Canada’s Day of Truth and Reconciliation will take place again on September 30th this year. I feel grateful to have read this clear and timely memoir to further expand my knowledge and understanding of the trauma and pain colonization has caused the Indigenous people of this country. Brandi Morin’s storytelling is accessible, powerful, and clear. This is a memoir essentially of survival. Survival of troubled parents, foster care, addiction, teen pregnancy, rape, and the long-term effects of colonization. She is a brave and vulnerable storyteller who brings greater empathy and understanding into the lives of Indigenous people, and the cycles of intergenerational trauma and yet manages to get up again and again in hope.
“Brandi Morin is an excellent writer, and her story is both moving and hopeful.”
“Silence is a tool of violence used against our people for generations in the attempt to erase and eradicate us” writes Brandi Morin. Morin is an award-winning Cree/Iroquois/French freelance journalist and indigenous activist. This book is a memoir of her life, and how she managed to find some peace and how she got to where she is now, an important voice in contemporary journalism.
It is hard to review a memoir, as it is someone’s life. I will say that Brandi Morin is an excellent writer, and her story is both moving and hopeful. I did enjoy the powerful fire of this warrior finding her voice and will be rooting and following Brandi’s stories and writing for a long time to come. “I’m humbled by the fact that I still have my life- and I refuse to waste it.” I think we need to continue to listen carefully to voices like Morin’s, I would hope all Canadians take some time to educate themselves and learn more as we approach this year’s day of Truth and Reconciliation, “because reconciliation will only ever be achieved when ignorance gives way to truth on a global scale.”
Read some truth in this wonderful memoir and join the push for justice for Indigenous people.
BRANDI MORIN is an award-winning French/Cree/Iroquois journalist from Treaty 6, Alberta, Canada. For the last ten years Brandi has specialized in sharing Indigenous stories, which have influenced reconciliation in Canada’s political, cultural, and social environments. She is one of Canada’s most prominent voices on Indigenous issues.
- Publisher : House of Anansi Press (Aug. 2 2022)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 224 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1487010575
- ISBN-13 : 978-1487010577
Laurie Burns is an English as additional language teacher to immigrants, literacy volunteer and voracious reader living in Dartmouth.
