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Podcast Episode 1
12:00pm

NISHGA

with Jordan Abel
Hosted by David O’Meara

NISHGA

with Jordan Abel
Hosted by David O’Meara
20
Friday
Aug
2021
12:00pm
Jordan Abel - Photo by Tenille Campbell

David O’Meara sits down with Griffin Poetry Prize winner Jordan Abel to discuss his latest publication, NISHGA , a groundbreaking, deeply personal, and devastating autobiographical meditation that attempts to address the complicated legacies of Canada's residential school system and contemporary Indigenous existence.

 

As a Nisga'a writer, Jordan Abel often finds himself in a position where he is asked to explain his relationship to Nisga'a language, Nisga'a community, and Nisga'a cultural knowledge. However, as an intergenerational survivor of residential school--both of his grandparents attended the same residential school--his relationship to his own Indigenous identity is complicated to say the least.

 

NISHGA explores those complications and is invested in understanding how the colonial violence originating at the Coqualeetza Indian Residential School impacted his grandparents' generation, then his father's generation, and ultimately his own. The project is rooted in a desire to illuminate the realities of intergenerational survivors of residential school, but sheds light on Indigenous experiences that may not seem to be immediately (or inherently) Indigenous.

 

Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books.

 

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