Joseph A. DandurandSH:LAM (The Doctor)

Abstract

enthusiasm. Fueled by cocaine, they torment the migrants, forcing them to forget “who they are, who anyone is,” Epitafio says. If Monge’s goal is to challenge our complacency , his book is a tremendous success. Among the Lost is a horrifying indictment of those who benefit from others’ misery—and those who look the other way. But not all of his storytelling choices are beneficial. Take, for example, Monge’s decision to assign relatively limited roles to the novel ’s only sympathetic characters. We never learn the migrants’ names—a handful get customized pronouns like “ShewhostillcallsonGod ” and “Hewhostillhasabody”—and the structure of the book deprives them of unique identities. Drawing from statements migrants have given to aid organizations , Monge intersperses his narrative with unattributed blocks of text in which they describe lives shaped by vulnerability and terror. “They evicted me from my home,” one says. “They slaughtered my family.” This is powerful material, but readers who want to know more about this person will find themselves frustrated. A year after the English-language publication of The Arid Sky, another Mongepenned tale of despair set in Mexico, it’s clear that he’s a skillful writer with a distinct worldview. The violence in his books is a harrowing reflection of real-world circumstances , and Among the Lost features more than a few unnerving scenes. If only he’d found a way to focus with a bit more clarity on those in his story who suffer the most. Kevin Canfield New York Joseph A. Dandurand SH:LAM (The Doctor) Toronto. Mawenzi House. 2019. 84 pages. Seldom is someone a keeper of deep cultural knowledge and a gifted poet. Joseph A. Dandurand is both. SH:LAM (The Doctor) is “Indigenous Knowledge You Need Now,” narrative poetry imbued with wisdom. Dandurand, a Kwantlen First Nations poet and playwright from British Columbia, is the 2019 Indigenous Storyteller in Residence at the Vancouver Public Library, having authored several plays as well as three prior volumes of poetry. SH:LAM’s poems weave a story in the mind’s eye through a series of dramatic monologues similar to British Victorian poet Robert Browning’s but presented from the point of view of one central character throughout. Dandurand’s skill as a playwright and as a poet synergize to create a gripping overarching story describing the postapocalyptic reality of American Indian and First Nations people on this continent yesterday, today, and tomorrow in a way that fits within the larger artistic movement of Indigenous Futurisms. Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson says that from Indigenous viewpoints, “the apocalypse has already happened.” Catastrophic destruction of lifeways and environment accompanied by genocidal attacks and waves of deadly disease started in 1492 at the paracolonial moment. But the term “paracolonial” also asserts continued Indigenous survival as Indigenous peoples, an ongoing process. Elizabeth LaPensée says, “Indigenous Futurisms reflect past, present , and future—the hyperpresent now.” It incorporates elements of but “is not merely ‘Indigenous science fiction,’” and it utilizes Indigenous rather than “Western ideas of space and linear time.” This is very much the worldview of the text. The central character is an Indian doctor , Sh:Lam—for Kwantlen people, a “medicine man” in the terms of mainstream America. Incorporating the kind of paradox that is part of Indigenous worldviews, he is both (1) the healer who ended the smallpox epidemic for his people historically and (2) a contemporary homeless heroin addict on the streets of Vancouver’s Eastside who lost his children to social services and his love to the needle, both eternal and human. He’s a postapocalyptic Adam eating the apple. While the character is tribally specific and grounded in his culture—as are the allusions and cultural descriptions throughout the text—he also acts as a sort of Indian everyman fighting the onslaught of colonization . In addition to smallpox and heroin, Sh:Lam takes on pedophilic priests from residential schools and those who harm the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (mmiw) for whom so many of us are standing up today. The richest aspect of this collection, however, is the way in which Dandurand asserts Native perspectives and cosmologies within this Western form to a mainstream audience with ease...