A finalist for the Governor General’s Award, Armand Garnet Ruffo’s latest poetry collection
Treaty # sees the artist and scholar thinking back on the lives of his Ojibwe ancestors, the state of affairs for Indigenous Peoples today, and the treaties that changed everything.
Ruffo’s examination of history and the present walks the fine line of consistently unsettling the reader without ever coming across as hostile. In “The Claim,” the poet lays bare the image of a van that “scours the streets and alleys for the homeless in a land / that is home.” This despondent image of modern life, heavy with intimations of the lasting legacy of colonization, reverberates throughout the collection’s stories of abuse, addiction, and loss.