Celebrated Cree author Harold R. Johnson dead at 64

Harold R. Johnson, an influential voice among Indigenous writers in Canada, has died, CBC Books has confirmed.

He died on Wednesday. He was 64years old.

Johnson, a member of the Montreal Lake Cree Nation, was a lawyer and writerwhose groundbreaking book Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People (and Yours)was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for non-fiction.

"The storyteller, trapper, father, brother, husband, uncle Harold R. Johnson took his final breath today and will continue the rest of his journey on to the other side. He was surrounded by his loved ones," according to a statement made by Johnson's family via Facebook.

"At this time there will be no funeral service. Arrangements for a celebration of life will be communicated in the coming months. We ask that everyone gives our family some time and space to grieve. Thank you."

Johnson, whose most recent work was the 2021 bookThe Bjrkan Sagas, had recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer.

"Our time with Harold Johnson was too short. We will miss him dearly and send our deepest condolencesto his loved ones," said House of Anansi, publisher of Johnson's booksThe Bjrkan SagasandClifford,in a prepared statement.

Becoming a writer

Johnson was born in 1957in northern Saskatchewan to a Swedish father and a Cree mother. As an adult, Johnson enlisted in the Royal Canadian Navy and worked as a logger, trapper and miner before going to university.

He studied law and completed an MAat Harvard Law Schoolwhere, on top of his studies,he wrote his first novel,Billy Tinker. Hemanaged a private practice for several years before becoming a Crown prosecutor.

"I wroteBilly Tinkermore as a lark. I was just having fun and it turned into something. It wouldn't have been writtenif it wasn't for this writing group I was in with a couple other Canadians," he told The Next Chapter's Shelagh Rogers in 2022.

LISTEN | Harold R. Johnson speaks with Shelagh Rogers:

22:43Harold R. Johnson on his life in stories

Harold R. Johnson talks to Shelagh Rogers about his life, his writing career and the lessons he's learned.

He was writing when he was four, but didn't publish until he was in his 40s.

The floodgates opened and he would have11 books published, including Clifford, Peace and Good Order, Cry Wolf and the dystopian novelCorvus.Longlisted for Canada Reads in 2019, the book depicts a world ravaged by climate change and war where people have migrated north to escape unlivable conditions.

"I wanted to write about climate change, quite bluntly. The entire book is premised on what's going to happen andCorvusis my imagining of it.I had toputin some interesting science and characters to keep the reader engaged," he told CBC Books in 2019.

• For the novel Corvus, Harold R. Johnson envisioned a thriving Indigenous community in a dystopian future

Firewater, an examination of alcoholconsumption among Indigenous people in Canada, draws on Johnson's work as aCrown prosecutorand was inspired by the loss of his younger brother to a drunk driver.

Johnsonat the time said he wanted to create a new narrative about alcohol and Indigenous people, and the hardships drinking causes for many in Johnson's Cree community.

During his 20 years as a lawyer and Crown prosecutor in Northern Saskatchewan, Johnson sent many Indigenous offenders to jail for crimes committed while drunk. This, he told CBC Radio's Piya Chattopadhyayin 2018, was not helping anyone and that Indigenous people should be able to take over justice in their own communities.

LISTEN | Harold R. Johnson speaks with Out in the Open:

The Morning Edition - Sask9:03Harold Johnson says First Nations people need a new narrative when it comes to alcohol

Harold Johnson talks about his new book, "Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing my People, and Yours." He explains it all in an interview with Sheila Coles.

"In my community, we don't want to talk aboutit publicly because we're afraid people are going to point their fingers at usand call us 'lazy, dirty, drunken Indians'," he would tellThe Current in 2016.

"The writing just flowed out. It was effortless. When I got past the fear and sat down, it just poured out of me. I wanted to have a conversation with my brother. When I wrote it, the language in there is deliberate. There are no academic words in there because my brother wasn't an academic and I wanted to write to him in a language that he would understand," he told CBC Books in 2017.

Stories are powerful

He told Rogers in 2020 that his storytelling approach evolved to reframethe narrative around Indigenous people.

• Why Harold R. Johnson's writing explores the nature of story and changing the narrative

"Stories are extremely powerful. Stories can heal you, stories can kill you. So it's like placebo; I give you a sugar pill, I tell you it's medicine. If you take the pill and believe the story, 30 to 50 per cent of people experience a reduction in symptoms," he told The Next Chapter.

"Thinking about storytellingin a new way came out spontaneously in a conversation I was having. Somebody asked me a question and I said, 'We have to change the story we're telling ourselves.'

"I blew myself away with that. I then started thinking about story and took that idea home and sat on it for a long time."

In one of his final interviews, he spoke with Rogers about his successes in his life and writing career.

"What a ride,what a glorious ride that was!If you go far enough back, there's a little eight-year-old boy who lost his dad and was forced to go on welfare. Iwas this half-breed from northern Saskatchewan nothing was expected from me except that I fail," Johnson said.

"I'm at peace. But peace is at various levels. I have not found nirvana but I'm doing pretty damn good for an old trapper."