An excellent audio performance by Eric G Dove made this a quick listen. But I did find myself growing tired of Schechter's intrusion into the story ofAn excellent audio performance by Eric G Dove made this a quick listen. But I did find myself growing tired of Schechter's intrusion into the story of Alferd Packer. Rather than simply reporting the information we have on Packer's cannibalism in the post-civil war Rocky Mountains, and the competing contemporary opinions of Packer's innocence or guilt, Schechter passes his own judgement on the case, albeit subtly, and I found myself wondering why this particular case garnered his personal opinion. It was an unfortunate distraction from a true crime writer I usually enjoy thoroughly. Still, this is work a listen....more
I am wemistikoshiw, so I don't and won't pretend to understand what it is to be Oji-Cree -- nor any other nation for that matter. I pass no judgment oI am wemistikoshiw, so I don't and won't pretend to understand what it is to be Oji-Cree -- nor any other nation for that matter. I pass no judgment on their beliefs, their lives, their experiences, their ways, but I do feel the great of weight personal disgust and guilt all wemistikoshiw should feel for the genocide of their peoples and cultures our ancestors began, which we carry on every day.
I've been the lover of a Cree woman, a woman I still love and always will, but I have no illusions that my love for her makes me any less wemistikoshiw, any less culpable for what has been done to the proud nations she sprang from. The most I can ever hope to attain is empathy, an incomplete understanding, and a heart willing to hear Indigenous stories coupled with a resolve to do what I can when I can.
As Boyden spoke through Niska and Xavier and Elijah, and as the voices of Niska and Xavier made Boyden fade away, I began to hear whispers of "let me tell you this wemistikoshiw" and "have you thought of this wemistikoshiw" and "don't ignore this wemistikoshiw" because what I was being told, what the whispers were speaking of, were things too important to be ignored.
Yes there is a terrifying and even sometimes thrilling tale of trench warfare in World War I in the foreground of Three Day Road, but there is so much more being told to us. It is telling us about the end of a way of life. I may think it was a beautiful way of life, others may think it was backwards, still others may think it was "heathen," but what really matters is that it was a way; it was valuable; it deserved better. It is a story of how that way was ended, of the ways colonization tore down, took away, raped, brainwashed, manipulated, murdered or slowly eroded through attrition. It is the effects and affects of colonization and how there is no post-colonial period for Indigenous North Americans. There is only colonization. Niska and Xavier are whispering these things to the wemistikoshiw because we need to hear them and do more than hear them. We need to take them into our everyday lives. To look in the mirror at our own wemistikoshiw visages and see all of those whispers written there.
Three Day Road is rich with meaning, bursting into the mud like the largest shells Fritz could throw at the lines, and I doubt that the multiple readings I am sure to give this novel will ever allow me to tap into them all. And maybe, perhaps, this first reaction that I've written here is the best and most important meaning I will ever take away from Three Day Road -- maybe knowing that I am wemistikoshiw, knowing and recognizing that, is exactly what the story needed me to know. ...more
Mad fucking madness! For sheer ballsy creativity this is the book you must read. For the coolest superpower ever (and this is the one I now officiallyMad fucking madness! For sheer ballsy creativity this is the book you must read. For the coolest superpower ever (and this is the one I now officially want) this is the book you must consume. For a post-contagion world this is the book you want. For blood and guts and gore this is the book you must want to read. For art that makes you snicker and your eyes bulge this is the book you must see. Devour this book like the putrefying flesh of a dead poodle. If you can keep it down you will love it. ...more
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