Barbara Todd Hager, Indspire Award winner, shares why Eden Robinson's Son of a Trickster hits home
Barbara Todd Hager is the recipient of the 2019 Indspire Arts Award in recognition of her career in writing and television production, including directing the docuseries 1491: The Untold Story of the Americas Before Columbus.
The Indspire Awards annually honour Indigenous success and achievement. A simulcast of the 2019 Indspire Awards will broadcast on CBC Radio, CBC Television and CBC Gem on June 23, 2019 at 8 p.m. (8:30 p.m. NT).
In celebration of Indigenous Book Club Month and National Indigenous History Month, Hager shared a book she found powerful: Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson.
"I was raised by a single mother who was always moving us from place to place in hopes of finding the perfect town, the perfect job and the perfect stepfather. In Son of a Trickster, Eden Robinson has conjured up a dysfunctional, wacky extended family headed by a mother who is either loving her son Jared too hard or leaving him to be raised by wolves. There's a scene or three in the book that seemed eerily familiar to me, and no doubt to others from Indigenous families who moved around a lot and often felt like aliens in school. Son of a Trickster captures that seismic shift that happens when modern life crashes into the ancient ways. When I heard that Eden's book was being adapted into a television series for CBC, I was ecstatic. The Indigenous film community has fought tirelessly for decades to see an Indigenous written and directed dramatic series on network television. I am not surprised that it is Eden Robinson's Son of a Trickster that has broken down the doors for us."