Joshua Whitehead wrestles with his identity as a writer in Canada and whether he fits within the borders of Canadian literature, often referred to as CanLit. “At times I say yes, because obviously I am hailed and recognized by such,” says the poet, author and academic, who is a 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize juror.
Yet Whitehead says he doesn’t define or constrict himself to trying to fit within borders — literary and generic. Instead, he says he is obliged to recognize Indigenous Nations as sovereign nations within Canada politically on the page and in how he sees himself in the larger literary landscape.
Whitehead, a two-spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1), joined a recent panel of Canadian writers for the Giller Master Panel: Canada’s Leading 2SLGBTQ+ Voices, to discuss the rise of queer and trans voices in Canadian literature. Topics ranged from how trans and queer writers fit in the CanLit scene, to whether being part of the mainstream literary scene was important, and what gave urgency to each of their works.
The panel also included Filipino-Canadian Catherine Hernandez, author of Scarborough and screenwriter of the soon-to-be released film based on the book; Arielle Twist, a Nehiyaw, two-spirit, trans woman from George Gordon First Nation, Sask., whose debut collection Disintegrate/Dissociate won The Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry; Lorimer Shenher, author of This One Looks Like a Boy, the story of his life as a transgender man coming to terms with his fear of transitioning to male, and That Lonely Section of Hell, the story of Vancouver’s missing women from his perspective as the lead police investigator.
Whitehead (pictured above) said his experiences growing up on a reserve in Manitoba were the foundation for his becoming a storyteller and a hustler, “peddling poems for pennies,” but he never saw himself as part of the CanLit community. Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, a novel born out of the author’s and his brother’s experience in residential school, Whitehead said, ignited his own desire to tell his stories. “I think I needed to see another queer Cree [writer] in downtown Winnipeg, my stomping grounds,” he said.
Sitting around his great-grandmother’s dinner table as a boy, and the only male in the room, listening to the aunties gossip “was a major writing and storytelling protocol or pedagogy that I underwent,” Whitehead said.
However, it was attending activist events in Selkirk, Man., that led to his being bound inherently to grassroots politics as a two-spirit, Indigenous writer. “Colonialist, heteropatriarchal, cisgender folks have always said [people like me] are not supposed to be here, and we are, so every day and every story is political defiance,” he said.
Of his upcoming book Making Love with the Land, in which he explores the intersections of Indigeneity, queerness, and, most prominently, mental health through a nêhiyaw lens, Whitehead said: “The urgency of my writing of this book very much comes out of the complete cultural and actual genocide of Indigenous peoples.”
The book has its roots in an experience he had one hot, humid day while working at a summer camp for youth run by the Friendship Centre — a national non-profit organization that provides services to help Indigenous people succeed in urban centres — in Selkirk. A boy came into the centre and collapsed from what Whitehead initially thought was heatstroke but, he said, it turned out to be an opioid overdose. In speaking with the boy later, Whitehead was shocked to discover that he thought overdosing, or touching death, was a natural part of growing up. “That never, ever left me. What type of extreme or injurious pain does a 14-year-old boy have to be in to be addicted to painkillers?
“That was a huge primer in thinking about the urgency of what I wanted to do.”
Indigenous youth have one of the highest rates of suicide in Canada, Whitehead said, noting that many who are suicidal identify as trans, non-binary, queer, or two-spirit. The book is a way to show them that depression, thoughts of suicide, anxiety or insomnia are things that can be talked about with the communities, or even in a book, he said.
“When I was a child, you could not be queer and Indigenous on the reservation, you also couldn’t be queer and Indigenous in the urban spaces. You had to obliterate one to become the other. I’ve found a way to bring them together and I think a lot of youth are doing that but not quick enough.”
You might think the acclaim of Jonny Appleseed, which was long listed for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize, would be Whitehead’s vision of success. Instead, he is most proud of having Mihkokwaniy, a poem he wrote about his paternal grandmother who was murdered in the 1960s and is buried in an unmarked grave in Saskatoon, published in full-metal indigiqueer, a collection of his poetry. The poem won the 2016 Governor General’s History Award for Aboriginal Arts and Stories. Putting her name and that of her murderer on a page and having it studied at universities shows the power of storytelling, he said.
Watch the Giller panel discussion on YouTube here.
