Author Michelle Good challenges perceptions of Indigenous life in newest book

In honour of National Indigenous History Month, author Michelle Good has released her newest book at the 22nd Talking Stick Festival in Vancouver, a month-long celebration of Indigenous art and performances with events running until July 2.

Good says her book, Truth Telling: Seven Conversations About Indigenous Life in Canada, is a series of essays that encourages non-Indigenous Canadians to consider what they really know about Indigenous life. 

The book follows the success of her novel, Five Little Indians, which won several awards including Canada Reads 2022 and the Governor General's Literary Award. 

Good joined CBC Radio to talk more about her inspiration for the book. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are the essays about? 

I'm going to go back a little bit and go to Five Little Indians. I was so surprised and delighted with the response to the book and the very tangible willingness of non-Indigenous Canadians to engage in the conversation. 

So I set aside the novel I was working on and decided, "Okay, now for the rest of the story."

I often refer to the residential schools as an implement in the colonial toolkit, so I filled out the rest of the colonial toolkit in these essays as best I could. 

What is the colonial toolkit?

People think there were only residential schools, but prior to that there were all kinds of things designed to terminate Indigenous populations in Canada. To clear the plains, so to speak, to allow for non-Indigenous settlement. 

There were things like Sir John A. McDonald's policy of submission based on starvation and the Sixties Scoop that had its genesis really in the residential school policy. One very good example is the essay $13.69 about the Adopt Indian and Métis program, which saw little children's photographs in newspapers in Saskatchewan during the '70s as though they were for sale like a patio furniture set or puppy.

What I seek to do with this book is to engage in conversation, as opposed to a confrontational approach. To say in a very simple, but well researched way that this is the realities Indigenous people have had to live with. So let's broaden the conversation, look at some of those things and look at how we can engage meaningfully as non-Indigenous and Indigenous people toward substantive reconciliation.

What should reconciliation and repatriation look like?

People need to understand the values of those colonial implements continue to form the foundation of all Canadian institutions, whether it's the justice system, the RCMP, the education system, social services, all those things.

If you imagine our current situation as the scales of justice are uneven, then to make them even something has to come from the enriched side and placed on the oppressed side.

People need to understand their circumstances must change, if Indigenous peoples' circumstances are going to change. But it need not be painful. When we think about land back, which is critical, there must be land. Only 11 per cent of the Canadian land base is owned privately. So if 89 per cent is Crown land, why is it so difficult? It's difficult, because the principles of termination and annihilation remain.

What do you see for the future of Indigenous literature?

There are now Indigenous publishing houses. But in addition, the large publishing houses like HarperCollins and Penguin are now seeing the importance and value of Indigenous literature. 

But like the change of the Constitution, it wasn't handed to us. We had to fight for that. There are so many talented Indigenous writers, who really sacrificed their career to make a pathway through. 

That's where we are now. If my work had been written in the '80s or '90s, I'm not sure if it would have seen the light of day. That's also creditable to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and their call to action to fund Indigenous arts in a more supportive way.