This is the poet who brought the issue of appropriation of voice out of the closet andtold Canada to make room for Indigenous writers. This is poetry without artifice orobfuscation, poetry that reveals the evocative truth of being Anishinaabe in the 21stcentury living in a colonized land. Read these poems and celebrate Keeshig’s visionof survival and beyond.
– Armand Garnet Ruffo, author of The Thunderbird Poems
Years ago, Lenore Keeshig threw a scare into the Canadian cultural establishment,defiantly calling upon it to “stop stealing Native stories.” In the uproar that followed,publishers began to open doors to Canadian Indigenous writers. Since that time, hertoughness of spirit has not diminished, but there is more to Lenore. She is a magicalstoryteller, writing in a gentle voice about mothers, daughters, grandparents, trees,water, clouds, bears and Nanabush. To her, Neyaashiinigmiing is “the most beautifulplace in the world,” and she has captured this in her poems.
– Rob Rolfe, author of Beyond Mudtown, Saugeen, and The Hawk
Anishnaabe storyteller Lenore Keeshig’s lyric voice does contend with stereotype, Canadian law and the lies of history books, but it’s always with the end of getting a hearing for our lived truths. Her poems prove that children and family, that bears and trees, waterspouts and guiding spirits make a world more worth our lifetimes than the one Cowboys and Indians used to define: you have looked across this land, this water, this beauty with a love reaching far into the past from where I stand, you have looked across this landscape forever(paths)
– Daniel David Moses, author of ‘A Small Essay on the Largeness of Light’and Other Poems and Almighty Voice and His Wife