The reader is a guest in nîtisânakan autobiographical, intimate and powerful essay which explores, through the experience of an indigenous body and everything that unites it to life, all the facets, good and bad, of belonging.
An artist of Cree-Métis-Saulteaux ancestry from the Prairies, Jas M. Morgan weaves around the pain caused by the loss of his mother the complex network of love, violence, neglect, intergenerational wounds, healing and hope which forms its identity and its presence in the world.
With a frank and devoid of artifice pen, Jas M. Morgan, who did doctoral studies in art history at McGill University and who teaches in the Department of Communications at Simon Fraser University, recounts his relationship with his adoptive mother, his childhood in a white family, the repression of his queer Indigenous status during his adolescence, and dissects his process of reappropriation.
Carried by an anger soaked in tenderness, nîtisânak is part of an ancestral cyclical narrative in which each end is a new beginning. Thus a story is built which is above all a story of love and its relearning, a love cut off from fundamental contacts with the territory and creation, deprived by history of the nourishing breast of the mother and of the language which would allow us to say this sacred bond which unites with others and with the earth.
The tone is harsh, uncompromising, disconcertingly frank, formally prohibiting those who, by colonial instinct, would risk appropriating its history to turn it to their advantage, put it into perspective, point the finger or, worse, heroize resilience. of a victim and thus reinforce their stereotypes.
“Don’t confuse my comments with trauma porn. That’s just how it happened for us. If these stories can’t be shared without shedding a white tear, that’s not my problem. My trauma is not a commodity to be consumed, but my story does not always have to be uplifting, resurgent, or revolutionary to be my truth. »
While indigenous writers are often expected to inspire, share their knowledge, and reach out to the oppressor, Jas M. Morgan categorically refuses to do so. His essay is his own, and he has no other mission than to express his experience of the world, and to reach those who could really understand it; here, queer and trans indigenous people.
Therefore, every word, every cry, every hint of hope is meant to resonate deep in the hearts of those who, like Jas M. Morgan, find themselves at the confluence of all oppressions, both within and outside. outside their community.
By cultivating this unique literary space, the artist certainly points out the disastrous consequences of colonialism, patriarchy and white supremacism on his community, but also manages to name the ways in which these hierarchies are perpetuated inside the reserve, or even queer circles. Be careful, however, not to jump too hastily to conclusions, and not to make a single truth that of the white man. “I should not reveal the truth and indulge the colonialists’ appetite for my trauma, nor feed their white savior ego so that someone can use my book at a dinner party and say they read the story from a gay Aboriginal person who explains that reserves are so dangerous for gay Aboriginal people…” For mature readers.