking about. 

Raven Sinclair: [joined the conversation late due to a time mix-up] I had the chance to meet Richard in 1995.

So that was, it's an interesting experience to be here because Richards in my life parallel in lots of ways we're, we're about, we were about the same age. I think he's a little, maybe a couple years younger than me. And, but the experiences, when Keeper and Me was one of the as soon as it came out, I jumped on it and I bought it and I devoured it and I shared it.

And I read it many times over the years. I haven't read it probably in about 15 years now, but it's still vivid in my mind because, he was so raw and honest and funny and insightful and all day I've been giggling about the scene where he, he meets his, he's in jail and he meets his family, or he connects with his family again. And then he's excited to go back to the community and see, so he goes, but his identity is so messed up that he's taken on the identity of a Black person. So he's got his hair all in an afro. And he, and he is wearing all this multicolored, this is, of course back in the seventies, late seventies, early eighties, he's wearing these multicolored clothes and it's and he is trying to talk like a Black person.

And, everybody's so excited to see him. It’s sort of water off a duck's back. The way that he, the way that he shares that is, it's just so delightful. It was part of, I think the gift that he had. To be able to share those kinds of stories what, that are embarrassing.

We embarrassed ourselves so many times. But what resonated about it for me was, I don't, I never pretended to be anything that I wasn't, I just didn't connect with my own Indigenous culture. But I certainly, he provided a mirror to me about the reality that wherever I go, people make up stories about who I am and in particular my ethnicity.

And when I've been to different countries, when I'm in Mexico, people start speaking Spanish to me. And when I was in Hawaii one time, they just assumed I was Hawaiian and so on. And then, I think part of the experience of being so dislocated from who you are as an Indigenous person is that you don't have any anchors for your identity.

When people present something, then that's where you go. And but it, in terms of the land and connection to the land he discovered that, that young, thankfully 'cause it's such an essential part of our recovery from the sixties scoop. And and that, all the way through his books.

And the two that I'm I love the most are Keeper’n Me in Medicine Walk. And, in, in both of those, he, his connection to the land is so strong. He goes out in Keeper’n Me, he goes out and in ceremony and he doesn't really know what's going on through what he's supposed to do.

And in some ways, the connection to the land just the land connects with him as opposed to him, being aware of what's going on. And eventually, he's. He starts to have these insights and starts to feel, starts to feel what it means to have that connection and the knowledge and the wisdom and the teachings that you can get from just being still on the land.

And then, in Medicine Walk I was just absolutely blown away by that book. I remember I had to put it down after the first two pages because the way that he wrote, he had developed so much as a writer that the way that he wrote he had a way of crafting English words that we use every day, but in a way that just brought everything to life.

There's this, in the first few pages, he goes into this barn and he could smell the barn and you can hear the sounds, and you can feel the temperature and you can, and the animals and the, the sounds, the rustling of the animals. And it's, it just was really profound to me.

And then the story, again, another story of dislocation. Disconnection from family for various, obviously intergenerational issues. And then this incredibly sacred journey that he is called to take unwilling at first, it probably, mostly throughout, he was pretty resentful throughout, or the character was pretty resentful throughout, and it wasn't really till the end where he really understood I think the depth of the depth and the power of that sacred journey and that, in that whole, that in and of itself really explains recovery. I think for survivors. 

I keep thinking about Jesse Thistle's definition of homelessness where he says that it's more than just the lack of a domicile. That's, it's disconnection from family, community, language, culture, teaching ceremonies and I think the one thing that might be missing is self. That's what I think Richard articulated so well in his works is the journey home is about a journey to, who we are as Indigenous people.

And he was masterful at sharing them. So yeah, I had a chance to meet him when he came to First Nations University by way of Janice Acoose, who was my first literature instructor. And then he came and taught there. And so I didn't actually connect with him after that, but I did, we were Facebook friends fairly early on, and so I had a chance to just watch him grow and change and have trouble in his relationships, which is like Richard, we're still in sync here.

And, finding in his most recent partner, just finding an incredible love there and support and nurturing. And again, a lot of what he shared was his time on the land. And I really admired that journey that he took in his life. And, I feel so sad that he's gone 'cause he was so gifted and it would've been amazing to see where his talents would've taken because he, his story, spoke to so many people.

And just in a, just a loving and wonderful way. And, the thing about artists is that they're just, they're really are gifts. They're gifts to the human race. Because even though he had this incredible talent he suffered, he still suffered throughout his life. And that's the greatest tragedy is that out of that suffering came this beautiful talent and I wish that we, collectively could find a way to help gifted people like that. To find a way to stay, to stick around. But maybe that's just part of what goes with being an incredible talent is that's you. It's where the inspiration is. Yeah. But I have some really fond memories of him and his work.

It's affected me profoundly, and I wish that I could ... I wish that I could let him know. 

Patty Krawec: That draws us really nicely into our final questions. Sadly, I am mindful of everybody's time as we move forward, as we continue into this next, into this next cycle, cycle of time and we revisit his writings again and they change us again for me.

What really came out in today as I was reading, was he, the ceremony the breathing, where he talks about in One Drum just sitting and breathing and I rush through my morning ceremonies. I offer my tobacco, I say my prayers. I, give a quick smudge, and then it's drinking coffee and onto my day.

And reading that, that book here just really made me think of the need to slow that down and to breathe and, and to let that moment connect me with the land, connect me with possibility, connect me with you, with what could be. Dalton, we'll go back to you. What will you carry forward, maybe from something you heard in this conversation or something you read in one of his books recently? 

Dalton Walker: Even in our brief discussion, you could just feel impact from his writing on each and every one of you. And that in itself is powerful. I know that I have been missing out on a lot of stuff and now I look forward to taking it all in.

And, but that then that's just a neat part about storytelling. There's, they're there and we're blessed that his writing is available for us to read and read again. And I look forward to that. 

Jenessa Galenkamp: Oh, I feel like I have a lot of big thoughts, but the little one is similar to what you were saying, Patty not rushing through things.

I feel like, especially while I was reading Starlight when the main character Frank Starlight is taking Emmy and Winnie out on the land. And teaching them to slow down and see things the way that he does and this feeling of connectedness that they get to by doing this.

And I think finding ways to incorporate that into my own personal life would be wonderful. And then just having that reflect back on the people that I'm around and like the way that I journey through the world, hopefully in, in a good way because of this. I feel like he, it's reflected in the way that Richard Ba writes about Frank Starlight and just like how kind and gracious he is as a character and as a person, bringing Emmy and Minnie into his life.

So I think that's something that I would like to carry forward.

Daniel Delgado: I'm also thinking about Starlight and the publisher's note at the end quotes an essay of his and he says, it's not in our imagined wholeness that we become part, it's in the celebration of our cracks. And I think that it’s a theme that comes up over and over again and the works that I've read and the works that I hear people talking about this idea that we're very broken, right? And and yet it's not that we need to find some way to become just completely unbroken, but that actually there's this beauty in the brokenness and in the way that we're broken and what we do with that brokenness.

And that's a thing that I have been that, that I think I'm just gonna keep thinking about from his writing. And as I, I leading this very inspiring pick up a lot of the other books that I've heard people talking about. 

Raven Sinclair: I'm thinking about the question about, it's another example where Richard reveals his human frailty.

And for many survivors, for many adoptees, long-term foster kids, child welfare survivors, because we were acculturated in a western white, for me it was white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, I think it was for Richard as well. We really embodied, the competition and the individualism and the, and I gotta get things done. Gotta have an agenda, I gotta get moving, gotta get the job done. And it's a constant battle, especially when you have re acculturated and you started to learn some of the teachings and, the and really acquire that connection to the land and some of the like the different sort of way of being in the world temporally.

And so that, that moment of going hard on oneself around, oh, I, I should be doing it this way. 

It's funny in a way it's funny because we all do that, whether we've been adopted or not, it's oh, we gotta do this better. And that's colonialism, right? Because that's comes from a Christian, those are Christian strictures or Christian framework of if you don't do things right, then you're going be smited or smoted or something like lightning.

And so it's it's a little bit of an irony in a way too because I know that what Richard knew by the time he departed was that creator is very forgiving creator. And they wait for us to pray. They're eager for us to pray. And if we do it fast, that's okay. Time isn’t the same there as it is here.

It doesn't matter. It's about intention. And yeah, I think that he was poking a little bit of fun at. Some of the things he was, yeah. I take so much away. I just think about all the images that he shared about just being on the land and his eternal optimism and love for people, the land.

And yeah, that was really inspirational. He was tenacious that way. And so I know that he's, I know he's in a good place. 

Shelagh Rogers: Thank you. You've all taught me so much about Richard, about my friend and I think the thing that will stay with me, that Jenessa, you used the word gracious and he really was so gracious.

He was gracious about the possibility of Canada being better. He was gracious about the possibility about a return to harmony. The thing that really always sticks with me. And Dalton, as a journalist, you're a listener and he writes so much about listening. This happens out in Starlight when they go out on the land and he asks Emmy to just close her eyes and really think about that space between your brows and just stop and really listen and listening runs through his books as well, his fiction, his nonfiction, and his poetry. And I think if I'm listening, is what this country has to do. But I, he reminds me that listening and listen and silent are made up of exactly the same letters. And as an old dyslexic, I really like this, silent and listen.

Just do that. Just be quiet. Shut up and listen, this is something I've actually been told to do too, but I also wanna say to, to you and Raven when you said, you, you wish you, he hadn't gone. He, I don't think he's gone. And I just, if I can just read you a little thing he wrote to me when my dog Poppy died.

Okay. I was bereft and it's, this is about spirit. It's not about Poppy. But he said she only ever knew joy and only ever expressed that a friend, an ally, a warmth on cold nights, she learned and gave enough, and now continues on her marvelous journey of becoming more just as all creatures even us do.

She returns to joy. You'll feel her in the rain, in the wind, in the bite of snow, and in deep and you will feel her sorry, in, in deep penetrating silence when you stand out on the land. So you might miss her terribly, but never ever be away from her. That's what Spirit is all about. It never leaves us ever.

So I know connecting into his books, you feel that spirit. And I think if we just slow down enough and listen we'll feel him with us.

Patty Krawec: Thank you for listening. You can find me online at thousandworlds.ca where I write about traditional Ojibwe stories and how they connect with our current lives, along with the books that I'm reading or feel relevant to the story. This podcast series and the book that emerged from it changed me the way that good books and the conversations about them do. Remember the first rule of Bad Indians Book Club: Always Carry a Book. 

These conversations originally streamed live and were recorded in 2021. Editing and transcripts completed by Tiffany Hill with the generous support of Dr. Eve Tuck, director of the Visiting Lab Lenapehoking. Our theme is Biindigen, an original hand drum song composed and performed by Nicole Joy Fraser.

Baamaapii!

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Excerpt from Booklist, a starred review which means the book is "outstanding in its genre": A fascinating advanced seminar about how to think, read, think about reading, and think about Indigenous lives.”

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Podcasts and Interviews!
Missing Witches Part 1 and Part 2
Turning Pages
CBC's The Next Chapter
New York Society Library

Book reviews!
The Miramichi Reacher
I've Read This
Pickle Me This
Foreword
Reading Our Shelves
Red Pop News
Ms Magazine's top 25
Summer Must Reads Toronto Star

My list of "must read books" for CBC on TRC Day, Sep 30 2025
An excerpt published by Baptist News Online.

Do you want me to zoom into your local bookstore or bookclub? Talk with you on your podcast? I can do that. patty.krawec@gmail.com For larger professional settings you can email Rob Firing at rob@transatlanticagency.com

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