As Long as the Rivers Flow

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is the
author of several books, including The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese
Women’s Lives, Kurlek and Margaret Laurence: T

As Long as the Rivers Flow is a small, beautifully illustrated book that
tells the true story of Larrie Loyie, a Native youth born in Slave Lake,
Alberta. Loyie lived a traditional Cree life until the age of 10, when
he was forcibly removed to a residential Mission school in northern
Alberta. Parents of children who refused to go could be put in prison.
The autobiographical tale is set in the summer of 1944, Loyie’s last
few months before entering the school. As he shares his story, readers
learn about the traditions and culture of Cree life. The boy travels
with his family to pick berries and medicinal plants, watches his
grandmother make winter moccasins, and cares for a baby owl. His coming
of age as a young man follows his terrifying encounter with a giant
grizzly.

For roughly 100 years, children like Loyie were taken to government-
and church-sponsored schools where they were forced to speak English and
do hard, manual labor. When Loyie returned to his people at age 14,
“he felt like a stranger. He tried to recapture the feeling of freedom
he had felt when he lived with his family in the bush, but things were
never the same.” Later he studied English grammar, taught himself to
type, and became a writer.

This short biogaphical narrative vividly dramatizes the old Cree ways.
Loyie’s partnership with writer and editor Constance Brissenden stems
from a writers’ group called Living Tradtions that the two started in
1993 to encourage Native people to write about their traditional
stories. Heather Holmlund’s expressive watercolor illustrations
partner the text perfectly.

As Long as the Rivers Flow won the 2003 Norma Fleck Award for Canadian
Children’s Non-Fiction. The book is highly recommended.