Indigenous Writers’ Gathering

with Colleen Cardinal, Suzanne Methot and Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm

In Person Non-Fict History

Admission

Free

Wednesday

Jun , 2019

7:00pm

Eastern

Library and Archives Canada, Alfred Pellan Room (2nd floor)

395 Wellington Street • Ottawa

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Colleen Cardinal Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm Suzanne Methot · Photo by Nadya Kwandibens Red Works

This is the power of storytelling. It's going deeper and truer than the history books and the newspaper accounts. It's bringing the stories to the people for the people and doing it for the right reasons: to teach and to illuminate. This Place: 150 Years Retold is the dawn to a new storytelling tradition that doesn't need to be held back. It should be shouted forward from now on.

Helen Kubiw

Please join us for a vibrant discussion presented in partnership with The Government of Canada and Ottawa Public Library.

Elder Albert Dumont will begin the evening with a prayer.

Ohpikiihaakan-Ohpihmeh (Raised Somewhere Else): A 60s Scoop Adoptee's Story of Coming Home by Colleen Cardinal delves into the personal and provocative narrative of her journey growing up in a non- Indigenous household. During the 60s Scoop, over 20,000 Indigenous children in Canada were removed from their biological families, lands and culture and trafficked across provinces, borders and overseas to be raised in non-Indigenous households. In this memoir, she speaks frankly and intimately about instances of violence and abuse throughout her life, but it is not a story of tragedy. It is a story of empowerment, reclamation and, ultimately, personal reconciliation. It is a form of Indigenous resistance through truth-telling, a story that informs the narrative on missing and murdered Indigenous women, colonial violence, racism and the Indigenous child welfare system.

Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing by Suzanne Methot explores intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities–and strategies for healing–with provocative prose and an empathetic approach. Indigenous peoples have shockingly higher rates of addiction, depression, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions than other North Americans. According to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, these are a result of intergenerational trauma: the unresolved terror, anger, fear, and grief created in Indigenous communities by the painful experiences of colonialism, passed down from generation to generation. How are we to turn this desperate tide?

This Place: 150 Years Retold, is a groundbreaking graphic novel anthology that includes a contribution from author Kateri Akiwenzi-Damm. Beautifully illustrated, these stories are an emotional and enlightening journey through Indigenous wonderworks, psychic battles, and time travel. See how Indigenous peoples have survived a post-apocalyptic world since Contact.

The Authors

Colleen Cardinal

Colleen Hele- Cardinal is co-founder and Executive Director of the National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network. She is nehiyaw iskwew from Saddle Lake First Nation, AB but adopted and raised in Sault Ste Marie ON. She has worked diligently to raise the issue of the 60s scoop as well as build community, support for 60s scoop survivors and bring international attention to the displacement and loss of identity 60s scoop survivors have experienced. She has successfully organized four national gatherings for 60’s scoop survivors She speaks publicly and candidly about murdered and missing Indigenous women and the impacts of the 60’s Scoop drawing critical connections between genocidal colonial child welfare removal policies and her lived experiences and those of women in her family. Colleen continues to volunteer with several initiatives, including Families of sisters in Spirit and the Nobel Women’s Initiative Sister to Sister Mentorship program to address gender-based violence, while giving context on the making of Canada, treaty relationships and the dehumanization of Indigenous people through policy and media. She is the author of the much anticipated Ohpikiihaakan-ohpihmeh (Raised somewhere else): A 60s Scoop Adoptee’s Story of Coming Home, which was released this past June through Rosewood Press. Colleen was recently was awarded the Ontario Premiers Award in November 2018 for Outstanding Community work in her field and the 2019 CBC Trail Blazer award and as well as currently spear heading an innovative GIS mapping project Mapping the Indigenous Adoptee Disapora with the Pe-k?w?win Project. Most importantly Colleen is the proud mother of four grown children and enjoys spending all her free time with her granddaughters.

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is a writer, poet, spoken-word performer, librettist, and activist from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. She is the founder and Managing Editor of Kegedonce Press which was established in 1993 to publish the work of Indigenous creators. Kateri has written two books of poetry, was a contributor to the graphic novel anthology This Place: 150 Years Retold, was editor of the award-winning Skins: Contemporary Indigenous Writing, and has also released two poetry and music CDs. Kateri’s work has been published internationally, and she has performed and spoken around the world.

Suzanne Methot

Suzanne Methot has worked as an adult literacy and skills training practitioner since 1991, and as an elementary classroom teacher since 2007. For over a decade, she was principal editor for Ningwakwe Learning Press, creating Indigenous culture-based literacy resources. She was also an Education Officer for school programs at the Art Gallery of Ontario, where she facilitated gallery and studio activities for students from K-12. Suzanne has also worked in advocacy and direct–service positions at Indigenous community-based organizations. Suzanne’s fiction, non-fiction, and poetry has been published in various anthologies. Her feature articles, guest columns, and reviews have appeared in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, Windspeaker, and Canadian Geographic. She is co-author of the Grade 11 textbook Aboriginal Beliefs, Values, and Aspirations (Goodminds/Pearson Education Canada), and is also a primary contributor to Scholastic Canada’s Take Action and Take Action for Reconciliation series of classroom resource books. Her non-fiction book Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healingwas published by ECW Press in 2019. In 2014, Suzanne was nominated for the K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Literature. In 2016, she was featured in a CBC Radio Onedocumentary on National Indigenous Peoples Day. Suzanne has lectured on Indigenous literatures at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Education, and was a guest lecturer in the Journalism program at the First Nations Technical Institute at Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. She has also been a guest speaker/presenter at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the Ontario Library Association Super Conference, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Hot Docs Film Festival teacher professional development conference, and the Halton District School Board’s 2018 Human Rights Symposium. She was appointed to the Royal Ontario Museum’s Indigenous Advisory Circle in 2014, and is also a member of the Durham College Journalism Program Advisory Committee. Born in Vancouver in 1968 and raised in Peace River, Alberta — which is known as Sagitawa (“where the rivers meet”) in the Nehiyawak language — Suzanne is a Nehiyaw ayahkwêw of Indigenous and European heritage. Her primary professional interests are decolonizing education for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in public schools, building cross-cultural understanding around Indigenous issues, facilitating community art projects, and developing trauma-informed systems and institutions. Suzanne is currently working on a children’s book about lost/hidden urban rivers, and on a novel set in northern Alberta. She is represented by Stephanie Sinclair of the Transatlantic Agency. <br> Connect on Facebook @SuzanneMethotAuthor or LinkedIn