Abstracts
Keywords:
- Contemporary Indigenous literatures,
- creation stories,
- Cree language,
- Cree literature,
- Indigenous knowledge,
- Indigenous poetry,
- language revitalization,
- quantum physics,
- Saskatchewan,
- star stories
Mots-clés :
- langue crie,
- littérature crie,
- littératures autochtones contemporaines,
- physique quantique,
- poésie autochtone,
- récits célestes,
- récits de création,
- revitalisation linguistique,
- Saskatchewan,
- savoirs autochtones
On February 14, 2024, settler scholar Dre. Marie-Eve Bradette met with Cree-Métis poet and scholar Dr. Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber regarding his latest collection of poetry, acâhkos nikamowini-pîkiskwêwina/The Star Poems: A Cree Sky Narrative, published in September 2023 by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing. The conversation took place across Treaty 4 and 6 Territory, the original lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dakota, Lakota, Nakoda, and homeland of the Métis Nation, and Québec city situated on the Nionwentsïo, the traditional land of the Wendat nation. The conversation was recorded via Zoom, and with the help of settler Ph.D. student Sophie Larue it was transcribed and edited. While we wished to keep with the orality of the conversation, we decided to edit the text to suppress some repetitions of words and hesitations to facilitate the reading process. Marie-Eve Bradette : To open our discussion, I did prepare some questions, but they are open to frame it more as a conversation then a classic interview. I didn’t want it to look like a grocery list, you know. I wish to talk about the process of writing this particular book, The Star Poem. A Cree Sky Narrative… The process of writing it in both English and Cree, to talk about what does it mean to write across languages? So, just to begin with, and correct me if I am wrong, I think this was your first creative work to be published? You have published scholarly books before, but I believe this is your first tap into creative writing? Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber : Yeah, it’s the first poetry book I’ve published. I’ve published short stories and poems in various journals and magazines over the years, and I’ve had some short stories in anthology books, like the Indigenous Science Fiction Anthology that was published by Theytus Books. I think that was 2016. But this is my first poetry book on its own. Marie-Eve Bradette : Okay, wonderful! I’m really happy to have that included as part of [this] issue [of MuseMedusa] because it’s probably the piece of contemporary literature that taps the most into the theme of sky narratives, sky stories, and stories about the stars... So, I’m pleased about including this interview. The book is a collection of what I would call poetic contemporary stories. It’s always complicated to put books in some categories, but this is how I’ve read this one… A poetic narrative about the world of stars and the star people... And I think it’s probably one of the most original books amongst everything that has been published so far, because it both taps into traditional sacred stories, but also contemporary stories about the stars. So, would you like to share a little bit about the project, where it came from, the motivation behind it, what brought you to write about stars from that Cree perspective? Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber : Yeah. Well, I began writing poems about the stars and space, probably over a decade ago, and it was really a way of exploring new metaphors for the human condition. Again, with a lot of traditional poetry and especially romantic poetry, writers often turned to nature to search for metaphors for life and experience. But with our new technology and the changes in our society, I began to think, well, there’s a whole untapped resource of the cosmos out there that, while certainly poets in the past have written about stars and the planets and different cosmic experiences, I was searching for new ways of expression. And then, also, at the same time, as I was finishing my graduate studies in …