Wampum

Fun Reading

The kids are full on bannocks and bacon and juice, so I can steal a moment between kitchen and digging out. A friend called last night from Quebec. He's got 120cm of snow, wicked more than I have.

Traditional cultural reproduction in literary (oral and written) form is a winter activity. Interleaved between the Napi Cycle, the accomplishments of Kuto'yisa (Kuto´yisa, Kuto´yisa, the dogs are eating your bones! as Gracie loves to say, and will teach to Sam and Kezzie this season), and the lives of Gluskabe and Agaskwa, the Odessy of the Simple and the Illiad against the Serpents, there are Jack Vance's terrifying Vandals, AE Van Vogt's Slan, spot-on for passing urban skins, the lasting importance of being ... under-armed in Indian Country, James Blish's four spindizzies, with the crew vs passanger dicotomy of contribution and parisitism, Bradbury's untranslated Chronicles, more foreign than than our common Hopewellian culture, more foreign even than Europe, so foreign our feet hesitate to dance on that red earth. Meters of pulp. Beautiful pulp.

A Modern Cree Work

A Modern Choctaw Work

Assiniwi attempts the silence of the Beothuk. Of course, the Beothuk did not disapear any more mysteriously than the Anasazi did. They took to boats and joined the mainland Wabenakis. The work hasn't been translated into English. Birchfield tries something else, crypto continuity, if the reveiwers are to be believed.

I'm looking forward to reading both Birchfield and Assiniwi this season. Both are unlikly to ever be expropriated and anthologized by cultural parasites, sci-fi or indian-lit, as they attempt what is real. The snakes are sleeping, its time for reading, and writing.

Posted by EBW at January 9, 2005 11:06 AM | TrackBack