30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30, 2021 edition cbc.ca - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cbc.ca Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Cascade
Published 4 days ago
The search for what “Indianness” really means
I was 12 years old when the chief of our tribe, Chief Hidden Wolf, came from our Peepeekisis reserve to cleanse and welcome my grandparents’ totem pole with sacred ceremony. We sat in a circle and took turns smoking the pipe (of which I was not allowed to participate), and afterward he showed me how to replicate the shape of a wolf paw with my knuckles in the still-wet cement that would soon harden to hold the pole upright. I was in awe of his reverence, and he shed an awareness on my life, and the relationships I fostered, with new meaning.
INTRODUCTION
As I’ve learned from my own experiences in the classroom both as a student and as an instructor, poetry is so often taught badly to us in grade school (if at all). I am, to this day, learning how to undo the myth of poetry being the work of certainty a perfect command of a subject, experience, event proclaimed through verse. This is obviously a byproduct of the ways in which the Western canon is taught: the work of “great masters” whose genius we are trained to admire and respect. But my immersion in queer and disability writing has taught me the value of