A Beautiful Rebellion: poems by Rita Bouvier

I feel like a witness, an audience member at the theatre to see the performance of embodied wisdom verbalized in A Beautiful Rebellion: poems by Rita Bouvier. The collection is in 5 sections: “a beautiful rebellion,” “a place I know,” “supermoon rising,” “when the moon is full,” and “the rest of us will carry you along.” These section titles, together, form a poem unto itself. The first third of the book has grounding experiences in nature, the next third includes interactions with people and their struggles, and the last poems act to hold up sacred moments of being present as a way forward.

As with her previous collections — nakamowin’sa for the seasons (Thistledown 2017), papîyâhtak (Thistledown 2006), and Blueberry Clouds (Thistledown 1995) — Bouvier increasingly focuses on abundance, healing and renewal. She has also written Decolonizing Education, and, last year, been included in Resurgence: Engaging With Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions In and Beyond the Classroom. This newest collection seems to pivot more strongly towards our responsibility for world building, not in the colonial sense of raze and rebar, but inward building towards connections with each other and the natural world. That said, how to unpack what “beautiful rebellion” is? Bouvier starts a beautiful rebellion with dozens of pages of dancing, community, gratitude and joy within snowshoeing, appreciating the sounds of rivers and fellow animals. How to understand a call for simplicity and love when the world is burning? Each word, each text comes from a context. What are the cultural underpinnings? There is a touch of Maya
Angelou’s joyful defiance of “I will rise” in the opening poem:

hâw! nista mîna niwan'skan
iykoî miyohtamân anohckîsikâw
âw! êkoma imiyowasik!
in gratitude I too will arise
so joyful for a new day
oh! this surely is goodness!

Bouvier’s poetic statement says: “Employing two languages and worldviews, I write to tell a larger story, one that is filled with love for family, community, and this place know.” The John V. Hicks prize jury described the manuscript that became this collection as “joyful, exclamatory, uncynical poems that don’t shy from the imperative to really look, to commune, to tend toward love.“

That is what disoriented me initially. No cynicism or irony — Bouvier watches carefully. She remembers moments that I can relate to — cue poem of snowshoeing, tumbling tangled, but in her case, falling to eye level with the strap that her father used to tie up his horses when she was a child, and that strap acting as a portal to that previously hidden memory. I felt as if I needed more context before I continued reading or writing. When I look at Indigenous writers, memories of trauma prevail from Residential Schools, from streets and the prevailing structural racism that persists. Indigenous authors are not only keening — there’s the lyrical hand of Tomson Highway, humour of Drew Haydon Taylor, Katherena Vermette showing what’s going on in the streets, Land Back anger comes from D.A. Lockhart; a language approach by Jordan Abel; the fierceness of Lee Maracle; Louise Bernice Halfe, whose Cree name is Sky Dancer, covers a gamut including insuppressible joy; there’s leaping gay pop culture of Tommy Pico; Joshua Whitehead’s decolonizing the head by speaking the slurs, putting the shame back on the source. Individual self-realization makes patterns fall apart with a good sample size.

Still, how joy? Part of Bouvier’s poetry is discerning what knowledge is accepted as is, and part is seeking what you will keep and carry forward and how. Her hope is not based on denial of history, but honouring the parallel culture that risks otherwise not being heard. My entry point is also through As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Univ. of Minnesota Press 2020). Her position is Land Back, community building a society where people living by the precepts of non-hierarchical, non-binary, non capitalist processes of building respect, mutuality, and self-determination where children, women, two spirited people and men are equal with nations of plants and animals, with waters and earth. Does Bouvier write as Leanne Betasamosake Simpson put it “first and foremost for my own people.” (As We Have Always Done)? A word is a door to a worldview, not a game of pass-fail. Bouvier’s translations towards inside margins makes for transparency and free entry to those who don’t read Cree-Mischif, whether Indigenous or English. Does she write for herself, other Indigenous people? What am I to do as a settler with a poetry that does not centre whiteness, that centres being Métis in language and intent. I can listen but do I have the right to speak? There is much to learn. Part of the thrust of the book is hung up on the binaries of black hats and white hats and resists the colonial internalized lessons, to stand resilient and not silent to the impacts of colonial pressures that continue. Bouvier centres land and community as a way forward. “perhaps regain balance/ in the reach of an extended hand of friendship.” “Implacable young hearts and minds/ return to the land/you have taken.” To be present among other species is restorative (30). “A harmony of wings
quacks and splashes// as each sound seeps into my weary body.” It is being present. As Betasamosake Simpson says:

“victim and crisis paradigms for story-telling are from the settlers. For my kobade to survive and flourish the next four hundred years, we need to join together in a rebellion of love, persistence, commitment, and profound caring and create constellations of co resistance, working together toward a radical alternative present based on deep reciprocity and th gorgeous generative refusal of colonial recognition.“

A beautiful rebellion might be rejecting the imposed givens of the past, and creating for the internal culture of self and the coming generations. It is a generative and generous reach, a decision of perspective. It is a cultural leap coming from poetry that prioritizes hooks and cleverness rather than consciously unpacking the structure of life that is healthy. A beautiful rebellion is poetry modelling how to live in community. One poem entitled “after and” is a reply to the overheard drunk white remark, “how many times can you pick up the downtrodden before you say it is enough.” Her reply in part is: “as long as we have more to enjoy/ than another we have responsibility /to lift each
other again/ and again/ but even then it may not be enough.” As long as there is disparity, and we are in a position to do so, we help. To be sure this isn’t a call for aid from the white maintainer of the racist system, but spoken human to human. Colonialism demands zero sum games, appropriation of land, plants, animals and people as “resources.” Joy disrupts capitalism and colonialism when land has been dispossessed. For Bouvier, in “Ode to a jack pine,” she isn’t seeing board feet of lumber, not someone “with more DNA than a human,” “medicinal aerosol,” “molecular picnic” “I’m in awe of you.” Empathy expands as an act of living practice for the world she wants to create, whether toward someone she was to meet but had to cancel, or strangers touching hands in a cafe, or a tree. A tree is not background prop, nor something to monetize, but a character to attend to with a name and relationship. There’s a gentle humility in persisting and insisting in the poem to build a better world.

Rita Bouvier is a Métis writer and educator from Saskatchewan. Her third book of poetry, nakamowin’sa for the seasons (Thistledown Press, 2015) was the 2016 Saskatchewan Book Awards winner of the Rasmussen, Rasmussen & Charowsky Aboriginal Peoples’ Writing Award. Rita’s poetry has appeared in literary anthologies, print and online journals, musicals, and television productions, and has been translated into Spanish, German and the Cree-Michif of her home community of sakitawak, Île-à-la-Crosse, situated on the historic trading and meeting grounds of Cree and Dene people.

Publisher: Thistledown Press (April 10, 2023)
Paperback 6″ x 8″ | 105 pages
ISBN: 9781771872348

Pearl Pirie

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Pearl Pirie's WriteBulb is now available at the Apple store. A prompt app for iOS 15 and up gives writing achievement badges. Pirie’s 4th poetry collection was footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021), minimalist poems, won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. Forthcoming chapbooks from Catkin Press and Turret House. Find more at www.pearlpirie.com or at patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet