Three Day Road (53 page)
Of course, the Cree and Ojibwe tradition of storytelling is as deeply rooted as any other part of the culture. Storytelling is the lifeblood of the Anishnabe. It is how lessons are taught, family histories are kept alive, and good times are had.
Q:
How has your scholarly work in Aboriginal programs influenced your writing of
Three Day Road
?
Had I not lived and taught on James Bay and continued to visit there extensively for the last ten years, I don’t think I would have created this book. The remote communities I’ve fallen in love with certainly feel the influence of Western culture in almost all aspects of life, but still retain ties to the land and to the ancestors. Nature still dictates on James Bay, and the Cree, contemporary as many of them have become, still live according to the cycle of the seasons. Autumn is the time to prepare for the
coming winter, winter is the time to trap and dream of spring, spring is the time of the river breakup and preparing for summer, and summer is a time of family and friends.
Q:
What is life like for the Cree people in Canada today? Are there any writers of Cree or Ojibwe ancestry you would recommend to your readers?
Many Native languages are faced with extinction or are already extinct, but Ojibwe and Cree remain two of the healthiest surviving Native languages in North America. I think this is due, in part, to many of these peoples’ living in more remote geographical areas, places where the English language doesn’t necessarily dominate every aspect of life. These remote areas are often completely out of the spotlight and off most people’s radar screens.
Often, a lot of poverty and violence and drug and alcohol abuse exist here. And these are the stories that trickle down to the rest of us. But there is a lot more to these communities that we don’t hear about. Many of them are actively dealing with and slowly excising the ghosts created by contact with what was often the worst of Western culture. Most often, it seems to me, the source of a lot of Cree and Ojibwe pain comes in the form of residential schools. We must remember that residential schools forcefully removed children from their families and communities and tried to integrate these children into the dominant culture by any means necessary. Abuse in all its forms became rampant. These schools remained until the 1970s, leaving many generations of Cree and Ojibwe to try to pick up the pieces of their culture and to try to learn for themselves once again who they are. The shock waves of the residential school system are still clearly visible today, but the Cree and Ojibwe are resilient people. They’re survivors.
Canada has some wonderful Aboriginal writers. I highly recommend the Cree writer Tomson Highway and the Ojibwe writers Drew Hayden Taylor and Richard Wagamese as three
examples of writers who really capture the contemporary and traditional pulse of Native Canada. I also recommend the Cherokee writer Thomas King for his humour and vision as well as the Dogrib writer Richard Van Camp for his poetic portrayal of life in the far north.
As for Native writers in the United States, Louise Erdrich is one of the greats. Her novels, short stories, and poetry are simply beautiful. James Welch is also one of the contemporary classics. Sherman Alexie is the next generation, a wonderfully gifted writer.
Q:
What are you working on now?
I’ve spent a lot of time and energy writing non-fiction about the devastation Katrina left in my adopted city of New Orleans, but I’ve also been pursuing a new novel. With this one, I’ve moved from the historical to the contemporary. Long ago I envisioned a trilogy of novels dealing with many generations of the Bird Clan. In this second book, Xavier’s children and grandchildren are the central players. Unfortunately, at the beginning of this one, some of the Birds find themselves at the slough of their fortune. The theme of the windigo visits once again, this time applied to the world of the contemporary reservation, as well as to a much more urban world in which many Native Canadians find themselves.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Why does Joseph Boyden use two narrators to tell the story of
Three Day Road
? What effects does he create by interweaving Niska’s and Xavier’s narratives?
2. Niska tells Xavier about the stories her father told her family. “Sometimes his stories were all that we had to keep us alive” (p. 35). What role do stories play within the novel?
3. Why does Niska spend so much time telling Xavier stories of the past? Why does she say that she “feeds” him stories? What effect do her stories have on him?
4. Early in the novel, Thompson asks Elijah if he likes combat and killing, to which Elijah responds, “It’s in my blood.” But Thompson doesn’t ask Xavier, who thinks, “Does he sense something? How am I different?” (p. 75). How is Xavier different from Elijah? How do they each feel about combat and killing? In what ways are they alike?
5. Elijah has a dream in which three of his dead fellow soldiers tell him: “Do what you can. There is nothing sacred any more in a place such as this. Don’t fight it. Do what you can” (p. 282). How does Elijah interpret this? Are these spirits right in suggesting that in war nothing is sacred and that a soldier should do whatever he can—even if it involves killing innocent people—to survive and win?
6. In what ways is it significant that Xavier and Elijah are Cree? How do their fellow soldiers perceive them? What aspects of their traditional ways of life affect how they perform during the war?
7. How does Niska begin to cure Xavier of his despair and morphine addiction? What does this cure suggest about the difference between Native Canadian and Western views of medicine and healing?
8. Niska has the gift of receiving visions. What do her visions reveal to her? How do they guide her?
9. What does the novel as a whole say about war and what it can do to those who must kill in war? How are Elijah and Xavier changed, physically and spiritually, by their experiences in war?
10. In what ways is
Three Day Road
relevant to our own time and circumstance?
Table of Contents
NTAWI NIPAHIWEWAK Raiding Party
KAKWAPASKINAATOWIN Competition
KA NIPIHAT WINDIGOWA Windigo Killer
ONIIMOWI PINESHISH Little Bird Dancer