Michelle Good invites conversation not confrontation on Indigenous issues in her new book Truth Telling

The Next Chapter20:22Michelle Good on Truth Telling

Michelle Good on her essay collection Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada.

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good sparked a nationwide dialogue about the importance of Indigenous authors in the Canadian literary landscape. In light of the success of her debut novel, Good felt it necessary to keep the conversation going in her latest essay collectionTruth Telling.

In 2021, the Cree writer released Five Little Indians, a novel following five kids who have survived residential schools and are trying to find ways forward. Five Little Indians went on to gain massive success as the novel won the 2020 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award and CBC's Canada Reads 2022 as championed by Vogue writer Christian Allaire. It was the #1 bestselling Canadian book at independent bookstores across Canada in both 2021 and 2022.

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Good is an author, lawyer and member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan whose writing often weaves in her own mixed heritage and Indigenous history. Through her fiction and nonfiction, she has been a powerful voice of knowledge and empathy for the rights of Indigenous people today.

InTruth Telling,Good explores many issues that are currently affecting Indigenous people in Canadawhile incorporating her own experience and family's legacy in seven personal essays. She contextualizes contemporary discussions about reconciliation, the emergence of Indigenous narratives and more through historical knowledge, essentially providing a resource to mobilize Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians alike into active change.

Truth Tellingis on theCBCBooks summer reading list.

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How fiction inspired personal narratives

Canada's overwhelming response to Five Little Indians prompted Good to begin writing Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada.

"This book happened more quickly and with a sense of urgency. I had been writing a new novel and I very consciously decided to set it aside and go into the collection of essays because of the response to Five Little Indians. It is very clear to me that non-Indigenous Canada is really prepared right now to enter into these conversations," Good said in an interview with The Next Chapter's Shelagh Rogers.

Good expressed that she wanted Truth Telling to offer an invitation to non-Indigenous people, rather than a confrontation.

"Nobody listens to anybody if everybody's yelling. I believe that the most important thing in terms of reconciliation is the ability of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to speak to each other with mutual respect and without recognition of the power differential that we have lived with for so long."

Calling for government accountability

Within the seven essays ofTruth Telling metaphors serve an important purpose to convey the true frustrations Indigenous people have with Canadian leadership. One of the essays uses an analogy to the character of Lucy from Peanuts who keeps pulling away a football from Charlie Brown.

"I wanted a very straightforward image of breaking promises. What we have in that is Lucy, or the federal government, saying, 'Look, I'm not going to pull this football away from you. I'm telling you this is how it's going to be we care about you, we want self-determination,' then we go for it, we say, 'Okay we believe you this time.' Then we run for the football and whoop there it goes again.

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Good uses this reference to point towards a larger systemic issue Canada has with failing to follow through on promises made to Indigenous peoples.

"The roots of colonialism still drive the governing systems in Canada. So they really have no creative ability to not pull the football, to not break the promise. They won't have that until they make necessary and substantive change that acknowledges Indigenous people as equal partners. That acknowledges that without Indigenous people, really there would have been no Canada. When we think of Indigenous people as allies in the wars, that ultimately determines the geography of this country," said Good.

Broken treaties

Truth Telling expands on several of Good's past published essays such as 'A History of Violence' to highlight the way historical patterns repeat themselves. Good emphasizes that the ways in which treaties were broken continue to affect current realities.

"Something that I try to point out in the book is that Indigenous people were not novices at treaty. Indigenous people right across North America, and let's remember that this border is really imaginary, treatied with each other. They had agreements with each other about the use of territory, about war, about how they would relate with each other and so on. What they were novices to was treaties where one partner has no goodwill.

Indigenous people were not novices at treaty ... What they were novices to was treaties where one partner has no goodwill.- Michelle Good

Good explains the sense of entitlement settlers felt to land, wealth and power which was upheld by the government despite the agreements they had made with Indigenous communities.

"The response of the government was not to explain carefully and intelligently to the settlers that this is Indigenous people's entitlement under our international agreement.

In one of the essays from Truth Telling, Good uses the example of the 1889 "Peasant" Farming Policy in the Prairies.

"What they did was reduce the number of implements that they were providing to Indigenous farmers. They were not permitted to use any king of mechanized farming equipment and they were not allowed to plant wheat. They could plant other grains and root vegetables, but everything was done with a shovel and a hole.

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"The government, with intention, undermined the ability of Indigenous farmers to be successful because the settlers were feeling that this was an unfair advantage. Nonetheless, Indigenous farmers were successful anyway," remarked Good.

Passing down familial knowledge

Truth Telling gives a vulnerable insight into each side of Good's family. In the essay called 'Racism, Carefully Sewn' she writes of her paternal grandmother's ignorance towards Good's mother.

"She basically took to her bed, was just outraged and told my father he would be disinherited. In the late '40s, my mom had just come back from spending three years in New Zealand at a time when we still had to get passes to leave the reserve to train as a nurse and a midwife. She was a celebrity, she was presented to Princess Alice, she was a force of nature and of goodness. And my grandmother treated her as though she were less than human.

Embodying one of the main tenets of the book, Good goes on to say the intolerance of her grandmother was part of a culture which should be questioned and deconstructed.

"She was a Prairie woman of her day and it goes to this notion I have of non-Indigenous oral history where through the generations since first contact, non-Indigenous people in power and not in power have been speaking in derogatory ways about Indigenous people forever and it is a learned behavior. As things worked out, my mother ended up caring for my grandmother at her end of lifetime and that relationship was ultimately mended largely through my mother's capacity to forgive and to understand.

"It's so important for us to think about what the children of Duncan Campbell Scott heard or the children of Hayter Reed, the major proponent of the residential schools. What did their children hear at the knee of those people and how has that created this almost indelible weave in the Canadian social fabric of racism and disregard for Indigenous people?"

The values of Good's Indigenous maternal grandparents have also been passed down as the author remarks.

"My grandfather and grandmother were the most incredible people, they were people with deep values and deep beliefs. They treated people with respect and they expected to be treated with respect. They were kind, they were generous and they were strong. That's the milieu that my mother was in until she was nine when she had to go to residential school. I think she was just mortified, frankly. I think she was like, 'How could anybody treat me like this?" She just decided this was not going to be the way her life was and it wasn't."

What did their children hear at the knee of those people and how has that created this almost indelible weave in the Canadian social fabric of racism and disregard for Indigenous people?- Michelle Good

How reading offers hope and resistance

As an author who has herself made a lasting contribution to Indigenous literature, Good stresses the importance of giving a platform for other Indigenous authors and stories to thrive.

"To see in such a short period of time it go from so few people being able to have Indigenous perspectives published to what we see today, where it's just so prolific is wonderful. Not only because it's literature, but because it's literature, but because so often Indigenous literature tracks the activism of the ages that have brought us to where we are now.

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"I sort of see them as twin tracks, if you will. The rise of Indigenous literature as our resistance and our activism has moved. Those two things have grown together almost step by step and it makes me happy.

When asked about her outlook as an Indigenous woman and author who has faced both adversity and acclaim, Good says she remains hopeful.

"Hope is like a tonic. It's when everything around you is falling apart, when your agreement with the federal government turns out to be nonsense. No matter what challenge you're experiencing, hope is that light to look at to say there is always a chance that things will improve, that we will succeed, that life will be better. I think my mother is the person who instilled the notion of the power of hope in me. If I had not been such a hopeful person, my life would have been very different."