Gatherings: The En'owkin Journal of First North American Peoples, Vol. 2

Beverly Rasporich is an associate professor in the Faculty of General
Studies at the University of Calgary and the author of Dance of the
Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro.

This second volume of an annual journal—centred on the work of Native
writers and produced by Natives at the En’owkin Centre in Penticton,
B.C.—is testimony to the current literary renaissance of Native
authors. A collection of poems, essays, prose pieces, oratory, stories,
legends, and songs, Gatherings is a volume of exceptional quality
throughout. The volume’s theme (“Two Faces: Unmasking the Faces of
Our Divided Nations”) reflects the tension of Natives living between
cultures and wearing the masks of each. This theme is a persistent one
in Canadian “ethnic” writing—that body of literature by authors
(usually second generation) of various marginalized ethnic groups. But
the pain, alienation, and tragic consequences of inhabiting two worlds,
as expressed here, knows no equal. For well-known author Alootook
Ipellie (an Inuk-Canadian), “Walking on both sides of this / Invisible
Border / Each and every day / And for the rest of my life / Is like
being / Sentenced to a torture chamber / Without having committed a
crime.” One of the most striking expressions of the “torture
chamber” can be found in “The Native Experience,” a prose piece
written by Columpa Bobb at age fourteen. Her maturity of vision and her
understanding of grim circumstances is astounding.

While the heart of the volume is poetry—with the “raging agony,”
“smothered screams,” and “dream-speaking” of the poems acutely
felt—there are also several significant pieces of philosophic and of
academic interest. Artist Gerald McMaster introduces the text with a
commentary on being a Native-Canadian artist; Lee Maracle presents an
interesting theoretical piece entitled “Skyros Bruce: First Voice of
Contemporary Native Poetry”; and John Mohawk adds an oratorical
address, “Indian History Through Indian Eyes,” to the volume’s
clear and strong Native voice. One can only look forward to the
En’owkin Journal’s volume three.