Through Black Spruce (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Through Black Spruce Alison Calder Joseph Boyden . Through Black Spruce. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2008. 360 pp. $34.00 hc. Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden's intense second novel, won Canada's prestigious Giller Prize in 2008, and deservedly so. Boyden, originally from Northern [End Page 208] Ontario, now divides his time between there and Louisiana, where he teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Orleans. Through Black Spruce centres on the Cree community around Moosonee, examining the effects of the historical and present-day colonial violence that is enacted both by institutions and individuals. Structurally, the novel alternates between the narratives of two protagonists: Will Bird, an aging ex-bush pilot who is in an unexplained, trauma-induced coma at the novel's opening; and his adult niece, Annie, who experiences both seizures and visions, and who is troubled by the disappearance of her sister, Suzanne. The narratives unfold in flashbacks, as the unconscious Will "tells" his story to his nieces, while Annie, believing that hearing her voice will help her uncle to recover, brings him up to date on her search for Suzanne. Their narratives are linked through the violent and terrifying presence of motorcycle gangs, whose drug-dealing influence reaches even—or perhaps especially—into remote communities. Together, the narratives combine to provide a composite portrait of how particular events can have far-reaching and unpredictable effects; the reader is in the unique position of understanding how actions in one person's story can affect those in the other's. While a few of Boyden's critiques are too heavy-handed—Annie's status in the New York modeling community could be explained far more subtly than through the repetition of her "Indian Princess" nickname—the world that he creates is persuasive in its depiction of the relation between past and present, and what it can mean to be Aboriginal in an increasingly globalized world. Colonization is still ongoing; it just wears new disguises. The economic exploitation originally practiced by the Hudson's Bay Company, and still evident in the low price offered when Annie goes to sell her furs at the Northern Store (174-75), is here supplemented by the underground drug economy of motorcycle gangs. When one enforcer refers to the gang as "the Corporation" (336), the economic connections are clear. As traditional cultural practices diminish, new dependencies grow, whether on drugs or on the new "Anishnabe soul food" (36): KFC. These new structures take a place alongside more obviously oppressive institutions, like the residential school that, Will sadly remarks, shattered his relationship with his father (80-82). Despite these ongoing corrosives, in the community that Boyden depicts, traditional ways of being are very much alive for some characters, as represented by Annie's trapping, her healing powers, and the presence of the Cree language. Because the novel is told by first-person narrators, much of it carries the flavour of oral recitation, as in the opening of Will's story: "You know I was a bush pilot. The best. But the best have to crash. And I've crashed a plane, me. Three times. I need to explain this all to you" (1). While most of the book is in English, readers are told that characters' conversations may switch back and forth between Cree and English, depending on whom they are talking to and what the context is. When Annie is high [End Page 209] at a party in New York, she makes a point of "protecting" herself by speaking Cree to people who want her to perform her Indian Princess identity: what her listeners don't know is that she is insulting them. Boyden himself uses Cree words occasionally in the text, but always with enough context that non-Cree-speaking readers will get the gist. The ongoing effect is to present Cree as a living language: this is a story of survival, not extinction. Also important here are the locations in which the novel takes place. Boyden's Aboriginal characters live in the city as well as in the bush; they are both on and off the reserve; and they have email accounts as well as visions. While...