Wordfest features Aboriginal writers

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Bookworms and literature lovers packed the Engineered Air Theatre in Calgary on Oct. 12 to see Eden Robinson and Lee Maracle.

The two Aboriginal authors - both with bright futures and very notable careers - appeared as part of PanCanadian Wordfest 2001.

The event was billed as a reading and "a look at life influenced by a First Nations perspective." It quickly expanded to include a range of topics as it became clear that the First Nations' perspective of the authors included their thoughts on current affairs, Native politics, and the art of writing.

Maracle's latest work is Daughters Are Forever, which is influenced by Salish storytelling.

In her opening remarks she commented on the state of affairs in the world after the events of September 11.

"We live in troubled times," she noted, adding that she sees a lot of tension and stress in her frequent trips between Canada and the United States, where she is a visiting professor at Western Washington University.

She summed up her observations with an open question. "I wonder perhaps if some of the sense of peace that existed in North America a couple of hundreds of years ago . . . and some of that wisdom of our Elders had been spread around a little bit more, maybe we wouldn't be in such a state."

Maracle, whose writing includes the novels Sundogs; Ravensong; and Bobbi Lee, Indian Rebel; read from her collection of short stories called Sojourner's Truth. These stories examine the reaction of ordinary Aboriginal people to big political events such as the Oka crisis and Elijah Harper's stand against the Meech Lake Accord. In the middle of these events, her characters often rely on humor as a means of coping.

This seems to be a technique used by Maracle herself. Throughout her reading she had the audience laughing, and never more so than when she read a story narrated by a woman who waits hand-and-foot on her four teenaged children.

The character comments that teenagers suffer from a "crippling disease . . . because none of my children can walk around anymore."

Robinson, who is this year's Markan-Flanagan Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Calgary, kept the crowd laughing with a reading from her Giller prize-nominated novel, Monkey Beach.

One of the characters in the book is a big Elvis Presley fan who pays a visit to Graceland. Robinson had the crowd howling with laughter as she told the story of spending the prize money she won for Traplines, her debut collection of short stories, on a trip for her and her mother to go to Nashville to do research.

Although Monkey Beach focuses on a young girl growing up, as Robinson did, near Kitimaat, she said the work is not autobiographical. Responding to a question from the audience she said, "The very early drafts were me, and they didn't go anywhere--she didn't do anything except sulk in her room and read. "That's not the dramatic basis for a story."

Robinson added that she produced a few drafts before she felt she had the main character she wanted and that "until she coalesced there was no novel."

Maracle put the writer's task in simpler terms. "There are no good writers in the world," she said. "There are only good rewriters."