Darrel J. McLeod's memoir of resilience as a Cree from Treaty Eight territory in Northern Alberta, Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age (D&M, 2018), won the Governor General Literary Award in the Non-Fiction category. Prior to his retirement, McLeod was a chief negotiator of land claims for the federal government and executive director of education and international affairs with the Assembly of First Nations. Fluent in French and Spanish, he holds degrees in French Literature and Education from UBC. McLeod now writes, sings and plays jazz guitar in Sooke, B.C. when not performing in Victoria and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. His next book was a follow up to Mamaskatch, titled Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity, A Memoir (D&M, 2021), which was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction

"Mamaskatch," a Cree word used as a response to dreams shared, evokes feelings of awe. In an interview with CBC Radio's Shelagh Rogers for The Next Chapter, McLeod explained his personal connection to this word: "The word, Mamaskatch, has stuck with me over the years. Mom used to say it a lot when we were kids when things happened that were a bit extraordinary. I gave the book that title after going online with some fluent Cree speakers. I asked them what it meant and they gave various meanings, ranging from, 'How strange' to 'It's a miracle.' It is the perfect title. I keep saying that word over and over again now. Somebody asked me yesterday what would your mother say if she read that book and I said she would say, 'Mamaskatch.'"

McLeod's first novel, A Season in Chezgh’un (D&M, 2023) follows James, a talented and conflicted Cree man from a tiny settlement in Northern Alberta, who has settled into a comfortable middle-class life in Kitsilano, a trendy neighbourhood of Vancouver. He is living the life he had once dreamed of—travel, a charming circle of sophisticated friends, a promising career and a loving relationship with a caring man—but he chafes at being assimilated into mainstream society, removed from his people and culture. The untimely death of James’s mother, his only link to his extended family and community, propels him into a quest to reconnect with his roots. He secures a job as a principal in a remote northern Dakelh community but quickly learns that life there isn’t the fix he’d hoped it would be: his encounters with poverty, cultural disruption and abuse conjure ghosts from his past that drive him toward self-destruction. During the single year he spends in northern BC, James takes solace in the richness of the Dakelh culture—the indomitable spirit of the people, and the splendour of nature—all the while fighting to keep his dark side from destroying his life.

A Season in Chezgh’un is shortlisted for the 2024 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

Darrel J. McLeod died in Victoria unexpectedly on August 29, 2024 at the age of 67, following a brief and sudden illness.

BOOKS

Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age (D&M 2018) $29.95 9781771622004

Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity, A Memoir (D&M, 2021) $29.95 9781771622318

A Season in Chezgh’un: A Novel (D&M, 2023) $24.95 9781771623629

[BCBW 2024]

***

REVIEW

Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age by Darrel McLeod
(Douglas & McIntyre $29.95)

Review by David Milward

Although Mamaskatch by Darrel McLeod is intensely biographical, it has seemingly fictional prose that is reminiscent of Beatrice Culleton's highly personal, 1983 classic, In Search of April Raintree.

McLeod's narrative describes his early life with his mother, Bertha, his brother Greggie (later known as Trina following gender reassignment), and his sister Debbie.

Bertha started off as the kind of mother many Indigenous youths would love to have. She was in tune with the ebbs and flows of the natural world and the spiritual teachings they provide, which in turn she eagerly shared with her children.

But she was physically abused as a residential school student and witnessed both physical and sexual abuse against the other students.

Although she managed to physically escape from the school, she could not escape the emotional, mental, and spiritual damage that it wrought. Getting into abusive intimate relationships only hastened the process.

Bertha could be ferociously protective, like a mother Grizzly Bear, when her children were faced with physical danger -- or with the threat of child welfare apprehension. Ironically, those situations frequently came about because of her neglect while she passed time at the nearby bar.

She was also frequently physically abusive towards her children. McLeod recalls two specific events. One involved throwing beer bottles at Debbie and himself, and another involved attempting to set fire to the house while the children were still in it.

Such is the paradox and nature of intergenerational trauma that its victims can at once try to love their children, and yet act out their pain and hurt them to perpetuate the cycle.

***
Debbie is sexually abused by her uncle andy. She not only suffers the aforementioned abuse from her mother, but she herself winds up in one abusive relationship after another.

Greggie is gang-raped at an early age by several other youths. He eventually becomes part of the drag scene, and then undergoes gender reassignment surgery. McLeod passes no moral judgment on the latter decision, but relates that the surgery led to physical ailments and complications. Debbie and Greggie struggled immensely with substance abuse, which only worsened their problems.

A great deal of Darrel McLeod's own turmoil arose from his struggles with sexuality. It started with an ambiguous encounter during his school years with an older boy named Stormy. McLeod remains unsure if it was welcome or coerced, enjoyable or painful.

More trouble arrived in the form of his brother-in-law, Rory, whose marital relationship arose from a highly exploitative relationship with 13-year-old Debbie. It turns out that Rory was emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive towards both Debbie and Darrel.

Again, as with Stormy, Darrel, cannot sort out whether it was consensual and abusive; enjoyable or painful.

***
Darrell McLeod reveals that abuse from Rory was the most painful and shameful thing in his life; he could never quite let anyone know.

His first consensual partner was a boy named Gresh. And while Gresh was not physically abusive, he was capable of mind games that could be more cruel than any physical blow.

McLeod renders no moral judgment on homosexuality. He remembers that, like any other young boy, he had crushes on girls during his early school years. He openly raises the question of whether he would have remained heterosexual and eventually entered into a relationship with a woman leading to a family had he not suffered the traumas he had, or whether he would have become homosexual anyway, in a relatively healthy manner.
Eventually he met a man named Milan who enabled him to become the man he is today.

Racism, overt and buried, adds additional layers to his memoir, such as the clearly discriminatory treatment he suffers from one of his school teachers, Ms. Long.

The teachings provided by members of the Catholic faith were also a constant assault on his self-esteem. Priests denigrated Indigenous peoples as primitive pagans and the church condemned his sexual explorations as a sin worthy of eternal damnation McLeod also suffered from microaggression, a phenomenon studied by Black and Latino scholars. It describes the use of words or actions that try to avoid censure beneath a surface tone of neutrality or praise, but which yet, in substance, remain fundamentally racist.

Instead of earning his attainments in their own right, he received insinuations that somehow he had miraculously exceeded the limited inborn capabilities of a lowborn race, an erosion of personal agency that almost reduced McLeod himself to a kind of museum piece to be gawked at.

Multiple traumas piled on one another over a lifetime can literally break people down to a point where they can't take any more.

Debbie ends up committing suicide after years of substance abuse and abusive relationships.

Their mother Bertha does not commit suicide, but her mind, body, and spirit have been ravaged.

McLeod and his mother see each other one last moment before she dies. They let each other know that they love each other, and all is now forgiven. It is a very brief moment where no words can, or need, be spoken, but their souls touch each other through their eyes.

***
I hope more people, especially non-indigenous people, read Mamaskatch to gain the insights that it offers on the social problems plaguing Indigenous peoples, and how the residential schools are not just a thing of the past to be forgotten, but have left behind an enduring legacy that cannot be ignored.

9781771622004

[David Milward is an associate professor of law with UVic and a member of the Beardy's & Okemasis First Nation of Duck Lake, Saskatchewan. He assisted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with the authoring of its final report on Indigenous justice issues. Milward's books include Aboriginal Justice and the Charter: Realizing a Culturally Sensitive Interpretation of Legal Rights (UBC Press, 2013).]

[BCBW 2019]

***

BIOGRAPHY MATERIAL -- supplied

Darrel J. McLeod is Cree from Treaty 8 First Nation of Alberta. He is the author of the memoir Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age (Douglas & McIntyre), winner of the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and finalist for the RBC Charles Taylor Prize, BC Book Prize and Victoria Butler Book Prize. The sequel to Mamaskatch, entitled Peyakow, is in the final editing phase and will be released in the fall of 2020.

Darrel is a fluent speaker of French and Spanish and is studying Cree. He holds degrees in French literature and education from the University of British Columbia, and has advanced training in dispute resolution. Much of Darrel's career was devoted to education at the elementary, secondary and post-secondary levels. He has done curriculum design, instruction, and delivered numerous workshops on many topics.

Darrel's full-time writing career began in 2013 with a course entitled Memoir of Inquiry at SFU. Since then he has taken numerous workshops and courses with established writers like Betsy Warland, Shaena Lambert, Caroline Adderson and Sarah Selecky. He has developed a highly praised and sought after workshop for the Federation of BC Writers. Darrel has been a presenter and panelist at many literary festivals including The Victoria Festival of Authors, The Sunshine Coast Literary Festival, The Ottawa Literary Festival, Blue Metropolis in Montreal, Vancouver Word on the Street, The Toronto Writer’s Festival, The Bangkok Book Festival, and the Georgetown Literary Festival in Malaysia.

In the spring of 2018 Darrel was accepted into the Banff Writing Studio to advance his first work of fiction. He lives, writes, sings and plays jazz guitar in Sooke, B.C., and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

FROM BACK COVER:

Darrel J. McLeod is Cree from treaty eight territory in Northern Alberta. The death of his father, months before Darrel's birth, precipitated his mother's flight from government agencies, which would likely have taken her children from her, a poor, Indigenous, single mother of three children.

The early years spent with his beloved Mosom (great grandfather Joseph Powder) at his trapping cabin near Spurfield, Alberta were idyllic for Darrel and his older siblings. The guiding spirit of Mosom would be a constant solace for Darrel throughout a tumultuous and unsettling childhood and youth filled with poverty, bullying, racism, gender identity issues and suicide.

Darrel's life has been one of constant change and transition – from a Cree speaking community in the bush to the cities of Calgary, Vancouver and Ottawa. Along his challenging journey there were a number of key people who aided him, including his older sister Debbie, remarkable teachers who literally saved his life, and longstanding friends who have replaced the multitude of family members that Darrel has lost.

An academic education that includes a degree in French language and literature from the University of British Columbia, as well as a diploma in Education, and a certificate in dispute resolution, launched Darrel into a unique career that has spanned a wealth of experiences. These include the role of chief negotiator of land claims for the federal government and that of executive director of education and international affairs with the Assembly of First Nations.

Travel, culture and language have entwined throughout his work and private life. He has explored the world from one pole to the other. Trips to remote parts of northern Canada and immersions into the cultural hubs of Europe and South America, as well as his faculty with French and Spanish, have provided him with an expanded perspective and critical thinking skills.

Music has been a significant part of Darrel's life. Inspired by his mother's singing accompanied by guitar and a grandparent's violin playing, Darrel became an enthusiastic singer from the age of three. An accomplished jazz musician, he now performs live in Puerto Vallarta and Victoria, B.C. Darrel is working on a second memoir following the events in Mamaskatch. In the spring of 2018, he was accepted into the Banff Writing Studio to advance his first work of fiction. He lives, writes, sings and plays jazz guitar in Sooke, B.C.

 




EXCERPT -- SPIRALS


The pattern of my mother's stories is different from the ones I hear at school. The timelines are never linear. Instead, they are like spirals. She starts with one element of a story, moves to another and skips to yet a different part. She revisits each theme several times over, providing a bit more information with each pass. At first I find it hard to follow, but I've learned that if I just sit back and listen without interrupting, she will cover everything and make each story complete.

"Auntie Margaret and I grew up on the trapline. We moved around every season and camped in large canvas tents to be closer to the animals and birds. In the evening, we sat around the fire, Auntie Margaret across from me, sometimes cutting sheets of moose meat to make kakiwak -- dried meat -- other times scraping moose or beaver hides for tanning. I always sat right beside Mother, your Cucuum Adele. Oh, she used to get so upset when I had to go pee. It was a big deal. She had to walk in the bush with me till we found a fallen tree that I could sit on and hang my behind over."

I smile inside at the notion of my strong mother with her man-hands being a dainty little girl. The detail in her stories and the intensity of her look as she tells them holds my attention, but the way she speaks as if it all took place yesterday or the day before troubles me. We both know that it happened years ago, and that it's part of our family history that will soon be forgotten.

"Auntie Margaret had her first baby, Chiq-iq, there on the trapline, you know. I loved that baby. There were no soothers then, so she would suck on my bottom lip between feedings -- fall asleep that way.

"The birds are messengers, Son. Sometimes they told me things that would happen in our family. Ahasiw, mikisiw, oho and wiskipos -- crow, eagle, owl and whisky jack. They'll help you -- guide you through life. Watch them, talk to them."

She chuckles nervously and watches for my reaction. I laugh too. Her bloodshot brown eyes are an exact replica of my own. In these moments she is so sincere, so real. I love that she thinks she can communicate with birds. Will I ever have that gift myself?

"I learned to be tough, Son. My brothers were rough, and I had to learn to defend myself or get beaten up play-fighting. I learned to whip the boys and come out on top."

Mother continues on, and every half hour or so I pull myself upright. I feel guilty about my dreariness and impatience. It is in these nocturnal sessions that I learn about our family history. Dead family members come to life and find their place in my heart. The seasonal dwelling sites and hunting areas she describes so clearly take shape in my head.

After a few hours she starts to slur her words and nod off. I take advantage of her sleepiness to put a few LPs that I like on the metal peg of the turntable -- Creedence Clearwater Revival, Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley -- turning the volume down at the same time, but I don't get away with it. She shakes her head and sits up straight.

"Play Johnny Horton again. Or put on Johnny Cash. Merle Haggard. Please, Son. I need to hear country. Turn it up, can't hear it." Her tone is gentle, but it's a demand, not a request.

The Johnny Cash album slides down the peg first; the arm moves over to the edge of the 33 1/3 album and sets itself down.

Call him drunken Ira Hayes, he won't answer any more...

"Yes, that song, Son. I love that song."

Not the whisky drinking Indian, nor the marine that went to war.

I finally get to bed around four in the morning. I roll onto my side and rest my head in the crook of my elbow, careful not to awaken my little brother. Sometimes after these sessions I can fall asleep, but other times I lie there thinking about what Mother has told me. Why does she pick me to tell her stories to, and why does she only tell them when she's drinking? She knows I have school in the morning and that I never miss a day -- she must think what she's recounting is important. Does she want me to repeat her stories to others, my sisters and brothers, her grandchildren -- someday, somewhere?

I know I could never share stories the magical way she does. The structure of our language, Cree, is hard-wired in her brain, and English is still a challenge for her. She sees the world differently from the way they teach us in school. Rocks are alive -- she calls them our grandfathers. The markers for I and you are attached as extra syllables to the verb forms. The second-person pronoun is always more important, so it comes first, whether it's the subject or the object. Unlike in English, I love you and you love me both start with the marker ki, for you. The third person is split into two parts; this distinguishes important characters in a conversation from secondary ones. The gendered pronouns he and she don't exist in Cree. Mother has told me this more than once, laughing at herself for getting the two mixed up.

Is that why my older brother, Greg, and my uncle Danny could play at dressing up as girls so often without Mother getting upset? Is that why my uncles aren't as hairy as the Metis or white guys around? What about me? Will I be a regular Cree guy, like most of my uncles, or more like Danny and Greg, who grew up mimicking Mother, my sister Debbie and our aunties? If I spoke Cree, would I see the world the way Mother does and have the answers to these questions? Would I be less afraid?

++++
Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity, A Memoir by Darrel J. McLeod (D&M $29.95)
Review by Latash-Maurice Nahanee

[BCBW 2021]

Darrel J. McLeod's Peyakow takes the reader on his personal odyssey and reveals the history of a country with a dark colonial mindset regarding Aboriginal people. It's the follow-up to his first memoir, the best-seller Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age (D&M, 2018) about the impact of colonization on McLeod and his family.

We witness in these new stories McLeod's dignity and intelligence as he faced the tsunami-like impact and destruction caused by the draconian Indian Act, which brought about cultural genocide to First Nations people all across Canada.

It has taken courage to stand up to a country that took control of land and resources from Indigenous people. It didn't stop there. The Indian Act sought to eradicate Indigenous languages and culture. Leaders like McLeod have stood up and said enough is enough.

"I now grasp how my extended family, once proud and strong, independent and thriving, became disenfranchised and impoverished while the society around us grew increasingly affluent," he says. "In the pages of this book, I write what I’ve come to understand about the colonization of my people and tell the story of how I struggled to turn around our dystopian lives, striving to salvage some degree of happiness and well-being not only for myself and my family but also for Indigenous individuals and peoples in Canada and other parts of the world."

McLeod grew up in an impoverished Cree First Nations community in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. He tells of the painful legacy of his impoverished youth, at times struggling with self-destructive behaviours and later the deaths of some of his siblings. He endured the bullying of white classmates, and coped with physical and sexual abuse.

McLeod moved to Vancouver to pursue his educational goals. While he achieved much by coming to the coast, it also led McLeod farther from his family and culture.

Eventually earning degrees in French Literature and Education from UBC, McLeod began a career in teaching. He climbed the ladder to become principal of a school in northern British Columbia. The conditions of this school were appalling. The federal government underfunds many aspects of Aboriginal education in Canada and McLeod experienced this firsthand. Federally operated schools built on a tight budget fall apart within a few years.

McLeod, then moves on to work for the federal government and the Assembly of First Nations, the national body of elected Aboriginal politicians. His meteoric rise in the ranks of the civil service brings him into roles and situations that draw out the best in his warrior spirit and intellect.

One of his first government jobs involved convincing senior decision-makers to fund new Aboriginal certificate and degree programs in colleges and universities. "My colleagues, all white -- policy analysts, economists and accountants -- made the same argument: if they agreed to fund special programs for "Natives," they would have to do the same for other minorities -- Chinese Canadians, South Asian Canadians, Ukrainian Canadians and so on," says McLeod.

His comeback argument was: "With respect, other 'groups' aren't victims of rapid and brutal colonization, their culture and language methodically suppressed, their territory and birthright usurped, their suicide rates four times the national average, their children making up half of the kids in government care, with gross over-representation in prisons, a lower life expectancy than other Canadians, poor educational outcomes at all levels and low economic participation. If any minority group ever faces a crisis remotely similar to what we are facing, I hope government will seriously consider their proposals."

As executive director of international affairs for the Assembly of First Nations, McLeod leads an Indigenous delegation to the United Nations in Geneva. With courage and unstoppable determination, he helps draft the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). He tells us that Canada, Australia and New Zealand strongly opposed this universal declaration of the rights of Indigenous People. As countries that were once colonies of Great Britain, from their early days they suppressed the rights of Indigenous people. Canada was among the last of the western countries to sign the UNDRIP.

McLeod's honest account of his life and work is brutal at times. Truth-telling is like that. But we need someone to reveal what happens behind the scenes. He was a lead federal negotiator on the Nisga'a Treaty, the first modern treaty in British Columbia. The quest for a formal agreement within the Nisga'a Nation started over 100 years ago. I am married to a Nisga'a woman who is the daughter of a high-ranking Chief who was also a senior negotiator for the Nisga'a negotiating team. Also, starting in the mid 1980s, I was an editor and writer with a provincial First Nations newspaper and reported on the Nisga'a treaty negotiations. So, I can verify that it was a long, arduous process.

A few years later, McLeod is once again a lead federal negotiator. This time he is trying to negotiate a treaty with the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island. On the table are issues related to land, economic development, fisheries, culture and language. And there is also the question of an apology from Canada to those members who were forced to attend an Indian residential School. But the federal government of Canada was initially opposed to issuing such an apology. In the end, the Canadian government relented and did issue an apology to the Nuu-chah-nulth victims of physical, sexual, spiritual and cultural abuse suffered at residential schools.

McLeod understood the impacts of such abuses. It's inspiring to learn how he was able to overcome his own challenging obstacles to become a school principal, a treaty negotiator, a jazz musician and raconteur.

Peyakow is a page turner. Take the time to read and understand the history of Indigenous people in Canada through books such as this. 978-1771622318

Latash-Maurice Nahanee is a member of the Squamish Nation. He has a B.A. degree (Simon Fraser University).