Hope Matters

By Lee Maracle, Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter

Hope Matters, written by multiple award-winner Lee Maracle, in collaboration with her daughters Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter, focuses on the journey of Indigenous people from colonial beginnings to reconciliation.

Maracle states that the book, "is also about the journey of myself and my two daughters." During their youth, Bobb and Carter wrote poetry with their mother, and eventually they all decided that one day they would write a book together. This book is the result of that dream.

Written collaboratively by all three women, the poems in Hope Matters blend their voices together into a shared song of hope and reconciliation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookhug Press
• Release date: Apr 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781771664981

Lee Maracle

Lee Maracle is an author and critic born in Vancouver. A prolific First Nations writer and expert on First Nations culture and history, Lee Maracle is an influential Aboriginal voice in Canadian postcolonial criticism.

Book preview

cover.jpgTitle page: Hope Matters, by Lee Maracle, Columpa Bobb, and Tania Carter. With a preface by Senator Murray Sinclair. Published by Book*hug Press 2019.

FIRST EDITION

Copyright © 2019 by Lee Maracle, Columpa Bobb and Tania Carter

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Book*hug Press also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

Logos: Canada Council, Government of Canada, Ontario Arts Council

Book*hug Press acknowledges the land on which it operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Hope matters / Lee Maracle, Columpa Bobb, Tania Carter.

Names: Maracle, Lee, author. | Bobb, Columpa, 1971– author. | Carter, Tania, 1970– author.

Description: First edition. | Poems.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190088982 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190088990

ISBN 9781771664974 (softcover)

ISBN 9781771664981 (HTML)

ISBN 9781771664998 (PDF)

ISBN 9781771665001 (Kindle)

Classification: LCC PS8576.A6175 H67 2019 | DDC C811/.54—dc23

Contents

Copyright

preface

hope matters

chapter 1: raven created romance

I Am Older Now

The Beginning of the World

When the Sun Refuses to Give the Sky to Rain

Baskets

Raven Created Romance

Almost

Reflections of Love Through Broken Glass

The Morning We Became Fire

Lusty

Still

Odds and Ends of Life in a Pocket

Paxim

Ah, But I Fell

Love From Nothing

Salmon Dance

Winter’s Night

The Walk Home

chapter 2: After the Sorry Clears Who Will Pay For the Headstones

Genocide

Raven Whispers

Ta’ah They’re Coming Closer

Tiny Child

Never Again for Anyone

Bartender

Crazed, Not Crazy

Night Skies

I Fall Away

After the Sorry Clears Who Will Pay For the Headstones

After the Sorry Clears Who Will Pay For the Headstones

Church and Spate

Chapter 3: how the vigil against humanity is built

Decolonization

I Intend For You to Hear Me

Justice Is an Ember

Metal

Breath Slips

Behind My Eye

Blind Justice

Pearls

Neglected

How the Vigil Against Humanity Is Built

chapter 4: children of the pyre

Decolonial Love

Fantastic Memories

Swimming Across the Inlet

There Is a Cloud—Rumours

Flutes Fan Fire Songs

Dreamscapes

If I Had the Tears to Ache

I Am Not 18

Love

Agates

Disembody

Honesty Is a Thorny Rose

Keep

Children of the Pyre

chapter 5: the last bastion

Time

Street Angel

Never

Horses

My Ghost

After Listening to Doug Nepinak’s Death Song

Take Back the Night

Sharma

Unafraid

Trayvon Is Gone

The Last Bastion

Si’yam (Uncle Len)

chapter 6: nuclear Embrace

Sky World

Nuclear Embrace

Cyber Spaces

Earth

Toronto Rivers

Ocean Poem

Tempered Glass

Broken Glass

Cry to the Bark-stripped Moon

ii

Beneath Moonbeams

Who Burned The Moonlight Out?

Crocus Winks

Crimson

Grey Smoke Is Ruinous

My Roots Are Bleeding

Minnows

Butterflies and Violins

Untitled

Between Mouthfuls of Midnight and Dawn

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

colophon

preface

As I worked on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the stories of the victimization of women and the separate, but related, impact the residential schools had on their lives as women, as lovers, as wives, as mothers, as aunties, as grandmothers, leaders and Elders resonated. They suffered not only because of their Indigenous identity but also, and perhaps primarily, because of their gender. They suffered at the hands of men not only while in the schools but also in the years following. Not only did they suffer in those ways, but their daughters and granddaughters also suffered because of the negative stereotyping perpetrated in those schools and in the public schools and institutions of our society. There was a depth to their victimization that placed them in a unique category because of their gender, and yet there was an element of resistance, and indeed of hope, to their survival that also called out for recognition and understanding.

The stories related to that victimization, resistance and hope called out for a special public review, and gave rise to a special Call to Action in the TRC Report to look into the cases and causes of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls of Canada. It was not lost on us that the issue was one that has massive international implications surrounding it, and knowing it would only help the world to begin to come to terms with what to do about it.

What has struck me over the years is that despite the unique impact of this history, it has been women who have strived to hold families, communities and their nations together.

I suspect there is an aspect to femaleness that most men will never understand that holds strongly to the belief that with each day of survival, with each bout of love and, with each newborn child, there is renewal.

There is life.

There is hope.

I sense that in the words here.

Senator Murray Sinclair

Ottawa, February 2019

hope matters

Hope lives inside the artist: