When Swampy Cree author Ken Carriere was a boy, his father told another man that he brought his son along on fishing and hunting trips so that he could be the protector, the one “to strike the Wetigo,” that well-known folkloric figure, the Algonquian cannibal giant, a monster representing starvation and madness. This was the father’s way of projecting his hopes and expectations for his son to carry on the traditions of the Cree people in 1960s northern Saskatchewan. In many respects, Carriere has assumed this responsibility, evinced in a wonderfully evocative memoir that warmly describes the spirit of place, the continuities of Indigenous foodways, and the resilience of the Swampy Cree language. The author, a retired geologist and educator, seeks “to provide a glimpse of the bushland and peoples of northern Canada and to share knowledge of living in a forever-changing environment” (12). His focus is on the ten-thousand square kilometer region of the Saskatchewan River delta, a diverse terrain of rivers, lakes, and boreal forest that the Cree have inhabited for the past seven-thousand years, from its post-glacial origins through the exchanges of the fur trade and into its industrial transformation through hydroelectric dams and oilsands development.
The author, however, is clearly aware that his memoir is more than an homage to past ancestors, living elders, and the broader communities of the delta. His printed words are meant to be of service to the future, composing “an ethnography, if you will, that will be of interest to both English-language and Cree-language readers” (6). Indeed, the magnificent gift that Carriere gives us is an eminently readable book that both commemorates Indigenous culture and functions as a tool for revitalization of the “N-dialect” of the Swampy Cree language. “It is my hope,” he concludes, “that this book will help others interested in the language to learn it. What is important is speaking it and passing it on” (xvi).
Part I is structured around eighteen short chapters, each focusing on the author’s memories of social encounters and interspecies interactions on a rapidly changing landscape of resource sites. Drawing upon personal observations, anecdotes, historical information, and even a few original poems to limn the emotional contours of remembered experiences, the author provides a richly detailed description of men’s and women’s roles in the customary practices of moose hunting, sturgeon fishing, trapline maintenance, canoe travel, and food preparation. We learn what the author learned from the elders he accompanied: traditional knowledge of ecological relationships and the place of humanity within them. (Anyone familiar with Thoreau’s The Maine Woods, and its appreciation of immersive learning from Indigenous companions, will be struck by certain similarities; in fact, the author acknowledges the literary influence of the nineteenth-century writer.) A selection of family photos, maps, and even the author’s own paintings of dramatic life-events help to illustrate the material culture of bush life, notably its subsistence technology and folk architecture. In each chapter, the distinctive qualities of specific resource sites and their historical significance for Indigenous travelers are highlighted in Carriere’s practice of embedding a generous section of Cree terms and place names—with translations and commentary—into his compelling English-language narrative.
Part II is decidedly more formulaic, with 125 pages of the edited transcription of six interviews the author conducted with family members born before or shortly after the Second World War. Many of the topics introduced in Part I re-emerge through a new voice, offering additional historical and cultural information and personal insights that augment the author’s knowledge and experiences: the changes brought by non-Indigenous recreational anglers; the increasing importance of gardens to supplement wild foods; the contrasts between traditional knowledge and Western science; and the use of ancestral places and familiar customs by returning soldiers to heal from post-traumatic stress disorders. Footnotes provide helpful cultural background and historical context to comments made in the interviews. While two of the interviews are entirely in English, four were conducted in Swampy Cree, reproduced using Standard Roman Orthography with the author’s own English translations.
By centering the voice and language of Indigenous people, this autoethnographic work nicely contextualizes the twentieth-century evolution of sustainable Indigenous subsistence rounds, and the values and attitudes of families directly impacted by the insatiable appetite and violence of settler consumption—the modern Wetigo. Through its representation of the Swampy Cree language in a broader bilingual narrative that vividly chronicles outdoor activities on increasingly threatened natural landscapes, this volume is bound to attract a youthful audience of Indigenous readers, many of whom might become the new generation of Cree speakers that Carriere foresees. In this capacity, the author’s writing is reminiscent of the books by the late Jim Northrup (Ojibwe) who strategically combined the humor and drama of reservation life in northern Minnesota with lengthy passages in Anishinaabemowin and English translations.
Those looking for explicit settler-colonial critique or programmatic statements on decolonization and reconciliation will have to look elsewhere. Nor will the reader of Carriere’s work find much in the way of traditional narratives, of the trickster-transformer Wisakecahk, or even of the Wetigo. They will read only hints of how residential schools attempted to eradicate Indigenous languages and intervene in subsistence activities. Instead, the intimacy of his people’s relationships with the land, and the impacts of modern environmental and social change on Cree communities, speak for themselves through Carriere’s personal experience narratives and those of the elders he interviews.
In both its subject matter and straightforward accessibility, this book (and especially its acknowledgments section) would be an immensely valuable and illustrative addition to classroom discussions of Indigenous relationality, of the profound ancestral connections and responsibilities among people, communities, institutions, places, and the other-than-human world. Ken Carriere has written an admirable book, a valuable contribution to Indigenous studies. It is a worthy fulfillment of his father’s hopes for a son able “to strike the Wetigo,” using the power of printed words to remember tradition and promote the survival of a culture confronted by forces that would destroy it.
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[Review length: 993 words • Review posted on December 14, 2024]