‘I weave a West that’s honest’

Author J Hoolihan Clayton (adoptee) is First Nations Plains Cree. Having lived a diverse and authentic life in the American West, she now writes history as fiction in order to inspire and elucidate.

 

excerpt...

Alamosa Citizen: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Who you are, where you come from, where you’re going, all of that good stuff.

J Hoolihan Clayton: Okay, well I’m Plains Cree. I was taken as an infant from the reserve in Canada in the Sixties Scoop and illegally adopted out across the medicine line into the United States.

I was adopted by a white family with a ranch in Wyoming. I was raised on a ranch in Wyoming, basically in the middle of nowhere, no running water, no electricity. I spent a lot of time, from a young age around Native elders and old cowboys and basically it was there that I think I became a writer.

I was so fascinated with the stories. I seem to have sort of an idyllic memory. I retained stories and then as I grew older, I began to write stories for myself. Despite all the other things that I’ve done in my life, I’ve always been a writer. I learned cowboying growing up and wasn’t able to have a college education early on. I worked as a ranch hand and wound up fighting wildland fires for years until I sustained enough injuries that vocational rehabilitation sent me to the University of Montana and I was able to get a degree in education and history.

History has always been a passion for me.

So, from there, since I needed an indoor job, I started teaching and mostly focused on Native American education and history. And mostly taught Native students or Hispanic students. I also specialize in at-risk education programs. I ran the education in the juvenile detention center in Taos for five years.

I set up several alternative education programs. One in a treatment center on the Taos Pueblo. One on the Zuni Pueblo. I taught at Dulce on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation and in rural Hispanic areas mostly. Then I decided that, for a variety of reasons, administration, fighting cell phones, I decided to retire and write full time.

There’s a wonderful quote from E.L. Doctorow that the historian will tell you what happened, the novelist will tell you what it felt like. That’s my impetus in writing these books. I also, because of my troubled past, with having been stolen, and also spending many, many years living in and cowboying on reservations in Pueblos and working on Pueblos, I wanted to tell the stories that I was learning about Native groups that are told from a perspective that you don’t find. 

KEEP READING:  https://www.alamosacitizen.com/i-weave-a-west-thats-honest/

A member of Western Writers of America, J. Hoolihan has been published in western historical magazines, such as "True West" and "Wild West." During her extensive research, J. Hoolihan continues to accumulate an abundance of topics for a succession of factual stories pertaining to the 19th century American West. Her first novel, Commendable Discretion, was published in January 2021. With Great Discretion is the second book of this series.* "Throwing the hoolihan" is a technique that old time cowboys used for roping horses. "Hoolihan" has been Juliana's nickname for decades

Tanya Talaga is Rewriting Canadian History Her Way

 

In The Knowing, her third non-fiction book, Talaga travels back in time—and unearths a few family secrets in the process

 

By Katie Underwood

August 22, 2024

Tanya Talaga has made a career of telling the unvarnished truth about Canada, to Canada. In her bestselling books, Seven Fallen Feathers and All Our Relations, Talaga, a Globe and Mail columnist of Anishinaabe and Polish descent, turned her incisive eye on systemic problems like racism in policing and the suicide epidemic among Indigenous youth. But when it came to the personal, to her own family, Talaga always found more questions than answers.

In The Knowing, her third non-fiction book, out August 27, Talaga runs toward, not from, her history, filling in the gaps in her own ancestral line. It’s a lineage severed several times, as her First Nations relatives were forcibly sent to government- and church-sponsored residential schools, asylums and new families entirely as part of the Sixties Scoop. After years spent digging into the past, she’s learned a few things: about her grandmothers, about Canada’s past and that, when it comes to family, you can never really know the whole story. 

The Knowing revisits the colonial history of Canada, as well as the history of your own matriarchal line. What made you decide to weave in your own  family details? 

All Indigenous families share the same history; we all have people who are missing. I didn’t want to write a trauma porn book, talking about everyone else’s pain. Elder Sam Achneepineskum from Marten Falls First Nation once gave me some advice: our ancestors need to know who’s speaking. We need to tell people who each of us are, so everyone can understand what happened. 

 

...Figuring it all out, the how did we get here—that helps me a lot.  It’s reclamation. One person I met, Paula Rickard, is a professional genealogist who lives in Moose Factory, Ontario.  She’s built out a family tree of the James Bay coast that now has something like 12,000 names.  When I was just starting out, I messaged her Facebook page, and she responded with, “You know we’re related, too, right?” 

KEEP READING : https://www.macleans.ca/culture/tanya-talaga-is-rewriting-canadian-history-her-way/

48 books by Indigenous writers to read to understand residential schools + All My Relations Podcast

David A. Robertson curated this list of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children's books

CBC Books 

David A. Robertson poses with his picture book When We Were Alone, which was illustrated by Julie Flett. (Holly Caruk/CBC)

David A. Robertson, a Cree author based in Winnipeg, writes books for readers of all ages. He has published 25 books across a variety of genres, including the graphic novels Will I See? and Sugar Falls, a Governor General's Literary Award-winning picture book called When We Were Alone, illustrated by Julie Flett, and The Reckoner, a YA trilogy. 

In 2020 alone, Robertson published three books: the memoir Black Water, the graphic novel Breakdown and the middle-grade novel The Barren Grounds. He also hosted the CBC Manitoba podcast Kiwew.

Here are some books by Indigenous authors to get you started on your learning journey. Please keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list. There are more stories out there.

KEEP READING

 

And the podcast ALL MY RELATIONS is Wonderful! LISTEN