Disinherited Generations:
Our Struggle to Reclaim Treaty Rights for First Nations Women and their Descendants
By Nellie Carlson & Kathleen Steinhauer
As told to Linda Goyette
Published by the University of Alberta Press
174 pages, $24.95

Reviewed by Joy Fisher

In her foreword, activist Maria Campbell calls this a “small and modest” book about “kitchen work” – revolutionary work by women that, in the end, always gets finished.

Through the recollections of two of the leaders of the Indian Rights for Indian Women movement, this book recounts the quarter-century struggle to regain treaty rights for First Nations women who “married out”— that is, married non-status First Nations or non-aboriginal men, thereby losing status as treaty Indians for themselves and their children.

Nellie Carlson and Kathleen Steinhauer grew up as friends in the prairies, both Cree women eligible for rights under Treaty Six. Signed in 1876 by their ancestors and representatives of the Crown, Treaty Six promised one square mile of land for each family of five in a permanent reserve, hunting and fishing rights, education benefits, health benefits and annual treaty payments. Beginning in 1951, only band members registered under the Indian Act had the legal right to live on-reserve, share in band resources, own or inherit property, vote for band council and chief and be buried on the reserve.

Under Section 12(1)(b), any First Nations woman who married a non-status Indian, a Metis man or a non-aboriginal man would lose her Indian status regardless of her ancestry. This often forced exile from a home community for First Nations women. Nellie Carlson lost her treaty rights when this section came into effect because her husband, Elmer Carlson, was Metis.

Kathleen Steinhauer lost her treaty rights when she married Gilbert Anderson, whose band had lost treaty rights under yet another provision of the Indian Act. When Anderson asked Steinhauer whether she was willing to give up her treaty rights to marry him, she replied: “Never mind. I’ll get them back.” Eventually, she did— and so did some 170,000 others who had lost their rights under Section 12(1)(b).

The struggle of these women to reclaim their rights for themselves and their children, and the network of First Nations women who worked with them in the Indian Rights for Indian Women movement, took decades and met with resistance not only from the government, but from some First Nations men, who referred to them as “squaw libbers,” and even from some women who had married status Indians, thereby retaining their rights, or, in some cases, gaining rights they were not previously entitled to.
Telling the story also took a long time. The conversations of the women with journalist Linda Goyette, then an Alberta resident, began in the fall of 2000 and ended in the summer of 2011. Nellie Carlson was 85 years old by the time the book was completed, and Kathleen Steinhauer was 80 when she died in 2012, shortly before its publication.

This is not an easy book to read for many reasons. Documented history is not as much fun as, say, historical fiction. Furthermore, it can be painful to focus on injustice, even when justice triumphs in the end. In addition, the repetitive nature of spoken history can be tedious as the subjects return to the same event or story again and again. But uncovering hidden history —and isn’t women’s history always hidden? — can also be like unearthing buried treasure. This book is a gem.

Joy Fisher graduated from the UVic writing program in June 2013.

Working the Dead Beat: 50 Lives that Changed Canada
By Sandra Martin
House of Anansi Press, 429 pages, $29.95

Reviewed by Joy Fisher

The first thing I noticed about this impressive book was its cover. I can’t remember the last time I saw a hardback embossed in an intricate gold-leaf design. The second thing I noticed was the publisher: House of Anansi Press. This, I thought, promises to be a memorable read.

I wasn’t disappointed.

In Working the Dead Beat, Sandra Martin, the Globe and Mail journalist sometimes referred to as the “Obit Queen of Canada,” resurrects the dead, sets them in the context of their times, and delivers—not eulogies—but, rather, complex and nuanced assessments of their lives and characters, “warts and all,” as she has been known to say.

These short biographies of Canadians who died between 2000 and 2010 demonstrate the art of obituary writing and go beyond it. They are not the published obituaries of the persons who are included, but, rather, expanded portraits based on those “first drafts.” Not all of the original obituaries were written by Martin—though most of them were—but all of the artfully-drawn accounts included in the book are the product of the writing skills she has developed over the past half-century or so she has been observing life in Canada.

The stories are neatly divided into five categories of 10 lives each, many of whom the reader will recognize. “Icons” includes such notables as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, writer Jane Jacobs and economist John Kenneth Galbraith. “Builders” encompasses stories of the lives of such notable figures as historian J.M.S. Careless, Celia Franca, the founder of the National Ballet of Canada, and former Supreme Court Judge Bertha Wilson.

Some of the lives memorialized are notable because they are deliciously spicy. Included in the category “Rogues, Rascals, and Romantics,” for instance, are the spy Gordon Lunan, the bank robber Paddy Mitchell and exotic dancer, filmmaker and writer Lindalee Tracey.

Another category, “Private Lives, Public Impact” shines a spotlight on lesser-known Canadians, such as Ralph Lung Kee Lee, a Chinese Head-Tax survivor, who, at age 106, was one of six Chinese men who sat in the visitors’ gallery of the House of Commons as Prime Minister Stephen Harper rose to offer a formal apology on behalf of Canada for its treatment of Chinese men during the early part of the 20th century.

In the final category, Martin writes of 10 people who devoted their lives to “Service.” Found in this chapter are accounts of the lives of, among others, journalist Helen Allen, who helped children find adoptive families, and Ernest Alvia (“Smokey”) Smith, who was, at the time of his death in 2005, the last living winner of the Victoria Cross.

Adding to the value of this well-researched book is Martin’s introduction debunking five myths about the “dead beat;” introductions to each of the five categories that reveal facets of the history of obituary writing itself; and a final concluding chapter that assesses the changes taking place as technology advances.

If you enjoy vividly-drawn, incisive portraits of individuals, you will enjoy this book. If you appreciate social history that speaks to the way Canada has matured as a nation, you will enjoy this book. If you are fascinated by the developments that led to the rise of newspapers in general or of the tradition of obituary writing in particular, you will enjoy this book.

Joy Fisher is a fourth year creative writing student at UVic.

The Shore Girl
By Fran Kimmel
NeWest Press, 229 pages, $19.95

Swallow
By Theanna Bischoff
NeWest Pres, 283 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Joy Fisher

These two Calgary, Alberta, authors have more in common than their place of residence. During this past year, NeWest Press published coming-of-age novels by each of them about girls growing up in distressed circumstances.

While the general theme may be shared, the authors’ approach and the resulting impact of the stories are markedly different, inviting a comparative analysis. The most striking difference is the structure that organizes the two novels.

While Rebee Shore, the protagonist of Fran Kimmel’s first novel, is given a voice in the telling of her story, the majority of the sections are narrated by others who observe Rebee as she struggles through a chaotic childhood guided, as the book jacket, says, “less than capably by her dysfunctional mother.”

Rebee is shown at various stages of her young life through the eyes of her Aunt Vic, her teacher Miss Bel, an older man, Jake, who treats her like a daughter, and Joey, a young man whom Rebee is able to guide through his own stressful adolescence once she has grown into the wisdom of maturity. Like lights on a multifaceted diamond, the various narrators illuminate the many facets of Rebee’s character, which emerges, finally, as rich in understanding and compassion. Rebee is someone who will touch you; she is someone I wish I could know.

The story in Theanna Bischoff’s novel Swallow, by contrast, is narrated entirely by the protagonist, Darcy. What we see is her perspective, organized primarily around flashbacks to her childhood and young adult years as she and her younger sister, Carly, struggle to survive being reared by a mentally unstable mother.

Carly doesn’t make it; the opening line informs the reader she has died, and the remainder of the book gradually reveals the circumstances of her death and the guilt Darcy feels over her sister’s suicide. By the end of the novel, Darcy has become an unwed mother living with her own mother who has recently also attempted suicide for the second or third time. The language in which this ending is written makes it clear that it is supposed to be somehow uplifting. I was not convinced. Far from wanting to know Darcy, I wanted to give her shoulders a shake and tell her to stop wasting my time and to seek professional help.

The Shore Girl builds to a carefully-crafted climax that reveals the secret of Rebee’s birth and her mother’s life-long distress that provides the satisfaction of unravelling a family mystery. Swallow, on the other hand, merely builds, progressively, the lyrics of the childhood song, There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, with a few more lines added at the beginning of each major section. I found the story hard to swallow long before the old lady swallowed the horse and died.

Joy Fisher is a fourth-year student in the Department of Writing