Wenjack (novella)

Wenjack is a historical fiction novella based on the story of Chanie "Charlie" Wenjack by Canadian author Joseph Boyden. It was published by Hamish Hamilton of Penguin Books in 2016 and features illustrations by Cree artist Kent Monkman. It was part of a collaborative effort to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Chanie's death.[1] The book follows Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Ojibwe boy, as he escapes from a Northern Ontario residential school in the futile hopes of returning home to his family and two dogs. It alternates between Chanie's perspective and the perspectives of Manitous, who take on different animal forms to keep a silent watch on Chanie as he walks on foot to a home he does not know is hundreds of kilometers away.

Wenjack
First edition
AuthorJoseph Boyden
IllustratorKent Monkman
CountryCanada
LanguageEnglish
GenreHistorical Fiction
PublisherHamish Hamilton
Publication date
2016
Pages112
ISBN978-0735233386

Plot

The story begins with Chanie describing his experiences of abuse from residential school teachers, who he and his friends (two brothers) call "Fish Bellies" or "Sucker Bellies" for their pale skin. On an October afternoon, Chanie and the two brothers decide to run away. Because of a lung infection, Chanie struggles to keep up with his friends. Eventually the three boys reach a river, where they run into the two brothers' uncle. They are given a meager meal of freshly-caught fish in the cabin where the uncle, his wife, and his daughter are staying. That night, Chanie sleeps on the floor by the wood stove.

In the morning, the uncle tells his wife to send Chanie away, while he takes his two nephews to the trapline to look for food. When Chanie gets up to join them, the uncle tells him that it would be dangerous to have four people in his canoe. The mother sends Chanie on his way with dried moose meat and tells him to turn right at the tracks to head back to the school. The girl gives him a glass jar that holds seven matches. Chanie leaves the cabin, resolved to find his two friends and their uncle. However, when he reunites with them, the uncle tells him he cannot stay and that he must return to the school. He tells Chanie he can beat the impending bad weather if he travels quickly.

At the railroad tracks, Chanie turns in the direction away from the school and toward where he thinks his home will be. When it is dark, he decides to sleep next to a beaver pond, lighting a small fire with the matches given to him by the girl. However, the fire gives him little to no protection against the extremely cold temperatures that night. He ends up dreaming about the sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of one of his teachers. Back on the tracks, Chanie continues to slowly make his way on his journey, weakened from exhaustion and exposure. He falls a number of times before finally succumbing to the cold. After his death, a mother lynx lifts Chanie's spirit and carries him into the forest, away from the tracks. In the morning an engineer comes across Chanie's frozen body by the tracks and notifies the authorities. The story ends with Chanie, warm and happy, dancing in the forest with all of the animals featured throughout the novel.

Background

Wenjack was released for the 50th anniversary of Chanie "Charlie" Wenjack's death as part of a collaborative effort to, as Boyden put it, "put Charlie out into the world".[1] The book's release coincided with the release of Canadian Rock musician Gord Downie's fifth album, Secret Path, a concept album also based on Wenjack's story along with a graphic novel of the same name by Canadian cartoonist Jeff Lemire and an animated film produced by CBC Arts.[2] Boyden also contributed two spoken word tracks to A Tribe Called Red's 2016 album, We Are the Halluci Nation.[3] Prior to the release of the book, Boyden wrote a Heritage Minute narrated by Chanie's sister, Pearl Achneepineskum.[4] Boyden obtained Pearl's permission over the phone to go ahead with the novella.[5] She also shared the only existing photo of Chanie,[6] which appears at the end of Boyden's book. He also collaborated with Métis filmmaker Terril Calder to produce SNIP, an animated short, based on Wenjack's story.

This collaborative gesture was initiated by Gord Downie's brother, Mike Downie, who foregrounded an article by Ian Adams published in Maclean's in 1967 titled "The Lonely Death of Chanie Wenjack", documenting Chanie's escape from a residential school at the age of 12 and the subsequent discovery of his body by a set of train tracks. Boyden also acknowledged the influence of the ballad "Chanie Wenjack" by the Canadian singer-songwriter Willie Dunn.[5]

On October 22, 2016, imagineNATIVE hosted "A Night for Chanie", a special multimedia presentation of film, music, and performance related with a reading of the book by Boyden and introductory remarks by Senator Murray Sinclair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The event was dedicated to honouring the memory of Wenjack and all other children of residential schools.[7]

In an interview about the book, Boyden reflected that he "want[ed] us as Canadians to understand the fuller history of our country, to take it upon him or herself to learn beyond what you weren't taught in school. And the importance of that. It's not so we feel guilty or bad for what people we never met did, it's beyond that. It's how do we come together as a nation and move forward together."[1]

Reception

Wenjack had moderately positive reception from the mainstream media.. John Bemrose of Maclean's described the book as "spellbinding", and "a novella that deftly suffuses Chanie's tragedy with traditional Aboriginal beliefs."[8] Denise Balkissoon of The Globe and Mail described it as "slim but heart-wrenching".[1] In conjunction with the release of Boyden's book and Secret Path, Maclean's put out a call for stories of other runaways from residential schools.[9]

The Brock Press, a student newspaper of Brock University in Ontario, Canada, writes that the novella "is short, but vast in its significance", claiming that "the book continues to make strides in its telling of Wenjack's story, pushing for the history of residential schools, the attempts to destroy First Nations cultures and forced assimiliation through violence and hate to be more widely viewed and discussed as a part of Canada's history."[10]

Reception to Wenjack was later overshadowed by the controversies around Boyden's genealogy and tribal affiliations. Debbie Reese, an Indigenous author and researcher of Native American portrayal in children's literature,[11] had an overall negative perception of Boyden's novella. In a series of tweets a few months after the release of Wenjack, she criticizes Boyden's act as just one of many that "[make] Native ancestry … the centerpiece of who they are", and the belief that "they can speak/write of things they ought not."[12] Pieta Woolley, in an article titled "Cultural thieves" for the United Church Observer, mentioned Wenjack as an introduction to labelling Boyden as "the latest alleged offender" in the midst of social questions regarding cultural thievery.[13]

References
  1. Balkissoon, Denise (October 21, 2016). "Author Joseph Boyden on writing the story of Chanie Wenjack". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  2. "Watch Now: Gord Downie's The Secret Path". CBC Arts. Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  3. Doherty, Mike (November 21, 2016). "A Tribe Called Red plants a flag for the Halluci Nation". Maclean's. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  4. "New Heritage Minute explores dark history of Indian residential schools". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. June 21, 2016. Archived from the original on October 18, 2016. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  5. La Rose, Lauren (October 21, 2016). "Joseph Boyden highlights tragic true tale of Chanie Wenjack in new novella". CTV News. Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  6. "How Chanie Wenjack chose Joseph Boyden - Macleans.ca". Macleans.ca. 2016-10-21. Retrieved 2017-03-21.
  7. "Special Presentation: A Night For Chanie". imagineNATIVE Film & Media Festival. Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  8. Bemrose, John (October 19, 2016). "Joseph Boyden imagines Chanie Wenjack's final, terrible hours". Maclean's. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  9. Friscolanti, Michael (October 20, 2016). "The Runaways Project: Help us tell these stories". Maclean's. Retrieved Mar 16, 2017.
  10. Parr, Shannon (November 29, 2016). "Joseph Boyden's "Wenjack": the story of the raw brutality of a young boy's situation and the strength of his heritage". The Brock Press. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  11. "Debbie Reese on Native American Authors". Internet Public Library. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
  12. "Debbie Reese on Twitter". Twitter. February 24, 2017. Retrieved March 17, 2017.
  13. Woolley, Pieta (March 2017). "Culture thieves". United Church Observer. Retrieved March 16, 2017.
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