 |
| Photo by Emily Kassie |
Julian Brave NoiseCat is the author of the new book We Survived the Night. He is also the director, with Emily Kassie, of the documentary Sugarcane. He is a member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen.
Q: What inspired you to write We Survived the Night, and how was the book’s title chosen?
A: I've always dreamed of writing a book, and this one has been many years in the making, arguably my whole life.
In the broadest sense, it's about Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Canada today, what our stories are and how they should be told. It's a story about survival—the survival of our families, cultures, truths, and much else.
The title is derived from the traditional way to give the morning greeting in my peoples' language, Secwepemctsín: tsecwínucw-k. Which doesn't really mean "good morning" and instead means "you survived the night."
Q: As a writer and director, how do you see the two disciplines coexisting for you?
A: While one is textual and the other is visual, at the end of the day it's all storytelling. I think Indigenous peoples have some of the best untold stories out there and if you hang out with our aunties and uncles, you'll quickly realize that we're pretty damn good at telling them.
I see myself as part of that tradition. Indians sitting around, telling our stories like we have since time immemorial.
Q: The writer Tommy Orange said of the book, “This is a love letter to Oakland, to the Canim Lake Band Tsq’secen of the Secwepemc Nation, to a father from his son, to the act of being a Native person in the twenty first century finding ways to love even through all that wounds have opened and wrought.” What do you think of that description?
A: I absolutely love Tommy's work. There There is a landmark book not just in Native literature, but American literature. I'm fortunate to call him a friend and the fact that he gifted me my first blurb for my first book is just a dream come true.
Q: What role do you see the Coyote figure playing in the book?
A: The whole book is a Coyote Story. It's a story about the trickster and how the stories about him and the ideas in those stories still hold a great deal of truth about the world we move through. About our fathers, families, and people, about the contradictions in our lives, and about how the world works.
Our trickster traditions were nearly wiped out and have long been written off, and yet they still get at so much unseen truth. You can't look out at the world right now and tell me it's not still shaped by tricksters and their tricks.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have another book and documentary in the works. The book is an Indigenous perspective on an American classic. That's probably all I should say about it.
The documentary is called Alcatraz Is an Idea and it's about the Occupation of Alcatraz. I'm working with the producers of the documentary Super/Man as well as my community uncles in the Bay Area, Peter and Benjamin Bratt, and their production company and hoping to get it financed.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I'm a huge fan of your work and it's an honor to be in conversation with you. And if you're reading this: please support Indigenous stories and storytellers!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment