Angie Elita Newell is the author of the new novel All I See Is Violence. She is a historian and she belongs to the Liidlii Kue First Nation from the Dehcho.
Q: What inspired you to write All I See Is Violence?
A: My inspiration for this novel circumvented me through a tumultuous point in my life. I was at a crossroads in my academic career and trying to process what had been done to my ancestors. I was at a feast and an elder turned to me and said, Did you know that there were female warriors?
I was not aware of that; here I was an academically trained historian in my own history and I was ignorant to that information. When I started to look into it through archival research I found out not only were there women warriors but there were battles fought against the United States military in which half the American Indian warriors were women, and they won the battle.
Given the female size discrepancies to their male counterparts, they learned to fight differently to make up for the strength and size advantages of the men that they faced, often becoming very sure shots, and when in hand-to-hand combat, the same thing, they would immediately strike to kill with a cunning accuracy.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I am an American Indian from Fort Simpson, located in the Northwest Territories of Canada; we are directly related to the Navajo and share the same linguistic family, Dene.
As an Indian you come to the understanding very early on that we’ve lost everything. Reservations are prison camps and the governments of North America have broken every treaty they have ever made with us and then took it a step further and launched a hundred-year campaign that forcibly stole our children to reeducated them to a “Western standard,” called boarding schools in the United States and residential schools in Canada.
Here every imaginable atrocity was inflicted upon the stolen children by the church and government-appointed care providers, physical, mental, and sexual abuse, medical experimentation, and murder were commonplace.
I know these truths from a personal level because my mother was sent to one of them, La Pointe Hall in Fort Simpson; she persevered and went on to become an air force pilot for the Royal Canadian Armed Forces.
The level of trauma within the indigenous communities, the fallout of colonialism, and a calculated genocide within North America leads to more often than not a chaotic childhood for indigenous children as suicide and substance abuse are rampant and my childhood was one of turmoil.
I found solace in English literature. I learned to read at a high level from a young age and immersed myself in the writings of Mark Twain, Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett, and Charles Dickens. Books such as Huckleberry Finn, The Secret Garden, and Oliver Twist were stories I went back to repeatedly, bringing me comfort in a world that was very unstable.
As a young adult I was led to academia through my incessant wondering as to why all these things had been done to us, the American Indians. As my knowledge base grew, I matured into an understanding that this oppression isn’t something that is necessarily unique to North America but is a pattern being enacted on a global stage and it is through awareness that we can put an end to it. Who controls the past controls the future and every single being deserves a peaceful life full of abundance and joy.
Then I lost my own son, and my very faith was shaken to its core, I completely left my academic life and started writing stories, my people’s stories and it is there I found not only god but love, a universal love, an understanding that regardless of everything this earth is wondrous and spectacular and she’s worth all of us coming together to protect and have reverence for.
Q: I’m so sorry about the loss of your son…
I know that the novel was based on a true story--what did you see as the right balance between history and fiction as you worked on the book?
A: All I See is Violence is about 75 percent factual, with a speckling of fiction brought through the characters, Little Wolf and Nancy.
Their relationships are also fictitious but they are set amongst very important points in modern historical, defining moments that have shaped our current reality, so it was important to me to keep so much of it grounded in actual happenings.
I am a mother and I have daughters and just as my ancestors taught me, I teach them our history through stories.
When I was researching the last battles of the Indian Wars, I was drawn to the story of General Custer. His life is like a Shakespearean tragedy. The more I researched him the more inconceivable it became and shocking that he died the way he did.
He was a valiant and talented warrior, and some readers are taken aback by his inclusion. If you read his autobiography, you’ll find a vain, confident human and he had every reason to be.
I wanted Custer to be the juxtaposition to Little Wolf to illustrate the 19th-century cultural differences and to weave alongside one another like two steam engines about to hit head-on. And I needed a vehicle for this information, and I couldn’t have asked for a more sensational one.
So, I chose to use Custer to include the academic knowledge of governmental policies of the 19th century. Readers who struggle with him need to still their mind and see past any sort of projection. Friction is our greatest teacher. It is here you can learn a deeper version of yourself, and you will come out with a greater wisdom.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: What I hope readers take away from my work is that the only thing that will ever matter is love, and some things can be fleeting, a moment that passes you by, but love is eternal, it can withstand anything thrown at it and I see this in my people, despite everything that has been done to us, here we are, here I am, still standing, still telling our stories.
And to every person who is willing to read my story I want to thank you. It is with an immense honor and gratitude to share our history with you, for we are all one and our story, our history is also yours, and may we all forge a better future together.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am currently working on the life story of the Apache warrior Geronimo. He evaded the American military for close to three decades and won battles against a thousand-armed forces with 50 warriors at his side and one of the most important being Chief Victorio’s sister, Lozen, a female warrior with supernatural capabilities. Their allies were Magnas Colorado and Cochise. This is their story, the return of the Bird Tribe.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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