From Wasauksing to the Moon and Back
A Conversation with Waubgeshig Rice
Waubgeshig Rice
is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation. He has written three fiction titles, and his short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies. His most recent novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was published in 2018 and became a national bestseller. He graduated from the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2002, and spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist and radio host. He left the CBC in 2020 to focus on his literary career. He lives in Sudbury, Ontario, with his wife and three sons. His forthcoming novel, Moon of the Turning Leaves, will be published in October 2023.
Managing Editor Tali Voron had the privilege of [virtually] sitting down with novelist and journalist Waubgeshig Rice. This is their conversation.
Tali Voron: Thanks so much for sitting down with me, Waub. Let’s start by talking about your work. Midnight Sweatlodge was your debut short story collection. Can you tell me about it and how it came to be?
Waubgeshig Rice: The stories that are in Midnight Sweatlodge are based on stories that I wrote as a teenager growing up in Wasauksing. At the time, I was really inspired by Indigenous authors that my aunt had shared with me. They were really influential, because back in the 1990s, I wasn’t exposed to Indigenous authors at all in the curriculum. Fortunately, my aunt knew I was keen on writing and reading fiction, so she shared Indigenous authors with me like Richard Wagamese, Lee Maracle, Thomas King, and so on. That inspired me to write on my own. I sort of just had these short stories that I wrote on a notepad with a pen. I would spend time in my room on the rez writing after coming back home from high school. I didn’t know if I could become a published author one day; it was more of a fun hobby at the time.
By the time I got through university and was living in Toronto, I was working mostly as a freelance journalist and I got to know people in the arts community—specifically Indigenous artists—everyone from actors to musicians to playwrights to journalists and so on. And that exposure inspired me to take another look at some of the stuff I wrote when I was a kid and pursue the next steps, whatever those would be. I was looking into various funding streams, things like the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and so on. And I was encouraged to apply for a grant through the Canada Council through its Aboriginal stream, it was called at the time—this was 2003–2004.
I was in my early to mid-twenties, and I was successful in getting a grant. I pitched that I wanted to revisit the short stories that I wrote when I was a teenager, and hopefully try to revise them and maybe put them into some sort of cohesive collection. And that’s really where Midnight Sweatlodge began. I took some of those stories and updated them. I tried to thread them together with this sort of Sweat Lodge theme, because a lot of the stories are about some of the challenges of growing up as an Indigenous youth. I was able to rekindle that passion for creative writing, even though I was working primarily as a journalist. So I was fortunate to have that opportunity, but I sort of left it after that.
A couple of years later I started working for CBC, I moved to Winnipeg, and that became my primary focus. After getting my feet under me at CBC, I started thinking back to those dreams of becoming published and the aspirations of writing creatively. Some friends whom I shared the original manuscript with encouraged me to pick it back up and to see about maybe getting it published. So I went back to the Canada Council. Actually, the program officer suggested pitching it to Theytus Books, the Indigenous publishing house based in Penticton, B.C. And I did, and they were interested in it. They eventually offered me a contract and they partnered me with Jordan Wheeler, the Cree writer based in Winnipeg, whom I also read when I was younger. So, it was a really nice way to come full circle. He was just amazing to work with. And he was so encouraging and so influential in that way. Theytus ended up publishing Midnight Sweatlodge in 2011. So that’s sort of the long story of Midnight Sweatlodge. Yeah, it was many years in the making; I’d say, like, fifteen years from start to finish, even though it’s a very small collection. It’s barely one hundred pages, you know, but it originates in my youthful experiences in my home community of Wasauksing. And so that’s pretty much how that all came together.
TV: Wow. That’s incredible. It really was a long time in the making. And I know that you interweave the stories of multiple characters in the book. So, I wonder, why did you decide to write it that way?
WR: I think when I took another look at the original stories that I wrote, I saw some common themes. But I also recall that all of those stories were based on the experiences that I had, and that my relatives and peers had. And that even though we handled things in different ways, or we had different resources or life skills to deal with these different things, our paths were interconnected coming from the same community, being Anishinaabe youth coming from an oppressed background, figuring out who we were at a very crucial time in the 1990s. So, I saw all those things sort of overlapping, and I guess it happened in a natural way to try to bring all those perspectives together and all those experiences. Fleshing them out was a healing practice and a bonding practice in some ways, by bringing people together by seeing just how interconnected we are.
This was also my very first attempt at fiction. So, when I look back at it now, there are things that I might have done differently. But I’m proud that I was able to do that and that I had the support of a lot of people in getting that little collection of fiction out there. So, to answer your question, it really is inspired by being from a small community and how all of our actions, all of our experiences, are so reliant on others and influential on others as well.
TV: Oh, I really love that. That’s a great answer. Thank you.
Three years after Midnight Sweatlodge, you published Legacy. It tackles themes of tremendous loss and grief after tragedy. So, I’m wondering, what inspired this story?
WR: There were a lot of things that inspired it. It was very much my own personal response to the collective trauma that Indigenous people survive. And by that point, I had been working as a daily news reporter for CBC for quite a few years. And starting out in Winnipeg, and getting to know the Indigenous community there and covering the stories of families who have endured trauma and tragedy, I saw so many common threads, again, amongst these tragedies. Not only amongst the responses to them, but the shared history of being disciplined, dispossessed, brutalized, and so on by colonialism. I really had a front-row seat to that collective trauma that a lot of Indigenous people have endured for hundreds of years now. And there were individual responses that I saw to a sister or an aunt being murdered or going missing, or a son or brother being brutalized by the police. You know, I saw so many people going through these things, and I thought there was something universal about how we respond to these tragedies that aren’t our fault and that are a result of being brutalized by the state. I wanted to explore something like the legacy of trauma, or the legacy of tragedies on just the individual family, and how the individuals of each family respond in different ways and how there’s no straight path to healing, and how it’s so complicated.
The more I explored that, the more I had the revelation that that’s my own family’s story, as well. One of my aunts was killed a couple of months before I was born. And my grandfather died tragically, as well. And my dad and his siblings, their entire lives since those tragedies have really been measured responses to those tragic and brutal events. As much as I tried just to stay away from my own family’s experience in writing that story, I have to acknowledge that was part of it, too. I think what I wanted to convey with the characters who were able to deal with the tragedy of losing their sister, I think, in more positive ways, was an homage to my own family, because my dad and his siblings especially never let their sister’s tragedy define her or them. They always spoke about her in positive and constructive ways and made sure that our generation knew who she was as a person and not just the victim. So, I wanted to convey that as well.
But you know, overall, these aren’t very happy stories, right? And even having it out there, I still sometimes struggle with it just because it deals with such heavy material. But I’m glad it’s out there, because I’ve heard that it has been a touchstone for a lot of people who have endured similar tragedies as well. And that starts the discussion. I think, if anything, that’s what I wanted to accomplish with it. But, you know, when I left that story, I always meant to revisit it. I always wanted to write a sequel to it. I don’t know if I will be able to over the next little while anyway. But at least I do want to write sort of a revised version with an extended epilogue to revisit who the characters are years down the line.
TV: Let’s talk a bit about Moon of the Crusted Snow. It has received much acclaim since its release in 2018. It has become especially relevant now as we make our way out of a global pandemic. I’m curious to hear how it feels to be immersed in a dystopic and apocalyptic world creatively in light of the simultaneous calamities in the world today.
WR: Yeah, it’s a little strange, for sure. You know, when I was dreaming it up and actually writing it, I could have never foreseen a global pandemic coming just a couple of years after that. So, to have it back in a minor spotlight of sorts, because of COVID-19, was a bit of a struggle because it was fortuitous for me. It saw a lot more readers, and it got back on the bestseller list, and I was able to have more opportunities because of it. But at what cost? A global pandemic, millions of deaths around the world. So, I would never say that I benefited from that, because that’s disrespectful and ignorant to paint it in that light. But I am grateful for the people who sought out the story and maybe took comfort in it as a result of this time of upheaval that we all went through. I had a really interesting moment of introspection as a result of that. Because I was like, why do people want to read about something like that during this mysterious and scary time? I think a lot of postapocalyptic and dystopian books got more looks during the pandemic, because stories like that can offer resolution during scary and mysterious times. And especially in those first six to eight months of the pandemic, when there was no vaccine, and we didn’t know what was going to come of all of this; there was no end in sight.
My theory is that people gravitated toward equally scary and mysterious stories that had a resolution, something that they could take comfort in. Whether it was good or bad, there was an outcome in the end. It was weird to relive all those things. I guess we were trying to figure out what the pandemic was going to be. But at the same time, you know, the whole book itself is based on calamity, too. It’s based on recent events, namely the 2003 blackout. That was what really catalyzed my intention in writing the story. But there is the lived experience and historical knowledge of surviving apocalypse as Indigenous people. And that base experience is there for almost anyone who’s Indigenous. Our existence now really is a response to those calamities, and what we’re able to construct as Indigenous people in our day-to-day lives. In terms of our identities, resistance is survival. And I think the essence of hope that I tried to convey in the story is based on that entirely.
The historical calamities are what I wanted to touch on and flesh out, and I wanted to enlighten non-Indigenous readers to what that lived experience can be like. That apocalypse for Indigenous people, for a lot of nations and communities has only happened within like the last 100 years or so. This is very much dystopia for a lot of Indigenous nations, the everyday life that we live through here in Canada, or in the United States, New Zealand, Australia, or wherever else. So, I think it’s the current crises that provide a different lens for me on the story, but it’s also a reminder that I wanted to write about all the historical wrongs that Indigenous people have endured to offer that parallel perspective to readers about what the end of the world can really be, and what it has been.
TV: This fall, Moon of the Turning Leaves, the much-anticipated sequel to Moon of the Crusted Snow, is coming out. Congratulations!
WR: Thank you.
TV: Where does the story pick up?
WR: The story picks up ten years into the future from the end of Moon of the Crusted Snow. Spoiler alert for readers who may not have had a chance to check it out—the first story ends about two and a half years after the initial blackout, and the community creates new settlements away from their reserve site. So, Moon of the Turning Leaves is ten years after their move into the bush, and they find themselves in a drought. They have also noticed that a lot of the food that they harvest from the land is dwindling, as are other natural resources, like the medicines from the bush and so on. They come to the realization that historically Anishinaabek would travel around according to the season and the food supply, but they’ve been static in this particular new settlement for too long, and they’re starting to deplete the natural resources around them. They realized that it’s been ten years since their move there and twelve years since the blackout, and they should finally make a serious effort to go south to see what’s left of the world; if, in fact, it has ended at all, but also to reconnect with their original homelands down on Georgian Bay. It’s explained in the first book that this community was displaced to far northern Ontario from the north shore of Georgian Bay, Lake Huron. They convene a group of six people to go on this exploratory mission. They walk through the bush down south, over the course of a summer, and they make discoveries along the way. I guess it’s all I can say. But it sort of follows along those same themes of renewal, of overcoming a crisis. And also, respecting the land and rekindling a connection with it and understanding it as the ultimate provider, really. I think this quest that the six characters go on, really brings that to the fore. And it was really fun to write. I hope that readers of the first book will be satisfied with it.
TV: What was the process of writing the sequel like? Did you feel that it was similar to writing Moon of the Crusted Snow?
WR: Oh, it’s entirely different from any writing experience I’ve ever had. Because any other work of fiction I’ve written before really was in my spare time, sort of off the side of my desk when I was working as a journalist. Especially by the time I started working for CBC—it became a pretty-time consuming job. So, any spare moment that I had, I worked on these fictional stories that I wanted to eventually get out there. And then of course, on the weekends, I spent a lot of time writing. But thanks to all the readers who enjoyed Moon of the Crusted Snow and encouraged me to dream up a sequel, I was eventually able to quit my career as a journalist and work full time as a novelist.
In May 2020, I left CBC, and that’s really when the work on Moon of the Turning Leaves began. As I was developing this idea, I had meetings with Penguin Random House Canada, which included the man who is now my editor, Rick Meier. We were kicking this idea for a sequel around, and then eventually, they offered me a contract. And as that came up, I started planning how I was going to leave my full-time job, because it’s a big leap. I was very fortunate in that I was able to apply for a Canada Council for the Arts grant, which helped me make that jump. So, from about May to December 2020 is really when I developed the idea, and when I started mapping out what would happen in the story. All the details of the setting and the overall narrative and plot points. I was able to spend eight months doing that, and I’ve never been able to do that. So, I really tried to fine-tune as much as I could in that eight-month period before I started writing the first draft, which I did in January 2021. It took me about six months to write the first draft. I submitted it in late May 2021. And we’ve been revising it, and Rick and I just finished the copy edits this past week. So, yeah, it is nearly complete.
I am very fortunate that it was my first opportunity working fulltime as a fiction writer. And I think I was able to really, obviously develop as a writer. I’m still learning as I go. Even though this is my fourth work of fiction, I still consider myself an emerging writer. I don’t have a literary background, especially educationally or professionally. So it’s really just a fortunate opportunity for me overall to be able to do this for a living. I’m just very grateful. And I’ve had great editors along the way who helped me learn how to do this. So, to answer your question, this is the first time I’ve been able to do something like this full-time, and it’s just been really rewarding, and really enjoyable.
TV: Oh, that’s amazing, and it’s so inspiring to hear. How did you know that this was a story that you wanted to continue in a sequel?
WR: When readers told me that they wanted to see a sequel! Because to be honest, I hadn’t considered a sequel at all. When Moon of the Crusted Snow was done, I quite literally saw the characters riding off into the sunset. I was like, okay, I’m done with them. I’m satisfied with how the story has ended. This is the story I wanted to tell. And we’ll see what happens now, going back to my job as a journalist, right? And I thought, okay, if I’m able to write another book sometime within the next five to ten years, that’d be great. That’d be another bonus. But when I started doing the promotional cycle for Moon of the Crusted Snow in the fall of 2018, during the question-and-answer periods of those events, almost always, the first question was, “Have you thought of writing a sequel?”
And for those first couple of events, I said no, because I was being honest. I hadn’t thought of writing a sequel at all. And the people who had asked would look very disappointed, and I started to feel really bad. I was like, oh, man, I gotta embellish the truth a little bit just to give them something, because I’m letting people down by being honest with them. So, eventually, I started saying, “Oh, you know, maybe I’m thinking about it.” But I hadn’t really been thinking about it. And so, as those months went on, I was like, okay, I’ll plan something in there anyway, who knows what’s ever going to happen?
So, the following summer came along and by that point, I partnered with my agent, Denise Bukowski. She said the response to the book was really good and that I should start seriously thinking about a sequel. I started thinking about it a little bit more. And she said she could probably get me a contract if I had a good enough idea. So that’s where the wheels really started turning. And then that fall is when I met with Rick Meier and Anne Collins of Penguin Random House. That process began essentially developing this long, elaborate pitch for them, which took many months to do before they finally offered me a contract. But it was the readers who connected with the story, the readers who began to love the characters as much as I do. And I think that the overall questions that people wanted to answer became my questions too. I thought, if there’s this much of an appetite for what comes next, then I owe that to readers especially. But I owe it to the characters, as well, because I spent so many years developing them and giving them this world and these opportunities that I owe it to them to take them into the future. That’s when my thinking around it really shifted, when I started looking at it that way, as a chance to revive the characters and reanimate them in the future.
TV: That’s really wonderful. It’s always great to hear that readers do have influence, you know, when they really love characters they can help bring them back. And it’s equally great to see the generosity of authors listening to their readers.
WR: Oh, yeah. I’m just so lucky. I just want to express how grateful I am to readers everywhere who connected with this story.
TV: Now, I’m not quite sure if this next question will make sense, because I’m trying to think it through as we’re talking. I’ve heard a lot of writers say that when they write, their characters stick with them long after the project comes to an end. I wonder, is where your characters ended up in Moon of the Turning Leaves where you thought they may end up back when you finished Moon of the Crusted Snow?
WR: Oh, that’s a really cool question. No, I guess the ending of Moon of the Turning Leaves is not where I imagined these characters to be when I was finishing Moon of the Crusted Snow. I don’t think I had the capacity to think that far ahead. And also I didn’t have the storytelling skill, or the writing skill, to envision that at the same time. I think I had such a narrow outlook on my literary career because I was primarily a journalist. And that’s why I think I was so satisfied with just getting the book out there, that I spent basically all my free time in the evenings and the weekends writing the story, and I got it out. It took a lot of extra time and effort to do, and I think that’s why I maybe left it where it was. To get back to what we were talking about earlier, to have the opportunity to revisit them, it really opened my eyes to different sorts of possibilities. I can’t explain what their ending is, because I don’t want to give it away. But when I went back through the last copy edit, it was emotional because here I was seeing these characters in a place that I never imagined them being. And I didn’t imagine myself being in this position either. It’s just hugely satisfying and gratifying. But very emotional, too, because I thought I was done with them, as much as I love them. But, you know, I was able to pour more love into them for the last three years and I’m going to be with them for another couple of years after this too.
TV: You mentioned that you’re finishing up the copy edits of Moon of the Turning Leaves. Are you working on anything else that you can talk about?
WR: I do want to work on some kids’ books. I think that is probably my priority at the moment. I am really intrigued by middle-grade novels, being able to write something for those middle-grade audiences, mostly because our oldest son, who’s six, will be getting to that point within the next few years. It’d be really cool to give him and his peers something and I’m going to have to learn how to do that, and then really develop those skills. But I do have a couple other novel ideas. I want to do something a little more lighthearted, because I’ve put my head into this postapocalyptic realm for the last ten years. And it would be nice to do something a little more humorous, which is what I want to attempt. So I do have a specific idea for a novel and at the same time I’ll probably get started working on all these things within the next few months.
TV: Oh, that’s very exciting. So there’s lots to look forward to.
WR: I hope so. Yeah, we’ll see.
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TV: To switch gears a little bit, let’s talk more in depth about your writing career. On your website, I read that your journalism career began in 1996, when you were an exchange student in northern Germany, writing about being an Indigenous youth abroad. I thought that was absolutely fascinating. I’d love to hear more about what that experience was like and what you learned from it.
WR: It was my first exposure to journalism, and it’s really what made me become a journalist. I was in my Grade 12 year in Parry Sound High School. This was in 1996. I really just had no idea what I wanted to do for college and university or a career after that. I was an honours student, so I got A’s and everything, but I wasn’t really being nudged into any particular path by teachers or guidance counsellors. And I was starting to get really discouraged because I felt myself slipping through the cracks. I was like, is this why so many Indigenous students give up because there’s just no set-out course for them, you know? I just started thinking about all these things, and became very frustrated.
I had one more year of high school left, so I decided that I would go to university, and I had that last year to do, but for what I had no idea. I was walking through the halls of the high school, and I looked on this bulletin board at the end of the hall, and there was a little flyer that said something like, “Have you ever thought of spending a year abroad? If so, come to this information session.” That day rolled around, and I went, and there was a member of the Rotary Club of Parry Sound there. She was talking about the Rotary Youth Exchange program and was trying to recruit people to apply to it. She explained that if you apply and you are successful, the Rotary Club will sponsor you to go to another country for a year. While you’re there you go to school, you’ll live with a few different families and so on. So I went home from school and told my parents about it. They thought it was a good idea, because they knew I was struggling with figuring out my path. And they thought if there’s an opportunity to spend a year somewhere else to figure that out, then go for it. They helped me apply, and after a long process, I was selected to go to Germany for a year.
About a month before I left, I was contacted by an editor named Dave Dale, who worked at a newspaper called the Anishinabek News, which was published by the Anishinabek Nation. It’s the organization that serves a few dozen Anishinaabe communities in Ontario. And he said that he had heard through one of our family friends that I was going on this exchange program. And he heard that I was, you know, keen on writing, and I was interested in current affairs and so on. But, despite those things, I’d never put together a journalism idea. So, he said, when you go over there, we’re interested in hearing about what your experiences are like as an Anishinaabe kid in a European country, and would you like to write for us? It sounded like a cool opportunity to document my year-long exchange program, so I said yes.
Then he said, “Every time we publish your articles, we’ll pay you a hundred bucks.” That totally blew my mind. As a seventeen-year-old kid, right, I was like, “What? You can get paid to write? No one ever told me that!” So that’s sort of where that all began.
After one week of being there, school started in the summer of 1997, in August. I had some very interesting, funny, and profound experiences almost right away. On my first day at school, there was a big crowd that had gathered to see me arrive because they heard that there was an “Indian from Canada” coming to their school. And they had the stereotypical image of an Indian in mind. So, you know, when I showed up, I was just wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and I had short hair back then. One of my eventual buddies told me afterward that they were all disappointed when they saw me because they were expecting an “Indian.” He was joking, obviously. But I wrote about that as one of my first articles about the stereotypes that I was going to have to contend with in this European country, and how I had to speak my truth there to inform them of what our ways of life really are. When Dave would publish my stories, he’d print the mailing address of the family that I was staying with. And about two to three weeks after each article, I’d get mail from readers. People would say thanks for representing Anishinaabek or thanks for being an ambassador for Canadians in general. It was really encouraging to get that feedback because it was the first time I felt that tangible connection that writing can create between a writer and a reader. And it was just so fulfilling and empowering that I decided I wanted to become a journalist.
I went back to Canada to Parry Sound High School for my last year of high school, and that’s when I applied to journalism school. Eventually, I got in at both Carleton and what was then called Ryerson, now called Toronto Metropolitan University. I decided to go to Toronto just because it was closer to Wasauksing, but also because it was Toronto. I was excited about being in the Big Smoke, as they say. But yeah, that’s how my journalism career began. And it really was about learning about how you can make community connections through writing in a journalistic way.
TV: It’s a really cool opportunity. And what a great way to figure out what you want to do by actually getting the chance to do it.
WR: Yeah, it was very much a fluke, but very fortunate that happened.
TV: You mentioned you have a journalism background, and you’ve worked with the CBC for many years. Did you find any similarities between your approach to journalism and fiction-writing, and did one ever inspire the other?
WR: I did find a connection, but not until many years after. I always saw them as two very separate things initially. And I think because journalism became my day job, I saw fiction as more of an escape, more of an opportunity to become more creative in those evening hours or on the weekends, in a coffee shop or wherever else. It’s like, okay, this is my time that I don’t have to write as a journalist. And I was working as a broadcast journalist, which is a very concise way to write. And I was like, okay, now it’s my opportunity to spread my wings. I didn’t totally know what I was doing, but I just took the opportunity to try to be as creative as possible. So, I think if you look at my trajectory, especially with Moon of the Crusted Snow, you can see how the language has changed quite a bit in the writing style. And that’s because I was encouraged to embrace more of that journalistic style of writing. So, in Midnight Sweatlodge and Legacy, I thought, okay, I’m not confined by time and space. I can take more of a chance onbeing more descriptive or spending maybe too much time on exposition. I would overwrite, essentially. But I saw that as my separate creative outlet, my chance to do that. And I think I might have gone over the top quite a bit. But when I was working on Moon of the Crusted Snow with Susan Renouf at ECW, she showed me the benefits of stripping things back and writing in a more active way like I do as a journalist. Mostly because Moon of the Crusted Snow is supposed to be a slightly faster-paced thriller kind of story. She said, try to play up your writing skills as a journalist and try to really put your head in that space of being more active. And trying to really just show those moments, but in more active ways, I guess. And that was a big revelation for me. And I thought, wow, all this time I’ve had this tool already, and I just need to exercise it in a slightly different way.
The other thing is that I really have been so fortunate in understanding humanity through my journalism career and really having a front-row seat to the human experience. That has really informed and influenced a lot of my fiction-writing, too, because of seeing people experience almost everything that you can experience as a human as a day-to-day news reporter. So, when I’m coming to a point in a story in fiction and I want to convey emotion, or I want to convey a human response to something specific, I can reflect back on a similar situation in my journalism career and be inspired by that. I’ll remember something like how the flames of a house fire reflected in a man’s teary eyes after he lost his home. I remember that so vividly because I empathized with that man. And I want readers to be able to empathize with the characters, the made-up characters that I’m writing about too. So, I think I’m able to rely on those memories.
TV: It’s so fascinating that first you saw your work in journalism and your fiction-writing as separate and then they kind of came together the longer that you were writing fiction.
WR: Yeah. The other thing is I had to understand that in journalism the goal is to make real people care about real people. In some ways, the goal of fiction is to make real people care about made-up people. But those made-up people are very much composed of real people in some ways too. So, I found when I was overthinking it, I would rely on that very basic premise. And that was really helpful for me.
TV: Okay, one more question about your writing career. A large part of your career was spent with the CBC, as we’ve discussed, and you’ve worked in various mediums from video journalism to web writing, producing, and being a radio host. Did you approach these aspects of your career in the same way as your creative writing or was it also quite separate initially?
WR: How I approach anything that I’m entering into, whether it’s for journalism or for research for fiction, or for making a community partnership, is to try to approach any new relationship with as much humility as possible and with the utmost respect. In many ways, you are requesting time from people. You are requesting the essence of humanity from them, their authenticity, their truthfulness, their stories. And I always remind myself that I’m not owed those things at all. I have to earn them. And to do that, I have to be mindful of my position, not just as a conduit for stories or for relationship-building or for whatever else. I represent myself, my family, my community and so on. So, there are a lot of different things at play when you are trying to tell stories or you’re trying to create something. And it’s not just as simple as going in and taking something or requesting something to take back. There’s time you have to put in to really understand what you’re talking about, understand what you’re trying to learn, and then really firmly establish your own intentions with whatever you’re trying to create to take elsewhere.
I think growing up in my culture and having ceremonial examples set before me and also understanding the fragility of everyone’s culture, of everyone’s own humanity, has helped me wrap my head around that and just understand the care and consideration that needs to go into it all. Whether it’s an interview for the radio or writing a web article or writing a novel or anything else, it’s really important to understand my place in a community and to be respectful. And I think that’s the foundation of everything that I try to do in order to do it properly and respectfully. So, in that sense, I see all of those actions in a very similar way, even though there are different desired outcomes and different actions behind them all.
I think if you rush through something or if you expect something, or if you have a certain plan for how what you’re creating is going to benefit you specifically, then I think you end up losing the plot, so to speak. It doesn’t become a community or shared thing anymore. It becomes an individual thing. And what I try to avoid is putting the focus on myself and what I may gain from something. I think being community-minded and understanding the communal efforts of creativity is at the core.
TV: That’s really incredible and it feels really authentic and I don’t want to say … right, but you know what I mean?
WR: Yeah, thanks. Well, authenticity is really the goal if you’re working with stories. That authenticity is what’s going to connect people with the stories.
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TV: Let’s talk a little bit about craft. The saying goes “write what you know.” How has your life experience shaped your writing?
WR: Predominantly, overwhelmingly, for sure. When I was a kid growing up on the reserve, I probably would have never foreseen how what I was experiencing would have been worthwhile for others to know about other than people like me, like Anishinaabe people or other Indigenous people. So, when I look back and I see that kid, who I was or who my peers were, I’m happy for all of us. This country is now improving awareness and knowing that our experiences are worthwhile and that our truths one day would be out there and that they would have been valued or seen. It’s enlightening for a lot of people.
Also, I am still connected to my own community. I go back there very regularly. We have a place where we live in the summertime, my family and I, close to where I grew up. So, all of those experiences have shaped my writing career. And when I think about something like Moon of the Crusted Snow, which is set in a community in far northern Ontario, where there’s a different dialect of Anishinaabemowin spoken, it’s going to have very different social and economic dynamics. But the day-to-day things you see in that story are directly inspired by the day-to-day things I saw growing up in Wasauksing. The vernacular amongst the community members, the jovial sort of joshing that you see between people. That’s all influenced by things I saw growing up in my community. And I think the more that I shared those things growing up, especially when I became a journalist, the more universal they became. They were shared experiences that others had and that was hugely empowering to learn at the same time.
So even though I’m writing about fictional communities, all of those authentic Anishinaabe experiences you see in my books are inspired by everything that I saw growing up. I feel very honoured that I’m able to do that, and I don’t take that for granted at all. I see it as a major responsibility to do that properly and respectfully. And that’s why I go back to my community to share ideas, to run things by specific knowledge-keepers like my dad or aunts and uncles or other relatives, because I don’t want to overstep at the same time. I want to make sure that I do it justice in everything that I write.
TV: How do you know the beginning of your stories are the beginning?
WR: I think that’s always a really tough place to begin with as a writer. What is the first line going to be or where are you going to find the character? Maybe this is part of my TV journalism experience, but I always try to start from a wide angle, a wider shot of the main character to really place them on the land. And I think that that’s where I try to begin. Just so that the reader can place themselves at the same time. That just makes the most sense to me, especially if it begins in a solitary way. I think that’s mostly what I’ve done so far. But we’ll see. The more I learn how to be a writer and the more I experiment, we’ll see what else happens.
TV: Is there a first line of any story or novel or work that has stuck with you?
WR: When I first saw your question, I was like, should I open up some books and try to refresh my memory? And then I decided no, that wouldn’t be totally truthful if I went and did that. So, the first thing that comes to mind that I always remember is the first line of The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp. And it’s something like: “I remember. It is the summer of my crucifixion.” That first line is so profound during the rest of the story. And then it goes on to say something like, “I wanted to keep as pure as possible, so I had two baths a day,” or something like that. But anyway, “I remember. It is the summer of my crucifixion” is a line I always carry with me.
TV: You’ve written short stories, novels, and of course, non-fiction. How do you decide which medium is best for the story that you’re trying to tell?
WR: That’s a good question. I think it’s really hard to figure out, and it’s not always clear. Moon of the Crusted Snow was originally supposed to be a short story.
TV: Wow.
WR: Yeah. I thought, okay, this is a fun little story. Maybe it’s only a short story. The original concept I had for it was this community that endures the blackout and they eventually find out it’s the end of the world. And that was sort of it. But the more I explored the idea, the more I thought about the external elements coming in and the revelations about what’s going on. And that’s how it expanded into a novel for me. So maybe it’s a matter of developing the idea and figuring out if there’s more there than something short. I don’t think I’m experienced enough to really say that I know exactly how I make those decisions because as I mentioned earlier, I spent eighteen years being a fiction writer off the side of my desk as more or less a secondary creative outlet to my journalism. So, I think I would make those decisions much more concisely due to the time constraints that I had. With Midnight Sweatlodge, those stories were already short stories to begin with. So, I think that was an easy decision to make. And I think with Legacy, I wrote it kind of like short stories because that’s what I knew how to do at that point. Moon of the Crusted Snow was more or less a standalone novel told in a linear way from start to finish.
I don’t know how to answer your question because maybe I don’t know how yet. Maybe I don’t know how to make those decisions. But it’s fun to be able to try to be creative in that way. I think now that I have more time to do these things, it’ll be more clear to me what my process actually is. But I guess when a story is ready, it’s ready, right? And I haven’t had the luxury of spending all kinds of time with certain stories, but maybe when I do, over the next few years, I’ll be able to decide how to make those calls when I need to.
TV: Maybe I’ll check back a few magazine issues from now and we’ll do a follow-up! And one final question. What is the best piece of advice you’ve received?
WR: Lee Maracle told me that you have to respect a story when it comes to you, and you have to abide by its truth as it presents itself to you. Whether it’s through your own imagination or whether it’s a story that’s relayed to you by someone in your community, your family, or even a stranger that perhaps you interview for work or whatever else. She said to me that you have to honour the story itself. You have to respect it and present it as you see it. And I think not to exploit it—that’s not what she said, but how I interpreted that. A story is a gift, essentially, is what she was telling me. And you shouldn’t necessarily commodify it for your own benefit. And by being truthful and authentic in that way, the story will continue to give to you for as long as it’s out there. And that’s just some of the wisdom that Lee was able to impart on me and so many other people.
That’s what my approach has been for a long time now. It’s just being respectful by acknowledging a story as a gift and as someone who’s carrying the story, by doing my best to nurture that gift of a story and share it with others. And I think that’s a good practice that a lot of people can abide by.
TV: That is really good advice. Thank you so much for sharing that.
WR: Yeah, thank you. And thanks, Lee.
Moon of the Turning Leaves will be published in October 2023 by Penguin Random House.