Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà

Truly, Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà: Northern Indigenous Voices on Land, Life, and Art is an irreplaceable volume about the north and about Indigeneity in the country currently known as Canada. Collectively edited by Kyla LeSage, Thumlee Drybones-Foliot, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, the book is by turns grounded, insightful, painful, and very funny, and I felt incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to read these interviews, essays, poems, and stories.

When I say "privileged," I mean that in two quite different senses.

First, the book is a product of the Dechinta Centre (which is itself irreplaceable as well) and of the Dechinta Centre's "land-based community-led Indigenous arts and educational programming in the Northwest Territories and Yukon" (p12). As a result, Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà gives its readers, no matter where they're from and what their background, unparalleled access to this institution and its programming. It provides as well a window onto the kinds of personal, cultural, and community changes that can flow from land-based resurgence. In sharing their views and experiences (both before and after their time with Dechinta), the editors and contributors have given all of us a remarkable gift, and I can't thank them enough.

Second, in reading this book, I'm keenly aware of my various demographic privileges. I've written about this topic before, including a few years ago in my role as a settler academic writing to other settler academics (happy to share a PDF, so just ask), and it's my one article that I know has been read by someone other than me. I'm deeply privileged in this place and at this time, so I'm pierced throughout all my readings of Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà. This comes both from the more expected stories of struggle and difficulty, but also from unexpected elements, including Tiffany Ayalik's sense of humour that informs her critique of Canadians: "Look at us, we don't have a tinder date without a land acknowledgement" (p77), and "Let me put on my Caucasian voice for this phone interview" (p73).

I loved Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà, even when I didn't.

Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà contains 43 diverse pieces, with the majority focusing on Dene perspectives. Other contributors come from or identify with other communities, but the Dene focus makes sense given that much of the Dechinta Centre's land-based programming occurs in the territory of the Yellowknives Dene. My own family ties in the north aren't to the Dene (my late brother-in-law was an Inuk, like my beloved nieces), and demographics being what they are, most potential readers won't have Dene links, but this shouldn't reduce even a little the tremendous value of this book to a reader.

In terms of how to read the book, I trust the editors, so it's fine to read it from front to back. On the other hand, it started out as a kind of resource collection that'd be useful inside Dechinta coursework (land-based and otherwise), so like all textbooks, there are lots of good reasons for dipping into and out of the volume in whatever order makes sense for your learning journey.

Me, I worked my way through from front to back, because my brain's not unhappy with the epistemic linearity of books. This did mean I read some pieces with a great deal more attention than others, but on the other hand, I've found myself going back to some of those I wanted to skip during that first read. (Once you've read a book that has meaning, the whole thing's present to you and you're able to present to the whole thing, and any seeming linearity can fall away.)

For settler readers, one of the more immediately accessible pieces is Jennie Vandermeer's "The Dene Laws: Indigenous culture is wellness." Like many writers here, Vandermeer writes carefully, blending her personal and situated perspective with an openness to where her readers may be coming from. There's a great clarity to her explication of the Dene laws, which she ties to her own life and experiences while working to illustrate how they might apply in other circumstances. In all kinds of ways, it's a useful microcosm of the book's mission overall, even if it's not necessarily a core reading for me from Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà.

With Vandermeer's essay, I did find myself wondering how she'd respond to those who, like Polly Atkin in Some of Us Just Fall, worry about the consequences of tying wellness to personal conduct, personal responsibility, and what's sometimes called "the nature cure" (critiqued in this excellent essay--but trigger warning!--by Richard Smyth). But Vandermeer's essay isn't about those things, so any worries I might have are beside the point. As with many other examples in this volume, the author and her editors have done a great job of generating a piece that's sufficient unto itself. You can read the essay for whatever purposes you want, but it has its own purpose already, and it should be clear to you whether you're respecting its purpose in your own reading.

This isn't the time to talk about favourites, so instead let me just list (in order of appearance in the book) a few pieces that I've ended up annotating prettily heavily in the margins:

• T’áncháy Redvers' "Re-membering, re-claiming, re-connecting," on drumming, burlesque, trauma, and the land ("In pursuing burlesque as a performer, I am re-membering my connection to myself, and thus the land" [p29])
• Chloe Dragon Smith and Robert Grandjambe's "To Wood Buffalo National Park, with love," a near-future fiction about what would happen if Parks Canada admitted its errors and began genuine co-management on Indigenous principles of the region including what's currently known as Wood Buffalo National Park ("We are committed to gaining full participation and asserting our opportunity to be here with all that comes with it: acknowledging the mess--the uncomfortable mess" [p41])
• Jeneen Frei Njootli in conversation with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, "This is your home: Ski-Doos, caribou, and mosquitoes," about an artistic practice that respects a culture growing from those things and many more ("The sounds in all of our communities are changing, and it's because of colonization, and climate change caused by colonization": taller trees, thicker brush, different moisture levels, etc [p68])
• Kyla LeSage's "Consent: Learning with the land," on the continued presence and value of traditional relations with the land ("We are only taught that consent must be between two humans, yet when we are on the land and learning from the land, we are taught the meaning of consent and what it looks like" [p172])
• Jasmine Vogt's "Finding Dendì, finding ourselves," which includes the book's clearest short description of a Dechinta land-based experience
• Thumlee Drybones-Foliot's "Caribou, wolverines, and spruce gum," which tells or re-tells a story about those subjects while also reflecting on storytelling, orality, and the transmission of culture ("Repeating a story verbatim is a safe place to start storytelling" [p222])

These listed pieces are my core readings at the moment from this book, but an early draft of this post also included ᐃᓕᓴᐱ Elisapie Isaac's reflections on being Inuk; Glen Coulthard's conversation with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson; and Simpson's conversation with Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk Mackay, mostly about throat-singing.  

It hurts my heart more than a little that it's so hard to find another review of Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà (though see below for a few articles about it), because it's the kind of book that should be on the shelves, bedside table, or coffee table of every settler who has feelings about land acknowledgements.

Ndè Sı̀ı̀ Wet’aɂà is an irreplaceable book. You need it: I don't know who you are, but you need to spend some time with at least some of this book's texts, and then you need to do something with what you've learned.

Other readings

Probably the best short introduction you'll find online at this point is from CBC reporter Avery Zingle, who wrote a nice article on the book's launch. The article includes some great perspective and details from the editors and some of the book's authors. The book's co-editor Leanne Betasamosake Simpson offers a crucial insight into the book's genesis and politics: "The pieces are written to be an invitation [to readers].... This love of land, love of culture, love of family comes through." Another good article is in Prairie Books Now, from David Yerex Williamson.

If you want to learn more about the Dechinta Centre than can be found on its pretty terrific website, you'd do well to read Erin Freeland Ballantyne's 2014 article "Dechinta Bush University: Mobilizing a knowledge economy of reciprocity, resurgence, and decolonization." It's from a special issue on Indigenous land-based education of the journal Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, and really the whole issue represents a remarkable deep dive into this movement.