One lazy afternoon I heard the recognizable voice of Joseph Boyden being interviewed on a CBC Radio chat show. For fun, I decided to call in and pose a question. Full disclosure, I consider Joseph a friend. We’re not best buddies i.e. we never donated organs to each other but we’ve book toured together, and in a crowded room we’d make the effort to find the time to chat and fill each other up on the latest literary gossip. On the cover of my novel Motorcycles And Sweetgrass, there’s a complimentary blurb from him. He’s invited me to his home in New Orleans and I’ve invited him to mine in Curve Lake but unfortunately we’ve never had the time to take advantage of those offers. I have it on good authority New Orleans is a bit more exotic then my small First Nation community, but exoticism is in the eye of the beholder, as frequently is identity.
Once on the show, I asked him a question that is frequently post to me as a First Nations author, “Does everything you write have to do with Native themes?” There was an audible pause, I could mentally see him going through all his current projects in his mind, and then said with a laugh “Yeah, I think so.”
Cultural identity is one of the most volatile and controversial topics in First Nations communities: Who are you? Where did you come from? Who are you related to? – the Holy Trinity of Aboriginal identity. Similar Indigenous cultures around the world have comparable issues, the Sammi, Maoris, and the original peoples of Australia for example.
2017 is fast becoming the year of two things ironically linked – Canada’s Sesquicentennial and sorting out who can call themselves a NAFNIP (Native Aboriginal First Nations Indigenous person). I say ironic because one of Canada’s bedrock policies, one that has been around nearly as long as the country itself, dealt with the control, classification, and the gradual dissolving/absorbing of Native identity. A result being that decades ago many of us were told that if we, for some reason, were picked up by the authorities, to eat our status card. Under no circumstances confess your indigeniety. White was right. Red was dead. Canadian existence was colour coded.
In fact, it seemed non-Natives had better luck and more success being an “Indian” than we certainly did. Witness the success of Archie Belaney, later rechristened Grey Owl. And then there was Buffalo Child Long Lance, a black man (theoretically with some Native blood) born Sylvester Long, who grew up in the American south under Jim Crow laws, who found it much better to be Indian. So in the 1930’s wrote a fictionalized biography about growing up as a Blackfoot in Montana and appeared in several movies as such.
Times have changed. Essentially, since the sixties, so many people now want to be Native. Sometimes, you do have to wonder why, what with the number of missing and murdered Indigenous women, high rates of diabetes, bad water, racism, subpar medical care and education, what the appeal is for them. A cynic might say a sense of masochism. A romantic embraces those whom they perceive to be the underdog. A realist might say the exotic is always appealing. This fetishism can happen in many cultures. Rachel Dolenzal comes to mind. She was the woman who worked for an African-American organization in Spokane, Washington who was outed in 2015 as being White. For them, it seemed to be a black and white issue.
Back to Joseph. Admittedly, I am a little more sympathetic then most of my literary and political colleagues. I will leave the condemnation regarding his ancestral background or lack of to the AAA – the Aboriginal Ancestry Assessors. Whether he is or is not, I don’t know enough about his family or personal history, other than what has been written about him, to render a solid opinion. However, I would say the best way to deal with rumour and conjecture is with information and facts. The more the better. Until then, the rumour mills will continue to grind. The moral of the story is be careful what you put on your resume, people tend to check those things.
Personally I am reluctant to pass judgement as my own blue eyes have frequently come under a certain amount of suspicion. At one time I was told my name had been used a thousand miles away to insult somebody in an argument – “You half-breed, Drew Hayden Taylor, Metis wannabe!” I guess that’s almost as good as appearing in a crossword. Another time I had been asked if I’d been adopted by a Native family.
Speaking as a writer, I confess to perceiving a certain amount of grey area in the matter. Many complain that Joseph may have stolen the opportunities and voice of other Native writers (and their potential prizes) under false pretenses. That is unfortunate if true. But as the devil’s advocate (even though there is no devil in my culture), I am reminded by comments from two successful and renown Canadian writers who feel who you are should not affect what you write.
I was at a discussion about cultural appropriation where I heard the noted Cree playwright Tomson Highway say “For me to tell you what you can or cannot write based on the colour of your skin is in itself a form of racism.” At another writer’s conference I heard W. P. Kinsella (yes I realize the irony of quoting Mr. Kinsella) say something to the effect of “I don’t have to have committed suicide to write about it.” Both logical comments in their own way .
Still, there’s more to writing about the Native community then just having a good imagination. Or a few drops of Native blood. Many feel you need to have walked the walk, personally have dealt with scars left by several hundred years of colonization to play the Indigenous card. There is a bond between individual and community forged by experience and history. Conversely, I have it on good authority one of my great great grandparents was Irish, yet I have yet to read any James Joyce or feel it necessary to drive all the snakes out of Ontario. My cat is 1/8th Persian but has yet to be claimed by the Persian cat community.
I know Joseph is an avid moose hunter, frequently trading the swamps of Louisiana for the muskeg of James Bay. That’s more than I have done. I have hunted at Shopper’s Drug Mart for hair mousse. His talents at making the traditional Native hangover soup though are unknown. He probably puts shrimp in it.
I repeat myself- it’s such a complex issue. Joseph Boyden may or may not be ‘Grey Owling’ – a new verb. If so, what a loss to our writing community. Or he may be making the most out of what he believes to be true. As I recall, it was standard practice in the American south that if you had even one drop of African blood in your otherwise Caucasian body, you were automatically relegated to being a second class citizen. Ironically again, he spends a good part of his year in Louisiana.
I remember hearing an Elder say to a friend of mine, “if you have one drop of Native blood in you, I consider you my daughter.”
In the long run, I don’t know what this means for Joseph. As things stand now, he’s already a hell of a lot more successful than most Native or Canadian authors. Should he cut his losses and start writing about Canada’s Celtic diaspora, or maybe continue mining away in the Aboriginal literary mine, wary of critical cave-ins? That is of course presupposing he does not have the ancestral bank account he’s been writing cheques on. Of course, it may all be a tempest in a teapot, and he may actually have an Indian in the cupboard.
I hope for his sake he weathers this storm. A lot of ugly things have been said about an essentially nice man. Broadly speaking, the term ‘wannabe’ is used a lot in our community. It refers to people who ‘wannabe’ Native and do what they can to achieve that goal. On occasion though, you can meet some who can be classified as a ‘shouldabeen’.
Worse case scenario…I’m just sayin….