Black Water
CBC Books | | Posted: August 19, 2020 9:41 PM | Last Updated: December 20, 2021
David A. Robertson
The son of a Cree father and a non-Indigenous mother, David A. Robertson was raised with virtually no knowledge or understanding of his family's Indigenous roots. His father, Don, spent his early childhood on a trapline in the bush northeast of Norway House, Manitoba, where his first teach was the land. When his family was moved permanently to a nearby reserve, Don was not permitted to speak Cree at school unless in secret with his friends and lost the knowledge he had been gifted while living on his trapline. His mother, Beverly, grew up in a small Manitoba town with not a single Indigenous family in it. Then Don arrived, the new United Church minister, and they fell in love.
Structured around a father-son journey to the northern trapline where Robertson and his father will reclaim their connection to the land, Black Water is the story of another journey: a young man seeking to understand his father's story, to come to terms with his lifelong experience with anxiety, and to finally piece together his own blood memory, the parts of his identity that are woven into the fabric of his DNA. (From HarperCollins)
David A. Robertson is an author and graphic novelist based in Winnipeg. The multi-talented writer of Swampy Cree heritage has published 25 books across a variety of genres, including the graphic novels Will I See? and Sugar Falls, a Governor General's Literary Award-winning picture book called When We Were Alone, illustrated by Julie Flett, and the YA book Strangers. He hosts the CBC Edmonton podcast Kiwew. His picture book On the Trapline won the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — illustrated books.
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Why David A. Robertson wrote Black Water
"He missed the trapline. He missed that connection. He missed the land. He missed his childhood in that way. I also think that he missed the water. He missed that more than anything.
"We used to go to Clear Lake, as adults and as kids. He loved Clear Lake so much because he sat by the water all the time. He loved the water. He loved the peace of it. He loved how it spoke to him.
He wanted to show me where he lived and to foster that connection in me. - David A Robertson
"As he got older, he started to think about his life and reclaiming knowledge that he had lost. That also had a part in why he wanted to go back as well.
"I also think he wanted to bring me there. He wanted to show me where he lived and to foster that connection in me.
"It was a completely selfless act for him, but also an act of reclamation."