Author: wmelnick
Media Arts and English high school teacher who loves using technology to enhance learning and engage students. Experiments with online learning and teaches in Brightspace.
Rae Spoon First Spring Grass Fire
A moving memoir from Rae Spoon, a talented singer/songwriter whom I first heard sing in the documentary, My Prairie Home (available for rent at NFB). The memoir is full of intriguing and sometimes heart breaking life memories forged in a turbulent childhood of strict religion and a threatening father figure. The story is intimately connected to the broader issues of gender in Canadian society and the tyranny of religion.
A Train in Winter
Biographer and human rights journalist, Caroline Moorehead writes of the 230 women who worked as Resistance Fighters in France during WWII. Their story is heart wrenching, as they survive the French prison châteaux de la mort lente and then deportation to the female concentration camp of Auschwitz, Birkenau, where many died tortuous deaths, only 49 would survive. Moorehead interviewed many of the surviving women and their families and researched the resistance organization to discover a story both riveting and tragic.
The Comeback
John Ralston Saul lives up to his reputation for breadth and originality of thought, arguing that what are typically presented as “Aboriginal issues,” are actually political battles that matter to us all. For example, Idle No More’s stance against Bills C-45 and C-27 was more than a disempowered group reacting to the infringement on their rights, it was a stand against a corporatist agenda and the type of authoritarian forces in government normally associated with “Argentina’s Peronism.”
When Aboriginal people take to the streets to protest broken treaty promises, it isn’t a national headache, but a public good. The demonstrations remind of us of the complexity of our history, and provide a welcome counterbalance to the corporatist, managerialism that is a growing part of the nation state under a system of global capitalism. The National Post
Prudence
Prudence by David Treuer tells the story of Frankie Washburn, a bombardier during WWII, whose family owns a rustic Minnesota resort called the Pines on an Indian reservation. When a prisoner of war camp is established across the river, their tranquility ends. An escaped prisoner sends everyone out to look, including Frankie and his friends. What happens next is a tragedy that will haunt everyone involved for years to come. Treuer handles the subject matter with sensitivity, but gives an honest look at the consequences of decisions made in the face of intolerance, and love.
David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He has a Ph.D. in anthropology and teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California.
Digitizeme 